A fringe right-wing Mesa County group that planned an open-carry protest October 10 in front of a Grand Junction mosque was forced to back down after a counter protest that was quickly organized via social media at the same place and time drew far more participants than the Muslim-hater event.
WCAF’s popular Atheist Quiz is always a highlight of the downtown Grand Junction Farmers Market, and the only booth that offers passers-by a knowledge challenge
Western Colorado Atheists and Freethinkers (WCAF) again hosted their highly popular booth at the Main Street Farmers Market in downtown Grand Junction on Thursday, 9/24.
So far, WCAF’s has been the only booth at the Farmers Market to challenge people’s knowledge and sense of fun by offering a short and always-entertaining Atheist Quiz.
Mesa County Republican activist Marjorie Haun echoed the sentiments of the county commissioners when she stated her belief that wilderness “is an absurd notion.” Haun also promotes the use of firearms and writes in her blog, “ReaganGirl.com,” that poverty is a lifestyle choice, white privilege is a myth and marijuana use “turns young men into biological young women.”
An article in today’s Daily Sentinel titled “Land of Bewilderment” says the Mesa County Commissioners voted unanimously to oppose a Congressional bill recognizing several new wilderness areas in Mesa County, including 75,000 acres in the Little Bookcliffs and the land surrounding Gateway’s stunning signature rock formation, The Palisade. Commissioner Rose Pugliese said more wilderness “is not in the best interest of Mesa County.”
Mesa County “Reagan Girl” GOP activist Marjorie Haun echoed Pugliese’s sentiment in the article, calling wilderness “an absurd notion.”
The above airplane, which closely resembles Air Force Two used to transport the Vice President of the United States, was spotted doing repeated touch-and-go landings at the Grand Junction Regional Airport on Saturday, September 19 at 11:00 a.m. Below is a photo of one of the airplanes that serve as Air Force Two when the VP is being transported in it. Note the extremely close resemblance. Could it be the same plane? If so, what was it doing here in Grand Junction?:
In this stunning example of bad marketing, a sunflower seed snack manufacturer chose a most unfortunate name for its products. The ad was seen perched atop the gas pumps at the Bradley at Patterson and 25 Road
Photo Credit: Lee Gelatt Photography http://www.leegelattphotography.com/
Grand Junction Gun Club members held signs and waved at noon today at 7th Street and Patterson Road to protest the escalating epidemic of gun violence in the U.S. and demand sensible gun regulations, like closing loopholes in the law requiring background checks for gun purchases.
The group turned out in response to Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which organized similar rallies across the country including in Washington, D.C. today. Stay-at-home mom Shannon Watts founded Moms Demand Action on December 15, 2012, in response to the devastating shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in which 20 elementary school children and 6 school staff members were massacred. Moms Demand Action wants state and federal legislators enact common-sense gun reforms.
Photo Credit: Lee Gelatt
Gun Violence Protest in Grand Junction
In Grand Junction, protesters stood on the busy corner in front of St. Mary’s Hospital in clear, sunny 80-degree weather holding signs saying “No More Massacres,” “End Gun Violence,” “Background Checks for Guns” and “Whatever it Takes.” The group got plenty of thumbs-ups and honks of approval from drivers passing by, as well as curious looks and even some middle fingers and angry shouts from drivers who didn’t support their efforts.
Photo Credit: Lee Gelatt Photography
In the U.S., nearly 8 children are shot and killed every day, and Colorado has the dubious distinction of now being home to a growing list of notorious gun massacres: The Chuck-Cheese killings in 1993, the Columbine High School mass killing in 1999 and the Aurora Theater Massacre in 2012. And the legacy continues: at the same time protesters were holding their signs in Grand Junction today, yet another juvenile male was shot in Aurora, Colorado, resulting in three schools being locked down.
Have you had enough of gun violence in our country? Want to see the U.S. start doing something to reduce these now-common tragedies? To join the anti gun violence cause locally and get word of upcoming gun sense activities in Grand Junction, go to the Grand Junction Gun Club’s Facebook page.
By definition, religion consists of sets of beliefs based on myths, fantasy and superstition.
If we accept one person’s religious beliefs as valid, we must accept them all, no matter how crazy they may be.
But if we act on this principle and start honoring all these various beliefs (and even the more mainstream ones) in workaday life, mayhem will result.
To see how this bears out, just take the principle to its logical extensions:
A woman goes to medical school and becomes a heart surgeon, then decides to become a Jehovah’s Witness who believes blood transfusions violate her religion. Honoring her religious belief at work would sacrifice patients’ quality of care, and could cost lives.
A devoutly religion 911 operator believes everything happens according to God’s will. Your house catches fire and you call 911. The religious operator answers, is your neighbor and recognizes you and your address. She knows you occasionally use alcohol, and based on the comings and goings at your house, has conclude that you regularly have sex on occasion even though you aren’t married. These activities violate her religion, and she honestly believes the fire at your house is God’s punishment for your sins. She does not alert the fire department because she dare not interfere with God’s will.
Your house is toast.
You get the idea.
We’ve already seen how the Kentucky County, Clerk Kim Davis’, religious belief against equal marriage have caused her to deny citizens’ their civil rights.
Just because a crowd of people mass in support Kim Davis by gathering in front of the jail she is being held in, and prominent Republican politicians make a show out of of visiting her in jail doesn’t mean she is right.
She is wrong. People who believe she is right need a thorough lesson in the purpose and value of a secular government and separation of church and state.
In the U.S., Ms. Davis is welcome to follow her faith any way she likes in her personal life, but as an elected public official, she is required to law carry out all of the duties her job requires in full accordance with the law or step down.
A Pennsylvania company called Fireworks is celebrating Pope Francis’ upcoming U.S. visit by marketing a specially-designed toaster that burns the image of Pope Francis onto your sliced bread. The Toaster comes with and an additional insert that toasts the words “Spread the Love” in English onto your toast. The toaster has seven shade settings and a removable crumb tray and sells for $48.95 online at ToastThePope.com.
Pope Francis is scheduled to arrive in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, September 22 from Cuba and will be in the U.S. until Sunday, September 27.
Coloradans for Community Rights (CCR) is gearing up to once again put a Community Rights initiative on the 2016 state-wide ballot.
A Community Rights amendment doesn’t ban anything. Instead, the measure establishes that communities in Colorado have a definitive right to local self-government. That is, the new law would give people, not corporations, the dominant authority to decide how to best protect health, safety and welfare in their own communities and surrounding natural environments. Basically, the measure would allow communities to decide, free from corporate or state interference, whether to allow corporate projects that could negatively impact their safe and healthy environments.
What does this measure mean to citizens on the western slope?
The Community Rights Amendment would, for example, give Mesa County residents living around Alanco’s stinky Deer Creek frackwater ponds the right to disallow this land use in their area. It would also give Paonia residents the right to keep drilling and fracking activities away from their schools, residential areas and organic farming districts. Corporations and their trade groups could no longer sue communities over decisions to keep dangerous or noxious industrial activities out of their area. The amendment would also prevent corporations from suing communities that vote to enact living wages, or ban GMOs (genetically modified organisms), for example.
On August 17, CCR submitted the official ballot language for the 2016 Colorado Community Rights Amendment to the Colorado Legislative Council. The ballot measure is very short, only about 200 words. After the ballot language is approved, CCR will organize a state-wide campaign to gather the number of signatures necessary to qualify the measure for the November 2016 statewide ballot.
CCR tried to get a Community Rights measure on the 2014 statewide ballot, but legal challenges by corporations opposed to the measure succeeded in delaying the signature-gathering phase of the effort until it was too late. This time, CCR has started work early enough that they will have a better shot at getting the measure on the ballot and passing it.
Efforts to pass Community Rights Initiatives are also ongoing in New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington.
Few people are aware of the extent of the fundamentalist Christian programs now going on in the U.S. Military aimed at turning our country’s Military into a global Christian mission for Jesus Christ.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), based in Albuquerque, New Mexico has working for years to draw attention to this situation. Mikey Weinstein, the head of MRFF, says these religious efforts constitute a “systematic program of indoctrination sanctioned, coordinated, and carried out by fundamentalist Christians within the U. S. military.” He writes that Christian programs in the military “[represent] a bona fide national security crisis” that is ongoing “throughout the entirety of the United States Air Force in particular, and the U.S. Armed Forces as a whole, whereby unchecked evangelizing activity is carried out on Uncle Sam’s time and the taxpayer’s dime.”
A shocking YouTube compilation of clips contains clips of videos created by the many parachurch groups that operate freely within the U.S. military shows military chaplains and fundamentalist preachers stating openly that they consider the military a hunting ground to recruit followers for Jesus Christ. They refer to military recruits as a “ripe harvest field,” and say the military offers them a “unique opportunity for a gateway ministry.”
Major General (Ret.) Bob Dees, Executive Dire actor of the Campus Crusade for Christ International’s Military Ministry, states, “The first strategic objective is to evangelize and disciple the enlisted members of the enlisted Air Force.”
Footage taken by AlJazeera shows Lt. Colonel Gary Hensley, the Army Command Chaplain in Afghanistan (the chief of all of the Army chaplains in Afghanistan) telling members of the military that they need to go on a recruiting drive for Christ. “Hunt ’em down and get ’em in the Kingdom, that’s what we do, that’s our business,” Hensley says.
A representative of the military branch of Campus Crusade for Christ states,
“Our purpose for Campus Crusade for Christ at the Air Force Academy is to make Jesus Christ the issue at the Air Force Academy and around the world, and I think that we’re seeing God do that. We’re seeing kids come to Christ, being built up in their faith and being sent out to reach the world. They’re government-paid missionaries when they leave here.”
All activities shown in the video are currently ongoing in the U.S. Military and are open violations of U.S. law. The rules regulating Air Force culture, Air Force Instruction 1-1 (pdf), state that “Every Airman is free to practice the religion of their choice or subscribe to no religious belief at all.” The regulations mandate that
…Leaders at all levels must balance constitutional protections for their own free exercise of religion, including individual expressions of religious beliefs, and the constitutional prohibition against governmental establishment of religion. They must ensure their words and actions cannot reasonably be construed to be officially endorsing or disapproving of, or extending preferential treatment for any faith, belief, or absence of belief.
The activities shown in the video are shocking and need to be seen to be believed. You can support the efforts of MRFF here, or write to your own elected officials and express your opinion about this blatant violation of service members’ rights, Air Force rules and the U.S. Constitution.
Namaste Nepal, one of the terrific new restaurants in Grand Junction that add diversity to the cuisine available in town now
Calling all local food lovers: If you haven’t tried this place yet, you should: Namaste Nepal is a new Indian, Tibetan and Nepalese cuisine place on Orchard Mesa, in the strip mall just west of the True Value Hardware. It just opened in early spring, 2015. The food is absolutely delicious, the prep extremely quick, and the owners are extremely gracious, kind and accommodating. They have a lunch buffet, too. Some of our favorite dishes so far include the lamb boti saag (lamb cubes in a creamed spinach sauce), the shrimp pakora appetizer (shrimp dipped in a garbanzo bean flour batter and deep fried), vegetable samosas (a savory pastry stuffed with lightly spiced peas and potatoes), and the onion kulcha (Indian tandoori oven bread stuffed with onions and fresh cilantro). Namaste Nepal is super-fast for take-out, invariably having orders ready in just 5-10 minutes. Easy parking right in front, too. They recently acquired some new patio furniture so you can eat outside. It’s very quick to get there from the east or west sides of town using the Riverside Parkway. To see their menu, click here.
Sorg says lifting the ban on marijuana commerce will finally create more jobs in our area and bring in more tax revenue for schools. Sorg says if he gets enough support for his online petition, he will initiate an official City petition to get a measure to legalize pot cultivation and sales on the local ballot. The Colorado Department of Revenue reports steadily increasing taxes being collected from marijuana sales. Many Grand Junction area residents see high-paying jobs being created across the state and watch as other towns rake in significant revenue from the new marijuana economy, and feel our town is being left far behind.
KKCO 11 News broadcast information about Sorg’s petition on the evening news tonight. The petition currently has 148 signatures, and the number is increasing. See and sign the petition here.
The mystery remains about who has been writing huge, cryptic messages using this hill on the Redlands for years now, and what drives him or her to do it
Back in December, 2014, I talked about the Mysterious Talking Hill Off South Camp Road. For years now, someone has regularly been climbing up this hill and scratching brief, huge messages into the green bentonite. The letters are probably at least 10-12 feet high. The writer changes the messages every other week or so. This task is far more challenging than using Twitter, which limits messages to 140 characters. The messages scratched into this hill are almost never more than four letters, tops. Repeatedly climbing up the crumbling scree to “erase” the old message and scratch in a new one can’t be easy, but some unknown person has been driven to do it frequently for at least six years now.
Sometimes the messages make sense. For example, around Mother’s Day it may say “MOM.” Near the end of December it may say “XMAS.” In May of 2014, when Google Street View caught a photo of the enigmatic hill, it said “USA.”
Google Street View captured the hill in May of 2014, when it said “USA.”
Yesterday the hill said “TREK.”
Why?
We don’t know.
Maybe it had to do with the recent article in the Daily Sentinel about Jamie Bianchini, the man who went on an 8 year bicycle ride through 80 countries — an extended TREK. Or maybe the writer simply bought a new Trek bicycle and was glad as hell about it.
Here’s how to see the Talking Redlands Hill:
Take Broadway out towards the Redlands. Turn left at Monument Road, where the “W” gas station is. (Stop at the fabulous Trailhead Coffee House for Coffee if you have time). Continue on Monument Road toward the Colorado National Monument. When you get to South Camp Road, turn right and go a couple hundred feet to the dirt pullout directly opposite East Fallen Rock Road. There’s a big green electrical box there. Park and look for the dirt road heading generally northwest from the pullout, then look up at the Morrison formation hills just above it. Look a little to the right at a lower green bentonite hill lying between the two rock-covered peaks, as seen in the photo at the top of this article. See what it says and report back! And if you know who’s doing the writing, please do tell!
El M7 Mariscos y Mas food truck at 2856 North Ave., just east of Maxim Motors, is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. – 9 p.m.
There’s a terrific new food truck in town, “El M7 Mariscos Y Mas” (“El M7 Seafood and More”) that’s camped out at 2856 North Ave., between Maxim Motors and the LeMaster Motel & Trailer Park. This terrific little place is the best thing to happen to North Avenue in a long time. El M7 specializes in mariscos, or seafood and offers deliciously different Mexican dishes like shrimp ceviche, fish tostadas, crab tostadas, fish tacos, shrimp quesadillas and burritos. They also have some larger and more awesome sounding dishes like Aguachile Camarones Ahogados (raw shrimp cooked in lime juice topped with onions and avocado slices, seasoned with salt and pepper). As a “barometer dish,” I ordered the shrimp ceviche to go. It cost $10 even. For that I got a big, 16-oz container of ceviche, a good supply of tortilla chips chips and crackers, one little container with fresh lime slices and another with a red, piquant-tasting spicy mariscos sauce, a napkin and some ketchup.
Take-out ceviche from El M7 provided TWO of these bowls full of ceviche. It was delicious.
The ceviche was truly perfect. PERFECT. Many times, especially in landlocked Grand Junction, if you can even find ceviche on a menu, it’s too fishy, or it’s made too salty, too tart or too vinegar-y. But not here. M7 really knows what they are doing and they absolutely NAILED this ceviche. It was truly delicious. The serving size was generous, too, enough for TWO of the bowls seen in the accompanying photo. They got the meal ready super-fast after ordering, too. This place really deserves your business. We are so lucky they are here!
City of Grand Junction Garbage service: fast, efficient and very reasonably priced
Every day in our subdivision, trucks from at least five different private garbage companies rumble through the neighborhood, hopscotching from house to house picking up trash. Most private trucks have 2-3 people operating them: one driver and one or two others who hang onto the back of the truck and jump off to gather trash cans. Sometimes just one guy does it all, driving a few feet, putting the truck in park, jumping out, emptying trash cans, jumping back in the truck, driving a few more feet, jumping out to get trash, etc.
Of all the trash services coming through the neighborhood, one is clearly the most efficient: the City of Grand Junction. A single employee does it all: drives the truck, operates an automatic lift that picks up and dumps the trash cans and puts them back down again. The City’s service is extremely quick, too. One City garbage truck services the entire neighborhood in just minutes.
The City’s rates for trash pickup can’t be beat, either. For just $10.85/month, the City provides a 64 gallon trash can and weekly pickup. Standard trash cans are just 30-45 gallons, so this is a generous size. The City also provides free junk pick up in the spring, and free fall leave removal. By contrast, private trash companies’ charge from $16-18/month for comparable service. Some charge an extra fee to provide you with trash cans and other extra fees to remove large items. Some also charge fuel surcharges when the price of diesel fuel exceeds a certain amount, so you’d have to know the going price of diesel fuel every day to know if you’re going to get a surcharge on your bill in a given month. The one advantage of private companies is that they will often pick up up to five or six trash cans for the same monthly or quarterly price.
The Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce’s ad in the 7/27 Daily Sentinel
An ad run by the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce in last Monday’s Daily Sentinel featured this headline, designed to make local employers drool. After all, from a business owner’s standpoint, what could be better than employees you don’t have to pay? At one time this was called “slavery,” but let’s not let that little detail sidetrack us.
The ad was about a Mesa County Workforce on-the-job training program in which the Workforce picks up 50-90% of the employees’ wages for a set period of time, so employees can get experience and training. Once you get past the Chamber’s demeaning headline, the program sounds great, but this really seems like entirely the wrong way to promote it. The ad’s headline is a slap to local workers and the thousands of low-wage earners in Mesa County.
Things are hard for working families in Mesa County. A living hourly wage for a family of two working adults and two children in Mesa County is $15.02/hour, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But the average per capita hourly wage in Mesa County is just $12.83/hour. Workers in Mesa County on average earn 85% of what others in the state earn, and almost 15% of Mesa County citizens live below poverty level, compared to 13.2% for the state as a whole. To make things worse, local elected officials reject out of hand new economic opportunities literally laid at our feet — like making the Colorado National Monument into a national park, and participating in the growing and prosperous marijuana industry — that could greatly help lift Mesa County’s long-suffering economy.
Downtown Grand Junction’s dismal public toilets at the Farmers Market: ICK!
Have you avoided the public restrooms in downtown Grand Junction because you fear what they might be like?
Well, your fears are justified.
A visit to the public restroom in downtown July 30 revealed a bad scene. The lights at the back of the room weren’t working, and the toilet stalls were dark and scary. They were also dirty. One stall closer to the front of the room was slightly better lit and a little cleaner, but try to use it and you’ll find it doesn’t have a door. The roomier, handicap-accessible stall at the back of the room had a door that worked, but it was also dirty. The worst part of the whole experience is that the toilets are positively prison-like: cold stainless steel without seats on them! They’re a lot like Model #1675 on this website that sells stainless steel security plumbing fixtures under the header of “penal ware.” The item description for Model #1675 says “Institutional Applications: Correctional.” That’s it. There is no second institutional application for this toilet. It doesn’t, for example, also say “Ladies’ Public Restrooms.” THIS IS A PRISON TOILET, period.
A fringe right-wing Mesa County group that planned an open-carry protest October 10 in front of a Grand Junction mosque was forced to back down after a counter protest that was quickly organized via social media at the same place and time drew far more participants than the Muslim-hater event.
