Summit County Citizens Voice

One of our regular reads around the Colorado blogosphere is Outta The Cornfield, which this week features a link to powerful essay by Audrey Rose about life and loss in a resort community. Click on the image to visit Outta The Cornfield.

Welcoming Mr. Summit County, Gary Lindstrom, to the Summit Voice blogroll, and we’re also stopping in to visit with the Gypsy Journalist, who is advocating for global womens rights, with Jackson Hole Underground for look at Wyoming climate changes, and Wild Snow, where Lou Dawson’s crew is prepping for a Denali expedition.

It’s time once again for our virtual weekly stroll through the blogosphere, where we, in the spirit of Web 2.0, encourage you to click often and click hard to explore all the nooks and crannies of this wonderful thing we call the internet. We know, there are some sites out there that are all about keeping you on their proprietary content, but to us, that’s fighting against the essence of what the web is all about. We say the more links the better and would like to start by welcoming Gary Lindstrom, aka Mr Summit County, to the virtual pages of Summit Voice. Who better than Gary to bring you little pearls of daily wisdom from the high country? We’ve added Gary to our blogroll (over in the right-hand sidebar, just scroll down a little way), where you can click on his blog every day, and we’ll check in on his blog from time to time and post a link when we find something we’d like to share.

A few days ago, Gary wrote a riff on contrails that probably speaks to many of us who have looked up at the sky and wondered where all those planes are coming from and going to. Read more of his blog here.

And check out the rest of this week’s blog-o-rama after the break …

Media-Travel-Mountains
Staying local, we’ve been scanning Rory Moulton’s Media-Travel-Mountains blog, hoping for part 2 of his “epic” post on 2009′s most regrettable words and phrases. Part 1 made us chuckle a few times and laugh out loud twice, especially the description of the number-one overused word — epic. Sadly, we’re still waiting for part 2 — but hey, maybe Mr. Moulton will let us guest blog one of these days!

In other recent posts, Moulton explores the fate of glossy magazines and, somewhat tongue-in-cheek (we hope) suggests that backcountry riders be fined for entering areas where the avalanche hazard is rated as high. Hmmm, more powder for the rest of us? Check out the blog right here.

Reality Sandwich
Whenever we’re feeling like we’ve been spending too much time at local government meetings, we head over to Reality Sandwich (in fact we sometimes scan this site while we’re AT a BOCC meeting, but shhhhhh, don’t tell). It’s sort of like chewing gum for the brain, with posts about crop circles, shamanic journeys, and … wait for it, mandala images appearing on Australian weather radar images. One of the latest posts at Reality Sandwich features an interesting video with author Robert Anton Wilson, who tackled America’s fascination with conspiracy theories in series of novels in the Illuminatus! Trilogy. So click here for quick bite of a Reality Sandwich.

Colorado MoJo
Colorado Mountain Journal is posting an interesting series on Colorado’s ghost ski areas, and there’s also an interesting new post about a free climbing guide for crags in Poudre Canyon. Get all the skinny at ColoradoMountainJournal.com.

Gypsy Journalist
Here in Summit County, the Gypsy Journalist posted a riff on some some legislation headed for Congress today. The international Violence Against Women Act would authorize more than $1 billion over five years to support international programs that address violence against women that is otherwise overlooked.

Here’s an excerpt from the post, and you can read the entire blog here.

“On February 4th, the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) will be reintroduced to the House and Senate in a push to make issues of physical and emotional abuse against women a diplomatic priority for the first time in U.S. history.
According to the Act, sponsored by Senators Joe Biden (D-DE) and Richard Lugar (R-IN), one out of every three women world-wide will be physically or sexually abused in their lifetime, and those rates reach up to 70% of women in some parts of the world.
The IVAWA would create the Office of Global Women’s Initiative in the State Department, and would authorize over $1 billion over the next 5 years in U.S. assistance to support international programs that address violence against women that is otherwise overlooked.

The Act also puts emphasis on establishing legal and judicial protection to prevent and respond to violence against women, which includes helping women understand how to access help through the legal process … “

Heading for Denali
At Wild Snow, Lou Dawson’s crew is blogging about their preparations a spring Denali expedition. Six of the team members all had a weekend off at the same time, so they high-tailed it into the central mountains to test gear and hang out. The blog is heavy on brand names but that’s balanced with specific and detailed information on the pros and cons of each piece of gear. Read the post here.

Wyoming weather
At Jackson Hole Underground, Jim Stanford spoke with a long-time Wyoming weather guru about about some of the various trends that may – or may not – be attributed to climate change. One of the highlights is 7 percent decrease  in snowfall in the town of Jackson between 1951 and 2000, from 9 inches per year down to 73 inches per year over that span. That may not seem like a bunch, but in a valley full of voracious powder hounds, it’s a Big Deal. Read the entire post here.

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