RegularOccurrences

4 La Vida Local

Weighing in

Tribes finally get seat at Colorado River negotiations table

by Allen Best

10

Going deep

4 Thumbin’ It

5 Land Desk

6-7 Soap Box

8 Big Pivots

10 Top Story

“You having a mullet is just like when you had cornrows. I just can’t look at you.”

– When a girlfriend gives you fashion advice, it’s probably best to take it

Stuffed

You may not know it, but Aug. 4, 2018, is a day that lives in infamy.

On that day, in Augsburg, Germany, André Ortolf set out to accomplish a feat that would set him apart from his fellow man: eating a watermelon really fast.

Debunking the Grand Canyon Egyptian ruins myth – yet again by Jonathan

12 Top Shelf Redux

Romeo

12

Boogie in Buckley

Ozomatli brings Grammy-winning L.A. fusion to Durango by Chris

Aaland

14 Gossip of the Cyclers

15 Flash in the Pan

18-19 Stuff to Do

20 Ask Rachel

21 Free Will Astrology

22 Classifieds

22 Haiku Movie Review

You call this fun?

When the going gets tough, the tough change their attitude

by Jennaye Derge

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On the cover

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More specifically, according to the Guinness World Records: “The attempt was done on a children’s holiday camp to show how records are attempted.” Alright…?

Little did Ortolf know he would be making the history books, because he downed a 1.5 pound watermelon in just 30 seconds. His title still stands today, according to Guinness.

However, his title could be in jeopardy with the first annual 4th of July Watermelon Eating Contest at 11th St. Station this Saturday (see what we did there?).

Carmen Drulis, manager of 11th St. Station, said she was thinking of an event that would be fun for all ages and landed on the watermelon eating contest. Last weekend, she had 11th St. Station’s owners and some staff give it a practice run.

“It definitely was harder than I thought it would be for them,” she said. “I didn’t personally do it. I found my way out of that.”

At 4 p.m. on Saturday, there will be three age categories: 6 and under, 7 to 15, and 16 and older. Contestants will go head to head trying to eat one watermelon the fastest, then advance to the next round. Prizes await for first and second places.

How many watermelons does one buy for a watermelon eating contest? “That’s my project today,” Drulis said Wednesday. We tried to Google “strategies for winning a watermelon-eating contest” but didn’t find much, other than some tutorials on a website called TikTok. Another website recommends “don’t choke,” so do what you will with that information.

Regardless, if you’re up for it, go on down to 11th St. Station on Saturday and try to unseat Ortolf. (Ortolf, it appears, has an affinity for setting strange world records, also holding the title for furthest distance to blow a pea as well as fastest 100-meter race in both clogs and ski boots.)

Oh, and no need to bring your own puke buckets – Drulis said those would be provided. And whatever you do, don’t eat the seeds. You don’t want a watermelon growing in your stomach.

A hopeful dystopia

One afternoon, in a year when human rights were being repealed nationally, I clocked into my bookstore job and stood powerless behind the front counter. I was trying to stay present while dreading the present. Then a small child, maybe around 10 years old, approached the counter and told me and my co-workers about a fantasy series she was writing. She described a five-volume series about different dragons fighting against each other “in a world on the brink of war.” Then she showed us a sketchbook full of dragon characters in this dragon world. The girl said the first book would be titled, “I Thought the World Was Free.”

The next books, she said, would focus on the chaos the dragons are caught in. But, she added, all the upheaval would lead to the final book, titled “The World is Beautiful.” At that moment, the world felt colorful again. And my heart swelled and sank.

A year later, as U.S. states continue to take away rights and health care from women and the LBGTQ+ community, I keep thinking about those books and stories in the making. In order to stay anchored to the present, I realize sometimes I need to be adrift in a hopeful dystopia.

Last year, in response to our ongoing crises, an unflinchingly radical novel came out called “Thrust.” I recently read it, and at times I found myself wondering if that little girl with her dragon books came straight out of this novel.

One of the main characters in “Thrust” is a girl named Laisvė. She lives with her father in the nottoo-distant future in what used to be New York City, where climate change and police states have created a bleak society. Laisvė is a “carrier” – by holding onto objects and recognizing the history they carry, she can travel through time via water. This allows the girl to escape immigration raids, taking her on a journey to engage with history’s working class, living hidden lives; to converse with the earth and animals in revolt against man-made destruction. “Thrust” smashes borders between fiction and history, magic and science; the past and present.

The sprawling book is non-linear, with every moment folding into each other. Lidia Yuknavitch, the author, said in one interview, “In this story, I tried to ask what it might look like on the page and in storytelling if times were allowed to speak to each other.” She added, “If the past and the present and the future didn’t hold anymore as markers of difference, what might that look like?”

Thumbin’It

The City of Durango sending out a random survey to 3,000 households to gauge, among other things, the quality of life in town. Oh please pick us!

Work on about 6 miles of new trails at Durango Mesa Park, on the east side of town, expected to be completed and open to the public by the fall.

Newly revealed doodles by ole Henry VIII showing he felt remorse for his six wives, countless beheadings, schisming from the church, starting tons of wars. See? People can change.

The result is a novel containing a hopeful dystopia. It’s a story containing multiple stories, centering queer and female voices. The novel celebrates those fluid identities and desires often regarded as threatening evils by patriarchy.

“EVIL is just LIVE going in a different direction,” Laisvė once said, adding, “People get stuck too easily.”

While I was reading “Thrust,” events were happening in the world that again felt like they leaped out of the novel. Around the Strait of Gibraltar, a growing number of orca pods are attacking and sometimes sinking boats. The Guardian recently reported that orcas around the North Sea, 2,000 miles from the Strait, are also organizing against boats. One researcher stated, “It’s possible this ‘fad’ is leapfrogging through the various pods/communities,” and there may be “highly mobile pods that could transmit this behavior a long distance.”

Now, when I hear of orca uprisings, I think of one scene from “Thrust:” on the cusp of environmental catastrophe, ancient mammoth tusks rise along the Lena River, which induces a new gold rush on a dying planet. One day, Laisvė and her family encounter a hunter prying a tusk loose from river mud. Her family keeps a safe distance behind a tree, and there Laisvė hears the tree speaking to her. “The animals are returning,” the tree says. “Water is rearranging.”

Later on, the omniscient narrator tells us that most people believe a different future is impossible. But, the narrator goes on, Laisvė knows a better world requires imagination, the kind of imagination that leaps “from sea into sky and back, like a beautiful black orca.”

Like Laisvė, the dragon girl in the bookshop carries the spirit of speculative fiction writer Ursula Le Guin – the visionary of hopeful dystopias. That’s what mesmerizes me about the imaginative mind of children. In their raw worldview, everything blends together: magic is as real as the sun and sea. In another scene from “Thrust,” earthworms are talking to Laisvė. They recognize her endless wonder for the world. They tell her, “I don’t know what kind of girl you are, but sometimes human-child spawn can travel differently. Once your species hits adulthood, it’s all over. Dead matter. Stuck inside their own dramas.”

In their own undamaged way, children recognize the man-made injustice and innate beauty of the world, while innocently demanding the impossible: a world where everyone is safe and loved. Those who carry that compassionate imagination into adulthood become prophets with pens, bringing to life other worlds for us to believe in.

– Kirbie Bennett

SignoftheDownfall:

Rough days keep coming, with search and rescue crews now looking for a man who went missing on Hesperus Mountain as well as an unidentified body spotted in the Animas River.

A human case of bubonic plague in Montezuma County. Thank god we still have 10,000 rolls of toilet paper from the last pandemic; that’ll come in handy.

In other pandemic news, more than $200B – nearly 20% – of COVID-19 relief business loans appear to be fraudulent. Well, that was a colossal f$@# up.

Highway to Heck

For nearly 20 years, bus #666 has taken passengers to and from Hel, which is a town on the Baltic coast of Poland. The irony of this caused a boom in bus tourism over the past decade, but Fronda, a local Catholic publication, didn’t get the joke. After years’ worth of protests led by Fronda, bus number 666’s operator announced last week that the last number in the bus’ license number would be flipped, thereby making it 669. Fronda has labeled the change a success, but eventually, they’ll figure out why all the local teens are giggling.