RegularOccurrences

4 La Vida Local

School daze

A teacher’s step-by-step guide to preparing to return to the classroom by Addyson Santese

5

Howdy, partner

Survival tips for those new to the intermountain West by Betsy Marston / Writers on the Range

8

Rough water

Repairing gravel mining’s legacy in the Animas Valley by Jonathan Romeo

5 Writers on the Range

6 Soap Box

7 State News

8 Top Story

10 Land Desk

12-13 Stuff to Do

13 Ask Rachel

14 Free Will Astrology

15 Classifieds

15 Haiku Movie Review

Ear to the ground:

“I started a diet a week ago and weighed 160 pounds. I weighed in at 164 today.”

– Yet another reason why dieting is bunk

Love in all the wrong places

Remember Craigslist’s “Missed Connections?” For that matter, remember Craigslist?

Neither did we, until a search for barstools turned to Missed Connections for a laugh.

For the unacquainted, Missed Connections is where people post messages in hopes of reconnecting with someone they encountered in public but didn’t muster the courage to talk to. In theory, the posts describe the location or circumstances of the encounter, the other person sees it, the two reconnect and live happily ever after. In practice, however, Missed Connections can be a seedy hellhole where people are just trying to solicit sex.

Craiglist declined in popularity in recent years with the rise of social media, as well as scam and safety concerns. So, we were perversely delighted to see Missed Connections is still quite active in Durango. So you don’t have to, we’ve pulled some of our favorites:

• “Looking for a hiking friend with hiking staff.” Oh god.

• “My cat ran out. She is a tabby cat that comes to her name (YUMMI).” Looks like a Boomer clicked the wrong button.

• “I was in front of you in line at City Market, white shirt, let’s meet.” Well that’s descriptive.

• “ISO hot bass player that played last Saturday night. Would love to visit waterfalls and eat lettuce wraps with you this weekend if you’re down, respectfully.” Uhhh…

Without a trace

Even in this surveillance day and age, it’s still possible to disappear by Jonathan Thompson

EDITORIALISTA: Missy Votel missy@durangotelegraph.com

ADVERTISING SALES: telegraph@durangotelegraph.com

STAFF REPORTER: Jonathan Romeo jonathan@durangotelegraph.com

STAR-STUDDED CAST: Addyson Santese, Jonathan Thompson, Rob Brezsny, Rob Pudim, Lainie Maxson, Jesse Anderson & Clint Reid

FAN MAIL ADDRESS: P.O. Box 332, Durango, CO 81302

VIRTUAL ADDRESS: www.durangotelegraph.com

On the cover

Disappointment Valley, named after high hopes of farming the vast expanse fell flat, is now a pretty iconic shot for all those seeking “The Open Road.”/ Photo by Renee Cornue

REAL WORLD ADDRESS: 679 E. 2nd Ave., Ste E2 Durango, CO 81301

PHONE: 970-259-0133

E-MAIL: telegraph@durangotelegraph.com

MAIL DELIVERY AND SUBSCRIPTIONS: $3.50/issue, $150/year

• “Johnson? You out there?” At least it’s to the point.

Our personal favorites, however, come from our neighbors in Farmington:

• “Red Lobster waitress. Had you as a waitress yesterday.”

• “Speedway. I was parked by u as u were cleaning ur window..i aplogized for just parking there ibwas eating.”

• “Waitress Bdubs. I was there saturday night. Beautiful waitress working in the booth area. Long reddish hair, glasses and beautiful! If you read this and know somew who works at bdubs please help me find her.” Maybe you could find her at … BDubs?

T he Durango Telegraph publishes every Thursday, come hell, high water, tacky singletrack or mon- ster powder days. We are wholly independently owned and operated by the Durango Telegraph LLC and dis- tributed in the finest and most discerning locations throughout the greater Durango area.

Believe it or not, there are stories online about people meeting through Missed Connections, not getting murdered and actually working out as a couple. It’s a crazy world, and crazier things have happened, so the saying goes. And hey, we get it, it’s hard to meet people these days.

However, we may want to put the waitress at BDubs in a witness protection program or something.

Eighteen easy back-to-school steps

1. Plan to start having stress dreams about the first day of school, like the one where you’re standing in front of a classroom of unmanageable students that’s more like a frothing pit of vicious piranhas and they all hate you and everything about your specific personality, at least a month in advance. Two if you can manage it.

2. Go to bed a little earlier each night. You want to start the school year feeling refreshed and re-energized. If you don’t, expect that students will be brutally honest with their opinions about your appearance and/or ask if you have a wasting disease.

3. Spend obscene amounts of time ensuring your course pages and instructions are meticulously crafted to be friendly yet firm, organized but not overwhelming, and intuitive without being demeaning. Additionally, practice avoiding the phrase “it’s in the syllabus,” lest you be viewed as bitchy and receive a poor score on Rate My Professor.

4. Throw in some laughter. Prepare a joke or riddle of the day. You’re more relaxed just thinking about it, right? (OK, I have to confess – I pulled this tip from another article. It was too funny not to include).

5. Buy the perfect pop culture bumper sticker, but reconsider putting it on your car because you don’t want your ride to be easily identifiable in the school parking lot that conveniently doesn’t have security cameras.

6. Remove the schedule that the administrative assistant kindly taped to your office door – the schedule that details your exact location at all times – because you work in a building that is unlocked 24/7 and anyone could come in at literally any time, a thought that doesn’t seem to disturb anyone else in your hall.

7. Visit your assigned classrooms beforehand to check out the tech upgrades (good luck girl, only God can help you figure out how to work that new projector now). While you’re there, see if there are windows or doors to escape through in case of a school shooter.

8. Pause to wonder if you’re the kind of brave teacher who would take a bullet for a student.

9. Feel guilty when the answer is probably not.

10. Think about all your colleagues who thought that your precautionary measures were ridiculous because “a shooting has never happened in (insert idyllic place).” Consider all the towns and schools where a shooting had never taken place until it did. Subsequently, count the number of shocked residents, left in utter disbelief after precisely such a tragedy occurred in (insert idyllic place) and divide that by zero –you’ve found the sum total of people who should have been surprised.

Thumbin’It

Hey! The La Plata County Fair is back! Which means only one thing: nodding off on a bench while eating funnel cake as your kid goes nuts on the Zipper.

President Biden declaring a new national monument near the Grand Canyon – Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni –protecting sacred Indigenous lands and banning future uranium mining.

Elon Musk vowing to pay legal costs for users who get in trouble at work for their tweets. Surely there’s a way we can come up with a scam for this to make some big bucks?

11. Hope that this will finally be the semester where you don’t have a student come to your office and tell you they’ve been missing class and are thinking of dropping out of school because they’re struggling with a sexual assault case. Prepare yourself for this exact situation anyway because it’s happened every single year that you’ve been teaching.

12. Don’t stop to consider if your male colleagues have to expend this much mental and emotional energy to get ready for the first day of classes. You’ve still got a lot to do to get ready for the school year. (Also, no, they don’t).

13. Take care of yourself by scheduling a massage! (Alright, yes, this is another ludicrous tip I found in a different article. Laugh twice at this suggestion if you’re both a teacher and a parent).

14. Do some fast math: if you’re too young to be someone’s grandma and therefore unsexy, but you’re also not old enough to be out of the theoretical dating age range, determine that students will automatically grant you 36% as much respect as your male counterparts. Go ahead and round that number down to 30% for the inevitable email you’ll receive from a student that starts with “‘sup?” and ends with them asking if they “missed anything important” when they skipped your class to shred some fresh pow.

15. Set aside some time to worry that the assigned reading list you’ve spent the summer compiling contains too much feminist literature. Inevitably think back to the guy in your creative writing workshop who said he just “couldn’t connect” to your writing because there were “too many women” in the story. Try not to spontaneously combust.

16. Avoid buying new folders or pencils or notebooks or any other stationery because you’re fully stocked after dumpster diving through last year’s discarded supplies. You’re still working with a teacher’s salary after all.

17. Scan your closet. As a female teacher, you don’t want to wear anything too form-fitting because then people won’t respect you or take you seriously, but you also can’t dress like a frumpy old cow because then people won’t respect you or take you seriously. Simply find a few cute outfits that are youthful yet professional while avoiding showing any cleavage, leg, stomach or shoulder. Really, any human skin at all is considered sexually suggestive and therefore a no-go, so if you can just rip that off prior to the first day, that’s probably for the best.

18. And finally, here’s the absolute best tip I can offer to prepare you for the trenches of a new school year: Walmart has five-cup coffee makers on sale for $9.98 in aisle H20. You’re welcome.

– Addyson Santese

SignoftheDownfall:

Oh, the Hugh-Manatee

An OHV rollover in Silverton that resulted in four people sustaining critical injuries who were not wearing seatbelts or safety equipment. Kinda important gear there.

A rash of wildfires breaking out in the region. And with wildfires in Hawaii, Italy and Greece, it’s sorta driving home that we really shot ourselves in the foot with this whole climate change thing.

The U.S. Women’s Soccer team getting eliminated in Round 16 of the World Cup. Crap, now what sport are we going to pretend to care about?

The Mote Aquarium in Florida announced last month that one of its manatees, Hugh, died as a result of “high intensity” sex with another manatee named Buffett, who was also Hugh’s brother and longtime lover. Apparently, same-sex manatee love has been documented seasonally in the wild, but the behavior intensifies in captivity, and the Hugh/Buffett affair had been going on for years before it turned deadly. The couple is pictured below on a date eating lettuce. The aquarium staff is sad, and Buffett is lonely, but thanks to DeSantis, this is still only the second worst story to come out of Florida in July.