Potato Day

For 112 years, through two pandemics, ‘Bonedalers have harkened the fall with a celebration of spuds. At the time of the very first Potato Day, 1910, Eugene Grubb had just published his book, “The Potato” and Irish immigrant Thomas McClure’s red variety, unique to this valley, was gaining national prestige.

“The Roaring Fork and Crystal River Valley section of Colorado is as nearly perfect in soil condition as can be found,” Grubb stated in 1912, “and the potatoes grown [here] are not excelled anywhere in the world, and are equaled in but a few places.”

By the 1930s, hundreds of rail cars carried thousands of tons of spuds from the Valley each year. Although this enterprise began fading in the 1940s, with mechanized farming techniques not apt for our local rolling hills plus labor shortages, Potato Day reminds the denizens of Carbondale that their settler roots are literally a root — the delicious and strange potato, domesticated by the Incas of modern Peru more than 9,000 years ago.

On Oct. 1, all are welcome to remember this history with the 113th annual Potato Day celebration. This year’s theme, “Marble Mash” is especially historic, marking the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln Memorial, constructed with Colorado Yule Marble from Marble, Colorado. It took 600 train cars to transport the finished marble for the Lincoln Memorial to the nation’s capital. The haul included 1,800 stones, weighing as much as 30 tons each.

Named for George Yule, a prospector in the late 1800s, this pure white marble was uncovered in the Ragged Mountains in lieu of silver and gold. By 1905, the Colorado Yule Marble Company had established the largest marble finishing mill in the world.

Along with the old, comes the new. In recent years, The Sopris Sun joined a Potato Day planning committee together with the historical society, rec department, local ranchers and schools, KDNK, and the committee keeps growing with diverse participation.

By popular demand, a Friday night dance will return. In association with the local contra dance group, caller Andrea Cohen and the Wooden Nickel String Band invite the community to a barn dance at the Third Street Center on Sept. 30 at 7:30 p.m. Anyone intimidated by partner dancing needn’t worry, Cohen will guide each twist and spin for an experience accessible to dancers of all ages and abilities.

“Historically, a community dance was part of it,” said Parks and Rec Director Eric Brendlinger. After last year’s event, meeting with some of the “oldtimers,” Brendlinger heard feedback from Ernie Giannenetti in particular that an evening dance was sorely missed.

On Friday night, members of the Giananetti family will also be stoking a fire in the pits beneath Sopris Park for the annual barbeque… with Nieslanik beef slow cooked luau-style, underground with burning coals.

The resonant heat will bake potatoes and roast corn on Saturday, wafting fragrances into the autumnal air to rival those of the boiling cauldron of cowboy coffee a short distance away.

This year, for the first time ever, the local Rotary club will serve up a pancake breakfast before the annual parade, from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. at 4th and Main. The menu includes sausages, orange juice and coffee from Bonfire with pancake batter donated by the Village Smithy.

The parade departs from 2nd Street, in front of KDNK, at 10:30 a.m. and it’s not too late for businesses, school groups, political parties, hobbyists or any other type of association to join in by contacting jrochel@carbondaleco.net (970-5101290).

Ross Montessori will again host the Tater Trot fun run with registration at 4th and Main at 8:30 a.m. There will be a farmers and artisan market open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Sopris Park. KDNK’s record sale returns, along with live music from Pam and Dan and the Hell Roaring String Band, also in the park. And the highly cherished Youth Gymkhana will conclude it all with a mini-rodeo competition at the Gus Darien Arena from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m.

The historical society, meanwhile, has organized a number of classic potato games, such as potato tossing and sack races, in addition to two new competitions, Potato Sculpting and Marble Statue.

To enter the Potato Sculpting contest, one must peel a potato, carve it and post a photo on the Carbondale Annual Potato Day Facebook page (#CarbondalePotatoDay); there are four categories: 1. the Lincoln Memorial, 2. most representative of the town of Carbondale, 3. most representative of the town of Marble and 4. most creative overall. Entries are due by Sept. 29.

The Marble Statue competition requires contestants to arrive at Sopris Park on Oct. 1 dressed as a marble statue. They will line up in front of the Gazebo at 11:15 a.m. When music plays, the statues must dance. When the music stops, they will freeze. Contestants will be judged by applause from the audience and prizes awarded for first, second and third place.

Poster art by Will Tempest

A ‘grassroots, community organization’

By James Steindler Contributing Editor

The doors to the Carbondale Clay Center opened 25 years ago, and from the beginning it’s been a creative space for this mountain community and connected ceramicists from other parts of the world with its workshops and artists-in-residency programming.

“That end of the street, for years, was the ‘dark end of the street,’” as the Wilson Picket song goes, Clay Center founder Diane Kenney chuckled. “It did bring life to that end of Main Street,” even though it took a few more years to get a streetlight — and the Christmas light decorations — to that end of Main.

The creation and upkeep of the center has not always been easy, including moving in its (at the time, top-of-the-line) Geil kiln that would not fit through the door. But, ingenuity and community have kept the ship at sail, and Kenney recalls Bill Bullard using a crane to plop the kiln in place, where it still stands today.

It’s taken the type of dedication to rise from bed at 2 a.m. on a rainy night, and drive down the Crystal River Road to ensure the kiln is properly covered. Or the love of a supportive life-partner to come with. “There are a lot of things, I have to say, that John McCormick was part of,” when it came to the Clay Center, Kenney said of her late husband.

She recalls a piece of advice she once received from George Stranahan when first pitching for funding. He told her to write down her vision for the center — where she’d like to see it 10 years from its inception. “That was really a good thing to ask me to do,” Kenney said.

The vision she shared was for the center to be a “grassroots, community organization.” To which George’s reply was, “You just said my three favorite words.”

The vision came into focus over the years and today, Kenney says the Clay Center is soaring.

The exhibit

Until the end of September, folks can catch “Diane Kenney Retrospective” — the Clay Center’s current exhibit — with her works spanning the years on one wall and her more recent line on the opposite side. It's Kenney's second solo show at the Clay Center.

When it comes to her creative process, the potter tends to let the clay lead the way. “It’s more of an attitude toward the clay, and the material probably defines my work more than a specific way of making a product,” she explained.

“I wanted it to look like it was handmade,” she reflected. “I wanted to show that it’s been touched and how tactile this material is.”

Kenney began making the new pieces in 2019, when her husband was still with us. “And, I didn’t get to finish them until the invitation for this show,” she said. “It was a big step for me.”

She admitted, “If I hadn’t had this show, I might have finished those, but I’m not sure.”

The recent pieces share a resemblance. She layered a coat of black glaze, then white, and spritely colored the etched designs mimicking nature and some with “soul-feeding” quotes.

Anyone who has one of the artist's pieces will find “DK” inscribed inconspicuously somewhere on its surface.

The beyond

The Clay Center, along with Carbondale, is growing. So much so, that the time has come for the facility to grow along with it. Whether that change occurs at its current location or elsewhere in Carbondale is still spinning on the figurative wheel.

Executive Director Angela Bruno shared that there were 151 people on its waitlist for programming this summer, and at any given time between 25 and 30 artists are waiting in line for shelf and studio space.

The Clay Center would also love to provide affordable housing opportunities for its artists in residence. Today, resident artists have to sort that component out themselves, albeit with supporters rallying to help make do.

“It’s for the community,” Bruno said of the prospective expansion. “We’re listening, and we hear the demand and the need. It’s for the community. It’s for the next 25 years and beyond.”

The radiant Diane Kenney. Photo by James Steindler

Settings: Silver Jubilee

On Saturday, Sept. 17, in celebration of its 25th anniversary, the Clay Center will host “Settings: Silver Jubilee” where guests will dine on handmade dishes they can take home at the end of the evening. It will be a convergence of the center’s history, its present and what’s to come, with speeches by Kenney, Bruno and Sam Harvey — the Clay Center’s longest serving board member.

People can peruse “Diane Kenney Retrospective” while Grass Patties will provide the musical entertainment for the evening. Tickets are available at www.carbondaleclay.org

By Elizabeth Key Sopris Sun Contributor

Life is full of many cyclical trends — from fashion and food to names and colors — but it all starts with the cycle of life and, consequently, death. Burials, like produce, began trending in a less natural direction with the manipulation of an organic process.

Pre-Civil War burials were an intimate aff air with many customs taking place within the home. Th e women of the family would wash the body and lay it out for viewing by relatives and loved ones. A local carpenter constructed a simple coffi n, likely out of pine, and family members oft en participated in digging the grave together. A family laid the body to rest on their own land or in a church graveyard.

Around that time, the burial process started to move farther afi eld with the introduction of embalming, a practice invented by ancient Egyptians. Th e U.S. War Department started utilizing embalming to ship northern soldiers’ bodies home. Mercury and arsenic were used to replace the body’s natural chemicals and delay decomposition. Today, embalming uses formaldehyde which is carcinogenic.

Embalming became a trend and a profession was born — that of the mortician. Because the mortician held the bodies, they started renting out their parlors for viewings and providing other services, eff ectively distancing the family from the burial.

Following her parents' modern-style burials, Janice Th orup, one of the founders of Wild Sage Natural Burials, was inspired to return burials to a more natural and familiar practice and started researching the green burial movement in 2020.

“Death is part of life, but we’ve tended to sanitize it and push it away,” Th orup said. “I think that has increased our fear of it and doesn’t really honor the body’s return to the earth.”

She describes modern cemeteries as lawn parks that are resource-intensive due to fertilization, watering and mowing. In conventional burials today, airtight caskets are oft en made from tropical woods shipped from far away lands and inlaid with copper and bronze, metals which leach overtime into the soil and water sources. Th e caskets are interred in vaults of fi berglass, steel or concrete to prevent the earth from collapsing and to support an even turf for mowing grass.

An advantage of green burials is that they cost about half of the average $9,000 price tag of conventional burials. Th orup said, “Th ose fancy airtight caskets are expensive, and embalming is expensive, and the funeral homes will rent hearses and provide a bunch of products and services that you might need, but you don’t have to have.” She explained, “Th ere’s the environmental cost, there is the consumer cost, and there is the cultural cost.”

Unlike the tight, uniform rows in a traditional cemetery, green burial grounds look more like a nature preserve. Th e bodies are scattered throughout the land and accessed by walking trails, identifi ed with fl at native stones and GIS markers. Th orup said, “Each grave is dug so as not to disturb the roots of existing trees and native species are planted.” People oft en donate land for green burial preserves and ideally conservation easements protect the land in perpetuity while providing the donor with tax credits.

Green burials prohibit anything that would interfere with the natural cycle of decomposition. Microorganisms in human intestines start breaking the body down within 72 hours, and within six weeks, most of the tissue is returned to the surrounding soil. Th orup said, “the process of the body’s breakdown is fascinating and really quite beautiful … Th ere have been studies that show it can improve air quality and soil health.”

Cremation has long been considered an environmentally-friendly aft er-life option, but the 28 gallons of fuel and chemicals used during the process emit some 540 pounds of carbon dioxide per cremation, along with mercury, nitrous oxide and particulate matter, into the air. Plus, Th orup said, “Cremations have a high PH level with 200 times the calcium phosphate and sodium that plants can tolerate. So it creates a dead zone if you bury them.”

In green burials, bodies are oft en interred in a shroud and placed atop pine boughs, or within a pine or cardboard box. Sometimes local artisans create caskets out of seagrass or willow. Th en pine boughs are also laid on top of the body for aeration. Preserve managers mound earth on top of the grave and, when it settles, continue the mounding process until the grave is level with the surrounding ground.

Most green burial preserves are clustered on the East Coast and southeast, with some in the Northwest. Wild Sage Natural Burials would like to off er green burials in the North Fork Valley. Th e 501(c)3 is actively looking for land to be donated to establish these preserves. Th orup said she wanted to honor “our spiritual values of just embracing death as part of life, wanting burials to be simple, and having families involved in a way they haven’t been since the Civil War.”

For more information, please contact: info@wildsagenb.org

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