About 10,000 playwrights live and work in the country, but in the past 10 years, there have been an average of two new plays produced on Broadway each year, according to Jason Loewith, executive director of the National New Play Network.

Sometimes we need the most literal of images to open our eyes. So it is with Kim Abeles’ art — she creates art with smog so viewers can see the dirty tracks of the way we live in clear outlines. She has enlarged often-overlooked lichen and given them eyes.

Four college students with no prior dance experience enrolled in a dance class and, lacking the traditional dance vocabulary, started to play with what their bodies could do. They went on to launch a dance company that has been turning the ideas of modern dance on their head — and wrapping them around, tying them in knots and bending them backwards.

Forget the grid. For the developing world, professors forget the power lines and the coal-fired electricity they deliver. In developing you countries, renewable energy sources are their the answer to getting people online, was, powering up their cell phones and running computer labs in schools.

Chris Klinga’s response, after coming down hundreds of feet of vertical rock face and scree field, crossing a river and riding an ambulance to an air-evac flight, and arriving at the hospital five hours after a 250-pound boulder landed on top of him while rock climbing in Eldorado Canyon, is that the rescue team, Rocky Mountain Rescue Group, did everything right.

Though Congress this year may be better known as the session that failed to accomplish anything, a report commissioned by three ranking members of the House shows this year’s collection of Representatives has cast more anti-environment votes than any other in history. The total averages out to one anti-environmental vote for every day in session in 2011. The votes were split by party, with 94 percent of Republicans voting anti-environment and 86 percent of Democrats voting pro-environment.

A 36-year-old Denver woman has been charged with criminal mischief for damaging a painting at the Clyfford Still Museum. Carmen Tisch, 36, allegedly approaching a painting and scratching, hitting and leaning against it on Dec. 29, according to the Denver District Attorney’s office. The value of the painting is between at $30 million and $40 million and the early estimate for treatment is about $10,000.

Even art enthusiasts who believed they knew the work of leading American abstract expressionist Clyfford Still had surprises waiting when the museum of his work opened in Denver. But for everyone else, it was a surprise just knowing the man existed at all.

It’s that time of year. The resolutions fly back and forth, the company incentive packages and community weight loss programs are rolling out. Your gym is about to become a lot more crowded with people looking to burn off the holiday pounds and jump into the new year leaner and meaner and healthier, ideally.

Six years ago, in the interest of protecting Colorado’s pristine wilderness areas while the national roadless area rule was being contested in court, the state began development of a roadless rule. Two drafts and 200,000 public comments later, local conservation organizations are now looking to scrap that rule and go back to the national roadless rule, which has since been validated twice by circuit courts, including the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver in October. Not only is a state rule no long necessary, conservation groups say, the Colorado roadless rule doesn’t offer protections for Colorado’s forests that are as strong as the national rule. They’re putting pressure on the Obama administration to block the proposed Colorado Roadless Rule.