We love it that local mothers came out of the woodwork on May 13, the day after Mother’s Day, to give our all-female county commissioners an earful about fracking.]]> 1770 13th St. wasn’t always a center of Boulder culture. For more than 50 years it was home to a towngas manufacturing plant that appears to have left behind a serious mess in the form of soil and groundwater contamination, contamination that is proving to be quite a challenge to clean up, mostly because the City of Boulder built a plaza and a teahouse right on top of it even after it knew the subsurface contamination was an issue.]]> Something unsightly has gotten a bit too close to one of Boulder’s crown jewels. An environmental contractor hired to deal with possibly hazardous materials from an old gasification plant near the Dushanbe Teahouse downtown has confirmed the need to clean up contamination at the site.]]> Deforestation is at the top of the CIA’s list of environmental issues facing Indonesia, and much of it can be attributed to the creation of palm oil plantations, built to satisfy demands of the American market, which has increased the import of palm oil by 485 percent over the last decade.]]> The City of Boulder is holding two events on May 18 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the East Boulder Community Center, 5660 Sioux Drive, to cover some summer concerns: water restrictions and a noxious weed eradication program.]]> More than 60,000 people are expected to participate in the Bolder Boulder this year — what “may be the world’s best mass participation race in the United States,” according to Runner’s World magazine.]]> Scholarship applications are currently being taken for the Women’s Wilderness Institute girls’ programs. The Institute offers four- to 14-day trips for girls beginning at age 9. Their classes allow girls to try out backpacking, rock climbing and hiking a peak, or delve into a committing trip, like an eight-day backpacking expedition.]]> Staying the same for almost 30 years has it benefits, explains Yo La Tengo helmsman Ira Kaplan, but it’s also OK to shuffle the deck once in a while.]]> Akerfeldt, singer/songwriter/guitar/driving force of Opeth, says touring is how the band became known outside of Sweden and how it built its following and reputation.]]> “Der Abschied” is ideal for Simson’s MahlerFest farewell because the text literally describes the parting of two friends. It is, Olson says, “the most colorful, beautiful, intimate piece of music ever written. Period.”]]> In fact, it amuses me to no end that some of the material on their website (particularly the description of Penumbra in the Garden of Twilight’s Cucumbers, the fictional play they’d intended to produce before settling on Delirium Tremens) and in the program so far exceeds in cleverness and craft the dialogue in Delirium Tremens itself.]]> Star Trek Into Darkness: When the crew of the Enterprise return to Earth they find the whole place in chaos.]]> If “director Baz Luhrmann” and “restraint” have ever appeared in the same sentence together, they were the word-bread creating a sandwich around the phrase “has absolutely no.”]]> Food assistance in Boulder County has increased rapidly in the past five years. Since April 2007, clients of the Boulder County Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) have jumped from 8,848 to 21,250 as of April 2013, a 240 percent increase.]]> Nowadays Zolo’s lunch menu doesn’t stray too far from the basics of Southwestern cuisine and would still be accessible to the ’90s diner. There’s a certain comforting culinary classicism inherent in a menu showcasing such items as tortilla soup, blue corn fried oysters, rellenos and chicken enchiladas.]]> West Flanders is in this bold new group of breweries that’s making a specialty out of a particular style. While the recent addition to Boulder’s beer scene does produce an IPA, a stout, a pale ale and a few other standards, it’s all about the Belgians here. When we stop by for a Monday lunch, there are four Belgian styles on tap, along with actual Belgians from actual Belgium in bottles and on a guest tap.]]>