While Durango’s annual winter festival is often known for its bawdier events, like the Follies and Fashion Dos and Don’ts, it also offers a lot in the way of family fun. This includes a spaghetti dinner Friday night at the Elk’s Lodge followed by a night-time parade downtown. On Saturday, the beach-themed Snowdown ball is open to princes and princesses of all ages. For a detailed listing of events, go to www.snowdown.org. Party on!

Kudos to local mom Audrey Crane and her co-conspirators for their hard work bringing this together. Now take the family out for a sub on Saturday to support their efforts …

Beware the Carrotmob

Stonehouse Subs in Durango chosen for environmentally friendly mass benefit

by Dale Rodebaugh
Herald Staff Writer

It could be called a buy-cott – the opposite of a boycott – and it’s happening Saturday in Durango.

Stonehouse Subs, the business designated as a Carrotmob target for Saturday, will offer its usual selection of sandwiches and soft drinks at regular prices inside. Outside, 4-inch pre-made subs at $4 each will be available in four varieties – ham and cheese, turkey and cheese, Italian and vegan. Credit card purchases must be made inside. Stonehouse Subs, 140 E. 12th St., will be open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The event is Carrotmob Durango, the local version of an off-the-wall happening in San Francisco last year that has gone international – Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Helsinki, Finland; Basel, Switzerland. It coincides with the international Day of Climate Action.

How it works: Consumers reward with mass patronage a business that pledges to invest a certain amount of its gross receipts for a day in energy-saving improvements to its building.

A Web search reveals that Carrotmob was the brainstorm of Brent Schulkin, a San Francisco electronic-games developer and social-causes activist, who in March 2008 persuaded liquor stores in the Mission District to invest in the environment. K&D Market, the high bidder at 23 percent, made $9,000 worth of sales, compared to its usual $2,000 day.

Audrey Crane, a software developer at Interaction Designer in Durango, was intrigued. By networking, Crane and co-enthusiasts found four businesses to bid to be the target of mob action. The winner was Stonehouse Subs, a sandwich shop at 140 E. 12th St., which pledged 35 percent of the day’s gross take to green improvements.

“Carrotmob is a practical way to help the environment,” Crane said. “It’s not like asking people to stop driving their car.” Read more.

Here’s an article on an interesting event for expectant parents or couples TTC (Trying to Conceive). It takes place 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday at Serving Life Chiropractic Studio at 1040 Main Ave #2, Durango, CO. Call 422-2032 to register (seating is limited). Cost is $35 per person and includes lunch, goody bags and door prizes.

Pregnancy Expo coming Saturday

Emphasis: Keeping mother’s body in optimal condition

by Dale Rodebaugh
Herald Staff Writer

A pregnancy isn’t simply nine months of a woman’s life, but involves issues that start at conception, carry through to delivery and beyond and bear upon the entire family, said the organizer of Saturday’s inaugural Durango Pregnancy Expo.

“We support and educate women and spouses about getting pregnant and being pregnant to make sure the mother’s body is in optimal condition so labor and delivery go smoothly, which helps avoid intervention as much as possible,” said Rachel Kapustka, a principal in Serving Life Chiropractic Studio.

Kapustka, who received a degree in chiropractic at Life University in Marietta, Ga., and her husband, Nick, who graduated in chiropractic at Sherman College in Spartanburg, S.C., will expound on the value of their specialty in conception and pregnancy at the expo, scheduled from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 1040 Main Ave. The couple have lived in Durango three years.

“We work with women, pre-pregnancy, to make sure their spine and nervous system function properly to provide optimal health for the uterus,” Kapustka said. “The nervous system must be as healthy as possible in order to have a healthy body.”

Pregnancy puts many demands on the body, Kapustka said.

“Our biggest focus is to educate parents on how chiropractic can decrease intra-uterine constraints that can result in breach births or Caesarian sections,” Kapustka said. “If the baby can turn head-down, there tends to be less need for induced births.”

Also on the program Saturday will be:
► Rebecca Pugh, a midwife, who will talk about the importance of nutrition for mother and fetus from conception through birth and the postpartum era.

► Lindsay Sherman of Riverhouse Children’s Center, who will describe how to get siblings in a frame of mind for the arrival of a brother or sister.

► Dr. Jamie McGregor, an obstetrician/gynecologist and professor at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. He will speak about brain development in a fetus and how parents can bond with their baby in the womb and after birth.

daler@durangoherald.com

Here’s some great information on the Homegrown Festival, which takes place 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday in Buckley Park. You can also check out the Web site HomeGrownFestival.blogspot.com.

Home Grown all started with an apple

by Bob Kunkel

A little over a year ago, a group of us started talking about what could be done with the excess of backyard apples that go to waste every year.

As it happens, the questions expanded exponentially until the idea of a Home Grown Festival was born. Question: Do you know what usually comes after a good idea? Answer: A lot of hard work. Councilor Michael Rendon ran the meetings and anyone who left the meeting was assigned more tasks. But it worked out, and turned into a very popular event, so the second annual Home Grown Festival will happen Oct. 18 at Buckley Park in downtown. Plan to attend or you’ll be assigned a task for next year.

Already, the Home Grown has grown. The festival is a combination of free Living Local Workshops, a Family Celebration of Harvest and our original idea, an opportunity to Share Our Fruitful Abundance.

The workshops are a hit with experienced home-growers and wannabes. Sessions are offered about food preservation, urban beekeeping, mushrooms, beer brewing, selecting fruit trees and preparing local wild foods. Workshops will run from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

The Family Celebration is presented as a true festival of the fall harvest. A good selection of live music plays all day, as pie-eaters compete for bragging rights and a front page “photo-op.” Don’t miss the 2 p.m. gypsy music and the A-Bun-Dance.

Share The Abundance activities go on all day and are the centerpiece of the Homegrown Festival.

This is hands-on, roll-up-the-sleeves kind of family fun that features apple pressing, fruit-pie sales, bountiful baskets, apple dunking, pumpkin painting, the outrageous apple slingshot and a fall brews beer garden with local foods from Sunnyside Meats, Turtle Lake Refuge and Zia Taqueria.

So, save those backyard apples (and other locally grown fruit) and bring them down to Buckley Park on Oct 18. They’ll be put to good use and offered free to anyone who needs them. Arrangements can even be made to pick up your unsprayed fruit. Call 382-6463.

Also don’t miss Harvest Week, Saturday through Oct. 17, when participating downtown restaurants feature specials that include three locally sourced ingredients.

The event is enthusiastically sponsored by the city of Durango and La Plata County, with the help of many community organizations that support local growers and sustainable living.

For more information, call the Colorado State University Extension Office at 382-6463.

Didn’t some other great event start with a young couple in a garden and an apple?

kunkelra@cidurango.co.us
Bob Kunkel is special events and business coordinator for Durango’s Central Business District.

A reminder from the organizers of this Saturday’s Weecycle:

WeeCycle Durango is having its Fall/Winter Consignment Sale. Forty plus local families are selling a wide variety of gently used clothes, toys, books, nursery items, baby gear and more. Sale is this Saturday, Sept. 26, from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church. The church is located at 2917 Aspen Dr. off Florida Road (near Riverview Elementary School).

There will be a diaper drive to benefit the La Plata County Family Center coalition. So bring some diapers, cash or check and your shopping list and take advantage of this opportunity.

Please pass the word along to anyone you know who would like to shop this amazing sale. For more information, go to www.weecycledurango.com.