My roof is equipped with an 8.5 kilowatt solar array, enough to supply household needs and to charge Sparky, our electric car. Our 25 solar panels free us from an electric bill; they don’t make us energy independent. In the summer, Xcel Energy sends us checks to pay for the… read more →
Stuff by Nicolette Toussaint
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Locations:
Columns
Published
Feb. 24, 2021
My Friend, the North American Electric Grid
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Locations:
Columns
Published
Jan. 27, 2021
Light and color via Zoom
On Fridays, I teach a color-mixing class to five artists, aged 11 to about 75. They bring a burst of light to my week, piercing the gloom of my current shut-in/shut-down life.
At the presidential inauguration, poet Amanda Gorman, resplendent in her sunshine yellow coat, similarly… read more → -
Locations:
Columns
Published
Dec. 10, 2020
Having enough is the new ‘having it all’
Recently, my friend Jessi Hempel, a nationally-known journalist, asked Facebook friends how they felt about “having it all” in this time of COVID-19.
Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown used that phrase to title her 1982 memoire, and at the height of my career, it seemed something… read more →
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Columns
Published
Oct. 28, 2020
Seeking Higher Ground: Moving to the right side of the tracks
“You’d think a white girl like me woulda had a better relationship with money.”
I blurted that out during a recent “Money Matters” interview. Across Colorado, financial disparities are widening, particularly across racial and geographic lines. So the Bell Policy Center, with funding from the Colorado… read more →
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Locations:
Columns
Published
Sep. 23, 2020
Seeking Higher Ground: What the warblers are telling us
“Nothing gold can stay.” So wrote Robert Frost in 1923.
That phrase haunted me Friday after I saw a small golden bird – a Wilson’s warbler – staggering across my lawn. I kept one eager cat away, so maybe that bird survived.
There has… read more →
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Locations:
Columns
Published
Jul. 29, 2020
Seeking Higher Ground: Pitkin, Breckenridge, Carbondale — what’s in a name?
Every Roaring Fork Valley town (except Carbondale) has at some point changed its name: Glenwood Springs was once Defiance. Basalt was Aspen Junction. Aspen was Ute City.
What’s in a name, usually, is history. Which is usually written by the victors, then revisited as times change.… read more →
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Locations:
Opinion
Published
Jun. 17, 2020
Bursting the white bubble; raising the white shield
About a week ago, a local lady, Marlene, asked online: “If I may, I have a question for anyone with a workable answer? Those Black people who have attained some degree of education, wealth, influence… Why don’t they organize, reach out to their fellow man…?”
My… read more →
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Locations:
Columns
Published
May. 20, 2020
Seeking Higher Ground: Castaway on a deserted island
Perhaps you’ve seen COVID-19 homeschooling memes.
My favorite: Homeschooling going well. Two students suspended for fighting. One teacher fired for drinking on the job.
My San Francisco friend Caroline Nassif, who teaches at the college level, says homeschooling is “ridiculously difficult.” One of her… read more →
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Locations:
Columns
Published
Apr. 15, 2020
Seeking Higher Ground: Thoughts about ‘food insecurity’
Despite a childhood marred by divorce, frequent moves and a parent’s attempted suicide, I have never gone hungry. And until Mary Kenyon mentioned it in a March meeting, I had never heard the term “food insecurity”.
According to the Colorado Health Institute, half a million Coloradoans… read more →
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Locations:
Columns
Published
Mar. 18, 2020
Seeking Higher Ground: Love in the time of Coronavirus
“Oh, a storm is threat’ning my very life today
If I don’t get some shelter oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away…”I’m quarantined, listening to a 2011 recording of Gimme Shelter produced by Playing for Change, which seeks to “connect the… read more →
