Men in my family are very handy guys, and they can build or fix just about anything. Dad was a homebuilder for over 40 years, and my brother Dean has been a carpet and flooring installer for over 30 years. Both have solid business reputations in Colorado Springs. In fact, one of them may have […]
It Ain’t a Good Job Unless You Bleed On It Read More »
What a letdown. After all the hoopla of the past month, in my family the day after Christmas has always been an anticlimax. When I was a kid, I counted down the days from Thanksgiving until Santa arrived. I had been dropping hints since Halloween from a list I had been building from Saturday morning
When most people think of masks, they think of parties, but the tradition of a “death mask,” or a mask cast after someone’s death, has a much more morbid, yet historical meaning. Death masks capture every wrinkle, hair, and pore in a final record of a person’s life. They are in some ways the best,
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Sometimes the mystery is more about the name of something than it is about the item itself. The “Cultural Crossroads” section of the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum features some beautiful pouches, or parfleches, which were made by Native Americans who never used that word to name them. “Parfléche” is a word made up by French
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Whose hands are these? Artus Van Briggle lived in Colorado Springs for only five years, but he left an indelible mark on our city’s history. “Van,” as he was commonly known, came to our city suffering from tuberculosis, and like many consumptives, sought a cure here. He was already a respected artist before his arrival,
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At first glance, this doll doesn’t look very lovable; in fact, it looks kind of creepy. But for one little girl from the family of Martha Marsh Sutton, a late Nineteenth-century homesteader in Colorado, it was a favored toy. Most dolls at this time were made by hand from scraps of cloth or old clothes,
Museum Mysteries: Rag Doll Read More »