Author: The Herald editorial board

We had gone quite a ways without a single death from COVID-19 in La Plata County when we discovered last weekend we had our first. Unfortunately – perhaps – that was all we were able to discover….read full editorial.

The notion that journalism is the first rough-draft of history seems to have originated, at least as a phrase, with the editorial board of The Washington Post in the early 1940s. You can see the appeal for journalists at least: There is a certain humility – or if you are disposed to be unkind to…

There were things at Tuesday’s Durango City Council meeting one could note with satisfaction, watching on Facebook Live as it was conducted remotely, with each of the councilors in what we assume were their homes. Interim City Manager Amber Blake reported on steps the city is taking during the pandemic to reopen Lake Nighthorse to…

You may have seen recently that in Durango, School District 9-R has moved, like oodles of other school districts around the country, to a temporary grading policy for middle and high school students – that is, for mostly-online learners – during the pandemic. Owing to the uncertainties of distance learning, in Durango, students who would…

Business owners want predictability in rules and regulations. During a pandemic, one that involves a virus that can be spread without carriers showing symptoms and so far seems to be far more deadly to those with underlying issues such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension, the predictability is not there, yet. There are a dozen unknowns…

Often at dawn and in the evenings, we walk with a border collie in Three Springs on the paved path below Wilson Gulch Drive and Three Springs Boulevard, beside the marshland and a series of small ponds surrounded by artfully arranged ochre stone slabs. It is usually quiet there, when the young boys from the…

Almost exactly two decades have passed since heavily armed agents of the Border Patrol’s SWAT team entered a Miami home in the pre-dawn hours of Easter Eve and seized 6-year-old Elián González from his Cuban-American relations. It was a capstone to a series of events that many later thought could have cost Al Gore the…

The mysterious coronavirus has already taken many things from us, or we have taken them from ourselves in the belief this is the best way to fight a ghost. And we are missing many, from togetherness to gyms and our economies to bathroom tissue. But there are some absences we cannot lament. One is the…

Member-owned La Plata Electric Association looks to be on the cusp of being able to negotiate a possible exit from its power provider, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association. A similar if smaller cooperative, Delta-Montrose, learned in recent weeks the cost to make its departure. Tri-State itself is claiming, as never before, that the future is…

A year ago we told you about the case of two Florida men who had pleaded guilty in connection with a poaching operation based in Limon, Colorado (“Staggering, stupid,” Jan. 4, 2019). The pair were working in Colorado at energy-industry jobs when they illegally took at least three mule deer and six pronghorn antelope, decapitating…