“I feel like these two questions are at the heart of all creative process: What is here? What else is here?” In this episode, Rosemerry and Christie talk about Rosemerry’s new book, The Wonderment, and the four questions that are at the heart of it. How do questions drive a creative practice? We also talk about how to create art out of what is familiar and common, how paradox and metaphor work to create a larger lens for re-seeing the world, how sometimes we swing between loving and hating what we’ve written, and how to write poems about injustice and what is happening in the world without making them overtly polemic or divisively political.Poet and teacher Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is co-host of this podcast. She lives with her family on the banks of the wild San Miguel River in southwest Colorado. Her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, is on the Ritual app. Her poems have appeared on Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, O Magazine, Washington Post’s Book Club, and Carnegie Hall stage. Her recent collections: The Unfolding and The Wonderment. As poet laureate for Evermore, she helps others explore grief and love through poetry. Since 2006, she’s written a daily poem, sharing them on A Hundred Falling Veils.Rosemerry and Christie will be giving the closing keynote at the Grand Mesa Writer’s Symposium! Join them as they talk about how to nurture a creative practice in the midst of everyday chaos.The WondermentRosemerry’s Website

When Wendell Berry, 92, died August 31, the West lost a writer who focused on the importance of rural land. He studied under the writer Wallace Stegner at Stanford University and wrote nine novels about characters — some like himself — who farmed and cared about the land.What also stood out about him was his public leadership — his readiness to march and commit civil disobedience, protesting against national, state and local government when he found their policies harmful and short-sighted. His targets included both a coal-fired and nuclear power plant, our war in Vietnam and the death penalty. He said he also opposed abortion. A Christian, Berry was a critic of organized religion for what he saw as its abstract notion of compassion.

We all have certain activities, places and people that make our heart sing and that feed our soul. Part of being mindful, is recognizing what these things are and intentionally engaging with them. It can be easy to forget in our busy lives when we get caught up doing all the day to day essentials and then we may start wondering why we're not enthused about life. Why we have a harder time smiling and laughing, and its then that we need to ask ourselves, have I been feeding my soul lately?

Suppose you were an astronomer and someone offered you, at no cost, two giant mirrors for telescopes in space, each valued at more than 250 million dollars. Sound too good to be true? It actually happened at NASA. In January 2011, the National Reconnaissance Office, a U.S. spy agency, offered NASA two, surplus 94-inch diameter telescope mirrors with related hardware. At that time, NASA was planning a space telescope with a 52 inch- diameter main mirror called WFIRST, an acronym that stood for Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope. A larger mirror exactly matching NASA’s needs would greatly enhance the scientific return from such a telescope. So, in 2012 NASA revised the plan to use one of these 94-inch diameter mirrors. After more than a decade of development, this telescope was launched into space on August 30, 2026.

Your weekly regional science update.

KVNF's Music Team puts together a biweekly list of music we keep coming back to. This is music we can't get enough of right now.

Dave Frank resigned from Montrose City Council on Tuesday, siting stress and conflict among councilors. The resignation comes amid tensions over proposed city charter changes.

Had Donald Trump been president in 1973, when Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into federal law, the Gunnison sage-grouse would be extinct. Close to 90 percent of all Gunnison sage-grouse remaining on the planet are in the Gunnison River Basin of west-central Colorado. The rest are in Utah. They’ve been extirpated from Arizona and New Mexico.The species is critically endangered in fact, if not by official decree. It is protected by the Act as just “threatened” because the Interior Department lost a lawsuit brought by Gunnison County, the states of Utah and Colorado, and ranching, livestock and energy-development interests.

We all tell stories of how ourselves, others or the world should or should not be. When we look at the energy behind these shoulds, we find a lot of judgment. These shoulds compare an ideal image or perception to what reality is and we often perceive the actual reality as being less desired.