Ear to the ground:

“My friend has to give a eulogy next week.”

“Is that for a funeral or a wedding?”

“Same thing.”

– Recent locker room discussion over semantics between two presumed bachelors

Bag it

Are plastic shopping bags accumulating at your house like tumbleweeds? If so, Fort Lewis College’s Environmental Center will gladly take them off your hands while helping others. Discarded bags will be woven into sleeping pads for the area’s homeless population.

The project is the brainchild of student Logan Loven. According to the EC, it takes between 500-700 bags to make one lightweight and comfy pad.

Bags can be dropped off at the Environmental Center, in the Student Union, from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. weekdays. Stay tuned for details on an upcoming pad-making workshop.

For more info, call (970) 247-7091.

In the Hole

The Twitterverse got its hashtags in a wad last week when it was announced that Vail Resorts was adding another resort to its quiver with the recent procurement of the Jackson Hole Ski Area.

The death knell quickly reverberated throughout the small town, as diehard ski bums bemoaned becoming No. 23 in Vail’s portfolio.

Alas, fears of a McJackson Hole were unfounded, as the story was just a well-played April Fool’s joke on the part of Jackson-based film company Teton Gravity Research. All references to the joke were promptly removed from the internet a short while later, and Jacksonites breathed a collective sigh of relief in the tram line.

“A friend told me about this ‘sale,’ felt like the news that a close friend got cancer,” wrote one commenter on the TGR website, where a picture of Mr. T replaced the hoax. “So glad they aren’t going to ruin Jackson like everything else they touch!”

Roasting the bean

While Durango’s Main Avenue coffee icon the Steaming Bean gets a facelift, its sister store in Telluride has closed its doors. Last Thurs., April 2, was the last day for Telluride’s Steaming Bean, a staple on that town’s main drag for 23 years.

Leucadia National Corporation, which owns the nearby New Sheridan Hotel, bought the historic Steaming Bean building last year. It plans to re-open the space as a coffee shop after major renovations.

“They might even be calling it the Bean, but it will certainly be a different experience,” Bean owner Brian Werner told the Telluride Daily Planet.

Steaming Bean, the coffee roaster that supplies the stores bearing the name, will continue roasting in Telluride.