Audio

New to gardening? Find your green thumb by starting small

The phrase "gardening season" may bring a few images to mind: large beds of colorful wildflowers… rows of neatly staked tomato plants… big bags of mulch stacked up against the side of the house. Or perhaps your mental image of gardening looks a little more modest. As in, potted herbs growing on a windowsill. That's the case for KUNC digital producer Natalie Skowlund. She recently decided to research and write an introduction to gardening for novices. And she lives in an apartment, so she wanted t...

Young musicians give Mexican folk music new life at Denver mariachi conference

On a rainy Friday in Denver, Esmeralda Cuevas-Lara stands in a classroom at Metropolitan State University holding a water bottle to her lips in place of a microphone. As a few other students sit in desks watching, Cuevas-Lara belts out lyrics from the Mexican mariachi ballad “El Herradero.”“Ay, qué linda, qué rechula las fiestas de mi rancho…,” she sings in Spanish.Cuevas-Lara moved to Longmont from Guanajuato, Mexico when she was 15 years old. The song, she said, brings her back there.“This is...

Boulder County’s new higher minimum wage could make a dent, but workers say it’s ‘not enough’

Conor Hall takes pride in his knowledge of food. Each workday, he answers customers’ questions about which cheeses to pair with a particular salami, or what it means for a ham to be “uncured.”Hall is an assistant deli manager at a King Soopers grocery story in Boulder. His shifts vary, sometimes forcing him to be up as early as 3 a.m. while other times he closes out the evening. Hall makes around $23 per hour now, well above the local minimum wage, but it hasn’t always been that way. When he sta...

'Mother of the Colorado Trail' highlighted in new archive

On a sunny Monday in March, Grace Marx unpacks gear from the back of a car at the remote South Platte River trailhead outside of Conifer, Colorado. She’s preparing for a three-day backpacking trip with her husband and two young kids. The trailhead where Marx and her family will embark serves as one of many starting points for the Colorado Trail, a 567-mile high-altitude wilderness path that traverses eight mountain ranges between Denver and Durango.Marx’s family isn’t new to the Colorado Trail....

Doulas could be an answer to Arizona’s maternal mortality crisis

TEMPE – Leah Goldmann lounges on a sofa with her legs crisscrossed and a pillow cradled on her lap. She listens as Latisa Ratliff goes over birth plans, prenatal dietary considerations and how to know when it’s time to head to the hospital for labor.
Goldmann is pregnant with a girl, with an expected due date in January. It’s an exciting – and anxious – time for Goldmann, who at 33 years old will become a first-time mom.

But for Ratliff, the work is her bread and butter. As a birth doula, Rat...