Michelle P. Fulcher

America is set to enter a new space age Monday, August 29, 2022. For the first time in 50 years, the U.S. is reaching for the moon. The Artemis mission is just a start – eventually, NASA’s goal is to build a moon base that will serve as a waystation to Mars. Colorado’s Lockheed Martin built the Orion spacecraft that’s at the heart of the mission. Engineering manager Heather McKay has worked on the project for more than a decade.

Colorado’s public lands are renowned for their beauty and for the riches they contain, but the stories of people who’ve lived and worked on those lands for centuries are often overlooked, especially the stories of people of color. That’s why the new state historian, Jared Orsi, is focused on making sure there’s inclusion and equity in the discussion about Colorado’s past, and present.

Twenty-five years ago this month, TV viewers were introduced to a small, Colorado mountain town. 

At first glance, you’d think Colorado’s population is soaring. There’s heavy traffic, high housing prices and a general sense that more people are in more places. Not so, says Colorado state Demographer Elizabeth Garner.

Was Yellowstone where hell bubbled up? That’s one of the myths scientists debunked when they did the first formal survey of the region 150 years ago.

Nicki Gonzales ends her year as state historian on August 1, which is Colorado Day. She learned all she could about Colorado’s collective history and culture, and learned a lot about herself at the same time. Gonzales is Colorado’s first Latina state historian, and a professor of history and Vice Provost for Diversity and Inclusion at Regis University.

Denver choir Kantorei teams with the Guatemalan group Vocalis this week for “El Ultimo Hilo,” (“The Last Thread”) centered around the Mayan genocide during the country’s civil war. The concerts are the result of a years-long collaboration between the two choirs.

The film CODA gave many moviegoers new insight into the Deaf community. But for Cliff Moers and his family, it was less revelation and more confirmation. Moers and his wife are deaf. All four of their children can hear. That makes the kids CODAs – or, Children of Deaf Adults. Cliff Moers heads the Colorado Commission for the Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and DeafBlind. He and his daughter, Avery, joined Colorado Matters host Ryan Warner, along with Cliff’s ASL interpreter, Christine Pendley.

Was she villain, victim, or somewhere in between? Five hundred years ago a young indigenous slave known as La Malinche was forced into service as an interpreter for the Spanish forces that conquered Mexico. Through the centuries, her name has been uttered as an epithet, or spoken reverently by those who viewed her as a hero. In the 1960s, she became an icon of Chicana feminism.

Six weeks into the war in Ukraine and the discovery of bodies in the streets and mass graves in the city of Bucha is another grisly turn. Iryna Chechko lives in the city of Cherniakhiv.

When director Steven Spielberg was remaking “West Side Story,” he turned to members of the Latinx community to make the film more culturally and racially sensitive. Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz, the chair of cinema studies at CU Boulder, was part of that committee. He also wrote “West Side Story as Cinema: The Making and Impact of an American Masterpiece.”