January 2018
How do you plan to contribute to our community in 2018?

John Milton

​     One of the things that draws people to Crestone is the sacredness of this land and I’m lucky enough to have come here over 40 years ago when there was only a handful of people in the overall community.  And early on one of the things I discovered were a number of the rather remarkable sacred sites in this community, which are in the form in the some seats or meditation chairs, built of stone that are  up to 20,000 years old, according to the Smithsonian.  Not too many people know about these, but they’re spread throughout Crestone.  Sacred Land Sanctuary, I’ve taken much of my retirement savings and used that to preserve the 300-400 acres we have up there, dedicated to the preservation of the sacred sites.  And so one of the things I’ve been offering to the community is to – when a handful of people get together and want to be introduced to this process or this reality, I take them onto the land and we walk through the sacred sites and I introduce them to how they work, what they look like, and try to give them a sense of how they function so when they go back to their own homes, or their own neighborhoods, they can go there and see where some of these sacred sites so that when they build a road or a parking lot or are putting up a building, something that affects the land itself, they can have some idea of where these sacred sites might be located, or they can call on us.  For example, I’ve worked with Bonpo community here.  They asked me to come in and do a survey of all the sacred sites, and the chairs on the land there, so I did, and then when they built their community, we worked together to help develop the location where the retreat cabins would go and their main retreat center in such a way that would not disturb the sacredness of the land and the sacred sites.  Archaeologists don’t know about this.  I’ve introduced it to the Smithsonian and they’re working with us now to authenticate and certify all this stuff.  It’s a brand new branch of Archaeology.  With all the new people coming to our community, I’d like to introduce them to how these things function, how they work, and why they contribute to producing an overall field that almost everybody feels when they come here, that there’s something special about this place.  Well, part of that is this amazing array of many thousands of meditation seats that are throughout the community and the energy meridians, like the meridians in your body, that link them all together.  And that provides a lot of the foundation of that feeling of sacredness that we have here.  And it goes back 20,000 years, at least.

Patti Jackson

     Thank you for asking to interview me, Lori.  Thankfully, Crestone has quite a number of non-profits and grassroots organizations here so finding somewhere to plug into to contribute to the community is very easy.  In 2018, I am thrilled to continue serving as Co-Manager of the Crestone Food Bank, along with Wendy Chanden and our wonderful group of volunteers:  Stuart, Alex, Marge, Nan, Claudia, Cherie, Nick, Marie, Isaline, Carmin, and Joan.  Working in the Food Bank comes so natural for me. You see, my grandparents – with whom I lived a number of years during my late childhood and early teen years - lost their 265 acre farm in rural Mississippi in the Depression.  After WWII, their little house that sat along the railroad tracks was “marked” as a stop for soldiers returning home who needed a warm meal.   Preserving and sharing food was always a central theme in my grandparents’ home so I understood early on the importance of food supplementation, especially in rural communities where jobs are scarce and incomes are limited.  As a nutritional health coach, the Food Bank is a perfect match for me and I am working to do what I can to improve the quality of food available.  Also, when people come into the Food Bank, it is important to me that they feel loved and supported.  Food is so much more than nourishment for our physical bodies, because, as Paul Wellstone so simply stated, “We all do better when we all do better.”   Yes?

Rodney Volkmer

     So, this year, the big push for me in Neighbors Helping Neighbors, and I’ve already started it, is the phone book.  So, I’ve rebuilt it from scratch and put that back together, but working for NHN is my primary contribution to the community and that’ll be all year every year until I get off the board!  NHN is a non-profit organization that is designed to help people in crisis.  It’s not meant to pay your rent all the time and to baby you the rest of your life, but if you need a little bit, we can give a little bit and get you out of that pressure so you can get on with your life and figure it out so that you can help yourself.  So, I think that’s probably the main thing is to enable people to help themselves and not become dependent on us.  My personal contribution to NHN, other than a little bit of money and stuff like that is most of their print and web and all that media stuff, plus I’m the President of NHN, so, ya know the board meetings and figuring things out and working with people and their crisises.  You know, I’m always available to help anybody with anything, given the time.  I help people individually more than as a large group of people.  And then I’m working with the Crestone End of Life Project and the Town of Crestone and different things, too, so always doing something!