All Entries Tagged With: "Mining"

Mineralist Population on Rise in State

(Crested Butte) They are people who eat only minerals. They are often wide-eyed purists, discarding animal flesh, dairy foods, fruits and vegetables in favor of carbon, copper, marble, sulfer, platinum, and/or coal with a side of Malachite or Rhodonite. Although Spartan, the diet is inexpensive, easily attainable and low in cholesterol.

“The fat content is nil but mineralists have given up flavor and simple digestion, at least at first,” said a prominent Ouray geologist who has written several papers on the sub-culture. “Fortunately, these confused souls are allowed water and maybe a little mercury on the weekends.”

Except for these two liquids all other minerals are solids in their natural state. Due to their homogeneous nature every part of the mineral is like every other part.

“There’s not a lot of variety at the dinner table,” adds the local rock source.

The mineralists started showing up in Colorado back in the Fifties during the last mining boom. At first there were conflicts with miners who did not appreciate these hungry, often longhaired flatlanders eating up the profits. Then, realizing that these newcomers could never make a dent in the mineral supply, the mining companies allowed them to settle here. The miners stopped burning out the mineralists and the mineralists agreed not to eat gold and silver.

“Nothing reminds me of the old days like one of these beggars ascending from the shaft at the Big Mine with a mouth full of Anthracite coal,” said the late Whitey Sporcich, whose family once owned all the coal, water and sagebrush in Gunnison County.”

– Paula Parvenue

Words of a true revolutionary

“I have myself been called a madman, because I was acting in a way that was not pleasing to England. The longer I live, the more I come to believe that Irishmen will have to go a little mad my way before they go the right way to get any freedom for Ireland.

And why shouldn’t an Irishman be mad; when he grows up face to face with the plunderers of his land and race, and sees them looking down upon him as if he were a mere thing of loathing and contempt! They strip him of all that belongs to him and made him a pauper and not only that, but they teach him to look upon the robbers as gentlemen, as beings entirely superior to him. They are called “the nobility,” “the quality”; his people are called the “riffraff—the dregs of society.”

— Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, Rossa Recollections, 1898