After a long drought – with some close calls along the way – The Durango Herald's team was named the co-champions at the Durango Adult Education Center's 15th annual Snowdown Spellebration on Feb. 1. The event brought in about $3,500.

As I've said before, I'm a far more gracious loser than winner, so it was fun to be on the stage at the end of the evening the first time I was on the team rather than just sitting in the audience writing about it. Congratulations go to my teammates Danial Ciluffo, who was making his fifth appearance on the Herald's team, and my City Editor Katie Burford, my fellow novice speller.

Our co-champions were the BP team, Heidi King, Mary Tesitor and Alexandra Vaughn, who came dressed as Puss in Boots, with King in a full-length cat suit and mask with a tricorn feathered hat, while her teammates played it low key while wearing, you guessed it, boots.

The theater was packed which was nice to see. It made it a lot more fun for the teams – it's always fun to hear cheering – and great support for the Adult Education Center, too.

The Mad Hatter Tea Party, also known as the First National Bank team, took bragging rights for funny repartee (not one of the spelling words) and best costumes, which was good, because they were the first team knocked out of the running. Moni Grushkin, known for the five days of Snowdown as Alice in Wonderland, said her spelling was impaired by eating the mushrooms on the snack table, but what were the excuses for the Mad Hatter, also known as Bob Ferguson, and the Queen of Hearts, who is Nadia Permann the other 360 days of the year? Well, OK, the mad part of Mad Hatter is a good reason right there, and any queen worth her salt, er, tarts, has a royal speller, so that's good enough for me.

Grushkin called me a ringer, but since I actually work for the Herald, I think not!

Host Beth Lamberson came dressed as Peter Pan and had the audience members clap to show they believed in fairies to get her co-host John Dunn, as who else but Tinkerbell, to make his grand entrance into the theater. They had fun with the words.

When the Durango High School team, also known as Two Princesses and a Frog, made up of seniors Megan Curry, Paige Serzen and Kyle Downs, were given the word “committee,” the example sentence was “The Yearbook Committee got us on the pages of every media outlet in the country.”

The first two rounds are pretty easy, and they give you the words to study, but after that you have to actually know how to spell. Kelly Quach, who organized the event, did not make it easy. Victoria Collette and Andrée Stetson served as the word judges, and Jan Murphy tracked the dollars – teams can pay to pass one word and buy back in once, if they have the funds.

Two teams, those from DHS and the Liberty School (Katie Cashette, Evie Lewis and Keely Savage), depended on the kindness of the audience to buy back in, and the audience did not disappoint. Shirley Isgar Alford of Blue Lake Ranch anted up to buy one school back in, and Rob Fogleman of Bob's Johns bought back the other. (I'm sorry to admit I was too busy worrying about the next word to spell to remember which donor supported which school.)

The words were an interesting combination of fairy tale lingo in keeping with this year's theme of “Once Upon a Snowdown,” such as ogre, pixie, eerie and fairy, and foodie favorites such as vichyssoise, jícama, vermicelli, hors d'oeuvre, sommelier and shiitake (mushrooms). Then there were the wide variety of words derived from foreign languages, animals and cultures – dhow, mahout, ailurophile, gharial, ouzel, xu, ukulele, aardwolf and echt.

Then the words got really tough. Final rounds included ichthyophagous, which means fish-eating, and fado, a Portuguese style of song, which isn't pronounced at all as it's spelled.

The word neither final team got was trouvaille, which is what led to the tie as co-champions. It means a lucky find. In our defense, the emcees pronounced it as trouvail, so we French speakers were a little thrown off. And I couldn't find it in Webster's, only on Wiktionary, so my story is there's no way we could have gotten it – and I'm sticking to it.

Other people who kept the competition going were Stephanie Moran as the official timer, Erica Ketter, who kept track of whose turn it was, Kathy Rush, who made sure the sound system and all the microphones worked, Barbara Dodds, who handled the tickets, and Sue Petranek, who managed the set-up and clean-up crews.

Paulette Church, the executive director of the Durango Adult Education Center, came as a fairy godmother, which is the role she plays day in and day out at the center, helping people's wishes for better lives through education come true.

She handed out lots of gift certificates from area merchants and restaurants as consolation prizes, costume prizes, audience trivia question prizes and to the champions, too. All three of us will be enjoying some fine dining at some of Durango's best restaurants.

Even though I had covered the center's graduation just a few weeks earlier, Spellebration was a chance to check out the 2011 final numbers. Church told me the center worked with more students in 2011 than it ever had before, and this year is starting off fast, with five students enrolling last week alone.

The center served more than 800 adults last year, including its GED program at the La Plata County Jail, where the number of hours of education provided each week increased from 12 to 19. In the last three years, 276 people earned GED diplomas, and 17 percent of those were from the jail. According to a three-state study called “Education Reduces Crime” by the Corrections Education Association in 2003, jail recidivism goes down from 31 percent to 21 percent, with that all-important GED certificate.More than 350 students study for the GED each year, and the San Juan Board of Cooperative Educational Services and Durango School District 9-R are partners with the center on the program.The center's licensed, QualiStar-rated child care center served 110 infants and toddlers from 102 families in 2011. Many of the parents participated in the Family Literacy Program, which provides lunch to parents twice a month, where they learn about their child's development stages, appropriate toys, ways to help their children prepare for preschool and get individual mentoring. The program is used in collaboration with the La Plata Family Center Coalition.

The center teaches English as a Second Language to students from 21 countries on five continents, offers community education classes and now serves as the umbrella for Del Alma, which received a $65,000 grant from the Barbara Bush Family Literacy Foundation in 2011, one of only 10 given in the whole country. The grant has enabled Del Alma to double its Afterschool Program this academic year at Park and Needham elementary schools.

If you missed my earlier column about the Durango Adult Education Center, send your donation to support its incredible work to 701 Camino del Rio, Suite 301, Durango, CO 81301. Enterprise Zone credits may apply.

To learn more, call 385-4354 or visit www.durangoaec.org.

Celebrating early February birthdays are Holly Englund, Tristan Miller, Nikolas Henry, Bryce Von Tersch, Gordon Clouser, Tonya Mulkey, Cole Ulrich, Sally Burchett, Katie Dudley, Janet McCoy, Bryce Raymond, Bob Gramera, Taylor Sallee, Evan Bastin, Clyde Hassett, Delaine Mize, Paul Myers, Beverly Tomberlin, Marcia Welker, Wesley Campano, Cameron Kelley, Hunter Martin, Ryan Dugan, Ryan Johnson, Karen Overington, Neil McCleery, Mimi Hayduke, Gisela Lott, Mary Kay Lambert, Robert Whitson and Eli Buck.

I know many people are following former state Sen. Jim Isgar's progress as he fights leukemia.When the Herald first learned of Isgar's condition at the beginning of December, he was hoping one of his siblings would prove to be a good bone marrow match, because a bone marrow donation is the only hope for a cure for the 60-year-old.

The good news is that his sister Joan Isgar Kellogg is a match. Only about half of the 10,000 people who need bone marrow transplants each year find a match, so Isgar already is beating the odds.They were hoping to do the transplant today, but discovered about 10 days ago in Isgar's last bone marrow biopsy that he was not yet ready for the transplant. Doctors have begun an aggressive regimen of two different types of chemotherapy and will be closely monitoring his blood levels. The hope now is to do the transplant at the end of February or beginning of March.

Isgar had a hospital room full of friends and family for a Super Bowl viewing party Sunday – I don't know if he was rooting for the Giants or Patriots, but I'm sure he had fun either way.

In the meantime, of course, messages from friends and family mean the world.

Cards may be sent to Sen. Jim Isgar, c/o P/SL Medical Center, 1719 East 19th Ave., Denver, CO 80218. (The senator title is optional, but as his wife, Brenda, says, “Once a senator, always a senator.”)Isgar also has a page on CaringBridge, the nonprofit website that allows people going through major health crises to keep people posted about their condition and receive messages from friends and family. You do have to register to access CaringBridge, but it's pretty basic.

Visit www.caringbridge.org/visit/jimisgar/journal to follow Isgar through his treatment and send him your best wishes.

There are volunteer thank yous and then there are volunteer Thank Yous. I've had two of the latter in the last month.

The first came from the Durango Discovery Museum, which had a Thankathon in December. My call came from Marcom (marketing communications?) and Visitor Experience Director Haz Said, thanking me for supporting the project over the years in Neighbors. It was a lovely way to reach out to donors and other supporters to let them know their contribution matters.

On Jan. 28, the Animas Museum held a Shingle Shindig to thank about 25 donors and workers who have been involved in the project to put a new roof and chimney on the old Peterson House. The project was completed in November, right before Thanksgiving.

Another volunteer, Kathy Szelag, prepared a scrumptious brunch that included mimosas (champagne and orange juice), fresh baked corn muffins, fresh fruit, Southwestern breakfast casserole, homemade sage sausage, French toast casserole with maple syrup and, in reference to the event's nomenclature, S.O.S., creamed chipped beef on toast. (If you're too young to know what that means, consult an older generation, someone who served in the military or Mr. Google. This is a family newspaper.)

Of course, Museum Director Carolyn Bowra took a moment to thank the donors and volunteer workers, including her 85-year-old mother, who just “couldn't stand the way the doors looked.” The next phase of restoration, including requests for support, will begin this spring.

Enjoying pre-Valentine's Day anniversaries are Doug and Connie Bishop, Craig and Sandy Goodell, Ormond and Jeannie Morford, Daren and Kim Caldwell, Ron and Janet Huth, Clark Lagow and Sandy Newman and Rollie and Ella Roth.

For information about upcoming events and fundraisers, check Local Briefs.

Here's how to reach me: neighbors@durangoherald.com; phone 375-4584; mail items to the Herald; or drop them off at the front desk. Please include contact names and phone numbers for all items. If you are submitting an item for preview, please send it with briefs in the subject line and email it to herald@durangoherald.com.