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Call him Col. Green and thanks for serving

It was truly a family affair when Kyle Green was sworn into his new rank as a full-bird colonel.

Green spent a chunk of his childhood in Durango, where he attended Needham Elementary School. His parents, Beth and Allan Green, are longtime Bayfield residents.

The Colorado Greens joined their Air Force offspring in the appellate courtroom at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland in June. Why the courtroom, you ask? Because Col. Green is a member of the Judge Advocate General’s office. (Yes, like the TV show but for real.)

Also joining in for the festivities were the newly minted colonel’s wife, Allison, and his children Katherine “Kadee,” Madison “Maddie,” Meghan and Brendan. Maj. Gen. Jeffrey A. Rockwell did the honors. Beth and Allen Green have attended every one of their son’s promotion ceremonies except for the one in Afghanistan. (During his 22-year career in the Air Force, Green has also been stationed in New York, California, Utah, Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, Oman and Washington, D.C.)

His parents and wife pinned the colonel’s eagles on his dress blues jacket; the older children, Meghan and Brendan, slipped the new epaulets on his shirt; and Maddie and Kadee got to pin the insignia to his hat.

Green graduated from Moffat County High School in Craig, where he competed on the speech and debate squad, going to nationals his senior year. For this promotion ceremony, his coach, Jill Grimes, flew in from Craig. He presented her with his first JAG pin.

Col. Green arrived at this stage through a circuitous route. He attended the University of Southern California on a full ROTC scholarship, graduating with a degree in industrial and systems engineering and a commission as a second lieutenant. (See, I told you it was circuitous.)

After working as an aircraft maintenance officer, Green decided to switch gears, attending law school at the University of Utah while still on active duty and picking up a master’s degree in public administration as long as he was there.

Since then, he has served as a prosecutor and defense attorney, a staff judge advocate in multiple assignments, a faculty member at the JAG school at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama – where he also edited Air Force legal publications – and is currently the staff director for the Judicial Proceedings Panel. That’s a bit of a hot potato assignment and an incredibly important one as well. The panel is the congressionally mandated federal advisory committee that is reviewing military judicial proceedings for sexual assault offenses in the military.

Many congratulations go to the entire Green family and two very proud parents.

HHH

The Leo birthdays are roaring in like, well, you know, for Carolyn Brown, Harlan Steinle, Suzanne Sullivan, Doug Mason, Wanda Ollier, Mary Chapel, Nancy Peake, Gordon Thomas, Merrilee Fleming, Carla Branson, Carol Gunderson, Wanda Ellingson, Alona Grinnan, Lea Leach, Annelore Miller, Arthur Jacobs, Janey Silver, Gracie Goldman, Beau Smith, Kyler Harbison, Alice Crapo and Cheryl Birchard.

HHH

Despite the numerous trivia competitions offered around town these days – Irish Embassy Pub and Brew on Wednesdays come immediately to mind – aficionados of Super Ted’s Super Trivia, which is held at Ska Brewing Co. on Tuesdays from September until early May – were going through withdrawal in the summertime. (Host Ted Holteen takes the summer off because it’s softball season, a thoroughly Durango kind of reason.)

So last summer, he created a Super Ted’s Super Trivia fundraiser for the Durango Arts Center – you may recall he’s the former arts and entertainment editor at The Durango Herald. Holteen scheduled a reprise this year, and lo and behold, most of the teams who go to Ska invested the $100 per team to get their Holteen trivia fix.

The arts center fielded its own team, but Executive Director Cristie Scott, Development Director Kathrene Frautschy and Technical Director Eric Bulrice were on duty to help Holteen pull off the event.

The difference between the fundraiser and the Ska version is the number of prizes involved. All kinds of local businesses donated items, including several kegs of beer for round winners, a lot of items from the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, including a whopper of a prize, a season pass to ride the train. The grand prize was donated by Charles Leslie at the Community Concert Hall. Each of the five members on the winning team received two tickets to any performance during the 2015-2016 season. (If I had known that was the prize, I would have tried a little harder.)

So there were prizes between rounds, prize-offs between two competitors and so on, adding to the fun.

Holteen always includes art, movie, television and music questions, although this one included a little more serious art such as Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vetruvian Man.” I was a little surprised there wasn’t at least one classical music question in the music round as an homage to Music in the Mountains, but the round ranged from Marvin Gaye, The Who and Led Zeppelin to BB King, U2 and Lady Gaga.

Here are five assorted questions from various rounds to test your own gray matter. (The answers are at the end of the column. I’d make them upside down, but I don’t know how to do that in our publishing system.)

What is the hallucinogen in peyote?

What Mississippi town did not celebrate the Fourth of July for 81 years after falling to the Union Army during the Civil War?

What actor starred in three Batman movies?

What is the actual street name of the Las Vegas Strip?

What do you call a road that passes over water? (Hint: It’s not a bridge.)

I shall say a fun time was had by all, although a couple of teams really took home some swag, so they maybe had the most fun.

HHH

My colleague Chase Olivarius-Mcallister scooped me on the general categories of the winners in the 11th annual Chuck Wagon Cook-off on Saturday – it was part of Durango Fiesta Days. That seems particularly unfair since I was actually on the scene judging!

My category was potatoes. I remember someone saying “What a boring category.” But they came fried or mashed, with gravy or bacon or seasoned in a number of ways, so not so boring at all.

The two wins Olivarius-Mcallister didn’t mention were the overall winners. First place overall for food went to Curly Cue Camp, first time attendees out of Las Vegas. Head cook Tina Stallard and her husband, Mike, who actually live in Albuquerque, can be mighty proud. Their wagon actually belongs to her brother and his wife, Clint and Elizabeth Combs.

And the winner for the chuck wagon itself was Rafter 76, out of Golden. The wagon, with head cook Monte Deckerd and crew James McFarland and Cindy Reutter, cook out of a refurbished early 1900s Peter Schuttler wagon purchased in South Dakota and restored in 2006. It’s extremely cool how there is a place for everything and everything in its place.

In my usual style, I was so busy catching up with all the old-time Durango folks that I forgot to write down which wagon brought it, but there was a miniature chuck wagon for children to play with that made tea parties look so, well, Eastern. Both boys and girls took turns checking it out.

This is an enormous production put on by the La Plata-Archuleta Cattlemen’s Association. Among those organizing the eight-wagon supper were members of the Beebe family – Gary, Peggy, Kyle, Garrett, Sabre and Tyler – Ned and Barbara Jefferies, Mae Morley, Melody Semler, Sandy Young, Larry Zauberis and Jerry Zink, whose fine idea this event was in the first place.

Thanks to all for a perfect cowboy evening.

HHH

Perhaps taking a ride on a bicycle built for two for their anniversaries are Judy and Dan Harris, Robert and Shirley Newby, Bob and Mary Sieger, Paul and Cathy Duggan, Bob and Betsy Morriss, Darrell and Mary Brown, Kirk and Ginny Dignum, Jim and Kathie Hudson, Mick Souder and Linda Schwinghammer and Preston and Renee Knight.

HHH

Without further ado, here are the answers:

Mescaline.

Vicksburg.

Christian Bale.

Las Vegas Boulevard.

A causeway.

If you got five out of five, you might want to consider putting a team (of five) together for Super Ted’s Super Trivia at Ska, which resumes the first Tuesday after Labor Day in September.

HHH

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. Follow me on Twitter @Ann_Neighbors.

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