December at the Narrow Gauge

Jean Alger
6 days ago
11 min read

Snow falls gently in the Hill Country

covering the meadows and the valleys.

The sluggish streaks of smoke climb quietly

from the roofs but fail to reach the lazy clouds.

On Alamo Plaza in the heart of the night

and under the flood of lights, the flakes float

like frozen moths and glow like fireflies.

They drop on the blades of dormant grass.

They alight on the cobblestones and live awhile

in silence, they dissolve before dawn.

The wet limestone walls of the mission

glow proudly after the night of snowfall.

"The Night of the Snowfall" by Mo H. Saidi

The air has a sharp chill in the mornings and at night, now. Even though the sun is still shining and it's a bit warm for the time of year, that little bite of cold doesn't quite go away. It's wintertime: the days are shorter and the stars are brighter and there's a quick step to our movements as we rush to get inside, to get into the warmth, to get out of the cold. I'm a bit of an odd one, and feel energized by the cold season - though not energized to be busy in a social kind of way. Instead, I feel energized to clean and sort and organize, to do the kind of chores others do in the spring time. I feel creative energy, and the desire to pull into myself. Working retail means that this season is particularly busy, with extra hours at the store, and balancing that with extra social activities, extra efforts in the community to connect and help each other. It doesn't lend itself to retreat, to pulling inward. I feel fortunate to have the options I do. I feel fortunate that the fears for safety that many in our community experience are not fears I carry for myself. I'm grateful to have food, to have a job, and, for the most part, to not have people question my right to exist here based on my appearance. I am so grateful to be part of a community that is concerned for the well-being of others, and so grateful to work at a place that believes, first and foremost, in compassion and inclusion. My heart is a little broken at the cruelty that exists in the world. Yet, the cold is bracing and the ways we stand up for each other against injustice is a balm for the wounded spirit. In Waubgeshig Rice's book Moon of the Crusted Snow, one of the elders says,

Apocalypse! What a silly word. I can tell you there's no word like it in Ojibwe. Well, I never heard a word like that from my elders anyway. The world was ending. Our world isn't ending. It already ended. It ended when the Zhaagnaash came into our original home down south on that bay and took it from us. That was our world. When the Zhaagnaash cut down all the trees and fished all the fish and forced us out of there, that's when our world ended.

I love this passage for its honesty and its pain and its hope. The elder speaks of repeated world-endings, and yet, her people are still there, still living.

Things are bleak around the globe, things are frightening, and our world is ending. I carry immense hope for what world we will create in its stead.

I offer this hope to you, and make a request: Imagine what world you want to live in, and make one small action to bring it into existence. It is this way, one action at a time, that we will remake the world.

Thank you for reading.

- Jean A.

Non-Profit of the Month: Hospice del Valle

Each month, the Narrow Gauge Book Cooperative features a local nonprofit that serves the San Luis Valley. This month, you can support Hospice del Valle.

Hospice del Valle is a hospice care provider, whose mission is: “To create a peaceful transition for clients with life-limiting illnesses, assisting clients and families in the celebration of life with love, caring, and dignity.”

Hospice del Valle provides palliative and hospice care, as well as grief and bereavement services. They strive to provide holistic care that considers the whole person, and their family, not just their medical symptoms.

When you shop at the NGBC this month, you'll be asked if you want to round up and donate your change. You can round up with any payment method. The change goes directly from our register to the organization. It's a simple and easy way to support local organizations that help make the Valley what it is!

You can visit their website for more information, here, and check out their book recommendations below:

Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
The Needs of Dying by David Kessler.
A Beginner's Guide to the End by B.J. Miller and Shoshana Berge
Final Gifts by Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelly

December Artist: Kellan Jones

Kellan is a self-taught wire artist who makes jewelry & jewelry-inspired wall art out of leftover electrical wire, beads somebody else didn't want, & crap he found in parking lots, along riverbanks, & on the side of the road. He lives in the beautiful San Luis Valley in Colorado, a home to vibrant queer & artistic culture, in addition to a lot of potato fields.

He is a late-blooming trans guy, and wants you to know that it’s never too late to figure out who you are. He figured out who he is just before I turned 50 & started testosterone at 52 1/2. He often travels with his leashcats, Loiosh & Major Tom, & when they can, they attend Society for Creative Anachronism events, where he dresses as a Viking era Norseman. (The boys just wear their fur.)

Artist Statement:

“I started out by collecting creek glass, cool rocks, & good sticks along the edges of Fountain Creek in Fountain, Colorado. I had no idea what he was going to DO with all of this until I happened upon a coil of copper wire my brother-in-law had helped me rescue from a busted Dust Buster. The solution was obvious: use unwanted stuff to hook other unwanted stuff together to make neat stuff!

Which is mostly jewelry, but I also make bigger things using the same techniques -- you could call them wall hangings, and some of them make nice suncatchers, plus there's the candle lanterns I make from glass jars & beads -- there isn't really a proper term for them, at least not that I've found. Do they count as sculpture? Maybe?

In any case, this whole theme of taking what's broken & unwanted & turning it into beautiful things resonates strongly with my identity as a queer person -- it echoes how, instead of letting ourselves remain lost, traumatized, & alone, we build queer families & community, and create beautiful things of our lives & experiences.”

The Narrow Gauge is thrilled to have Kellan and his art in store! Please join us on December 6th from 4pm - 6pm for a come-and-go reception. During the reception, Kellan will give a demonstration of his art technique! You won’t want to miss it!

You can continue to support the PALS program through December 18th when you purchase a book for a child from the Reading Tree. Each year we work with Crystal Gonzales of Honey-Do Floors to host the Reading Tree. You’ll find the tree decorated with tags that have a child’s initials, age, and interests, and underneath the tree, you’ll find an assortment of books that match the interests. Once you select a book, it will be wrapped by us, and gifted to a child at the PALS holiday party the week of Christmas. You just purchase the book, and we’ll do the rest!

We had more children than usual this year, and there are many tags still on the tree. We'll be thrilled to help you pick something out next time you're in store!

Holiday Shopping

We're delighted to carry many items from local artists and makers, to carry books from local authors, and to stock our shelves with special items, books and otherwise.

We love helping you find just the right gift for your loved ones, and remember, we can order most books for you if we don't have it on our shelves! We have limited inventory space, so can't keep everything on hand, as much as we'd like to!

For holiday shopping, keep in mind that it takes us 7-10 days to get a book from the warehouse. We send out our orders once a week, on Sundays, and so it is 7-10 days from that point. With holidays approaching, and winter weather beyond our control, shipping speeds will slow. If you want to be sure to have an item in time for the holidays, we'll need to be able to order it by December 14th in order to get it for Christmas.

You can also order through our website, and have an item shipped directly. That can speed up the process, as it doesn't have to come to us, first!

If we don't have what you need, we encourage you to visit bookshop.org for your book-buying needs. Or, if an order won't make it in time, consider placing a picture of the book inside a card, and letting your loved one know what they can look forward to! We love surprising our friends and loved ones with just the right gift, too, but sometimes the best gift is worth waiting for.

Kellan will be in store working on his craft so you can see how he bends and twists wire and beads to make magic. Come for this come and go reception to talk with him and see his art!

Join us on December 19th at 6pm to celebrate the 4th and final issue in the Elemental series of HeartThrob. There artists will share and talk about their work, and you'll have the opportunity to purchase a copy.

The co-editors, Allison Cruse and Jean Alger, will also share some of their plans for the future of HeartThrob and Hysteria Heart Press.

Join us in store at 3:30pm on December 21st to think like a crow and trade our trinkets! Bring a gently used trinket to trade with other corvid-minded individuals! No need to buy new items - just bring something you already have. We'll have a few things on hand you can choose as your offering, too, if you don't have anything you can part with.

Spadefoot Story Slam

Returns on January 17th at 6pm.

Each month, we host the Spadefoot Story Slam community. We're on hiatus for December, and will be back in January with the theme Regret.

Call for Artists for 2026

We're excited for the artists we already have on our calendar for 2026, and have just a few more spots left. If you're interested in being a featured artist, we have openings for July, September, and December.

Our most common features are painting and photography, though we have also had fiber arts, glass art, and ceramics.

Featured artists have a show for one month. We'll promote your art on our social media accounts, feature you in our monthly newsletter, send a press-release to the newspaper, and schedule an artist reception if you want to have one.

We try to feature new artists each year; if you were featured in 2025, please wait to apply again until we put out a call for 2027.

If you would like to be a featured, please fill out the application by clicking here. You'll be asked to upload photo samples of your work, to provide a bio and artist statement, and to provide months when you are not available. If you have questions about any part of the application, please email us at narrowgauge.coop@gmail.com.

Other News

Indie Press Book Club Feature

The Narrow Gauge Book Cooperative is happy to feature Melville House Books for November and December!

On January 7th at 6pm we'll discuss We Live Here Now by C.D. Rose.

From their website: “Melville House is an independent publisher founded in 2001 in order to publish Poetry After 9/11. The book, an anthology of poems written by New York poets, was inspired by poems sent to the book blog, MobyLives, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

The book was widely successful, and Melville House soon expanded its list to include books of literary fiction, political and activist nonfiction, cookbooks and books on food, and a classics line called The Art of the Novella. The company has published two Nobel Prize winners — Imre Kertész and Heinrich Böll — and numerous New York Times bestsellers. It particularly prides itself on the diversity of its list, and on the publication of debut authors.

Melville House UK was founded in 2011.”

Be sure to explore the various collections they have and browse our selection of their books over the next two months. We had a really difficult time choosing only a few!

Our book club pick: We Live Here Now by C.D. Rose.

Join us on January 7th at 6pm to discuss this novel, described as “DeLillo meets Kafka in a wickedly smart novel that explores the boundaries between art and life, vision and reality, beauty and commerce.”

Synopsis: When visitors to a famous conceptual artist's installation start mysteriously disappearing, the aftershocks radiate outwards through twelve people who were involved in the project, changing all of their lives, and launching them on a crazy-quilt trajectory that will end with them all together at one final, apocalyptic bacchanal.

Mixing illusion and reality, simulacra and replicants, sound artists and death artists, performers and filmmakers and theorists and journalists, We Live Here Now ranges across the world of weapons dealers and international shipping to the galleries and studios on the cutting edge of hyper-contemporary art. It spins a dazzling web that conveys, with eerie precision, the sheer strangeness of what it is like to be alive today.

The book is available in store now, and is 10% through January 7th!

Many Ways to Shop the NGBC

Shop In Store

You can shop with us in store and browse the shelves. Find the book you're looking for, or find a book you didn't know you were looking for! Our booksellers are happy to help you find the title, make recommendations, or order a book if we don't have it in stock.

Shop Online

We have an indie commerce website, through IndieLite, that allows customers to place orders online. Just go to narrowgaugebooks.com and click on the "Shop Online" button. Then, click "order a book" and you'll be redirected to our indie commerce site. You can search for the book you want, and then place your order from wherever you are! There are options to have your book shipped to you, or to pick up your book in store! You can even have your book shipped to someone else, if you're looking to skip the hassle of shipping the book yourself.

Call Us!

You can call us at 719-589-3464 to see if we have a book on the shelf. We'll be happy to put it aside for you! We can hold books for up to one week, so you can be sure that title is ready and waiting next time to stop in!

Preorders

You can preorder your next greatly anticipated book! Preorders help us know what our customers are excited about, and help us more effectively judge how many copies we should order. Often, we get new releases ahead of their publishing date, so when publishing Tuesday rolls around, we'll have your shiny new book ready and waiting for you to dive into the pages!

Be sure to check out this week's Shelf Awareness newsletter. Don't miss releases by your favorite authors, what's going on with your preferred genre, or find an obscure gem. NGBC can order any title referenced, and we can ship it direct to your house.

Happy Book Hunting!

Thank you for reading, thank you for supporting us, and thank you for being our community! - Jean A.