On today’s Big Something, we’re recommending the incredible investigative series that Dave Phillips wrote for the Gazette about the brutal and terrifying effects that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is having on soldiers, their families and, in turn, our entire community. If you haven’t read it yet, we strongly encourage you to do so as a matter of public awareness and safety. The war in Iraq may have been fought by an all volunteer military in a country that few of us will ever visit, but it is increasingly clear that we will all have to face and deal with the psychological fallout our soldiers are just now beginning to experience for decades to come. As Phillips describes, young men who’ve spent multiple tours in Iraq are coming home knowing little of adult life outside fear, adrenaline and killing.

The series, “Casualties of War,” is divided into two parts that total 15,000 words. Part I is HERE, and Part II is HERE.

The series is rightly getting a great deal of national media attention and rumors of a Pulitzer nomination have been circulating. You can watch Phillips talking about the series in the YouTube video from CNN above. And you can listen to his interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! last night HERE.

You can also listen to a brief interview we conducted with Dave Phillips in the player below:

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When my Godfather, John Eastham, shuttered the downtown location of his gift shop, The Whickerbill, a few years back, we inherited a large bureau that had a brightly-colored stack of old semi-psychedelic posters tucked away in the bottom drawer. Full of mischievous proclamations and aphorisms, the posters were created in the early 70s by a Palmer High School student named Roy Linton who hand-silkscreened them onto construction paper and sold them at the Whickerbill until he graduated high school and went on to become a well-known custom auto body painter in Denver. I took the posters in to show my Godfather and he narrates this audio-slideshow (please padon the heavy buzzing—we were having some technical difficulties).

If anyone has any more of Roy Linton’s artwork or remembers the posters, please leave a comment or get in touch with us: thebigsomething@krcc.org. We’re going to try to get in touch with him in Denver and will let you know what else we find out.

The Paint Mines Interpretive Park just outside Calhan opened in June, 2005, becoming yet another incredible park in the growing network of open spaces in El Paso County. There’s not much you can say about it that isn’t said HERE. You really have to go see it for yourself, but perhaps this audio-slideshow of the park at sunset can convey some semblance of the speechlessness it induces.

(We love to hear from you. Please leave feedback in the comments or email us at thebigsomething@krcc.org. Thanks!)

Pueblo’s Arkansas Levee mural is a great example of how something widely perceived as negative (grafitti, in this case) can be turned into a cultural opportunity. Once a long and large slab of concrete designed to channel runoff of the Arkansas River from the Pueblo Reservoir, the Levee became a natural site for grafitti artists, many of them rather clever students back in the 1980s. While the city could have fought it, covering it with abstract blobs of leftover paint, they embraced it, let a group organize it and, at 3-miles long and growing, allowed it to turn into the world’s longest continuous painting (according to the Guiness Book of World Records).

Please enjoy this slideshow which is NOT completely comprehensive, unfortunately (hey, it was 104 degrees out there), but covers most of the 3-miles beginning at the west end and heads East, including the south side of the Levee at the east end, which is mostly devoted to murals by children. We also recommend clicking the four arrows in the lower-right-hand corner of the slideshow to watch it in full-screen mode for the greatest appreciation of its details.

For more information on the mural project, you can go HERE.

We always appreciate your feedback and suggestions for other Big Somethings in the comments or by email at thebigsomething@krcc.org.

Two Sundays ago, six local gentlemen set off on mountain bikes to do what only a handful have done before: ride the entire “Ring the Peak Trail” around Pikes Peak in one day. Three of the riders—Doug Johnson, Scott Boyer and Jon Csakany—spoke with us and shared their photos of the ride in the slideshow above.

Created by and marked byFriends of the Peak over the past decade, the Ring the Peak trail is …

… a collection of trails, four wheel drive roads, and a few paved roads that circumnavigates Pikes Peak The trails cross federal, state, county, city, and sometimes private lands. The total length of the trail system is approximately 63 miles with approximately 80% of the trails completed.

Design and construction is ongoing for the remaining 20%. The altitude ranges between 6,400 feet in Manitou Springs to 11,400 feet in Bull Park, consequently many trails are obscured by snow during the winter months. Ten portals have been designated as access points to the trails, although there are numerous other ways to find your way to the trails.

We recommend their site highly if you want to know more. It has lots of information, links to maps and detailed written descriptions.

We also highly recommend Scott Morris’ excellent blog post and beautiful GPS map of his ride.

Artist Streeter Wright has been paying his way through Colorado College for the past five years by working as a roughneck on the gas rigs in Western Colorado. The schedule is grueling: 14 days of 12 hour shifts followed by 14 days off. While he’s working, Wright takes pictures of the people, tools and machinery on the rigs, which he then transforms into detailed pencil drawings on small pieces of vintage notebook paper he found in his grandparents’ storage locker. The resulting 34 drawings shown here have the look, feel and attention of a naturalist’s sketchbook discovered in an old trunk—a guidebook to the culture of the rigs. In this audio-slideshow, Wright walks us through a world that few outsiders ever visit.

Just think, if you went to Blues Under the Bridge last year then you were one of the last people to see the legendary Koko Taylor (who died on June 3 of this year) live! We’re not trying to scare you into coming to Blues Under the Bridge, but just want to remind you that the caliber of musicians, the location and the opportunity are unique. On top of all that, if you buy your tickets today, KRCC members will pay only HALF of what you’ll pay at the door while the general public will save $20 on a 2-day pass. No reason not to buy your tickets now if you plan to go because it’s UNDER THE BRIDGE! Rain or shine, folks, you’re gonna have a great time. There’s also a full bar this year and Bristol Beer, as always, and tons of food vendors (fyi: you have to scroll down to see them).

Look, we know how much you love the Blue Plate Special at noon every weekday on KRCC. We also know how much you love food and beverages. What are you waiting for? Come down to KRCC between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. for your last chance to get the 1/2 price (members)/2/3 price (general public) weekend passes.

If you need more convincing, here’s a video (produced by Don Goede) of Koko Taylor performing at last year’s Blues Under the Bridge and a video of this year’s Saturday night headliner Bettye LaVette singing her “Love Reign O’er Me” tribute to the Who at Kennedy Center in 2008.