Letter to the Editor / 23mar25012

Striking the best balance

Published: Thursday, March 22, 2012 6:08 AM CDT

Dear Editor,

I was a bit surprised to read Wilson Mesa homeowner and mushroom festival compadre John Sir Jesse’s premature letter castigating county government for trying to take away property rights.

Without going into all the legal complexities, the county is discussing the problematic, resort-community issue of short term rentals and we have decided to review the current policies for the Telluride Region and possibly the entire R-1 School District. To that end we’ll be adding this matter as an agenda item to a future regular public meeting (usually scheduled on Wednesdays) in the Miramonte Building west of the courthouse. Public input is a right government reserves to the people, who are the ones who really hold power in a representative democracy.

Prohibitions are a possibility. The commissioners have discussed the results of a preliminary staff survey of homeowner associations, which appear to be unanimously opposed to allowing short-term rentals.

Personally, in this down economy, I’m worried and want to give homeowners as many options as possible to pay off their mortgages. So I sympathize, some, with Sir Jesse’s rant. But we have to weigh both the individual homeowner benefits with overall community impacts. And then see what balance is best to strike for the county’s east end.

Neither the county planning department nor your county commissioners have made up our minds on what policy to pursue. If you want to weigh in on short-term rentals and find out when the hearing will be scheduled, please contact 970.728.3844.

Home from San Francisco,

Art Goodtimes in Norwood

Copyright © 2012 - Telluride Daily Planet

Up Bear Creek / 15mar25012

Taking a hard look 

at nuclear energy

Moab, Utah  (photo by Goodtimes)

PIÑON RIDGE … Sheep Mountain Alliance’s Jennifer Thurston is right. The $11.6 million bond the state has set for the new Canadian-based Energy Fuels mill cleanup in Paradox Valley is way too low. What are state regulators thinking? Have they already forgotten the state’s financial disaster with insufficient bonding at Summitville? … The old uranium mill-site downstream of Naturita cost $86 million to clean up (taxpayers footing most of that). The Slick Rock mill-site cleanup, in our own county, cost $50 million. And Grand Junction’s mill-site cost $500 million … 

Paradox Valley (photo by Sue Williamson)

 There’s a hidden subsidy for you, all to the benefit of the One Percent’s uranium industry (whose production in Paradox will be sent overseas as export, not for our domestic energy needs). Imagine if we put just the cost of just those three cleanups into solar or wind? We’d have alternative energy for the whole Western Slope … And we’re just talking mill-sites. The hundreds of mines and adits still leaking radioactive elements into our watersheds would take many, many billions more to clean up … Which is why I’m so fried with the Democrats. They’re advocating subsidies for the uranium industry, just like the Republicans. And we haven’t cleaned up the messes from the last uranium boom … Want a campaign issue? Ask Obama and Udall and Bennett when they’re going to get off the “safe nukes” bandwagon, and stop making bundles of money for the likes of the Blues Brothers and their General Atomic investors.

New "Safe" Confinement structure under construction at Chernobyl

CHERNOBYL … And the true costs of the nuclear industry are never taken into account for “black swan” events, like Chernobyl, Fukushima or Three Mile Island … Lebanese-American risk management expert Nassim Nicholas Taleb identified a “black swan event” as one that is very rare, comes as a surprise to the observer, has massive impacts and is only rationalized as possible after the fact … 

Cover of Taleb's book

Right now in the Belaurus, French construction company Novarka is building the world’s largest movable structure – a steel rainbow taller than the Statue of Liberty – to slide over Chernobyl Power Plant’s Reactor #4. The temporary sarcophagus placed over the ruins of the reactor after it exploded in April of 1986 is falling apart. The new structure, designed in part by the Battelle Memorial Institute at the cost of $2.1 billion, is only expected to last 100 years. It’s needed to clean up the highly radioactive dust that is still contained within the deteriorating sarcophagus … Some 29 countries are paying for this new steel rainbow. While Belaurus estimates the black swan event at Chernobyl has cost that country $235 billion. But in the U.S., should such a black swan event happen at any of the 104 existing nuclear reactors located at 65 nuclear power plants (not including the two new Japanese reactors being built near Atlanta, Georgia, recently awarded an $8.3 billion loan guarantee by the Obama administration), the lion’s share of the liability for the event would be covered by U.S. taxpayers. Companies actually responsible for the disaster would only be liable for the first $12.6 billion, thanks to the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Liability Act (renewed for 20 years in 2005). After that, it’s up to Congress to come up with the money. And you know that this august body, dominated by industry lobbyists, will force U.S. taxpayers to pay the nuclear piper – one of the many “hidden subsidies” for nuclear power that’s rarely discussed in comparing the costs of nuclear energy versus other energy sources … In speaking of black swan events, we’re not even talking about “routine” accidents that you rarely hear about in the U.S. media, like radioactive tritium leaking into groundwater as happened at the Vermont Yankee plant two years ago last month at a cost of $700 million in property damage. According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 43 of the 65 nuclear plants have already leaked radioactive tritium into groundwater, inflicting billions of dollars in property damage … It’s hard to fight against jobs for folks in the West End of Montrose County who only see value in a renewed uranium industry. But when looked at critically on a world stage, nuclear power is very dangerous game that’s likely to cost our children’s children trillions of dollars in property damage and untold suffering and illness. Is the nuclear industry’s so-called “clean energy” really worth it?

SHORT TERM RENTALS… Some folks outside the Telluride Region were concerned that the discussion of imposing some new county rule limiting short-term rentals would apply to them. If we’re talking about the Wright’s Mesa and West End Zone Districts, the answer is no. I made sure of that before we even started the discussion a couple weeks ago at the county … However, if you live Downvalley or on the Mesas, the answer is maybe. A number of homeowner associations have said they do NOT want short term rentals happening in their subdivisions. I think we have to respect that … At the same time, as I argued in the county’s initial discussions on this issue, these are hard times. Within this capitalist system, every private property owner ought to have as many tools as possible made available to prevent further foreclosures – and I see short-term rentals as one of those possible tools … Short-term rentals will definitely be available in Norwood and our West End, but they may not be in Placerville and elsewhere in the R-1 School District. So, whichever way you come down on this issue, it’s important that your voice is heard at the county in the next couple months.

THE TALKING GOURD

Photo by B. Thomas

Moss Spring

Imagine

billowing clouds of cumulus

backlit in the moonlight

Jupiter chasing Venus

across a star-struck

sky

Cloud Acre’s eye meal

of amaryllis

takes the breath away

So we talk more

this world and I

Blackbirds newly back

to Wright’s Mesa

The storm wind’s hurl & spin

flapping plastic

Six of us

hungry for bon mots

& lyric chatter

Inhaling margaritas

& sunshine

around a winter table

Up Bear Creek / 8mar25012

 Evan Greene at Barthell shrine with V. St. John  (Martin)

Hollywood comes to Telluride

to do a film, not just watch ‘em

THE LABOR TROUBLES … Smoke from a tramway bunkhouse still billows into the Bullion Tunnel. Shouts, hot embers and buckets of water spill across the sloped snowy ground, as miners struggle to douse the spreading flames. Nov. 20^th, 1901, and Western Federation of Miners Local 63 President Vincent St. John has just made it up Tomboy Road from town. He dashes into the Smuggler-Union mine portal, heedless of his own safety, and starts helping pull men out … Just the summer before St. John had raced up Tomboy Road to almost single-handedly broker a cease-fire after a deadly skirmish at the mine. Union member John Barthell, unarmed and just 24 years old, had been shot down by the Smuggler-Union’s armed guards in Marshall Basin when armed union members came up the hill looking for scab workers …

Tensions were still high, although the WFM Local 63’s first strike had been settled favorably for the union. The tragic fire that fall -- a direct result of the Smuggler-Union’s new Boston-based owners’ failure to install iron doors like “the majority of mine entrances and tunnels” had – left deep wounds among workers and a number of widowed families … 

Stories like these are what first intrigued Recording Academy executive (the Grammys) and screenwriter Evan Greene. “I fell in love with Telluride as a student at CU Boulder 20 years ago,” said Greene. “And I’ve dreamed of respectfully bringing Telluride’s amazing story alive ever since” … 

St. John jailed unjustly

One Bluegrass he let his friend drive home alone and he took the dog and a tent and lived up on Firecracker Hill, back when camping was an allowed forest use in these parts. Five years ago he brought his family to the 4^th of July Parade and “bought every book I could find” about Telluride’s history. Three years ago he let historian MaryJoy Martin of Montrose take him on a tour of the region and its historical sites. “The more I learned the deeper I got into the project,” he explained … 

Greene bought the screen rights to Martin’s The CorpseOn Boomerang Road (Western Reflections, Montrose, 2004) and her manuscript Undesirable Citizen: A Biography of Vincent St. John. Then he wrote a script for a full-length feature film. “It’s a great story about humanity,” Greene said. “It’s almost a perfect good versus evil story. A wealthy industrialist hires his son-in-law who’s failed at everything to take over a mine. An iron fist is the only kind of management Bulkeley Wells knows” … 

Finally, after years of research and preparation, Greene has partnered with Elbow Grease Pictures, a Hollywood film and television production company, to tell Telluride’s labor tale -- about the struggle between the workers and the capitalists, between the Western Federation of Miners and the Mine Owners Association, between Vincent St. John and Bulkeley Wells. They’ve laid out a $11.6 million dollar production package, and are planning on doing a companion documentary, suitable for television, to stir interest. The partners are raising production funding, and are open to involvement from the Colorado investment community …

 “The story of the fight between U.S. workers and their employers that Evan Greene has discovered yearns to be told,” said Elbow Grease producer Marcus Avery. “He has crafted a magnificent depiction of the triumph of the human spirit in the face of almost insurmountable adversity that will captivate audiences everywhere” … Greene himself is just as upbeat about the film they are calling Undesirable Citizens. “Given the issues that are prominent in our cultural dialogue right now (union relevance, mining accidents, the battles between workers and management, the greed of big business), “ he said, “this subject – especially since it drove labor relations forward and gave birth to many of the worker protection laws we now take for granted – could not be more topical and timely” … 

Telluride's own "Stuntman", Tim Territo

If all goes according to plan, Telluride will gain more than just publicity from the movie. According to Greene, “The partners feel strongly that the film should be shot in Telluride and Colorado.” They’ve contacted Colorado Film Commissioner Donald Zuckerman, and they’ve engaged as director Michael Schroeder, who has shot a feature film and several commercials in Telluride already. To Tim Territo of the Telluride Film Commission, this was good news. “People from the whole area will benefit from this project,” he noted. Actors, carpenters, extras – there should be plenty of jobs to go around once production gets underway.

Lone Cone (photo by Megan Kozey)

DONALD MCKEEVER … Another Norwood legend slips away. “Popcorn” was such a gentleman. Tolerated us newcomers. Even enjoyed visiting with us, on occasion. Always good for a story or a joke ... His bones had been hurting a bunch as he moved into his eighties. Made him a little grumpy, although he’d still make you laugh in front of the post office … Didn’t like government much. But he let us pols put our lawn signs up on his lovely main street property. One of Norwood’s best community folks, to my mind. He leaves us all sad and missing his laugh … Requiescat in pace

THE TALKING GOURD

Green Politics 101

Toss your hat

not far left of the ring

but into the radical

middle

Up Bear Creek / 3mar25012

Another Norwood legend passes

DARRELL ELDER … The narrow ditches on both of the state highway were jammed. But Rev. Clint Parry had but few words for his friend, Darrell, who didn’t think much of churches, “or ministers”, Parry laughed … It was no mistake that tow trucks led the funeral cortege. Darrell had pulled more than few of us out of ditches for the three decades I’ve lived in the county …  I knew Darrell was still a bit less boisterous from that cancer scare a few years back. But I’d seen him driving around. He’d stop by occasionally … Like the time he parked his pickup smack dab in the middle of a lane on the Cone Road right in front of my house and visited with me for some 45 minutes or more. Talking about local issues and roads and county policies and histories and all manner of curious stuff. He liked chatting and trading stories. A colorful character, dressed in a pair of greasy overalls, looking every bit the working class hero he was. He had his biases, and he didn’t shirk from sharing them. But he also had some good ideas – things he’d wrestle over for a while in his own mind and then surprise you with … ‘Course, when I first came to Norwood, I looked every bit the hippie I turned out to be, and that was not very high on the social totem pole in Darrell’s mind. He could look kind of gnarly, even after you got to know him. So, at first I kept my distance from his place just north of Stinking Springs and south of the county transfer station. But, eventually, a beater car tanked on me, and I tried to take it to D’s wrecking yard for salvage. But he wanted nothing to do with me, or my car. So I had to tow it to Montrose … But that was years ago, when I’d just come into the country. Before I got into office and teamed up with Commissioner Vern Ebert to get rid of building codes in the sparsely-settled West End of San Miguel County, about 15 years ago. After that, D and I had something to talk about – government interference in our lives … I have to say, I really grew to like our visits, even if I never liked some of his biases. But then, I know he didn’t really like some of my biases either. So I think we felt kind of even … Gonna miss you, D … Requiescat in pace

HISTORY CHECK … In recent times, some individuals have tried to finesse the historic spelling of Illium Valley to make it conform to the ancient Greek plains of Ilium in modern-day Turkey. But that’s not historically correct. I was reminded of this error leafing through William Henry Jackson’s Colorado (Pruett Publ., Boulder, 1975 [24975 ANAC]) compiled by William & Elizabeth Jones, while having Sunday brunch and playing ping-pong at the beautiful Two Candles Restaurant & Lounge in Norwood (their library is extensive) … On page 51, hand-lettered in a Jackson photo dating from the 1880’s [24880’s ANAC] is this caption: “Sunshine Peak from Illium Valley.”

MESH NETWORKS … Great article in March’s ScientificAmerican about the increasing centralization in the current World Wide Web through dead-end Internet Service Providers, national governments, closed loop cloud services like Facebook and Google, and how web privacy activists have devised an ingenious low-tech way to bypass government or corporate control, where each individual computer becomes a relay in the system, or a “device as infrastructure” network, as Sascha Meinrath of the New America Foundation calls it … It also has large implications for emergency management communications in case the Internet goes down. And it isn’t very expensive.

ENERGY PIG … Energy use continues to drop at Cloud Acre, along with my carbon footprint. My latest bill shows a total kilowatt hour (kWh) usage for the past 12 months of 10,580 kWh, with a monthly average of 881 kWh. That’s down from August of 25009 when my yearly total was 16,118 kWh and my monthly average was 1,343 kWh, and down from my last bill of 25011 which reflected a yearly total of 11,452 kWh and a monthly average of 954 kWh … That’s a year’s saving of 5,538 kWh – not an insignificant figure.

SUDDEN ASPEN DEATH … There have been lots of speculation on why the aspen have been suffering precipitous mortality recently, and certainly drought and global warming have to be exacerbating factors. But a paper published in the International Journal of Forest Research by Katie Haggerty of Lyons suggests a surprising connection. She links the major changes in the radio frequency  (RF) environment, particularly its anthropogenic increase in RF intensity and complexity, with SAD. “This study suggests that the RF background may have strong adverse effects on growth rate and fall anthocyanin production in aspen, and may be an underlying factor in aspen decline.”

THE TALKING GOURD

1-800

If you would like to come to the party, press 1

If you are already at the party, press 2

If you need to leave the party,

walk out the door.

If you are a third party candidate,

press the issues.

If you have already partied till you dropped,

hang up and try again.

-Mike Olschewsky

Nucla/Norwood

New Verse News

Monday, February 27, 2012

OBAMA'S DE-APOTHEOSIS

by Captain Barefoot

http://www.shutdownthecorporations.org/

Ain’t easy keeping the Elites from plotting
elimination. Accumulation. Spaghettification

Dense wealth stretches approaching nations
like noodles. Rolling pins it out of ‘em

like a hillbilly wrings a chicken’s neck
or a banker breaks a rancher’s back

Wall St.’s black hole, stringing us out on
 the meth of cheap mortgages. Cheap oil

Walmarts & mutually deterred nuclear voodoo
Thank competitive gravity. Market cabals

& Brahmin capital cliques. Wiping out whole
economies. On line. By drone. One shop

stupid cupid strategies of Empire, aggregated
in Alpha males. Corporate sales. The climate?

Just details … We live in an America inured
to mass Tell-a-Vision. Armed beyond reason

& our furthest shore. With a spook Pentagon
lock, load & pointed at the Planet’s head


Captain Barefoot identifies himself among the Union of Street Poets, Vincent St. John Local, Colorado Plateau, Aztlan Kuksu Brigade (Ret.), Cloud House, San Francisco, Shasta Nation, Pacific Rim.

http://www.newversenews.com/

Up Bear Creek / 23feb25012

Teasing Out the Divine

ELLE METRICK … San Miguel County’s current Poet Laureate is coming out with a wonderful new collection of poems, from Stewart Warren’s Mercury Heartlink Press in Albuquerque. She read poems last night from her book as the featured reader at the monthly Talking Gourds reading series at the Livery in Norwood … A gift to yourself this spring. Highly recommended.

POLITICAL ANGELS?… Say, I’ve been invited by the Obamas to attend a White House Conference on Conservation: Growing America’s Outdoor Heritage and Economy on March 2^nd in D.C. It sounds like a good opportunity to get at the front of the line in understanding federal initiatives and funding for tourist resort communities … But the county doesn’t have the $2500 it will cost in trip expenses. And neither do I … So I thought I’d ask if there’s a political angel out there who might be willing to finance my attendance at this conference. I’d promise to come back and report to the community at a public meeting in the Wilkinson what I’d learned. I know, it’s a long shot … But if this strikes a chord, call me today in Norwood 327-4767 or catch me at the Green Assembly at the County Meeting Room in the Miramonte Building from 6 to 7:30 p.m. tonight. The deadline to RSVP is midnight this evening.

CANNABIS INITIATIVE TWO … Michelle May is a Denver activist who is trying to get a different initiative on the ballot that would de facto legalize Cannabis use. In her proposal, judges would be legislatively prohibited from sentencing Cannabis users to jail in Colorado … If you’re interested, I have a petition that you can sign. Call me.

OPERA … Did you know the Norwood School music teacher Jeff Hemingson sings opera, and well? I didn’t. He performed for us a capella at the Livery in Norwood for the Norwood Travel Club’s delightful A Night in Italy. Jeff did a real fine basso profundo (F#) on his first piece, then ranged from Faust to La Boheme, and ended with the spiritual Old Man River, as he walked among the dinner tables … Very impressive.

Last year's Headwaters speaker Winona LaDuke

HEADWATERS … I’ve long been enamored of this annual autumn conference that Western State College in Gunnison hosts. At the end of its three days, we do a Talking Gourds Circle, and people in attendance get to speak from their hearts about what’s on their mind after listening to lots of learned talking heads. Last fall Kathryn Bernier spoke so eloquently, I asked her to share with us her words in the Gourds Circle from last fall. Here they are … “I challenge you to question your values, your beliefs, and most of all your culture. This culture that is a cult we (potentially) blindly follow. And if you settle upon the same set, I congratulate you. And if you find that your entire subset of reality is unfounded…well…I challenge you to start building a culture and a community that is founded in values, beliefs, even science. I challenge you to make difficult change, to be ostracized for going against the grain and the mainstream, to agree to disagree, and to make amends. I challenge you to embrace your strengths and hold your failures tighter to learn from them. I challenge you to not partake in things you don't believe. I challenge you, just as I challenge myself, to create your own reality, and build a new culture."

Gregory's Gulch in Black Hawk

WEEKLY QUOTA … Remember old guard Republicans who cared about hunger and peace, even if they didn’t always walk the talk? … "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."  -President Dwight D. Eisenhower (April 16, 1953)

THE TALKING GOURD

Poetry Biz in 2012

Drive up to the mountains

On a February eve. Old mining town

Now refurbished with glittery casinos,

Cars, gamblers & buses. County

& its library named for a booster,

Some forgotten knucklehead

Named Gilpin. One of those

Know-it-alls who thought

"rain followed the plow."

No need to listen to John Wesley Powell.

Even then politicians bragged

About making their own reality.

So Powell got the same treatment

James Hanson got from W's White House.

But the library was homey

& I liked reading in front

Of ceramic masks. The host

Recited witty baseball poems.

No one bought a book but a woman

Handed me a very fine drawing

Of a white bearded man

Looking earnest & scholarly

& several said they enjoyed what I did.

Just an old poet trying to be

A public intellectual

In a country

Where most no longer read.

-Phil Woods

Denver

Up Bear Creek / 16feb25012

San Miguel Greens hold local meets

COUNTY ASSEMBLIES … The two major parties have for years had a very effective and democratic system for involving local party members in their pre-primary nominating deliberations – caucuses and assemblies … Minor parties in Colorado haven’t used those techniques to gather input from rank and file members registered with them. But this year the San Miguel Greens want to change that … We’re planning to hold two assemblies in San Miguel County in order to give registered Greens a time to gather and endorse candidates; select delegates to the state Green Party Convention in Carbondale, March 31, as well as the year-round State On-line Council; elect facilitators; and discuss the future of the Green Party in local, state and national politics … In Norwood, the first Green Assembly in the county will be held tonight, Thurs., Feb. 16, at 6 p.m. in the Two Candles Restaurant & Lounge … In Telluride, the second Green Assembly will be held next week, Thurs. Feb. 23, at 6 p.m. at the County Meeting Room in the Miramonte Building … All registered Greens from San Miguel, Dolores, Ouray and West Montrose counties are invited to attend (or those interested in registering Green).

Greens have adopted a Sunflower as their "mascot," with a peace sign thrown in for those of us Peaceniks.

COUNTY COMMISSIONER … I suppose after four terms and 16 years as a local elected official, some would say that it’s time for me to step down. But I must confess – I like working for the people 

Explaining to the Grand Junction Sentinel why I was walking out on Club 20

For two years, back in the mid-Eighties, I was the lone citizen representative on the Idarado Negotiating Committee that Democrat Gov. Roy Romer set up (after Linda Miller gave him a good talking-to in the Opera House) to head off a truck removal tailings solution to the Newmont subsidiary Idarado Mining Company's Superfund eco-disaster east of Telluride. What the Federal Court ordered would have destroyed our resort economy, if the Governor hadn't intervened. I remember looking around that Idarado table and realizing everyone else there was drawing a salary – state and federal regulators, staffers, state and corporate lawyers, locally elected officials ... Most of us who stumbled into Telluride understand “third jobs" ... But usually you try and do them to get paid. As a journalist I'd done a 13-part series on the complex state Superfund case against Idarado in the weekly San Miguel Journal -- a competitor start-up to the weekly Telluride Times. So, back then, I was honored to be named as Romer's citizen representative. And I felt I was instrumental in ensuring strong water quality standards and the funding of a local oversight committee at the start of the cleanup’s implementation -- to be sure things got done right (which they did, mostly thanks to the state's health and environment overseer -- the amazing Camille Price, who stayed on with us and married mi hermano Lucas of La Cocina de Luz)

Tentacles of Red in a Blue Sea

Now I sit around similar tables (yes, basketweaving when I have to listen for a long time) locally, regionally and on the state and national levels. I get to represent the human and more-than-human world in political deliberations. Only these days I’m getting paid by citizens of this county to do it. I get to bring 30 years experience, living locally, to whatever issue is at hand  -- not as a trust-funder, but as a Rainbow back-to-the-lander who grows 50+ varieties of heirloom potatoes on my little acre spud patch in Norwood. 

Son Gorio helping his Dad in Cloud Acre's Spud Patch

In spite of my personal biases, my task is to treat everyone fairly – balancing the needs and majority opinions of the liberal, exurban tourism-based East End of San Miguel County with the needs and minority opinions of the conservative, frontier ag-based West End. That meant bringing Rep. John Salazar's San Juan Wilderness proposal to Norwood for a hearing on a move to include Naturita Canyon even before it became a bill, where Randall Thompson and a number of others effectively scotched the wilderness idea (which would have been a boon to some Norwood businesses as word about this new "wilderness" made it into the guidebooks). But, listening to what was heard at the hearing I held in Norwood with the Sheep Mountain Alliance, Salazar took it out of the proposal that became his bill.

Lone Cone Moon reflected in the Headwaters of Naturita Canyon

It also means not supporting the county taking a public stand against the West End Montrose uranium plant, although we've repeatedly expressed our concerns for the cumulative dust deposition impact from a uranium mining boom in this country -- that public stance is in spite of my own position as a Green and long-time anti-nuclear activist. I personally do not support nuclear. But my fight is with the Democrats, not with my West End neighbors. The Obama administration, like all those before it since World War II, supports nuclear, gives it subsidies, wants it mined within our borders. So, what right do we have as a Blue/Green county in telling a Red county not to follow the Blue President's policies in this Purple state we're in?

Having a job does help me support Mary and Sara Friedberg and our son Gorio. Plus, there are some important bennies besides a paycheck -- I get to work with a great staff throughout our county offices and shops in Telluride, Illium, Deep Creek, Wright's Mesa, Norwood, Dry Creek and Egnar, as well as complementing two of the best colleagues a county commissioner could wish for, Elaine Fischer and Joan May … In these hard times, the county is having to make difficult decisions about the size and scope of future services, as we watch our county’s balanced budget continue to shrink. Luckily, we’ve prepared well for a rainy day (bless you, Gordon Glockson). We have the cushion of a sizeable reserve, built up over the last 20 years, which we’ve begun to draw down to ease our local economy’s transition from the bull market boom of the Reagan-Clinton-Bush years to the reality of the current bear market bust … Really, I’m proud to serve in local government. On the local level I think government works. It’s government that you can talk to in the market or at the post office. A government that will return your phone calls … One of those who ran against me last time around suggested that county commissioner was meant to be a job, not a career. I respect that opinion. But I also feel that working for the people is more than just a job. It’s a way to give back to the community, to safeguard a shared vision of what society could be in this very special region, and to provide a resilient future for our children … So, I’m going to campaign again in San Miguel County’s District 3 for a fifth term. But it’s report card time in the ballot box. And it's going to be up to you, my fellow constituents, to decide whether I’m fit to serve again.

PAT SWONGER … Can’t keep a good man down. It’s great to see that Pat didn’t let those behind-the-scenes Dem kingpins cut him out of the election process this year, on a technicality. He’s bounced back with a plan to forgo the party assembly process and petition directly onto the Dem primary ballot for a shot at the State House seat currently held by J. Paul Brown, a La Plata County Republican (the 59th, the district the Colorado Supreme Court pulled the Telluride Region out of) … Definitely a man of the people, I’ve worked with Pat on several key issues and have seen him do a fine job in Silverton on the town board there. He’s the kind of savvy rural politico we need in Denver -- representing all the citizens on the Western Slope, not just the ranchers and big money interests (like Brown does) … Right now he needs volunteers – particularly in Ridgway and Ouray -- to help him gather the 1000 petitions he needs to get on the Dem ballot. And consider sending a donation to Patrick Swonger for House District 59, POB 241, Silverton, CO 81433.

THE TALKING GOURD

Voices

(photo by Bob Grossman)

Outside,

Maverick Draw’s cumuli

lock horns over Lone Cone

The sky releases

little shouts of snow

Inside, first time ever

Cloud Acre's amaryllis

blooms

Photo by Gorio Osha'

two red strumpets

sassy as their golden tongues