My wife gave birth to a daughter today at 1:13 p.m. That’s 13:13 if you go by Military Time. She weighed 7 lbs 14 ounces and was 20 ½ inches long. Her name is Delilah Rose. This is our second child born at 8,000 feet. Our first, also a girl, is almost two years old. She calls Delilah “Bee-Bee.”
Tonight, I roamed the halls with no particular destination in mind. Inside the patient care unit there is a shelf of movies on VHS. After our first daughter was born I watched “Dances With Wolves.” I considered watching it again, thinking that doing so may invite the same luck we’ve had with child number one. Normally, I would do this without question. I’m like the athlete who performs a ritualistic task prior to each game, but I am not an athlete. I’m just a guy with superstitions.
Well, I should have seen it coming. Troy Hooper, ace reporter for the Aspen Daily News, returns to town after a vacation and immediately starts to (a) write yet another story where he’s holding the bag for Sheriff Bob Braudis, and (b) tries to go after me in the process.
Aspen is a code word for elitism across the country and around the world, but is the word really justified when it comes to the arts that we get to see and feel? Or has the arts scene in Aspen veered inexplicably and inexorably toward kitsch and popular culture?
You’ve got to love Aspen City Council, especially if you love the idea that individual citizens should have the right to sleep with whomever they choose, regardless of race, color, creed—or sexual combination.
"Over the last year," writes CEO Pat O'Donnell, "Aspen Skiing Co. has been the target of accusations and innuendo regarding the February 2005 referendum on Snowmass Base Village. There have been unsubstantiated claims that SkiCo "engineered" the election by displacing international workers and replacing them with U.S. citizens in our Club Commons employee housing project in Snowmass."
On Sunday afternoon while “catching up” with a friend outside of City Market in Aspen I was disturbed to watch what has apparently become a normal characterization within our society. I watched as an elderly and weathered woman exit the driver’s side of the van, with cigarette pack in left hand and a troubled unfocused gaze. She got as far as the shipping- tape spread across her brown dilapidated van when she completely collapsed to the street. As my friend and I went over to help, a male dressed in an undershirt and boxer shorts quickly exited the passenger side of the van and scooped the woman up and assisted her back into the driver’s side of the van. While, my friend and I continually offered our assistance, we were ignored by both. It was a disturbing scene to me on many levels. First and foremost I was watching an obviously intoxicated person be put into a driver’s seat of a van. Secondly, I remember noticing the van parked on the sidewalk of City Market earlier, and thinking “that’s the homeless” van.
The news that the Aspen City Council and city planners are mulling an extension of the moratorium on building in Aspen brings the initial thoughts of bloggers Jerry Bovino and Michael Conniff about the idea to bear.
As I dressed this morning for a nice Sunday motorcycle ride through the mountains, I wasn't sure how many layers to wear under the leathers. I fired up the computer to get the current temperature and was very surprised that it was only in the 40'sF. Last night was rather foul with nasty rain showers and fairly cold temperatures. I had a thought that maybe, just maybe we could possibly see some high elevation S. N. O. W. As I walked to the garage to fire up my trusty new steed, I had to stop just to look at it. It's that beautiful.
