Zele Community Table
Zele Community Table is a service of Zele Cafe in downtown Aspen, and is meant to complement the Community Table in the story as a place for the meeting and exchange of ideas of locals and visitors alike.
It’s like finding home. When I thought of home I thought of Aspen. We spent a lot of summers here, and came out for Christmas. Smoo was larger than life. My parents didn’t say: “Do you know who your grandparents are?” We didn’t have an inflated sense of who we were. It wasn’t up for discussion. I was so oblivious as a child of the [Smoo] myth, not the myth, the whole persona, and part of who she was. To me we were going to Aspen and it was this great space. We got to ski for free. I would nod my head. I knew there was a park, an auditorium with her name on it. Now we spend three or four months a year here. Every school break, spring break, winter break, and part of the summer. Nick wants to spend the whole summer here. And Emma, when we bring her back to school, she takes a leap every time.
Continue Reading June 30th, 2008
I liked the freedom of setting my own hours. Working for the club was like working for myself. It enabled me to finish school. I had to finish it up at Regis University and finished through their online program. But I definitely found my niche. I was driven to learn, I had passion for the knowledge I was gaining, particularly the study of physiology. I really liked the clients. I like the relationships I was developing. I really enjoyed it. I was sure I’d be passionate about it, though working with people might ruin me liking the exercise thing. But that ended up not being the case. Working with really athletic people is absolutely an advantage to being in Aspen. You’re dealing with performance and not obesity, and it’s one of the better places to be.
Continue Reading June 30th, 2008
It’s all action-focused, forcefulness. I’ve changed a lot since then. There are so many different ways to go about being fulfilled. I grew up in a home with very competitive athletes. My sister is a professional windsurfer, my brother is on the U.S. Sailing team, an Olympic athlete. I didn’t perform at that level. So that’s all I knew. How to go about it all the way.
Continue Reading May 5th, 2008
LS: I’d always done photography on the side. I was living in Austin and we were supposed to have a freeze. South Texas shuts down. It’s so humid, it doesn’t snow but it’s ice and sleet. Dangerous and very exciting. I knew I was going to have to stay home and I had this urge to color with crayons. This urge for crayons. I had forgotten about this. There was a Michael’s by my apartment, and I bought a big box of crayons. I always liked looking at paint and paint samples. So I was looking around and thought I’ll buy some paints too. My sister has that first painting and it’s awful. Ten years ago. It was a dream. I had studied photography and art history.
MC: What was the first painting like?
LS: Goofy. I bought a book on how to paint with acrylics. I could actually mix it and thin it. Interestingly enough, after that, I was painting hearts but they were very abstract. I did one for everyone in my family. That’s what came out. I see it as a metaphor to follow my heart. I had to paint a lot of hearts to follow my heart.
Continue Reading April 16th, 2008
Stuart Brafman: I just did an interview on KAJX about my uncle as a matter of fact. My Uncle Abe came to the United States at age 15 in 1922 from a small town in the Ukraine with his father and two sisters. His mother was killed by bandits shooting up the town. The guy was incredible. Within two years of coming here his father died. He learned the language, got a job in shoe factories, and worked his way through high school. He applied to West Point after just four years and got a grade of 82. The Congressman was ready to recommend him until he realized “you’re not in my district.” That Congressman said: “I made an appointment for a guy who had a 68.” He said: “What about Annapolis?”—but Uncle Abe rejected it. Then he worked his way through the University of Wisconsin engineering school, selling fruit off a wagon in summer to make enough money. The third year he did ROTC in the summer and the family pitched in to get him through his last year. He graduated, got a commission, and was sent to Fort Sheridan, where he soon became the post engineer—he built Fort Sheridan into a major induction center and became a full colonel.
Continue Reading March 21st, 2008
Max Werdenigg, Edelwiser skis: These independent labels in skiing—I really like the idea. Every ski has its own personality. When we build skis we put our soul in it. That’s more and more important in our society. The masses grow to a point where you lose the individual part of one’s self. Now you can design your own Porsche—everyone’s going to mass customization. They talk at MIT about mass customization. Some scientists say it’s a pretty young field. Finally we’ve got a case study.
Continue Reading February 13th, 2008
MC: What were you writing when you started?
AM: In my twenties I wrote science fiction but I only had one book published. It was about a wife who drove her husband to be reduced to a set of teeth mowing a lawn. I became a feminist and said no to an offer to put it in an anthology.
MC: Why did you say no?
AM: I was stereotyping a hen-pecked wife. Like a lot of women in the early 1970s I got caught up in the women’s movement. It took me a while but one time I saw a guy snickering about a woman’s liberation march. I was so pissed—I had false eyelashes then, I wore tiny dresses, I was into being pretty. I started marching and got more and more involved. When I was in college I was standing around at college fraternity parties and nodding. Feminism made a lot of sense to me. I’m a great backer of Hillary Clinton.
Continue Reading January 22nd, 2008
Lieutenant Colonel Dick Merritt (retired Marines); Dan Glidden Aspen Police Department Patrolman (Navy Seaman); Shae Singer, daughter of a veteran; Michael Conniff.
Michael Conniff: Who have you interviewed for the Roaring Fork Veterans History Project?
Dick Merritt: Frank Dolinsek and Gino Hollander in Aspen, Ralph Ball in Carbondale, John Tripp in Carbondale, Dick McCrudden in Carbondale, Shae Singer! Why don’t you sit down? We’re doing 20 per year, interviewing at-risk veterans. The older ones, a 90-year-old, escaped from the Holocaust. He was in a German labor camp, fleeing to the United States. Kurt Bresnitz is his name. He joined the U.S. Army Battle of the Bulge and then liberated Dachau.
Continue Reading December 4th, 2007
Tom Hayles: I thought it was pretty interesting that ZG represented the place where we live. You weren’t tied to the normal life others might be. I was looking for a way to be distinctive or different. I find it really hard to plaster something on me to say “Aspen.” I still feel it’s a little bit of a bull’s-eye. ZG is a way of saying “Aspen, this is where I’m from, this is my designator, yet it doesn’t say Aspen.” Things you can do with it are very interesting. I designed it to be very simple, very plain, a lot of elements of some of the other elements of Aspen. Herbert Bayer and the divine elements. Something fairly unique about it but that people could still recognize.
Continue Reading November 1st, 2007
I moved from Boulder to Vail and worked in a dinner theatre club for three years before I moved back to Denver. Then I came to 35th Anniversary of the Crystal Palace on July 12, 1992. In a simple conversation with Mead Metcalf, the owner, I said: “If you ever have an opening I’d come here.” This will be my sixteenth winter. I didn’t work the summers for the first two years. I would wait tables. After a few years, I had to work my way back in. I don’t think I would ever consider myself the most featured performer there, but the most satisfying thing for me was writing songs.
MC: Can you give us an example?
MM: “Viagra.”
Continue Reading October 23rd, 2007
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