Christmas shopping in the mid-Valley is a great way to support our small business owners and boost the local economy. With so many choices for great gifts right here in our own neighborhood, why go anywhere else?
Carlos Urbina, 67, was struck when he tried to cross Highway 82.Urbina had just exited a bus from Aspen and was returning to his home at the Willits Townhouses in Basalt.
Aspen Music Festival and School Director of Educational Outreach Debby Barnekow has been blogging from around the Valley this week. Today is the final day of her in-school residency with guitarist Brad Richter.
As this residency with Brad Richter comes to a close, and we head into the Music and M.O.R.E. concert at 6:30 tonight at Harris Concert Hall, a higher level of intensity was needed to get all of the student groups ready for the performance. Often it is difficult for young people to assess their own potential and abilities. Their performance opportunities are not frequent nor often well attended. I hear young people say to me often that they feel invisible, that adults don't even notice them. I have a most wonderful job that lets me observe their incredible skills, imagination and creativity and hear their powerful solutions to difficult world problems.
Tonight I am proud to not only present Brad Richter with a world premiere among the pieces he will play but to also present students who have worked hard to reach a new plateau in their playing. For some, this is their first time to ever play together in an ensemble.
The past two days we worked with Basalt High School's guitar classes, Aspen Community School's 3rd/4th grade guitarists and Aspen Elementary's 4th grade class, taught by Natalie DeFelice. The high schooler's rearranged their classes in order to have one more extended rehearsal with Brad to perfect their piece-a Led Zeppelin song, Kashmir. ACS guitarists have a Beatle's song, I've Just Seen a Face, that is not often heard. The AES 4th graders worked on perfecting the form of their poem with Brad's music-it will be amazing to hear. I invite you to join us for a wonderful concert- again, the time is 6:30 at Harris Concert Hall.
Aspen Music Festival and School Director of Educational Outreach Deborah Barnekow is on the road again this week with guitarist Brad Richter. The week-long school residency ends this Friday with a free community performance at Harris Concert Hall. The following is Debby's daily blog:
Mike McGarry, co-founder of the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform (CAIR) returns to "Con Games" to debunk Bill Gates and his high-tech visas. Then the Con Man turns his attention to the surge of the Mahdi Army in Basra, Iraq.
As if the third-party blindsiding of a Presidential contender isn’t nasty enough, the subsequent drill requires the candidate to personally denounce what that particular person has said as if it were his or her own. Crazy, you say? You said it. The only reason this is happening is because partisan fart-blowers need fresh ammunition the way sharks need chum.
Where does it end?
It won’t in our lifetimes. At some point, Kevin Bacon will say something that embarrasses his chosen candidate, and the candidate will have to repudiate what Kevin Bacon says, return his contribution, and then profusely apologize for what the inseparable actor thinks out loud.
The temptation to dismiss the latest entrance of Ralph Nader into the 2008 Presidential race is all but overwhelming, and I admit my first instinct is to let fly with an indecipherable curse that ends in the sigh: “Not again.”
Democracy at work—and democracy without the smirk—were both there to behold election night at the Eagle County Precinct 7 caucus of which yours truly chose to exercise the rites and rights of citizenship.
When we arrived there was a long line leading up to the sign-up table where we Eagle County orphans, cut off from our brethren by the small matter of mountains, nonetheless lined up in reasonable order on a cold night to dictate the course of democracy, at least in our small corner of Colorado. The Republicans, the lost souls of our republic, got there first, and I couldn’t help but peak in to see how the recalcitrant elephants were doing at the El Jebel Community Center where their confab was already under way.
It wasn’t pretty, my friends, as John McCain would say. While hundreds of us Democrats hob-nobbed in the hallways and byways in El Jebel, there were 22 lonely Republicans in all—I counted every single one the way I learned as a cub reporter—in clusters small enough to break your heart without making you think about switching parties.
We have all no doubt heard of "The Silent Majority" and "The Moral Majority," but I would like to posit "The Quiet Majority."
The two previous "majorities"--both Silent and Moral--were a way of defining a fundamental shift toward conservatism marked by anti-communism, religiosity, and what were once known as "family values" before Republicans with multiple wives started to run for President. The Quiet Majority, in contrast, is not tied to these arcane formulations--or any others, for that matter.
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.
Happy NEW YEAR to everyone! I hope that 2008 is absolutely GREAT for everyone in the valley. While it is starting out for me to be somewhat on the negative side, I truly believe it will all work out for the good by the time everything is all said and done. Cross your fingers! I very well may need your help.
What's been on my mind lately is my living situation. About 8 or 9 days ago, my roommate came up to me and told me that she was giving me a couple of days notice that she MIGHT be moving back to California to help care for her ailing 20-something son and that she would be leaving within a matter of a few hours of hearing what his test results were. She would also be taking only what she could pack into her car - leaving the rest of her stuff behind and that I would need to get a new roommate very soon!
I am making the journey over the hill this Thursday, the 10th if any one would like to re-up on some local food. We are temporarily out of Wild Alaskan Salmon. I exhausted that source and am looking for another sustainable fisher to work with. I sold out of cheese as well over the holiday and haven't had opportunity to replenish that stock yet. I do have plenty of juice, jam, beef, buffalo, elk, lamb, granola, Leroux Creek Spa Skin care and cookbooks for offer.
