Blame it on the dogs, Wolfy and Rovie, but Connie fails to avert a stampede in the latest installment of Post blogger Sue Gray's
Cattle Logic.
In
What Would Yoda Do?, Post blogger Mitch Mulhall tries to resolve local blogger Sue Gray's words with a
washingtonpost.com article written Christmas Eve. "Last weekend, Sue Gray wrote, 'Bethlehem itself has been walled in by the Israeli "security fence" to the point that it has strangled the once booming tourist industry as well as the local economy.'... The condition associated with the term
walled in suggests enclosure," Mulhall writes. "I looked for maps of the wall Israel has erected between itself and the West Bank. Bethlehem is just south and a bit west of Jerusalem. It is separated from Jerusalem by the wall. It is not enclosed, or surrounded by the wall... Last Christmas Eve, I stumbled upon an article on washingtonpost.com titled
Bethlehem Enjoys A Festive Christmas."
Who's correct?
“We hope, to paraphrase Mark Twain, that reports of The Valley Journal's death are being greatly exaggerated. But there is no sugarcoating it: The Valley Journal is gone for now as a stand-alone publication, and is the latest casualty in a wave of setbacks to the newspaper industry.”
Posts filed under 'Carbondale'
RFTA is organized under Colorado state law as a Regional Transportation Authority (RTA). An RTA is a tax district which can fund projects related to “any highway, road, street, bus system, railroad, airport, gondola system, or mass transit system”. In contrast, the RFTA board, made up of elected officials from eight different jurisdictions, effectively limits our RTA to being nothing more than a mass transit authority.
The first major RFTA planning effort, the Corridor Investment Study (CIS), did go through the motions of examining the full range of transportation possibilities intended by state law. Although identifying future traffic congestion as the problem to be addressed, the “technology options” considered by the CIS managed to include “automobiles on new lanes” on the same list as extravagantly silly items like “jet packs”, “dog sleds”, and “automobiles on flatbed trucks”, and then treated these ideas equally by dismissing them all with no further comment.
Claiming that reduced bus travel time would result in huge ridership increases, the CIS authors did not examine any highway option beyond “passenger cars or trucks using Highway 82 in its present configuration,” despite the potential for highway capacity increases to provide both congestion relief and improved transit performance. The CIS set out to show that “the region’s growing traffic congestion cannot be solved with just one mode of transportation or by highway expansions alone,” but ended up confirming the exact opposite by showing no congestion improvement even with unrealistic projected transit ridership increases.
Last year, RFTA was approached with a request to create a petition process for the district that would allow local citizens to propose “outside the bus” traffic solutions. For example, the use of local tax sources for highway construction would allow us to cut through state level funding delays, and set us up for future reimbursements from the state that could then be applied to transit services.
This year, taxpayers could have had the opportunity to weigh the relative benefits of doubling bus service on the Highway 82 corridor, or fixing the Entrance to Aspen (for example), and voting accordingly. But the RFTA board never discussed the idea of allowing citizen initiated petitions for the use of our own tax money. It requires six out of eight votes to make such a change, and representatives of the three upper valley jurisdictions - Aspen, Snowmass Village, and Pitkin County – made it clear they would never vote to allow such a process.
Until RFTA expands the scope of its vision in respect to our private vehicles, transportation planning will continue to be a process akin to viewing the ocean through a glass bottom bucket - and the results will continue to be shortsighted.
*This space was originally intended for “Discussing Mass Transit Part V – What is RFTA Proposing?”, but RFTA is still working on whatever they are about to propose. We pause from that series long enough to offer this background information.
September 9th, 2008
Galia Golan in her Aspen Institute lecture on Monday 8/25 confirmed everything I have been saying and writing about Israel for the last six years. Dr. Golan is a Jewish woman who has lived in Israel since 1966 and has been on the faculty of the Hebrew University since 1967. She has been active in Peace Now, an Israeli organization dedicated to ending Israel’s occupation of Palestine and was the director of Bat Shalom, a Jewish women’s peace organization.
Continue Reading August 27th, 2008
Aspen Community Theatre is offering a free dance workshop on August 23rd from 10 am to 3 pm hosted by Marisa Post, the director and choreographer for Aspen Community Theatre’s fall musical, "Chicago."
Synonymous with the show "Chicago" is the name of its brilliant director and choreographer Bob Fosse. Highly stylized, this dance class will explore the essential ingredients in the choreography of Fosse, including his dance roots in vaudeville, burlesque and jazz. The workshop will include a film history of vaudeville and burlesque, a session on how to follow choreography, culminating in a dance class designed to pull it all together. This class is perfect for actors, singers and dancers of all experience levels.
Marisa Post received her theatre training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, NYC and is currently the Director of Education at Theatre Aspen. She has worked as a professional actress, in New York and nationally. As a director and choreographer, Marisa has created new and published works for the stage, including Umbrella Man, Little Shop of Horrors, A Little Night Music, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change and The Sound of Music.
Enrollment is limited. Please call Carol Bayley @ 920.3937 to register.
August 14th, 2008
As soon as the food was gone, the chicks would immediately fall silent and settle back down to sleep. And I’d go back to work. I quickly became addicted to observing the new family, picking up my binoculars a dozen times or more each day. I cherished this routine and the rare opportunity to observe nature’s wonder at such convenience.
Within a week, the chicks began to develop their adult feathers, or ‘fledge’ as it’s called in the birding community. I anticipated watching them learn to fly; jumping out of the nest onto the thickly needled branches of their spruce abode, awkwardly testing their new wings as mom and dad encouraged them to explore the outer branches and eventually take that big leap. But it didn’t happen that way at all. One day they were there and the next day, they were gone.
Continue Reading June 18th, 2008
The Con Man gets a visit from Lt. Colonel Dick Merrit and Seaman Dan Glidden, two retired veterans who stand for all that's good about those who have served the country. Also: a bit of a rant of flag lapel pins and taking back the lapel flag pin--and the flags--from those who desecrate it with faux patriotism.
Click here for the complete "Con Games with Michael Conniff" for Memorial Day May 28, 2008.
May 26th, 2008
Aspen Community Theatre is offering a free dance workshop hosted by Marisa Post, the director and choreographer for Aspen Community Theatre’s fall musical, Chicago. Synonymous with the show Chicago is the name of its brilliant director and choreographer Bob Fosse. Highly stylized, this dance class will explore the essential ingredients in the choreography of Fosse, including his dance roots in vaudeville, burlesque and jazz. The workshop will include a film history of vaudeville and burlesque, a session on how to follow choreography, culminating in a dance class designed to pull it all together. This class is perfect for actors, singers and dancers of all experience levels.
Continue Reading May 18th, 2008
The creation of Israel 60 years ago as a sanctuary for the Jewish people is cause for celebration. Israel is a successful nation, which has contributed much to science and technology. It’s fully capable of defending itself with the fourth strongest military in the world. But Israel is still in jeopardy.
Continue Reading May 14th, 2008
A new house cannot be built where an old one remains. The old house may be rotting, crumbling, a hazard to its occupants, but until it is brought down completely, and the debris cleared away, a new abode can not be built in its place.
This is why I support John McCain for president. There is no doubt that he will continue the disastrous policies and practices of the current administration. Indeed, many of his staff and advisors will be the very same architects of the old crumbling house we all now find ourselves living in.
Continue Reading May 12th, 2008
“Incredibly disrespectful.” That’s how the Con Man describes the conservative’s penchant for mislabeling the Democratic Party. But after learning of the Democrats’ primary electoral process, I’m inclined to agree with the assessment that the Democratic Party is decidedly undemocratic.
Continue Reading May 6th, 2008
One of the people at the newspaper who hired me when I came to Aspen five years ago told me about “the tractor beam effect.”
That’s a poetic way of saying that once people leave Aspen they always come back, inexorably drawn to the mountains, the valley, the rivers, and certain ineffable things that have no name.
True enough: all of that speaks to why we’re so lucky to be here. But it’s also another way of saying people leave—they leave all the time—and that we’ve experienced this directly and personally. At least three key people, great friends, will no longer live here full-time come 2009.
Continue Reading April 24th, 2008
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