Make Glenwood Springs into a destination resort
Glenwood is a mining town? Glenwood needs better press. Leadville is a mining town. Aspen is a mining town. New Castle is a mining town. Telluride is a mining town. Cripple Creek in a mining town. Central City is a mining town. Not Glenwood. Glenwood has always struggled for identity. Are we a tourist town or are we a service town? Glenwood is not a mining town.
Remember years ago when Crested Butte, a mining town, was challenged by AMAX, a mining company, to develop a molybdenum mine? By that time, mining wasn’t fashionable in a mining town. It didn’t happen.
Unfortunately, Glenwood has lost its identity. If it becomes a mining town, a service town, a tourist town… or all three, does it matter? The citizens should decide.
Mining could be an attraction in-itself, but the main focus should be on economic sense for the community— making Glenwood a destination resort, independent of its proximity as well as the route to Aspen. We don’t want Aspen tourist refugees, we want people to see: we are who we are.
Interesting that a similar trend happened in Salida. It reinvented itself from a railroad town to an artist’s enclave.
Fred Stewart,
Grand Junction
We are human animals living on a tax farm
Allen and Anne America are tax slaves. Who isn’t wondering where freedom and prosperity have flown? With government glue on our shoes; we are stuck. Law after law, regulation after regulation, and tax after tax makes us robotic drones to politicians and big corporations.
I don’t feel so American anymore when Congress has confiscated nearly half of what I labored so many years for. Do we really own much of anything — a house? A car? Just stop making payments or drop your insurances and see what happens.
In reality we may actually own a pet and the clothes on our backs. So, it does boil down to this phrase — we are human animals living on a tax farm. Every single monetary obligation takes a jump every year— Medicare, Rx plans, supplemental insurance, and yes, even car insurance, just because you have turned a certain age and your car is 16 years old. It should be mentioned to those who are not yet at retirement age that our cost of living adjustment (COLA) might buy a tube of toothpaste or simply disappear due to Obamacare penalties. Don’t we feel so very lucky when there is something left over to purchase a needed pair of shoes or be able to go out to dinner? Wow!
Carol Abbott
Battlement Mesa
Thanksgiving story has been shrouded in misinformation
I would like to share some good news about the first Thanksgiving. We have much to be thankful for! Democracy, separation of church and state, consent of the governed, self-determination, equal and just laws serving the common good. The tenets of civil government that arose from the principles and ideals of the Mayflower Pilgrims and the Native Americans they lived amongst.
This origin story of the U.S. begins with a compact, a peace treaty and three days of inter-cultural celebration, followed by a melding of cultures through a half century of friendship between the Mayflower Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians at Plymouth Plantation 1621-1675.
What is the American mind? The American spirit? Where did they come from and where will we take them? What is the nature of true freedom? Throughout time humanity has made choices which have created our history. What of our future? Our choices will lead us there.
At the founding of this nation an extraordinary exception to the human condition unfolded when the visionary leaders of two radically different cultures met and worked together to maintain an inter-cultural exchange that became what I call the “First Great Synthesis” between Europeans and American Indians. I believe this gave birth to American democracy and to the American mind and spirit. The “Second Great Synthesis” occurred when aspects of The Great Law of the Iroquois were integrated into the U.S. Constitution. I foresee a third synthesis, as our cultures come together again to realize the great promise of liberty, justice, equality and abundance for all that America made to the world in its freedom documents.
This story has been shrouded in misinformation since the beginning. First it glorified the Pilgrim and ignored the Indian. Now it demonizes the Pilgrim in an effort to honor the Indian. I believe we can bring it into balance with a perspective on the common vision for humanity shared by the Pilgrims and the Natives they lived amongst: a vision based upon the right to act according to one’s conscience in a self-governing democracy.
Giving Thanks,
Connie Baxter Marlow,
Woody Creek
