Aspen perceived

Rant Warning:

I love my home town but sometimes I just want to slap it upside the head. We have tempest in a tortoise shell as our current cause de jour , we have a $70 million dollar free museum without a permanent collection, a mad moose on the loose up at Maroon Lake, the City Council has decided that the free market is bad for everything except pot, the local paper has gotten letters complaining about too many porta potties  (complain about too few before you complain about too many I say) and our current Mayor was afraid that choosing a Council Member with a roll of the dice would have made us look silly- yeah *that* would have made us look silly.

Lodging, development, building, transit, density, we teeter on the edge of the abyss.

 Our souls are in the balance. We are doomed, doomed, doomed.

It's a problem of perception.

1887

2009

America has been a place of reinvention since the first boatload. The Wild West welcomes newcomers with a ubiquitous "don't care what you did before, what ya gonna do here?" The tales told could be as dark as Conrad or as subtle as de Maupassant.

Re-invention? We've made a meal of it.

A big fat banquet.

… and we Aspenites have a rose colored utopian view of ourselves as hearty mountain folk who climb, ski, bike and support all the moral, environmental, humanitarian causes on the planet.

Others see us as ungrateful posers who have won the lottery and can only squander the profits.

What is this relationship of Aspen and Money?

Let's reframe the conversation.

Let's start with a good long look in the mirror.

A whole generation pulled Aspen out of poverty after WWII.  It is we who have welcomed the money, we chopped down trees for the money, we mowed ski runs for the money, we built hotels for the money, we paved streets for the money, we built runways for money, we courted money, we won money, we're in bed with money.

Want a divorce? I didn't think so… at least not without the property tax, the sales tax, the real estate transfer tax and custody of Prius.

Are we  spinning Gold into Good ?

Or...

are we delusional?

Money isn't character.

How you make it, what you do with it, how you treat others… that's character. 

(Confused? Read Trollope)

Now, let's try evaluating all those problems with a dispassionate eye. 

The formula is simple. It's difficult, but simple. 

You start with a realistic evaluation of the present.

Then think of the outcome you want.
(Please make it a positive outcome.)

Don't try and over think a solution.
Don't place blame.
Don't punish.

There can be simple solutions to complex problems.

Perception is everything.

End of rant.