Bubbles, letter to the editor

This is a letter to the editor regarding the Telluride inspired ballot proposal to amend the home rule charter and take all building permit variances to a public vote instead of a vote by City Council.

There are plenty of opinions on this:
Neil B. Siegel
Andy Stone
Lee Mulcahy
Blanca and Cavanaugh O’Leary
Mick Ireland
Curtis Wackerle
Chad Abraham
Maurice Emmer

and many more…

I couldn't find a copy of the petition or the ballot proposal on line.

Here's some backstory.

and here's the letter:
****************

I wish the authors of the "Keep Aspen Aspen" and City Council had met Bubbles.

Bubbles was a student of human nature. Not that Bubbles had any reason to trust humans they'd been pretty awful to him before he made it to Anderson Stables. His previous owner had used a 2x4 as a training tool.

He was a stout little quarter horse with a sure step who'd take you down the steepest slope, weave through deadfall or rocket through the barrels at top speed like a horse half his age.

He was a sweetie but every once and awhile he would jump. There wouldn't be anything in on the trail, nothing to spook him, he'd just give a big ol' sideways hop and if you weren't paying attention- you'd be on the ground. Then he'd stop and look back and I swear he'd be laughing at you.

That was the point of course, to see if you were paying attention. Given his history Bubbles could have turned into a biter or a fighter but instead he became a teacher.  He'd test you just enough to let you know this was a dance for two, not just the one with a sloppy hand on the reins or swinging the 2x4. All he asked for was your attention and your attention had better include respect.

Mutual respect. That was Bubble's lesson.

The "Keep Aspen Aspen" charter amendment is a big ol' 2x4 to the head.  Before you pick up that 2x4 think about what this amendment achieves. The message to Council is that we're mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

Fine and good. Beyond that what are some of the possible outcomes? Developers could turn tail and suddenly comply with all existing code… and there'll be pork in the treetops come morning.

Council could weaken current code and make everything compliant taking the voters out of the equation entirely…soon to be an Oliver Stone conspiracy movie.

Citizens could suddenly become proactive and delve into the minutia of each variance request leading to the democratization of every issue ... and we all become Gandhi.

Citizens could rely on the best advertising soundbite for their vote….like "keep Aspen Aspen" which is a sterling example of a catchy soundbite.

We  could all just vote our emotions unencumbered by facts.

Yeah, those last two, those I believe.

The problem is this won't just be a one-off. Changing the charter hamstrings this Council and all future Councils. You don't use the 2x4 once you use it repeatedly in perpetuity. The last time we did that in Colorado it was the TABOR. Will we be de-Berting in a few years?

Yep Su Lum "This is no way to run a railroad". The train of City Hall and the train of Citizen outrage threaten to meet head on leaving a ton of twisted anger and smokey unintended consequences.

How do we achieve mutual respect?  One thing for sure it's not with a 2x4 to the head.

Voter Variances, letter to the editor

This is in response to the anti-variance petition article in the Aspen Daily News My major concern which I didn't put in the letter is opening the building variance permits to a ballot questions also invites big money into the process in a way we've never had in Aspen before. Can an election in Aspen be bought? This would be the test.

Oh joy, voter variances.

Getting a building permit in Aspen is a draconian process. 

Do we really think making each application a ballot question will be better?  You think you have information overload now, just wait.

What on earth makes you think the voting public will read each permit application? I soooo look forward to the building permit ads. Don't you want to see ad campaigns for parking spaces and increased roof to floor area? What if it's easier to "spin" the electorate than our elected representatives? Should we vote ourselves out? Nominations are open.

https://www.icivics.org

for those who need a refresher course on the definition of "Republic"

No one pays attention until things turn into a screaming match. 

Don't kid yourself the only reason ordinance 19 was rescinded was due to fear. Fear works. A whole bunch of people showed up after public comment was closed and yelled. Yep that's what we need more screaming matches at City Hall, more finger pointing. It's gonna be greeeeeeeeeat. Just like the good ol days, yippee. (No beatniks allowed)

In my opinion all 91 pages of ordinance 19 sucked.The original intent which was to help older properties renovate was a good one. 

Wheeler Opera House, did it need renovation?

this

or this?

The ordinance strayed from that original intent, greatly. The Council chose to listen to the majority of citizens who showed up for public comment. Badaboom- enact ordinance 19. So where does the fault lie? In my opinion it's two fold there was insufficient feedback to staff when they strayed off point and there was insufficient input during the public comment and work sessions.  The "rethink" of ordinance 19 suffers from the same malaise. Clicker sessions with questions crafted to silo the answers and using the failed ordinance as a template is not the way to win friends and influence people. 

Asking for public participation in these sessions only on weekdays during working hours is the height of class discrimination.

My vote goes to the next representative who is forthright enough to give clear direction to staff and brave enough to point out when the focus is getting blurry. My vote goes to the next representative who will go out and talk with people who don't write letters to the paper or start petitions. My vote goes to the next representative who has the guts to clean our bureaucratic house and start fresh.  My vote goes to the next representative who has the courage to listen.

Pas "je suis" mais "nous sommes".

Je suis… Charlie?

It was never a magazine I read. The humor was too arch for me. Ridiculing others is easy. I prefer irony. Laughing at ourselves. We point inward and can call ourselves idiots… and that allows the hairline crack of change to open. I like that, laughing at our own foibles. It's healthy.

Let's be honest, the Muslim population in France is predominantly from former North African colonies which means they are the same social underclass as African Americans in the USA.  The difference being that by French law you are guilty until proven innocent.

Mocking the powerless is easy. It's also wrong. Let's get that straight from the start… kicking people when they are down is wrong.

Mocking the powerful.. now that's different… 

à la Ralph Steadman

that's an obligation. 

as Voltaire would tell you, 

that is the heart of free speech.

That would be mocking, not killing….ridicule not destruction. 

Unlike the Taliban 

Afghanistan and Buddha

As I've said in a previous post "The greatest responsibility always rests with the most powerful." 

In my mind the Paris shootings at Charlie Hebdo and the recent protests against US police killings are opposite sides of the same coin. 

The protestors carry signs which say "Black lives matter" 

and "Police lives matter".  

These could be followed by "Nigerian lives matter", 

"Journalist lives matter", 

"Muslim lives matter", "Christian lives matter" "Afghani lives matter" "Iraqi lives matter" "Syrian lives matter" Atheist lives matter….. polar bear lives matter…. penguin lives matter…. live trees matter…. 

Let's keep it simple. 

Jason deCaires Taylor

Until we stop this endless division and divisiveness we will continue to be brutes bent on destroying ourselves and everything around us. It is not "je suis"; it is not "I am". It is "nous sommes";  it is "we are".  

Anthropocene

Imagine…..

More than brick and mortar, letter to the editor

This is in response to Executive Director Gram Slaton's farewell interview in the Aspen Times Michael Goldberg's response.

 Do we really need another theatre stage in Aspen?

The Performing Arts budget of Aspen is enviable. Why are we only a stop over for small tours which fit in one truck?

Why aren't we the stopover for major tours between Denver and Salt Lake? Why aren't we the birthplace of new productions? The Ballet is a notable exception

Aspen Santa Fe Ballet at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC

but for the most part, like our Art Museum, we do not have a "permanent collection" of home produced Film, Theater or Opera, certainly nothing which is strong enough to travel. Our creative sons and daughters go elsewhere to perfect their craft.

With the Writers Conference, the Aspen Institute, the Music School,

Yelena Dyachek in the 2014 Aspen Music Festival 

production of Eugene Onegin Opera News Review

Aspen Film, Jazz Aspen and other numerous Arts institutions plus that big pot of money we should have the proud label of "made in Aspen" as part of our "brand".

When I asked Nancy Quinn of the Arena Stage why Aspen wasn't on the list for major productions her reply was "they're hobbyists". When Mayor Herman Edel asked me what we needed during the Wheeler Opera House renovation I said "a shop space". I had the same answer for the District Theatre and urged adding 2 more feet of fly loft so that we could host touring Broadway shows. I was drafting the tour of Phantom at the time- another 2 feet and we could have had that tour. Of course none of that happened.

A vibrant performing arts community takes building relationships as much as much as building with brick and mortar. We can be leaders in the Performing Arts if we choose to support innovation and nurture our local talent. We can be leaders in the Performing Arts if we tap into the wealth of knowledge of our Guest Artists.

We need to prove we're serious and not hobbyists. We need to support the people who make the production as well as those who sit in the seats.

Bring the backstage kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

hydraulic lifts on stage

Give our Performers a place to rehearse. 

Give our Scenic Artists a place to paint other than the cafetorium, 

preferably one with a source of water and a sink.

Have a place to learn Stagecraft from Projections to CAD,

from saber saws to CNC.

Have a costume shop instead of renting everything. Make some hats. Build some shoes.

Rig a Rope

Write a script and then watch it turn into flesh and blood. 

We are on the edge of a Makers Revolution let's ride that wave.

So, yes, another Performing Arts venue would be nice, but please don't keep repeating the same mistake over and over again. Plan for more than comfortable seats and a great place to unload the truck. Plan for a space where creative and curious minds can gather and play together and turn their ideas from dreams into something you can touch. We could be a powerhouse of innovative arts entrepreneurship if we tried.

… and some more information on the RETT as of January 7,2015

I can't breathe

The greatest responsibility always rests with the most powerful.

My Facebook feed is still stuffed with pro and anti Ferguson posts.

I have friends who see this as entitlement from the African American Community and emblematic of the moral decay of society when someone who is breaking the law is a victim and someone enforcing the law is a criminal.

I have friends who see this as emblematic of a deep and abiding class divide between black and white in America. More to the point they see this as the front line of the race wars where being black and male puts a target between your eyes for every cop in the US.

Me? I remember my gig on Bed Stuy Avenue in the 80's. I was one of the Scenics who worked on Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing".

 

https://images.complex.com/complex/image/upload/c_limit,w_680/f_auto,fl_lossy,pg_1,q_auto/b3zvr1qzbfw13p8nsmhu.jpg

 Yep, that would be a sign I painted for the film...  because I can do "homemade lettering" really well.

from  NYC film locations

Here's the mural that Larry Casey painted.

The Pizza place and the mural which Joyce Kubalak painted.

(I got to "touch up" the pizza parlor after it burned- should have brought waders.)

There were two incidents which I will always remember.

The Scenics were the only all white crew. We were mostly white females. The reason for this was that there were no Scenic Artists of color in USA 829 available. I think we may have had one African American with a Scenic Artist card at that time. You got into the Union by passing a painting test. The test was judged "blind" so no one knew the candidates. That's the only reason women got in- we could paint. There was no"outreach" to minorities in the 80's and on Bedford-Stuyvesant Avenue that summer it became glaringly obvious.

Our on set security was provided by the Nation of Islam. They picked us up in a van every morning drove us to the block and then drove us back at the end of work every day. They were the only people in suits on the set. They were always impeccably dressed with crisp white shirts, narrow black ties and grey suits with knife edge pants creases.

Incident #1

Two of us were walking back to our "paint shop" in a brownstone basement when a gray van pulled up beside us. There was a white man driving and we could see that the back was caged in. The driver leaned over and said "You're doing  some construction here? You need security? Who's the boss? I need to talk to your boss." We heard whining from the caged section of the van. We were puzzled, but the Brothers knew what this was about. Neither one of us had time to answer before one of the Brothers started walking down the sidewalk towards us. The driver spotted the Brother and his look changed from obsequiousness to dread. He slammed his foot on the gas and the van tires screeched as he pulled away. The last we saw of him was the back doors of the caged van with several german shepherds looking out the windows.

These were "white dogs"

Dogs who had been trained to attack anyone of color.

Incident #2

If you saw the movie you remember the Pizza Parlor and the Bodega. We built those. They looked like real shops but they were just plywood fronts with a lot of paint and set dressing. I was working on the bodega set one day, I think I was working on the signage which advertised fruits and vegetables. 

for the video clip...

One of the residents of the block stopped in his tracks and asked "Are you really putting up a store here?" I replied that no, this was a movie set and we would be filming and then it would be demolished and it would be just like it was before.

His face fell. I could see tears welling up in the corners of his eyes. "…but … but… if it's so easy why don't you do it everywhere?" 

Why don't we? It's not a matter of wealth, it's a matter of will. We're afraid of each other, we don't trust each other, our lizard brains take over. "Can't we all just get along?"

The bottom line is that whenever you have separated people into powerful and powerless there will be violence. 

The Stanford Prison Experiment proves that.

Jane Elliot's blue eyes brown eyes experiment proves that.

Jane Elliot in 2015 responds

 or we could make it even simpler….

No, I don't support criminal activity but I do understand frustration and hopelessness. I don't support enforcing laws only on the powerless and not on the powerful.  We can do better. We can let each other breathe.

and a 2020 addendum:

https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/what-white-people-can-do-for-racial-justice-f2d18b0e0234