Aspen Ideas Festival 2018

It's a little bit of a late post but yes, the logo leaves did make it back to the Aspen Ideas Festival.

So it's a bit like "Where's Waldo?" except it's with the logo leaf sculptures- we keep moving them around the Aspen Institute campus every year for the Ideas Festival.

Yes, there are two in Anderson Park on either side of the bridge catching a nice little reflection off of the pond.

 

Aspen Daily News 

Then, there are three more in the reflecting pool in front of the Doerr Hosier building on either side of the Andrew Goldsworthy stone sculpture.

 Here's Kathy Small and Amy Mountjoy in their Wellies and pool shoes helping out with the install at the Doerr-Hosier 

Think of it as the mangrove version of stained glass.

The view from inside the Doerr-Hosier

Reflections are good.

Very good.

Very, very good

 

and a little bit of extra love from Yourshot for this pic  

from NatGeo Editor Kristen McNicholas

and a link to Kristen's website ....

and those reflections were featured on this year's Aspen Ideas Festival App...

Previous posts on the stained glass logo leaves...

They're baaaaaack, moo and moo again

 

If you've been following for the past couple of years you'll know that I've been experimenting with grazing. The principle from the Savory Institute is simple: brief periods of intense grazing improve soil health. Since my place is a dry land  ranch I'm after any way I can to help sequester carbon in the soil and keep rain water from evaporating when it does fall.

When you compare grass fed to feedlot there isn't any question. Carbon sequestration happens with grass fed. 

So the question is- what about mob grazing compared to no grazing? Can desertification be reversed?

 

I reset the rain gauge in June and this is the total for the year including snowmelt. Three inches came in April.  It's not the lowest I've recorded but it's 5" below average.

After that 3 inches in April this is what we had:

 

Pretty impressive since the 2017 grass was dormant until this Spring.

...but after April- came May- this month has had .02" of rain- total- yes- there is a decimal point in front of the zero- that's two hundredths of an inch of rain for the month. The growth of April is already turning yellow... and the fires have already started burning....

Cows- better grass and fire mitigation all in one go..... we hope.....

Previous years of moo.

Brick, Mortar, and Blood

One Billion British Pounds Sterling.

That's what the new BBC Broadcasting building cost in 2011.

...and 2 years later?

.... over 500 jobs gone.

.... and 6 years later?

....  1000 more layoffs.

.... but..... we have a pretty new building. Why does Shelley spring to mind , I wonder?

I took a tour yesterday. A building addition is being planned and the cost will be $1,000,000.  When I asked if there would also be new security- of the human analog variety- to check ID and verify each person and parcel- the answer was "No." Adding another employee cost too much.

$1,000,000 for brick and mortar- no problem.
$50,000 for one job- nope.

Now I don't know how many of you have been in buildings without checkpoints- where only digital surveillance is used. I often wonder if anyone is watching the video feed.  I wonder how easy it is to cut the feed- or steal the feed. I wonder who is watching. I wonder where the blind spots are. I've seen demonstrations of facial recognition (think talking to Siri with a head cold) and demonstrations of mind-reading (scary as all hell). I think of all that and I'm swinging more and more to the view that , yep, AI will replace humans. We already value AI and tech more than "us".

We value what we build more than the people who build.

That isn't anything new. The Great Wall, the Pyramids, Borobudur, Angkor Watt...  there is a legacy which reaches beyond the builders in these... and yet... and yet... when I see handprints of Anasazi mud brick ... when I see the paint pots left on the floors of Pompeii ... when I see the snapline in an Egyptian Architect's tomb... when I can run my hand over ancient hewn wood and sense the strokes of the adze... those lives may have been nasty brutish and short but there is something of the builders left behind ... some breath... some sweat... some self.... It's why there is a weaver's path in a Navajo rug to let the life of the weaver escape on the path of the thread.

Isn't that really the source of our fascination? We don't fear the Great Ozymandias but we sense the hands which carved the stone and the minds which shaped the metal.

 

So why do we value the work

more than the worker?

The obvious answer is that the work doesn't talk back except with the voices in our own wee little minds.... which brings me back to AI. What happens when the building does talk back and we disagree?

Groasis Update 2018

Here's the Spring 2018 Groasis update:

Chokecherry planted in 2013-2014. As you can see there is a lot of difference between plants. Some are still small at about 3 inches still inside the waterboxx and others are growing past the wire cage.

 

I had to take two pictures of the "star" which is over 2' Choke Cherries are supposed to be a "fast grower" well... around here survival is considered "fast growth"

 

 

Yes that is a Black Widow Spider egg sac you see... 

the spiders really like living inside the opening for the plants. 

 

This is a little "shooter" growing out from the bottom of  waterboxx.

 

Here's the link to earlier posts:

http://ziskac.blogspot.com/search?q=groasis

It ain't the skiing.... letter to the editor

"In Aspen you either have 3 jobs or 3 homes."

It’s not a skiing economy. It’s not an outdoor sports economy or an arts economy or a conference economy. It’s not about the skis, the bikes, the kayaks, the concerts or the think tanks.

Follow the money and you will find the answer.

It’s a real estate economy. (Follow "What's the Big Deal?")

Aspen real estate is an investment which is AAA with a phenomenal rate of return when flipped. The dividends are parties and networking.

Ask yourself what sustains the real estate economy ? Then ask yourself if that’s what you want.

Real Estate prices stay high as long as demand is higher than supply. There are other factors but that’s the economic foundation. All of our restrictions, our labyrinthian  permitting, our challenging terrain, our civic divisiveness, our remoteness,  - those all increase costs, increase the project timeline, and thus limit supply.


The same factors increase the divide between classes, the 3 jobs class vs the 3 homes class

The same factors decrease the amount of land for wilderness and wildlife- after all even an uninhabited monster home is an invasion displacing species of native plants and animals encouraging scavengers who are used to living off our trash and on our well watered lawns.

When did the real estate economy take off? In my opinion the rocket launch was  in the 70’s. Condos encouraging non-residential ownership combined with limited growth ordinances, and  height restrictions all combined to squeeze the supply.

Square footage prices alone are not what has made Aspen what it is today. Add to this Affordable Housing which helped keep wages artificially low (The entry level wages I received in the 70’s would translate into $55 per hour today.) and the J1 visa (multilingual *and* cheaper be still my beating heart).

Viola!  Ever increasing real estate prices and stagnant low wages. … and you wonder why the 1% of the 1% wants a slice of Aspen? It ain’t skiing.



Update: Follow the money.... 2018


"In the first quarter of 2018, the median sales price for a luxury home—defined as the top 10% of the market—in Aspen reached $18.34 million, an impressive 162.1% increase from the same time last year when the median was logged at a comparatively measly $7 million. 

“We’ve been seeing these big numbers because the backlog—what I call the ‘aspirational priced inventory’—is coming off the market, either expiring, or sellers are realizing they need to meet the buyers on price,” Mr. Miller said."'

https://www.mansionglobal.com