Category Archives: Uncategorized

Gimme Back My Hour!

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IMG_0007 (2)aIt’s been a week now, and the government still has not returned the hour it stole from us on March 9.

They call it daylight saving time. Like all wonderful government institutions — from the IRS to the TSA — it goes by an acronym. It’s “DST.”

It’s a “savings” in the way that government spending is an “investment.” Each spring they steal an hour of our life. They return it — without interest — in the fall after everyone has finally gotten accustomed to its absence so that everyone can then try to get reaccustomed to its presence.

Since when does the government get to decide what time it is? Isn’t this just the government jerking our chains?

As always, they deny it. They say it’s for our own good — just like the mandates of Obamacare, the ban on big sodas and Aspen’s monstrosity of an art museum.

Here’s their do-good rationale: Continue reading →

Camino de Santiago – talk and slideshow

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The Camino de Santiago — a talk and slide show by Glenn K. Beaton on March 12, 2014 at the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies.

The Camino de Santiago, a half-thousand mile trek is an ancient pilgrimage dating back to 900 A.D. It starts at the border with France, climbs over the Pyrenees and then follows back roads, trails, paths and even the ruins of Roman highways across northern Spain.  Along the way are the ruins of medieval villages, monasteries, castles and the great cities of Pamplona, Burgos and Leon. All of which is interspersed with tapas, orchards, vineyards, fantastic local wine, rain, relentless foot-pounding and ridiculous stories.
Glenn Beaton, a contributor to The Wall Street Journal and a columnist with the Aspen Times has walked the Camino by two different routes in the last two years.  His most recent walk last fall was the subject of a five-part series in the Times. Join Glenn for an adventure through Spain.

Tea, donated by Two Leaves Tea Company and Paradise Bakery cookies will be offered during lecture.

Free Members $5 Non Members

3/12/2014

Hallam Lake  7:00PM – 8:00PM

Dino doo-doo

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Let’s check in with the local government spenders who hatch ideas like laying colossal, concrete eggs around the bus stops, burning fossil fuels to heat outdoor playgrounds abutting the highway and building bus stops with big quarter-million-dollar phalluses to compensate for the little quarter-inch ones in their pants.

Yes, I’m talking about the bus guys — the (drum roll) Roaring Fork Transportation Authority.

First, let’s be clear on terminology. As a brand, “bus” isn’t cool. No one wants to ride a bus called “bus.” And “RFTA”? Forget about it. So the bus guys paid a consultant to come up with the brand (another drum roll) “Veloci-RFTA.” It came with a chicken-shaped dinosaur logo.

That’s right: the bus guys who will save us from global warming/cooling/whatever, named themselves after an extinct chicken-shaped dinosaur that failed to survive a climate change 66 million years ago.

You probably think that visitors from Austria and Japan who want to get around town are looking for a vehicle that regularly stops at a sign with the letters “B,” “U” and “S” in approximately that order.

You think wrong. Continue reading →

Man Up and Marry Her

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Newman

“If you’re playing a poker game and you look around the table and can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.” — Paul Newman

“Basically married” is how a friend described her relationship with her live-in boyfriend on Valentine’s Day a few years ago. The combined age of this “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” was over 80. She’d always played her “basically married” card in a casual and well-practiced sort of way.

But it was a bluff. Like most women (no, not all), she wanted to have a family. She could half-convince her friends that she was “basically married,” but she could not convince even herself that she was basically a mother.

The game was getting old, and so was she. Biological clocks don’t bluff, and hers told her it was almost too late for a winning hand.

She’s had lots of company. Continue reading →

He’s No Worse than Alcohol

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untitledLast week a biochemist announced that marijuana “is no worse than alcohol.”

OK, he’s not exactly a biochemist, but he does have some expertise on the subject. As a teenager in an exclusive private school in Hawaii, he was a member of a “club” called the Choom Gang. They had a narrow charter: It was to get high smoking marijuana every day. “Barry,” as he was then called, excelled.

President Barack Obama, as he is now called, still publicly jokes and brags about his teenage marijuana habit. But the president of the United States of America promises that he does “not encourage” his two teenage daughters who live with him in the White House to do the same.

I’m glad.

The president himself still smokes, but now his smoke of choice is Marlboros. He says he “bums” them off White House staffers who don’t smoke but carry cigarettes for the president to “bum.” And he promises that he doesn’t “bum” them in front of his children because that (the smoking, not the “bumming”) would set a “bad example,” he said.

As for marijuana, he said the “main problem” is that too many poor people and too few rich people get arrested for it.

These pronouncements came in the same interview where he said that if he had an adult son, he “would not let” him play professional football because it’s too dangerous.

Squint through this haze, if you can, and see Continue reading →

Wringing Out the Old Year

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It’s time again to ring in the new year and wring out the old.

No, I’m not late, and I’ll tell you why. It started with the president promising me, “If you like your old year, you can keep it.”

(And then, oddly, he said, “Period.” That’s right: In reading his teleprompter, he read aloud the period. But not the comma.)

Later he changed his mind about keeping my old year, but his change of mind was for my own good. He explained that my old year was “substandard.” “Bare bones,” he said. He told me it was a “bad apple.” Not just for him, he said, but for me, too. So he mandated a new year for me.

The new one comes with free maternity coverage in case I want to become a mother and free contraception in case I don’t. It costs 40 percent more, but hey, good free stuff costs good money, right?

Back to the timeliness of my column. I generously gave money to the Obama re-election campaign, and coincidentally, he generously gave me an extension on my new year. Under the extension he gave me, my new year starts after the 2014 elections in November. So this column is not three weeks late but 11 months early, thank you very much.

Speaking of extensions in the old year, the Syrian dictator was reducing to bare bones thousands of the people to whom he dictates. Obama drew a (drum roll) “red line” warning him not to do so with chemical weapons. The dictator thinks of himself as a dictator, not a dictated, and so he proceeded to do precisely that. Obama gave him an extension (or perhaps erasure) of the red line.

In Russia — formerly known as the “Workers’ Paradise” and now known as a festering sore of corruption, alcohol and crime with 7,000 nuclear warheads for sale, use or rent Continue reading →

Days of Infamy for Obamacare

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President Franklin Roosevelt called the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor “a day that will live in infamy.” The ensuing World War II lasted 3 1/2 years.

That’s about the same as the period between Obamacare’s enactment in March 2010 and the launch of the website in October.

Here’s the monthly timeline of both World War II and Obamacare:

• World War II, month one: The Nazis already have conquered nearly all of Europe, and the Japanese have conquered most of East Asia. America is still mired in the Great Depression. At Pearl Harbor, the Japanese destroy much of America’s Pacific Fleet. The next day, Congress nearly unanimously declares war. Volunteers flood the military enlistment offices. The declaration of war is a half-page long.

• Obamacare, month one: Obama signs Obamacare even though polls show that most of the people oppose it. The bill runs to 2,000 pages. The speaker of the House chuckles, “We’ll have to pass the bill so we can find out what’s in it.” One thing not in it, President Obama assures us, is the cancellation of anyone’s insurance. He promises, “If you like your health insurance, you can keep it. Period.”

• World War II, month two: American troops arrive in the British Isles.

• Obamacare, month two: Obama completes his 37th round of golf since taking office.

• World War II, month three: Americans break the Japanese code, enabling them to decipher Japanese war communications.

• Obamacare, month three: The Obamacare tax on tanning salons goes into effect.

• World War II, month four: Americans send a message to Japan, with a daring, long-distance bombing raid on Tokyo.

• Obamacare, month four: Obamacare mandates that Continue reading →

Talkin’ about the Government

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I’m on the pavement talkin’ about the government.” — Bob Dylan, “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” 1965.

Half a century ago, we took to the pavement.

We saw the military fighting a badly managed war, the Pentagon lying about that war, universities engaging in racial discrimination, the White House spying on dissenters, a president committing misdeeds and lying to cover them up and the IRS targeting political opponents.

All of this government wrongdoing did produce great music. Bob Dylan put our protests to song and became the musical poet of the age. Insofar as government is concerned, he anticipated the next age, too.

Because government got no better.

Weirdly, however, we stopped protesting. In the war between the people and government, the people quietly surrendered.

Many even switched sides and became the establishment conformists that they once loathed. After protesting The Man for years, they became him.

Let’s listen to Dylan again.

“So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.” — “All Along the Watchtower,” 1968.

At least 24 times the president promised the American people that “if you like your health insurance, you can keep it. Period.” The nonpartisan fact-checker PolitiFact called this the “Lie of the Year.”

“Ain’t it hard when you discover that he really wasn’t where it’s at after he took from you everything he could steal?” — “Like a Rollin’ Stone,” 1965.

The Wall Street Journal reported that White House records show Obama knew, for years, that Continue reading →

More Fear and Loathing

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Hunter S. Thompson — gonzo author of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and keeper of dynamite in the basement and toxins in the refrigerator — was the last of the Aspen undomesticated types.

In my recent column, I lamented the substitute poseurs who are more interested in conventional socialism than unconventional socializing.

Indeed, as I noted, we’re now so lacking in fearsomeness and loathsomeness that the sane and sanitized readers of Travel + Leisure voted Aspen their “favorite town.” Ugh. Readers emailed me, called me and even stopped me on the street to add names to my growing list of extinct and endangered exotica. So here are a couple more:

Meet Claudine Longet. Born in Paris, this winsome woman danced in Las Vegas well before Thompson arrived. One day, she had the good fortune of her car breaking down — because her rescuer was one Andy Williams. They married a year later when she was 19.

By age 21, Continue reading →

Fear and Loathing in Aspen

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Hunter S. Thompson was a gritty character. He was a member of the National Rifle Association. He accidentally shot a person while attempting to scare a bear away. In his house near Woody Creek, he kept dynamite.

He never graduated from high school. He worked for Time magazine till it fired him for insubordination. He once was charged as an accessory to robbery.

His breakthrough novel was about the Hells Angels. For that, he lived with the Angels for a year till one night they beat him almost to death. He later wrote a series of deviant “Fear and Loathing” novels beginning with the classic “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”

He once said, “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”

Whatever you think of how he wrote (well) or lived (less well) or died (badly), say this for the guy: He was a true character.

I thought of Thompson when I saw that the buttoned-down readers of Travel + Leisure magazine recently voted Aspen their “favorite town.” What’s next? Will Aspen be Continue reading →