Journal

There’s a time and a place for everything; it’s called college. I loved college. Well, what I remember of it anyway… Even though I never graduated, I owe quite a bit of my ken to those formative years. Like many college students, I had to work to pay my bills while I was in school, and when I realized the point of going to classes was to get a job, which I already had, I quit going to class but kept going to my job. I still hung out with my friends, lived with roommates, and enjoyed the ‘college experience.’ But in hindsight, I wish I’d studied a trade like mechanics or plumbing— some kind of skill that will always be in demand.

Of course I am an advocate for education, and I think it should be available to any/everyone who wants to learn, but taking on massive debt to pay for a degree in a field that’ll probably be overrun by A.I. seems rather hopeless. (Speaking of hopeless, you’d think the hippie generation would forgive student loans before corporate larceny.) Remember the good ole days: smoking grass in the sun, listening to unknown music while wearing cut-offs, protesting the actions of our government— oh snap! College students are protesting the war-is-big-business model right now. And guess what? They’re right. Just like the elders were right about Vietnam decades ago. Too bad we don’t learn from our own history.

I studied some history in college, and I really liked philosophy. To this day I think back on Philosophy 101 and ponder the purpose of us. I have always loved people-watching, witnessing all the different ways in which we move through this world… Like the way we walk. Everyone has a little bit of a different gait because we all had to learn to walk on our own. Nobody could do it for us, and our parents couldn’t buy our way in like they can, and do, for college. Everyone has to find their balance and that’s why we all have our own signature stride.

Makes me think, what if learning about the rest of life is similar to learning the basics? What if we all had the chance to experiment and figure it out for ourselves. For instance, when my husband and I do the jumble, I see the letters scramble and move around to find the correct answer, whereas he hears the sounds they make and solves it auditorily. Imagine what this world would be like if each kid was able to learn in their own individual way, instead of the conventional one-size-fits-all schooling system.

My cousin, Ingrid Hillhouse Moore strongly believed in the benefits of learning through play, especially at a younger age, when we are so impressionable and eager to find new paths. Youth is the time to experiment, to test all the theories and standards that society has adopted. Elders should be available to answer any questions that come up, but now it’s time to sit on the porch, drink hard lemonade and reminisce about all the wonderfully unique mistakes we made in our youth.

Individuality is a beautiful thing. I think when we’re young, more important than attending lectures or classes, is the lesson of living on our own, learning how to make our way in this world and leaving it a little better off for all. Our society has made it all about money, but there’s so much more to learn about life than collecting a big paycheck.

If I could go back to tell my coed-self one thing, it would be this: everything they are going to teach you is a fuckin theory (f-bombs really emphasized the point to my younger self.) In fact, most of what we know about this world is simply theory with a majority consensus. By the way, some theories hold more water than others, i.e., all the species riding on one boat through a major flood without eating each other is not as likely as some would like to believe. In conclusion, I would tell myself, science is a good thing to study, but science is malleable. Always question authority and remember, we’re all just animals with higher education.

Mike Pence won’t endorse Trump for president— it’s like Darth Vader standing up to the Emperor! Is it because Trump tried to have him hanged on the steps of the Capitol? Fair enough. I’ve held a grudge over much less… So, I guess the question is, will the GOP split in half like the Titanic or simply sink to the bottom in one piece? Either way, the water’s coming in and the ship is going down.

Today’s Republican party reminds me of a sick, dying animal that snaps at anything and everything to get near it. Banning books, reviving the Comstock act of 1873, demonizing Taylor Swift: these are the desperate acts of the darkside, but the force for good is strong with younger generations— second only to Obi-Wan Kenobi because he has the patience of water moving through rock.

“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.” ― Margaret Atwood

I like that. Be like water. Don’t get discouraged. Be patient and kind and whenever a narcissistic orange buoy gets in the way, just maneuver around it until we get our way, the way of independent freedom and choice. (Right here in Garfield County, we need to flood the commissioner meetings regarding their newly self-appointed role of selecting library trustees who just might ban books [which only highlights their obsoletion as most young, impressionable minds are online these days.] https://www.protectgarcolibraries.org/)

What kind of dinosaurs still think a demure white woman sitting in her kitchen is the way to reach Americans? The fringe Republicans are laundering the news faster than the money these days. Trump selling bibles is obviously a way for the church to contribute to his political campaign, which is illegal in this country because the old white guys who founded the United States were adamant about separation of church and state. Probably because they were fresh off the boat from a kingdom, but apparently the GOP was held back a grade or two and needs to relearn the lesson. Illustrated by the fact that they just made it more difficult for breeders to breed by restricting women’s healthcare in Alabama.

Makes me wonder if so many of us are conditioned and desensitized that, as a nation, we’ll just stand by like mouth-breathers and watch a dictator in the making. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before— again and again. The rinse cycle of fascism may keep the history book publishers in business, but I have a better idea. Let’s put A.I. in charge of Washington DC. Seriously, what do these people do that an algorithm couldn’t handle, and for a lot less of our taxpayer money. I know what you’re thinking, “what about the inherent bias that we see with A.I.?” Well, it couldn’t be any worse than what we’ve got now.

All the futuristic stories have robots taking over at the manual labor level, but I would rather start at the top— you know, where the big bucks are. Imagine a revolution where the machines take over Congress and we all get to vote through an app on our phones. Then at least we would actually know how the majority feels about the issue, instead of always getting stuck listening to the squeaky wheels. The incessant whining and whinging of these neo-nationalist talking heads is so fucking loud I can’t hear myself think, much less hear the cries of Native women who vanish in atrocious numbers every year. What kind of civilized society ignores the incessant rape and murder of their most vulnerable? A vulgar capitalistic one with an unhealthy appetite for watching others suffer, I’d say. Now is the time to redesign our representatives to protect and serve us, the people. Protect us from the corporate-owned clowns who are constantly trying to undermine our still-a-work-in-progress democracy.

Keep swimming, Jedi Knights.

Here is one version of how the story goes…

Kate Lindvig was a mail-order bride from Denmark who got off the train in Nebraska to meet her new husband, took one look around, and got right back on the train— headed west. She made her way to Aspen, where she ran a boarding house. When one of her tenants couldn’t pay his bill, he gave her title to some land in Old Snowmass.

Kate moved out to the property and lived there year-round, unmarried, for most of her life. Over time, she homesteaded over 600 acres. She rented little one-room cabins to hunters and trappers, while raising cattle and farming the few vegetables that would grow at such elevation. She had electricity powered by the falls (hence the name: Snowmass Falls Ranch) and once in a while she drove her cattle to town the old-fashioned way, to make ends meet.

In the 1940s my grandparents, Bob & Ditty Perry, wanted to buy Snowmass Falls Ranch for a cow camp to graze their cattle in the summers. They had the Mt. Sopris Hereford ranch in Carbondale, which Ditty’s father, DRC Brown, purchased from Mr. Grubb. The ranch was now theirs, with a piece on the hill carved out for Ditty’s oldest brother, DRC Jr., whom we called Darce. (Ever the ‘small world’, my maternal grandfather, Tom Moore, was an architect and he designed the house in Carbondale for Darce and his second wife, Ruthie.)

So, Bob and Darce went to the land sale with the verbal agreement that Darce would spend Ditty’s money for half of the total price and then Bob and Ditty would be the sole owners of Snowmass Falls Ranch. Ditty’s father died when they were young, and her brother controlled her money until she was thirty-five. (A different era! I would like to point out that 2024 marks fifty years since a woman could get a credit card in her own name. And in the name of equality, mine are all maxed out.)

Anyway, Bob and Darce went to the sale together, but they were late, and a couple of brothers had already bought the land for $5k. So, they tracked the brothers down and offered the full amount, plus a couple of good horses. The brothers agreed to the deal and that was that, or so Bob thought. In the 1950s the guy charged with selling Kate’s place, as it was called, had the mining rights and a woman of his acquaintance ended up owning them. She brought this to Bob’s attention, probably hoping he would give her 5k and a couple of good horses, but as some of you may already know, there’s a bit of a stubborn streak in the Perry bloodline. Bob and Ditty took it all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court, where they lost the case. However, the woman could not afford to pay her lawyer, so she gave him the mining rights as payment, and then Bob went and bought them from the lawyer.

At one point, Darce (loveable rascal that he was!) claimed he owned half the ranch. After all, he had accompanied Bob to the sale and, as it turned out, maybe he had not used Ditty’s money. Perhaps he used his own, or even his wife’s money that day. So, my grandfather paid his brother-in-law half again the sale price of the land and finally owned the cow camp outright.

Bob and Ditty had seven children and the next eight decades were chock full of cattle drives, picnics, campouts, hunting trips, packing trips, family reunions, weddings, christenings, memorials— although we never did have a true Viking service by sending a loved one’s body (on fire!) over the falls. And if I outlive him, I’ll have to come up with a new plan for my husband’s funeral as his wishes might be frowned upon by Pitkin County Open Space.

For the last eighty years our family has called this land many things: Kate’s, cow camp, Snowmass… My whole life it has just been there, at the end of the road; a silent yet stunning sanctuary. A place to hideout and daydream, a place to explore. A place with a remarkable story.

When I was in college, my sister and I went skydiving with one of my roommates. We all drove out to a field near Longmont where a Vietnam veteran gave us a quick four-hour session on the dos and don’ts of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. We avoided going tandem on our very first dive because it was a static line that opened after a few seconds of freefall. Still, we needed to know what to do in case the chute didn’t open automatically, and while I can’t remember the guy’s name, to this day I remember one piece of instruction he gave us. I think it has stuck with me all these years because it is damn good advice in general. “When you’re up there, hanging out enjoying the view,” he said. “If you happen to see a dumpster way down on the ground, whatever you do, do not stare at it, thinking, ‘Gee, I really don’t want to land in that dumpster.”

If you have lived in Carbondale for a spell, this perfectly describes what is going on in our town these days. (The mere fact that I use the word ‘spell’ ought to clear up any confusion as to whom I’m talking about; the middle-aged locals, the folks who have lived here for their middle-of-the-loaf years.) We keep driving by all the new construction, shaking our heads, muttering to ourselves, “when the hell did that happen… I sure hope they stop building us out with this bland suburban sprawl.” Then, next thing we know, there’s an enormous cinderblock wall at the entrance of town. What’s the plan here? Keep Carbondale Ugly?

This was a theory held by beloved Satanker, Brad Hendricks. Brad believed we could keep our town the way it was a little longer by leaving junk cars in the yard, by letting trees and grasses grow wildly, by hanging our laundry out for all to see… Basically, by making our town unsightly, we would keep the fancy-pants from finding out how great it was to live here. Well, Kevin, you can take your underpants off the line now because they’ve figured it out.

I’ve decided Kevin is the male counterpart to Karen (no offense to all the easy-going Kevins out there, who do not shove their-way-or-the-highway down our throats.) Inspired by the Kevins, Brad, and all this new construction, I’d like to announce my candidacy for Town Trustee. Just kidding! Whoo-boy, gotcha! Luckily for us all, I live outside the town limits and therefore cannot run for one of THREE OPEN SEATS this April.

If I did live in town, I would probably have gone around the bend by now. I’d be that middle-aged woman in the same old grey sweater who forgot to wash her hair, ordering an oat-milk cortado to get a crackin start on her day at 11:00am— Oh snap. I am that woman, and while I was busy making other plans, Carbondale has turned out to be my hometown.

Through the years I’ve worked here, played here; loved and lived in this little town at the base of a mountain. I understand that change is the only constant, but there’s something to be said for a thoughtful, listening approach to determining the future of our town. We can encourage smart, sustainable growth over hungry hungry hippo building. We can buzz over the vibrancy as long as we don’t attack our heart: the people and places that keep it Carbondale.

I want to smile as I sail down Main Street, remembering the good ole days while nodding to new ones in the making. I want to watch the Forest Service incorporate healthy, mature trees into their plans for improving the place they live and work. I want to see less dumpster rubble making room for new box-style construction and more reclaimed floorplans with an enhanced view of Mt Sopris, putting the mountain in our little mountain town. Since I can’t run for town council, I guess I’ll just keep writing and posting— or wait! Does P&Z require one to live inside the town limits? Lookout boys, one more Karen comin up! I really hope their meetings don’t start too early…

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” – Nietzsche

These days I start my day with a cup of coffee, a little good intention, and inevitably— uncontrolled sobbing. It’s the humans that get me every time. I scroll through my Instagram feed of witty ontological memes and cute animal pics, feeling pretty good about the day ahead, until I come across the IRC’s death toll of children in the middle east.

I know I’m lucky to be a DINK (Double Income, No Kids) in this valley of extreme wealth and prosperity while the majority of people on the planet are just working to secure food, water, and shelter for themselves and their offspring. When families are struggling because of a natural disaster I can make an effort to manage my feelings of overwhelming sympathy. I can accept that nature is brutal and send a donation to try to help— a drop in the bucket of world-wide suffering, but a drop, nonetheless. However, when the disaster is caused by other humans, I am paralyzed. I do not have the bandwidth to cope with the hopelessness of endless war for profit.

If we can’t see that bombing the families who live in Gaza is the abyss, then I don’t even know.

In this life where habits are hard to break, generational patterns are a bitch. What I call the Warlord Syndrome exists in many aspects of life: business, parenting, and of course, actual war. When we realize that we have become exactly what we started out to change or defeat, then we know what it is to be our own worst enemy. In business we see it every time an ingenious start-up is swallowed by a bigger fish in the sea of industry and all the shareholders rejoice, “Yay Capitalism!” Whether or not we have our own biological children, we have all had that moment when our parent’s voice came right out of our mouth, “Because I said so.” And right now, at the apogee of our cultured civilization, we are sanctioning the murder of children in the name of “defense.”

I am not advocating for leniency when it comes to the terrorists who kidnapped innocent Israelis in the first place. The atrocious actions that were the catalyst for this conflict seem impossibly surreal in this day and age. But I can, and do, detest the inhumane brutality of Hamas’ actions and question the Israeli government’s response simultaneously. My first question, where is the Mossad? Why must we obliterate so many more innocent lives when we have the ability to surgically extract the source of angst? And where is all that US budget money going, if not toward the training of such an elite force?

I have long suspected that our wars have more to do with profit than people. Believe it or not, there are salesmen on this planet who would rather sell the weapons that kill innocent children than take a tax break for feeding or housing them. Usually because of their privileged upbringing, these guys have no concept of mercy, and their self-serving actions perpetuate another generation of hate and violence by inspiring future terrorists. Speaking of generational trauma, if we could break the cycle of valuing money over peace, well, hmm, then I’m not sure what this world would look like. Without greed and avarice, how would we measure our immense success? Without a perceived enemy to rally the troops, how would we justify spending trillions of dollars on military gadgets, instead of food, housing, education…

We have such a long, tired history of conflict and war, but surely we can find a reason to get out of bed in the morning other than a foreign adversary: someone to fear, someone to hate. We can choose peace over profit. Oh, cheer up, war mongers! Even with world peace, we would still have the brutal consequences of El Nino to contend with, and judging by our current actions on climate change, Mother Nature will be ramping up her attacks on a global scale… plenty of bad news to absorb with my morning coffee.

On my mom’s fourth deathday (like a birthday without the gifts), I went by the Third Street Center to drop off winter coats I had collected the night before at Ladies Wine Night. As I walked into Third Street with a big pile of Glamour Do’s, I wasn’t sure what I would find. All I knew was that a large number of people from Venezuela had been living in our town without the necessities and someone had organized a coat drive. What I found was Carbondale at its finest. People pulling winter clothes out of a huge heap of bags to sort and display by size throughout the room. No one was really in charge, and yet everyone was busy setting up the epic display of free winter gear. It was enough to make anyone cry, even if it wasn’t their mom’s deathday.

My sister likes to say we were brought up as Buddhist sympathizers. Mom went to Nepal in the early days of the Peace Corps and while those years definitely had an impact on the rest of her life, I feel like her ability to share— not only her things, but also her time, was innate. And she hummed. All the time. It was almost like she had an endless tune playing in her head that came out as a hum even when she wasn’t consciously aware she was doing it. It was just part of who she was, like the wool sweaters that somehow weren’t scratchy or the tea cupboard that could not be contained. Mom was the epitome of the adage, ‘When we have more than we need, it’s time to build a longer table.’ And that’s exactly what happened in Carbondale that Saturday, on the anniversary of her death, as they brought out more and more tables to accommodate all the donations.

It feels really good to give away what we don’t need, both emotionally and in our closets. Especially right now, our country’s chock full and I for one, would like to see a shift in worldly goods and sentiment, with the US taking less and giving more. I also think we should embrace the idea of automated jobs, starting at the top. I mean, what do these CEOs do all day that a computer couldn’t master with a little get-up-to-speed session? I’m sure we can find a millennial to write an algorithm that simulates the elite corporate culture and I know the shareholders would like the sound of golden parachute-sized savings.

As sentimental as we may be for the good ole days, if we’re being totally honest, they weren’t all that good (or fashionable!) for some of us— actually, for most of us. This is where I give credit to GenX for shaking up the system by normalizing our differences and pointing out the banality of Leave-It-To-Beaver-land. In the last few decades, the world’s concept of what we should all look like, or be, has shifted drastically (and there are plenty of podcasts dedicated to the discovery that even the Ward Cleavers [Caucasian hetero cismen] weren’t that happy with their role.)

A major influence on GenX was the music: Prince, Joan Jett, David Bowie; all the artists who refused to conform to the record label’s monotone, instead choosing to follow the sound of their own beat. The vibration of how we all live here, together, on this spinning ball of capitalism and denim is fundamental to our vitality. From the beginning, tribes and clans would get together at night to dance around the fire, and aside from a shared sense of community, there was a vibration sent into the actual planet that cleared the cells of all living things.* There were even nightclubs in the 80s that shook the Earth, but today, everyone at home, plugged in to their individual device, does not give back anything to the planet. It isn’t healthy, our solitary dance of creature comforts and consumerism, not to mention how full our closets have become…

So, the good news is that winter’s coming (bet you never thought you’d hear me say that!) Plenty of time to clear out all that messy clutter— on both our selves and our closet shelves. My advice: get yourself into a sound bath or get out and dance in the moonlight, because your good vibes are worth sharing.

*The discovery of the cellular symphony was made in 2001 from a biophysicist, Jim Gimzeweski… He found that certain cells emit a beautiful eerie hum. …Gimzeweski also noted that cancerous cells emit a horribly out of tune sound, discordant and aggressive. This tells us that cells are in fact highly sensitive to sound healing and vibrational frequency can tune into any out of tune cell sound and alter or change its frequency into a sense of calm and peace through the science of entrainment and periodicity.

I’ve got a question for ya, how old is the term ‘bucket list’? Okay two questions, did a GenXer invent it? The internet is all in a tizzy trying to determine if the guy who wrote the movie The Bucket List (starring Morgan Freeman) invented the term, but I could swear I heard it long before 2007. They claim this could be the Mandela Effect; when a large number of people misremember the details of an event, or even the event itself. Just like those poor souls who still don’t think they witnessed seditious treason.

Anyway, hats off to whoever coined the term ‘bucket list’ because I have referred to it often as I knocked those big dreams off one by one! My bucket list has certainly evolved over the years. From setting foot on every continent to watching every Morgan Freeman film, I’m honing in on what makes a life well lived… and all the technology of today only makes it easier to accomplish, e.g., watching High Crimes and Million Dollar Baby on the long plane ride to Pago Pago. What would’ve been science fiction fifty years ago is now included in coach.

According to several experts in the artificial intelligence field, we might only have about seven good years left before A.I. takes the reins and rarely lets humans out on our own recognizance.* I don’t want to alarm anyone, but the time to fire up that welding torch, or go hiking in Yosemite, or write a memoir called Sarcasm with Strangers is now.

In the futuristic book Klara and the Sun, parents can purchase an ‘artificial friend’ for their kid. Of course, in the story there are older models sold at a bargain price for the parents who can’t afford the latest and greatest. As long as there are humans (or apes) on the planet, there will be ways to show off one’s status. I wonder if even the robots will develop a way to differentiate themselves. Like, the shiniest one will be coveted by all those with tarnished limbs…

There was an experiment conducted recently with a robotic cleaner. (I of course, instantly pictured Rosie from The Jetsons.) The robot was tasked with cleaning the kitchen and they measured its achievement by checking the level of cleaning fluid used by the robot each day. Then one day they caught the robot dumping the cleaner down the drain.

If I’m being honest, I am a little worried about what the world will look like as artificial intelligence takes on human traits and inevitably, takes over. Not so much in an evil-machines-hijack-all-the-diners way like they sold us in 80s movies, but in more of an endless ennui. I mean, what will A.I. do when it realizes there is no point to it all?

There was an art installation in the Guggenheim Museum called Can’t Help Myself.** Sun Yuan and Peng Yu designed a robotic arm which leaked hydraulic fluid the same color as human blood. The arm had a large shovel at the end and so it would constantly scrape the leaking fluid back towards its center, even as it continued to spill out. In the beginning the robot had extra time on its hands because the fluid wasn’t leaking much, so once in a while the shovel-arm would stop scraping fluid and do a little dance for the crowd— sort of a one-armed sprinkler dance move that brought joy. But the fluid leaked out more each day and eventually the robot only had time to try to keep up. Then, in 2019, the last of the hydraulic fluid leaked out and the robotic arm ceased moving.

Talk about art imitating life. We think we have all the time in the world when we’re young doing the sprinkler with our friends on the dance floor, but as the years move along, we have to work harder just to keep our joints oiled, and eventually we simply leak out and stop. So right now, while we still have some fluid left, let’s take advantage of this time and space to do what we love.

You can find me on my couch saying, “Alexa, play The Shawshank Redemption.”

*https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/09/artificial-intelligence-industry-future

**https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/34812

When I was a kid, my sisters and I would ride our bikes endlessly around Sopris Village in El Jebel. Our dad lived there, and it was like sci-fi Nancy Drew because it was this suburban ‘village’ surrounded by miles and miles of empty fields: no City Market shopping center, no Movieland, nothing to do but ride around the paved streets surrounded by fields of long grass and weeds.

There was one restaurant on that side of Highway 82, a sit-down, nice-but-not-quite-fine dining place, with white tablecloths and water glasses at each place setting. I can’t remember the name of it, but I think it started with a W, and they kept a little dish of mints at the hostess station. At least, they did until the Perry girls rode up on our 10-speeds. It felt like a caper to ride up, run inside and grab a handful of mints, before speeding off on our bikes… Around and around we went on those paved streets in the middle of nowhere.

Nowadays, I wouldn’t tell a kid to ride their bike anywhere near that area. Mid-valley traffic rivals the shitshow that is Aspen, and everyone’s in a New York mood: rushed and furious. As we all watched, our valley became a magnet for urbanites who want to live a more natural, carefree life. After all, we’ve got it all: clean rivers, public lands, endless sunshine, affordable housing— err, I mean, it’s all relative. The housing in this valley seems affordable if you’re a millionaire from Manhattan, or if you’re willing to live in your car; there isn’t much available in between.

A big part of Carbondale’s charm is that we are more than an affordable place to stay while visiting Aspen. We have our own lives happening here: pure punk rock, Potato Day, ranching and real rodeo. By the way, now we’ll have the only rodeo in the Roaring Fork Valley, as Snowmass is tearing out their rodeo lot for— you guessed it, rent-controlled housing. But even this past summer, we could not park our old red Ford pickup with the white wooden rails at the Gus Darien Arena. Every time I went online before noon to try to reserve a spot, they were immediately unavailable. Then my dad told me that Rob Lowe was in the truck next to him, and I thought, well, that does it… now we’ve got the aging teenage heartthrob population coming to Carbondale.

My first exposure to Rob Lowe was full frontal, at about the same age I was riding my bike around Sopris Village. In the movie The Outsiders, while stepping out of the shower, Rob’s towel ‘slipped.’ I was like twelve or thirteen, and all my friends and I sat up super close to the Tv as we rewound that scene more than once on the VCR. He and Matt Dillon and C. Thomas Howell were always on the cover of Teen Beat (the 80s version of TikTok) and Matt Dillon was S.E. Hinton’s pet, in much the same way John Hughes couldn’t make enough movies for Molly Ringwald to star in.

Oh, those were the days! You think you like Carbondale now, you should’ve seen it back then. In 1983 nobody was in such a hurry as to drive through town like their asshair is on fire. The only honks were audible waves because we saw someone we knew. The USFS property looked exactly like it does today,* and Carbondale and El Jebel were distinctly different towns, with miles of empty land between them.

Now, the Willitsification of the mid-valley has completely obliterated El Jebel and is quickly eclipsing Carbondale. We are one construction site after another: fancy retail on the ground floor, expensive box-living above, or my personal favorite: architecture-for-the-apocalypse cinderblock-style climate-controlled storage for the likes of Rob Lowe’s artwork. With the number of storage units going up in Carbondale, instead of a bedroom community we’ll be a garage community for upvalleyers and all their junk. But maybe these can be the affordable housing units of our future… We could all reside in heated/cooled comfort, with shared indoor plumbing and ADA compliant access. A little dystopian perhaps, but at least it’s affordable.

*Public forum to discuss USFS Main Street plans on Thursday, Oct. 5^th 6pm at the Third Street Center.