Beautifully done by Vagneur. Up on the Aspen Times.
Tony Vagneur:
"“You must have seen a lot of changes,” comes the almost-guaranteed remark after people realize I'm an Aspen native, and I guess that's true to a certain degree. My birth happened to coincide with the opening of “The World's Longest Chairlift” in 1946, and I suppose I've been most fortunate, through luck of the draw, to witness the metamorphosis of Aspen from a quiet mountain town into a world-class powerhouse of skiing and culture.
I don't know how it goes out at the music tent, but I do know that every winter some young hotshot comes along, thinking his turns are the best anyone's ever seen on Aspen Mountain. Fantasy is probably good in any venue, for it gives us all the impetus to stay in the game and make something stick.
We are continually given a reliable thread of “boiler plate” history, vignettes of people such as Jerome B. Wheeler, B. Clark Wheeler, Walter and Elizabeth Paepcke, D.R.C. Brown, Friedl Pfeifer and other looming icons. The “Quiet Years” (to which many of us refer as the “Golden Years”) has become a convenient term for describing a large chunk of Aspen's history.
Most of this is correct and interesting, but it is a superficial rendition devoid of the passion, tragedy and brilliance that make up our antiquity......
.......Point well taken, sir, but there have been other businessmen with as much hubris who didn't fare as well. Unfairly, Guido (one-time justice of the peace) likely is best-remembered for the sign in his window, “No Beatniks Allowed,” a reference to the influx of “hippies” in the '60s. Always a sign man, he put up a marker on Highway 82 near his downvalley ranch, trying to encourage motorists to slow down, which read merely “Nudist Crossing.”...." (Read more? Click title)
"Unapologetically pursuing and tracking patterns within the news others make since 2010."
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