April 18, 2012

SandBoxBlogs: Aspen Times/Andy Stone "Is downtown Aspen just a kiddie pool full of plucked chickens?"

(sighs...laughs instead of cry...rolls eyes....sighs again....)

There really is (believe it or not) a bar of standards and a formula she has for picking the stories that are SandBox worthy.

Andy Stone rarely, rarely makes the bar cut.

But today, (Nanny has shoved his link off to the side as long as she can in her posting) and now she has to deal with him....(isn't it just like the aggravating cuss??#^*!@!)... Andy actually has a few things of worth in his column today.

(sighs...rolls eyes...will he ever pull it all together so he can get one fully rational and moderately tolerant column pulled together???!!...sighs...sips from cuppa...rolls eyes...puts on soothing Tranquil Woods cd...)

Here are the snippets as Andy 'makes the cut':

"So it seems that Aspen is about to be inundated by a wave of uncontrolled development. A tsunami of tsuris..."

"And this time, we are being told, the people to blame are not the developers who seek to create ever-taller buildings in hope of attaining ever-taller stacks of money."

"In case you've been asleep — as certain council members seem to have been — it all began with a bursting pustule of local outrage over a spate of outrageously tall downtown buildings. (No need to wade back into the vile swamps of those events — except perhaps to note that if it took Jesus to chase the moneylenders out of the Temple and Joshua to topple the walls of Jericho, then it is apparently going to take an act of God to do something about that desecration known as the new Aspen Art Museum. So, come on, Jehovah! We're counting on you.)"

"Anyway, realizing there is no limit (height-wise or otherwise) to greed, the City Council began to see that only actual legal limits would stop the development of even more of the damnable buildings that threaten to block out the sun."

And so, Councilman Torre (who eschews a last name but might be trying to qualify for the sobriquet Torre the Fearless or even, egads, Torre the Wise) suggested an ordinance limiting downtown building heights to 28 feet"
"But — and here's the tricky part — Torre the Wise realized what would happen once the prospect of a height limitation was mentioned. The Four Developers of the Apocalypse (OK, there are a lot more than four of them) would rush to pile up applications, $1,000 bills and lawyers to whatever dizzying heights were necessary to beat the deadline before the new law went into effect."

"Sort of like calling in Mario Batali to whip up a delicious dinner with whatever is leftover when the sharks get done with that kiddie pool full of chickens."

"And, just for the record, I don't actually blame the developers.

That's right.

Greed is a natural part of the human condition — just like bubonic plague. You don't “blame” people with the plague. They're just victims. And you do whatever you can, whatever you must, to avoid their deadly contagion.

The greedy are no more to “blame” than those sharks in the kiddie pool.

But the people who refused to stock up on shark repellent. Or refused to call Shark Be-Gone. Well, make no mistake, they deserve our condemnation."

(Dare to read the whole thing??  Click title)

"Unapologetically pursuing and tracking patterns within the news others make since 2010."

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