31mar25016 – The Independent People’s Party, Robert Jason White, Loey & Louise Gerdts, Jim Loan, Mari Boyd, Our Inner Trump, Jack “Budada” Mueller, Rafael Jesús González

Remembering Louise Gerdts & family

Louise Gerdts (Photo courtesy of Lori
Worman Gerdts)

LOUISE GERDTS … Loey and Louise Ringqust were quite the double team when I meandered into town. Weezie owned the old High School, where I attended dance classes on the second floor with Jeri McAndrews. And my daughter Iris went to pre-school -- until one wing of the old building’s roof collapsed under the snow load. Luckily not during school hours. And almost miraculously, the ceiling debris spared the one corner where a teacher (couch-surfer? – who remembers now) had spent the night sleeping. The rest of the room was catastrophe’s aftermath -- which she had to climb through to get to the classroom door’s only way out … So many memories. Louise, Joern and Loey were some of the few locals who hunted mushrooms back in the day – before the Wild Mushrooms Telluride conference became a festival … And they knew about Tesla. And all kinds of other interesting things. Interesting people. And now all three of them gone. And another chapter of changeling Telluride slips into the shadows ... Bless you, Louise. You made a fine home here. We’ll miss you.

JIM LOAN … Had the good fortune to run into this good man – former interim headmaster at the Telluride Mountain School – while at University of Denver’s state spelling bee with Norwood’s spelling champion Mari Boyd a few weeks back ... Jim was in good spirits, looked fit (he works out at the DU gym) and said to say hello to all his many friends in Telluride.

SPEAKING OF MARI … Norwood folks flocked to the Livery last weekend for “The Sister Soprano Arts & Talent Performance” which featured, Ms. Boyd, Cidney Priestley and Sophia Watkins singing and dancing their way into our hearts. A delightful evening.

ROBERT JASON WHITE … Campaign emails are circulating in Telluride’s cyberspace from this newcomer to our community -- touting Brian Ahern as the county’s great “White” hope (despite numerous scrapes with the law and convictions for menacing). And this curiously unknown Roger-come-Whitely alleges corruption, conspiracies and all kinds of unsubstantiated malfeasance in county government … A one-man PAC for Ahern, White himself was been registered in Fort Collins as unaffiliated, but registered last week as a Dem in San Miguel County. According to the Colorado Secretary of State’s office, he has never voted in an election in Colorado ... His email addy “electbrianahern@gmail.com,” is packed with inaccuracies and yes, lies. But such is the price we pay for our freedom of speech. Just be aware that there are candidates and their supporters out there (not to be out-trumped) spouting all kinds of untruths this election season … So don’t be alarmed at certain outrageous statements you may read in the media or see in your in mailbox over the next few months. Know your sources.

OUR INNER TRUMP … “You gonna vote for Trump?” the Montrose mechanic asks with a laugh. He knows I’m a Green Democratic Socialist Sanders die-hard, even without the giveaway bumpersticker … It’s not that he’s a big fan of Trump. He just wants someone bully enough to kick the whole D.C. bunch “out on their asses.” Ordinary people, who’ve been on the receiving end of the 1%’s economic shaft, appreciate Trump’s calling baloney on the Republican white-gloved elite’s punching Wall Street loopholes for their country club buddies. They also like Trump’s roasting of the Democratic urban elites and their penchant for more spending, more regulations … I think my mechanic represents a lot of America – fed up with government from here to the Beltway. Fed up with gridlock. With failed promises and competing philosophies that don’t ever play nice. Whatever happened to working together with your ideological opposites and finding middle ground -- for the greater good of the Republic? Lost, I suppose, with the Reality TV rhetoric … Sometimes my buddy McRedeye thinks it’s time we evolved from an imperial two-party centrist behemoth to a more egalitarian multi-party coalition government. As it is, the patriots’ originalist vision of a republic with competing checks & balances appears to be fraying at the modernist edge … But with the entire world dependent on America’s holding steady the Post-WWII helm in the Nuclear Age, I’ve come to believe that wholesale change would be catastrophic. On many levels. And so, we are stuck at the head of a World Economic Empire with what Pres. Obama rightly calls America’s “imperfect union” … To that end, I call on all my fellow citizens to unite under a reaffirmed ethic of liberty – with an emphasis on freedoms and tolerance. Ensuring justice and opportunity for all. Let us hold to our different visions, but let us also work together to achieve the best balanced choice possible -- in seeking the good of the people … Maybe it’s an Independent Peoples Party we need, where centrists -- right-wing and left-wing -- meet in the middle and collaborate to make reasonable compromises (from the Latin for “sending [something] forward with [the help of others]”) … Impossible? It may seem that way. But as the hermit poet of Log Hill Village, Jack “Budada” Mueller would say, “All power to the paradox.”

THE TALKING GOURD

Ritual para Jueves Santo

Llegan como mariposas

de largas distancias,

otros países, otros continentes,

pies cansados, gastados,

heridos, polvorientos

de cruzar ríos, y montes,

selvas y desiertos

huyendo hambre y asesinos.

Y nosotros que vivimos

en el imperio que los desplazó

podemos hacer no menos

que lo que hizo el Maestro:

tiernamente lavarles los pies

y decirles, "Les tenemos lugar

puesto en la mesa."

-Rafael Jesús González

Berkeley