By George Sibley

It is hard to find things to write about in a positive and optimistic way these days without feeling like Pollyanna – looking on the bright side of life, like those guys hanging on crosses put it in “The Life of Brian.” But, in an era when nearly everything seems to be going to hell, there is one thing that is getting better and better, and that is beer. All those ales, lagers, pilsners, stouts and other things along a spectrum from hoppy to malty that get lumped together as “beer.” Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

Three score and ten. I’m there, so a couple months ago I put on the bracelet. For all the followers of the great billygod of the burning bush, his shepherd king and poet put it right there in the Bible – Psalm 90:

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

By the time you are reading this, the Great Election of 2012 may be in the can, since voting has been going on in most states for weeks, along with the ubiquitous polling. But whoever wins whatever offices, we probably ought to put in some time evaluating this election – perhaps around the question: was this the election through which American capitalism finally vanquished American democracy? Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

We continue to slog through the ordained stations on the way to the selection of our American Idol for the next four years. We’ve done the primaries – and it is hard to imagine a more entertaining cast of characters than the raft of Republicans who played out that version of the “Survivor” show. Now, as I write, the conventions – all theater-with-no-drama – are behind us, and aside from the barrage of daily coverage that might occasionally turn up some kind of a “47 percent” bonanza, we have only the debates-with-no-discussion to look forward to having behind us. Oh, and the voting of course. Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

So far this wildfire season, we’ve been lucky in Central Colorado (knock on wood). There have been little fires here and there, but nothing like those that other parts of Colorado – and the Rocky Mountains in general – have been experiencing.

The ferocity of some of these fires has been compounded by their nearness to civilization. I am not referring to the uncivilized people who build out in what our late lamented founder called “the Stupid Zone,” remote places where people build big fancy homes and have the temerity to expect fire protection and affordable insurance. The fires this summer have roared right through the Stupid Zones and gone on to threaten whole communities. For example, the Waldo Canyon fire forced the evacuation of Manitou Springs. Whole suburbs were evacuated and some destroyed by that fire and the other big one in northern Colorado. Forest fires aren’t supposed to be a Main Street problem. Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

Earlier this summer a group of around 70 people, mostly from the Upper Gunnison River side of Central Colorado, enjoyed a tour of Blue Mesa Dam as part of a commemoration of the commencement of construction on the dam 50 years ago this summer. Bureau of Reclamation managers and engineers showed us around the dam and its powerplant, and we ended up staying an hour longer than anticipated, it was all so fascinating. Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

“In the hope you don’t produce too much civilization in the Gunnison Country.” – Inscription in “Deep in the Heart of the Rockies”

No one had thought this would happen so soon – the challenge of how to remember Ed Quillen. When I think about Quillen, I’m always thinking ahead to something – how best to fit a Quillen diatribe into the next Headwaters conference at Western State, whether there was time on the upcoming trip to Denver to stop in Salida for a cup of coffee, wondering what next Sunday’s column would be about, writing him an email about this Sunday’s column. Read the rest of this article

Part 3: The Fry-Ark Project

 By George Sibley

In 1948, after six years of study and planning, it finally happened: the Bureau of Reclamation released plans for a big project to bring water from the Gunnison River Basin through Central Colorado to the Arkansas River Basin. A really big project – exceeding the fondest dreams of Arkansas Basin water users – the “Gunnison-Arkansas Project” proposed transferring 600,000 acre-feet of water through the Continental Divide. That was twice as big as the Colorado-Big Thompson Project up north, moving West Slope water to the South Platte Basin. Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

Part 2: The Quest for the Rational versus the Irrational and – Immortal?

Lying astride the Continental Divide, Central Colorado has been a crossroads for some action and a lot more “discussion” concerning the state’s central problem: an arid region with 90 percent of its people on one side of the Divide, and around 80 percent of its water on the other side. The Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, celebrating the 50th anniversary this year of its “creation on paper,” is one of Colorado’s solutions to that problem, moving water from the West Slope through the Divide to the Arkansas River Basin. This second part of the story details how the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project came to be. Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

Part I: The “Political Infrastructure” for Trans-mountain Diversion

Driving down U.S. 24 from Leadville to Buena Vista, along the Arkansas River that carved the valley, you don’t have the feeling of traveling past a man-made waterworks. It is in fact a beautiful stretch of river that looks quite “natural.”

You have to know what you are looking for to see the waterworks – for example, between Granite and Buena Vista, looking up on the hillsides across the river, you’ll see a barnlike industrial structure – a pumping plant, pulling water from the river and pushing it through the mountains to another natural-looking waterworks across Trout Creek Pass, in the South Platte River tributaries. Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

“Home is where one starts from.” – T.S. Eliot

When the publisher of this journal suggested we contributing authors contemplate the topic of “home” for the new year’s first issue, it got the brain to firing on most of its cylinders. Partly because this is frequent topic of conversation between my partner and me. At home, as it were, which is most basically wherever we are at the end of the afternoon when we can sit down together with a beer, a bowl of popcorn, and (in season) a fire. Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

“Employer wanted.” We saw that sign in Missouri, along US 36 – a good “heartland” road: if you laid a ruler on the map with Denver at one end and Indianapolis at the other, you’d see a line already there, US 36. Interstate 80 runs above it, Interstate 70 below, if you want to zip past and avoid it all, but if you want to go through the so-called heartland, US 36 is a good transect. A lot of it is still two-lane blacktop through Kansas, but it’s a fast two-lane with very little traffic, so long as you keep watch for the occasional tractor the size of a dinosaur traveling 17 mph. Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

This year’s Headwaters Conference at Western State College posed an interesting topic. Entitled “Small Steps, Big Stories: Climate Solutions in the Headwaters,” the conference explored the challenge of developing positive, life-affirming “cultural stories” for addressing the big problems the society faces. Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

I got raked over the coals by a reader in last month’s Colorado Central (August 2011, p. 20), on my June column complaining about “private-sector capitalism.” It was a thoughtful enough critique to warrant some response this month. (Actually, my first thought was – great! It’s not a black hole; someone is actually reading and thinking about this stuff!)

I’ll start by saying that the main thing I wanted to convey in that column was my confusion and frustration about American economics – a confusion involving corporate cash, job creation, local business destruction, tax policy, tax evasion, investment return, retirement plans, and all the other tangled elements of what passes these days for an economy that we call “free market capitalism.” The reader’s basic challenge: if I don’t like “private-sector capitalism” as practiced by Amazon, the company I was ragging on – what do I suggest instead? Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

Thirty-five water-user groups from both sides of the Continental Divide recently concluded a “Colorado River Cooperative Agreement” concerning the waters of the Upper Colorado River – both the water still in that river’s tributaries in Grand, Summit and Eagle Counties, and the water diverted out of those rivers into the South Platte basin.

This situation lies a little to the north of Central Colorado, but it is nonetheless worth watching down here in Central Colorado as this agreement unfolds. “Central Colorado” is, after all, a region of the state fiendishly created by this magazine’s founders Ed and Martha Quillen to include headwaters on both the East and West Slopes. (Not to mention on Colorado’s “South Slope,” the Upper Rio Grande – technically East Slope but recently treated like the West Slope by the rest of the East Slope: a place to go for more water.) Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

There’s a certain kind of a high school punk you probably all remember – the guys (or girls) who were always picking fights – between other people. They would exploit misunderstandings, momentary irritations, whatever, egging a couple people into making a big deal out of nothing; then – “Let’s you and him fight it out,” was the line. They took as a kind of profane obligation the spreading of chaos and violence in the world around them.

As one who spends quite a bit of time in the often futile pursuit of actual information from the mainstream media (MSM), I begin to realize that some of those punks never grew out of that; they just went into the “communications” field. Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

A couple months ago I broached the idea in this column that one of the problems with “capitalism” in America is the American bias that equates it with “private-sector capitalism.” Meaning, a system for investment during the production and distribution of goods and services controlled by individuals and organizations who have money and are looking for ways to use it to make more money.

What made me think of this again was a story from the New York Times business section back in April about a difficulty that big online virtual mall Amazon.com is encountering today – what might be called an enviable difficulty, I suppose, from a business perspective. Amazon is making a lot of money these days. How they are doing that, we will look at more closely in a minute, but the fact is, in a time of “weak economic recovery,” as we’re euphemistically putting it, Amazon’s first-quarter revenues this year were up 38 percent over the same period last year. Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

So America, how’s that tightey- whitey Tea Party workin’ out for ya?

I have to ask – but I’m kind of embarrassed by the question. It just shows I’m infected by the same semi-focused anger and frustration as the rest of the dying American middle class. I’m just coming at it from another angle than the angry, frustrated people whose inept response was the misbegotten Tea Party.

I’m actually as horrified as I’m angered, horrified at how totally aggressive and vicious the assault on the middle class has become – the fact that we are now quite openly taking away from the poor in order to protect the ultra-rich. Never before has the grasping insatiability of those for whom there is never enough been so naked. But even more horrifying is the avid and aggressive participation of so many middle-class people in the undermining of themselves and their future. To see anything comparable, I think we have to go all the way back to the 1930s in Germany, when Hitler was seducing the German bourgeoisie into surrendering their minds to “Make Germany Great Again.” My anger gets evenly split between the exploiters and the exploited, the suckers seduced into doing the dirty work against their fellows – and it is a smoggy unclean anger because I don’t have any idea what to do about it. It is truly as Yeats said: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” I’m as angry at myself as at “them” for my lack of knowing what to do. Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

Jobs. I thought that was what the election last year was about – creating jobs, I mean. The party that was more or less in power, the Democrats, had promised jobs but weren’t producing them fast enough, so we the people turned the job of jobs over to the other party whose promises to create jobs had not been tested. Not for two years anyway, not since the eight-year reign of the second Bush, which had seen the creation of very few jobs despite less desperate economic times. But that was then; this is now, and two years is a long a time for Americans to remember an old mistake. Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

Over here in the Upper Gunnison valley, we have a problem – one that not everyone in central Colorado would call a problem. Leadville, for example, would probably love to have our problem: a mining company with a bunch of money wants to develop a molybdenum mine on Mt. Emmons, the mountain that presides benignly over the town of Crested Butte. Read the rest of this article

by George Sibley

Our Colorado Central stablemaster, Mike Rosso, suggested that this month we might try to write about love – any kind of love – in honor of the St. Valentine’s festival. Because his email arrived just after I’d read an online article from The Los Angeles Times about Christo’s awning project over the Arkansas River, I thought, great: I’ll write about my love of things I love that make me wonder about myself. About my sanity, or morals, or something equally ambiguous. These are things that, on the surface, seem totally foolish, or unnecessary, or extravagant, or environmentally irresponsible, or any combination of those qualities – but I love them, which means rationality somehow got short-circuited out of the consideration. Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

At the coffee shop a few months back, one of the local Tea Partiers slapped a petition down on my table: “We want all government officials to adhere to the Constitution of the United States.”

Well – what’s to disagree with there? I signed it. But I was left with the uneasy feeling that I should have asked some questions first. Like, which government officials do you think are not adhering to the Constitution? What do you mean by “adhere”? Et cetera.

To the best of my knowledge that petition never went anywhere, but a month later, the same guy was petitioning to recall all of our County Commissioners – for, among other sins, not adhering to the Constitution. I didn’t sign that one. Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

I’m writing in the wake of the election of 2010. Old stuff, you’re thinking, but be assured I am not going to spend much time there. The election strikes me as just one of those surface manifestations of something bigger going on – like the recent volcano-earthquake-tsunami in Indonesia reminds us that we are all adrift on big rafts of stone on a sea of magma.

So what is going on tectonically underneath the volcanic chaos of something like election 2010? On the surface, it seems clear that the Democrats went down because they couldn’t revive the economy they had inherited, so it only made sense. American political sense, that is – to give the mess back to the party that had worked thirty years to create it. Read the rest of this article

By George Sibley

Cruising into election time, I find myself thinking about wolves. And fear.

I have been following, in a layman’s way, the wolf restoration project in the northern Rockies. One thing I’ve learned is that wolf restoration is credited with restoring the unraveling valley ecosystem in and around Yellowstone National Park. Without going into details, this is mainly due to the way the wolves have shaped the elk herds. Without the wolves, their main natural predator, the elk had not only over-populated the valleys, but had also become fat and lazy “meadow potatoes” (Dave Foreman’s term), loafing around the valley floors trashing the vegetation foundation to any ecosystem. Read the rest of this article

Colorado Central: How did you end up in Gunnison?

George: Have I ended up here? Well, I probably will. Can’t imagine where else I would go now. I came to the Upper Gunnison to be a ski bum, after flunking out of the Army, but despite my best efforts I began gravitating toward respectability. Got into the newspaper business – starting out as editor because anyone who knew anything about newspapering was too smart to try it here; went from that to freelancing and odd jobbing; tried to leave the Upper Gunnison but it didn’t take; and was lucky enough to slip into a position as academic odd jobber at Western State College. There, I finally fell into a full-time year-round job for the first time, at about age 46. Now, I am back to writing, when I am not trying to figure out the water-energy nexus. And I really can’t imagine being anywhere else: there’s something about the valley that makes me keep believing that it might be possible – not probable, but possible – to err and fumble our way into a society that at least approaches matching our scenery … Read the rest of this article

by George Sibley

Most of the local Tea Party leadership was sitting on a bench in front of a local coffeeshop as I came out from a meeting, right by the bike rack where my trusty rusty bike waited patiently. Three of them – call them Tom, Dick and Harry, names changed to protect – whatever. I know two of them by name and vice versa, although we’ve never talked much. But as I grabbed my bike and kicked up the stand, saying something polite seemed to be in order. Rather than the weather, I decided to try flattery.

“Wow,” I said, “seeing the three of you here like this makes me think the government should fear for its future.” Read the rest of this article

by George Sibley

After my really grumpy column last month, I’ve put in some serious thought time trying to think of something positive to write about this month. In a nation confronted daily with the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the bottomless pit of Iraqistan, the corruption of governance by money, et cetera, it’s not easy to have positive thoughts about anything other than the beautiful weather we’ve been having in the valley. Dry, droughty, it’s true – but we expect that in June; maybe even live for it. Read the rest of this article

by George Sibley

I continue to be thoroughly fascinated with the theory of plate tectonics, based as it is on what St. Paul (in an entirely different context) called “the evidence of things unseen.” Why are there volcanoes? Earthquakes? – both of which we have become reacquainted with in a big way recently. What unseen phenomenon of nature is this violence the evidence of? God’s displeasure was the old answer – still acceptable to many people, although that’s a pretty mean-spirited god to travel with. Read the rest of this article

by George Sibley

Next month – June 7 to be exact – there will be a water-related meeting in Salida that could be kind of historic if there’s a genuine effort to make it so. It’ll be a meeting of the Gunnison Basin Roundtable and the Arkansas Basin Roundtable. The purpose of the meeting is to see whether it’s possible to cut through the B.S. shielding a couple Colorado Water Cliches.

Cliche One: Urban growth just can’t be stopped, so it has to be accommodated.

Cliche Two: There has to be at least half a million acre-feet of Colorado River Water left for Colorado to develop. Read the rest of this article

by George Sibley

Recently it became official – globally, there are now more city cousins than country cousins. In other words, more than half of all humans live in large urban concentrations. We central Coloradans are now part of a global minority, which is probably not that much of a surprise here, where our state’s population is closer to three-quarters metropolitan.

A short essay in Newsweek (1/25/2010) tried to celebrate the fact that we are “adding the equivalent of seven New Yorks to the planet every year.” This means the most important locus (sic) for 21st-century innovation – technological, economic, and societal – will be our cities. They present the most promising opportunity to make our planet smarter. Cities bring together the systems by which our world works and include education, transportation, public safety, and health care, among others.” Read the rest of this article

by George Sibley

I have a friend here in the Upper Gunnison with whom I argue politics a lot, mostly electronically. We are always sending each other e-mails with editorials, news stories, and essays attached, mostly focused on aspects of the political economy – which should be distinguished from the real economy, the miraculous helter-skelter whereby most of us manage to find enough food, energy, shelter, and other necessaries to stay alive and fairly healthy. A political economy, on the other hand, is the paste-up of philosophies, ideas, ideologies, and religion we each hold about how the real economy ought to work. A political economy always seems to fit some aspect of the real economy well enough (if beaten into shape with a bigger hammer) so that we can continue to believe in it.

Read the rest of this article

by George Sibley

October 16-18 Western State College will hold its 20th Headwaters Conference in Gunnison – 20 years of open discussion on who and what we are, here in the mountains of central Colorado. It’s a good time to try to revisit the roots of the idea – and to look how it has branched out. Read the rest of this article

by George Sibley

The Sunday New York Times is always a good place to go for inspirational reading on the seventh day, especially for us communicants at the American Church of Mammon; early in August it carried interesting stories about a couple of Masters of the Universe. Read the rest of this article

by George Sibley

Last month in this column, I began an exploration of “hydraulic societies” – societies whose existence depends on their ability to move water around. I quickly got in too deeply to get out in one column, and am picking it up again this month. The purpose of the columns is to serve as background for consideration of Colorado’s 2005 “Water for the Future Act,” now entering its fifth year – an interesting “experiment in democracy,” although it is seldom portrayed or perceived as that. Read the rest of this article

by George Sibley

Colorado’s “Water for the Future Act” is now going into its fifth year. Is it working?

Well, I am betting that most Coloradans who read that paragraph will say, “Huh?” “Colorado’s what?” This could be taken as a measure of the extent to which the “Water for the Future” process is not working, not yet anyway – in part because it involves “water”, which we are all aware of needing, but which we have all been sort of psychologized to tune out on when someone brings up the technical, legal or legislative underpinnings of our water systems. “That’s too complex for us citizens to understand.” Read the rest of this article

by George Sibley

I’m just back from “Spring Break,” and you won’t believe where we went. We went thirty miles upvalley to Crested Butte for a couple days of mixed business and pleasure, and stayed in a lodge. Since it snowed close to a foot over the two nights and a day we were there, it was truly a break in the early spring we’ve been enjoying most of the winter; spring broke, and we returned to winter for a couple days. Read the rest of this article

by George Sibley

All the global “meltdowns,” economic and otherwise, have been temporarily, subtly trumped here by the onset of the annual local meltdown that signals “Springtime in the Rockies” – that interval of mud, gray skies, and soggy erratic weather during which, that old song notwithstanding, “I’ll be coming back to you” only if you happen to live in Cuernavaca, or at least Canon City, someplace without dirty snow. Nonetheless, even that onset of mud and sogginess generates an involuntary uptick in the human spirit, no matter what the news from the larger world. Read the rest of this article

by George Sibley

“Capitalism” is one of those words that increasingly has gotten out of hand, in my opinion, much like “Christianity.” Just as we are expected to believe that “Christianity” has something to do with “Christ,” that gentle fellow who preached and practiced love, forgiveness, and judging not, we are expected to believe that “Capitalism” as practiced in America has something to do with “capital.” Read the rest of this article

Column by George Sibley

Education – February 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

“The first duty imposed on those who now direct society is to educate the democracy.”

THAT WAS ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, author of Democracy in America, 170 years ago. But it is good advice today for “those who now direct society.” I would argue that we never have learned how to “educate the democracy” — which is why, for most of our history, we have lived in a plutocracy (government by, for and of the wealthy) imposed on a politically naive populace through fear and propaganda (“you can all be rich too” ). Read the rest of this article

Column by George Sibley

Politics – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

–Henry Thoreau, Walden

RONALD REAGAN had one thing right when he was elected in 1980: it was “morning in America.” Read the rest of this article

Column by George Sibley

Nature – December 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

I WROTE MOST OF THIS before the election, at a time when it was hard to believe that there was still a race too close to call, after the McCain and Palin duo started running on a lot of nasty untruths, with their only remotely philosophical stance being the fundamentally undemocratic and un-American premise that “spreading the wealth” is a bad thing. How could anyone still take them seriously after that? Read the rest of this article

Column by George Sibley

Modern Life – November 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

OF ALL THE GREAT INDULGENCES of the 20th century, “Books on CDs” is one of my favorites — combined with that greatest of all indulgences, the automobile at its current exalted, and possibly terminal, state of development. The combination makes the Interstate 80 limboid across the Great Plains literarily disappear. Read the rest of this article

Column by George Sibley

Energy – October 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

WE’VE HAD SOME semi-heated discussions recently, over here in the Upper Gunnison valley, about the challenge of getting people to face up to “inconvenient realities.” One inconvenience is the double-jawed energy vise closing in on American society today — on one hand, the global build-up of greenhouse gases, which is delivering scientifically predicted results even faster than the scientists had predicted; and on the other hand, the growing inability of petroleum production to keep up with growing demands long-term, which is driving up the price of literally everything we depend on. Read the rest of this article

Column by George Sibley

Politics – September 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

IT WAS AN INTERESTING WEEKEND. I spent most of Saturday doing “community stuff,” but of the enjoyable sort (no meetings) — helping set up the Library’s Used Book Sale (highgrading a couple of books); then over to the Farmers’ Market to pass out copies of the new Gunnison Valley Journal, a collection of local writings and pictures I’d helped edit; then back to the Book Sale for another foray (found a brand new John LeCarre I hadn’t read); then back to the Farmers’ Market (via the Gunnison Brewery for a liquid lunch and The Bean for liquid dessert) to help dismantle things; then back to the Book Sale to help pack up the unbought books (free by then, and I found a “Cremation of Sam McGee” for the new grandson)…. Read the rest of this article

Column by George Sibley

Economy – August 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

FOR A CHANGE, I’m not writing from the Upper Gunnison. My partner Maryo — in celebration of one of those decadal birthdays — wanted to go to Finland partly for nostalgic reasons (she and her family spent a year there when she was one decade old), and we both decided it might be interesting to go there and to the rest of those northern countries because they seemed to come closest to exemplifying an idea that is totally oxymoronic to America: Intelligent Industrial Democracy. Read the rest of this article