Columns

At the Thunder River Theatre Company (TRTC), “The Tempest” begins with a roar and a crash. While Prospero, played by Jeff Carlson, magically conjures up a storm, Prospero’s ocean-tossed enemies are disgorged from the bowels of the theatre itself, appearing through a trap door. As they writhe and struggle to hang onto their sinking ship, cries ring down from dark catwalks encompassing the ceiling. Thunder crashes from all sides, the darkened theatre rumbling and shaking the audience.

Right now, I’m pursuing two long-deferred callings: writing a personal column and becoming a fine-art painter. Those two activities feel like yin and yang, emotionally balancing the scales: painting is a right-brain activity, writing is left-brain. When I’m writing, my mind is full of words. I never miss a publication deadline. While I’m painting, mind chatter disappears. I lose track of time. I sometimes even miss meals.

He was the stuff of nightmares if you were a young woman, back in the day.
A crocodile id concealed by the comfortable face of a guy who looked like the picture of the guy who was “Salesman of the Month” at a moderately successful automobile dealership, where you almost bought a car.

New Year’s resolutions can be traced back to the Babylonians, according to Wikipedia. My resolution is to put more effort into putting a dent in climate change and global warming. And so, I’m starting 2017 by writing this column.

The moment is upon us for profound change in our local educational system.
What do we really want kids to be gaining from our schools? Of course, we want them to learn how to calculate math problems, how to write coherently, to know some history and understand scientific concepts, but what else?

One of my favorite books of all time is “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” It contains truths that I’m certain are universal. And yes, I believe in aliens. Mostly because I find it incredibly arrogant to think we are the only life forms out there, but also because it’s lonely and sad to think that we’re as good as it gets. (And I am not alone in my belief. Astronaut Gordon Cooper believed in aliens, probably because he went to space, where they live, as does the Hon. Paul Hellyer, former Canadian minister of national defense. Believe in aliens, I mean; I do not think that the former Minister lives in space).

By Laurie Guevara-Stone
As we hear more bad news every day, from the high national debt, exorbitant unemployment numbers and stagnant wages, to havoc wreaked by climate change, it seems that our corporation-dominated system is proving unsustainable. We seem to be hitting both financial and ecological limits. However, there is good news with an innovative structure that can actually strengthen a local economy. This good news comes in the form of cooperatives.

So, two planets are shooting the breeze. One says, “OMG. I’ve just discovered I’ve got people. The other says, “I was just talking to a planet in the next galaxy, he had some. Don’t worry, they don’t last long.”
Alan Watts was a popular philosopher back in the 1960’s — back when we still had philosophers. They are still playing his talks on a Boulder radio station, I learned recently. Watts was known as a Zen philosopher. He loved to tell stories and was very funny at times. In one of his talks he was looking to put the human existence in perspective. He said the earth “peoples” — in exactly the same way an apple tree “apples.” Kind of like, well, we are not such a big deal in the scheme of things. Kind of like the planet joke.