Summit for Life gratitude
Thank you to everyone involved with the Chris Klug Foundation’s 19th Annual Summit for Life on Saturday, Dec. 7. We are thrilled by the continued support of our participants, sponsors, volunteers, fundraising donors and vendors.
A massive thank you to our generous sponsors: The Aspen Times, Paradise Bakery, Aspen Square Hotel, Aspen Snowmass, The Little Nell, Aspen Valley Hospital, Duck Company, Aspen Snowmass Sotheby’s International Realty, The Brodsky Family, Alpine Bank, Kahtoola, Donor Alliance, Bank of Colorado, Nite Ize, Deep River Snacks, First Western Trust, Stratos Residential Collection, Ute Mountaineer, Obermeyer, Wood Investment Counsel, Timberline Bank, DWC CPAS Advisors, The Ritz Carlton Club Aspen Highlands, Holy Cross Energy, Top Dog Repair & Towing, Mantis BBQ, Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank, Sundae and over a dozen other businesses that provided prizes!
Special recognition to our vendors for helping make the magic possible: JRoy and crew with Aspen Snowmass, Reilly and The Little Nell team, Mark and Dyan with Paradise Bakery, Jim and Duck Company, Rick, Christine and Cassie from Nite Ize, Austin and Cat with Kahtoola,Dana and the Aspen Square Staff, Anne with Aspen Times, Midnight Lightning, the Six Productions crew, Cath and Tyler with CJ Timing, Adam with Brooks Production, Matt with Matt Snell Photography, Michael Bond, Todd and Melissa with Mountain Creative, Sasa and the Aspen Ritz-Carlton, Lucas and SocialLight, Aspen Ski Butlers and DJ Tenza.
Our heartfelt appreciation to our 40+ volunteers. With only two staff members and 12 board members, this event would not be possible without their time, effort and energy! The 2024 Michael Wells Inspirational Award was given to Team Joyful in honor of our late friend and ardent supporter, Susie Budsey.
Mark your calendars for Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025 for the 20th Annual Summit for Life!
Anna, Chris, and Jessi
Chris Klug Foundation
USPS kudos
This has been a most challenging year for many of us, but I feel we are beginning to see that proverbial “light at the end of the tunnel.”
Another light has been our small, local Carbondale Post Office. Yes, they are understaffed, underpaid and overworked, but somehow they managed to deliver a backlog of almost two weeks worth of packages and mail in one-single weekend. Talk about challenging! I am not sure what caused such a back-up … Be it lack of staff, too many Amazon packages to handle and sort, or dealing with rude customers. And certainly this is not the season for delivery delays, but in the end the mail WAS DELIVERED.
May the New Year bring joy to all of us lucky enough to live in this beautiful valley and, hopefully, many applicants to join the Carbondale Post Office staff.
Janet and Arvid Johnson
Carbondale
No complaining
Thanks for sharing the stories of Randy Udall from his friends and family. Especially that, “He made energy cool, he made it interesting.” These days, I hear too much talk of “grief” from climate or environmental activists. There is actually a lot that’s “cool” now in the energy transition and climate progress and other environmental quality measures. Populations of raptors have boomed worldwide during my lifetime; many other species are doing great here in Colorado. There were no moose at all when I moved here in 1975. Now, look out!
Our exposure to toxic heavy metals is way down. Until 1995, 99% of American children had blood lead measurements above today’s “action level,” now it’s only 2%. While some activists despair of “environmental racism,” recent measurements of lead in children’s blood were essentially equivalent for Mexican-Americans and Anglos, though higher for Blacks. All much, much lower than 30 years ago. In LA, calculated annual exposures to vehicle particulate pollution have remained 25% higher for Blacks and Hispanics for 20 years, but perhaps it’s more important that this exposure decreased by 60% for all races and ethnicities in those two decades.
Electric vehicles (EVs) are definitely cool. In the mountains, one cool aspect is that while going downhill, you can watch the battery charge increase from the regenerative braking. The 81623 area code is one of the top buyers of EVs on the Western Slope. The RAV4 plug hybrid EV is in second place here now. It has 42 miles of battery range for driving most days, and then a gas engine is available for the boonies. Someone here has one with the plate: “THE CAR.”
I’ve heard too much “grief” about EVs and lithium batteries from “activists.” They are not weighing the relative merits and are overwrought and exaggerating secondary and tertiary impacts. One local author recently advocated for “clean” hydrogen fuel instead, probably not realizing that compared to a battery, it takes four-times as much energy to go a mile on H2.
Yes, worldwide greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing, but at a much slower rate during the last decade (0.5%/yr versus 2%/yr). Deployment of cool, renewable, sustainable, efficient technology is increasing, so those emissions could decline in the near future.
Frederick Porter
Carbondale
Re: Forgiveness
I find John Hoffman’s letter [Forgiveness], comparing Biden’s pardon to the story of the Prodigal Son, ingenuous. For one, it misses totally the intent of the story, which is about a sinner who comes home poor in spirit, mourning the man he is in order to stand upright in his inheritance (squandered) once again. Make it back up the rest of the Beatitudes, for peace in his Father’s house. Is there any remorse or course correction going on here? I think not. Will Joe go to his knees, repent and ask the Father of the Catholic Church for mercy, in squandering the reputation, moral grounding and future stability of the entire empire, in his administration’s wallowing in the pigsty of worship towards the Seven Deadly Sins? As the policy practiced.
However, you did uncover the main problem with all the various religions of men, and the region many call the Holy Land. Although, I’m certain the Lord of the star fields cares much less than us about temples and real estate — in that we all interpret Holy writ to our own petty needs.
The Zionists are using a narrative to commit ongoing genocide to justify the need for a war God. Rather than face how their actions trash their own foundation of the Ten Commandments, as they’ve systematically stolen a lost nation from its lawful inhabitants for the last 70 years. But wasn’t that story precisely about such trashing, and thereby becoming a landless peoples?
I myself prefer the potter M.C. Richard’s interpretations as words to live by. She has written: “Bear ye one another’s burdens, the Lord said, and he was talking law,” in her lessons on turning clay called “The Crossing Point.”
Another classy one: Love your enemy, it’s the only way to find them out. This being the actual context for forgiveness. Anything less is window dressing the vile image in the mirror.
Eric Olander
Carbondale
Aspen One woes
The greed and lies from Aspen SkiCo continue. “In the snowsports world, we are deeply committed — and it’s one of the things that keeps me here — to being the highest compensated … in the industry,” stated yet another Aspen One executive puppet to the news.
I taught at Telluride where Tellski’s highest paid pros were paid 50% of the price for the ski lesson for their requested private lessons from day one of the season. Aspen One has been known for retaliation towards employees who attempt to exercise their legal rights to unionize. If we don’t have the right to free speech on public lands — the lands of the American people — we are slaves.
Lee Mulcahy
Basalt
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