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ENLARGE
Barbara Lucks
Yes, I own a pick-up truck and I have an NRA decal on the windshield. I am not sporting a Jesus fish, as my spiritual life defies denomination. It’s too personal to advertise on the truck anyway. I am voting for Barack Obama as soon as early voting opens. Put that in your G.J. pigeonhole and smoke it!
Barack Obama may not have realized just how progressive a town he visited when he showed up at Cross Orchards, a historically maintained agricultural site in the middle of fast-growing Grand Junction. Grand Junction combines the best values of conservatism, personal responsibility and hard work, with the best values of a rapidly evolving technological society.
Feel free to succeed in Grand Junction, but not by defrauding your neighbors. You can’t buy or sue your way out of bad behavior. Trust is the commonly accepted currency at all levels of society, including our homeless.
Just about everyone knows that G.J. is a Mecca for retirees, but fewer people may be aware that it is also a magnet for young entrepreneurs. Small business can still make it in this town. Downtown Grand Junction combines a diverse small town Main Street with wireless Internet and a fun outdoor sculpture walk. The nearby Western Colorado Botanicals Gardens is the pride of the community that transformed a riverside dump into a showcase for high desert flora, without tapping the taxpayers. A staggering number of volunteer hours and a lot of sweat were the funding.
My husband and I first settled in Mesa County in 2000. We live in Mack, a historic railroad town, 18 miles west of Grand Junction. With the exception of Country Jam and Rock Jam, Mack is in a coma.
S-h-h-h!! She’ll wake up again soon enough. Energy companies are buying up tracts of land, and there are rumors of a new energy plant on the western border. Coal, natural gas and oil shale are readily available. Mesa County is growing exponentially, and the Cameo power plant on the Colorado River will close in 2010. A new energy plant makes a lot of sense. DSL high speed Internet just came to Mack. Qwest is going after more than my business.
Since there is no place to spend money in Mack, we often find ourselves in Grand Junction for business, pleasure and shopping. For the purposes of this article, I will use Grand Junction to describe most of Mesa County, though there is as much difference between Grand Junction and Mack as there is between Basalt and Thomasville.
I found it hard to get my head around Grand Junction until I realized that you get your heart around Grand Junction. This is not like some hot infatuation with a drop-dead gorgeous guy with a bundle of bucks. This is more like the gradual realization that the slightly pudgy, dorky guy, who is reliable and honest and accepts your own slightly pudgy dorkiness, is a far better choice for a long-term relationship.
Folks in Grand Junction are pretty reserved. They’re not going to tell you all about it. Apart from the occasional Jesus fish on the bumper, they do not generally wear their hearts or their beliefs on their sleeve. “Don’t complain, don’t explain,” quipped screen siren Rita Hayworth. They must have heard her in Grand Junction.
Still water runs deep. Not very far beneath the surface of a quiet cowboy with a country music ring on his cell phone, it is common to find a citizen who is exceptionally well informed on foreign policy, or a volunteer who cheerfully gives up every Saturday to enrich his community.
Mesa County is not drunk on capital. The sober memory of Black Sunday, when the oil shale barons snuck out of town on the weekend and plunged Grand Junction into an instant depression, tempers long term planning and fiscal oversight.
Despite record high tax revenues and an enviably stable real estate market, local politicians seem more interested in prudent governance than political sideshows. Bernie Buescher is our state representative and chair of Colorado’s joint budget committee. Buescher is a competent, honest and genuinely nice public servant with bi-partisan support. He simply refused to engage in mud-slinging politics with his Republican opponent in 2006.
Sophisticated Aspenites who abhor “drill, baby, drill!” are the same capitalists who are shouting “build, baby, build!” It’s probably best to stop throwing stones and start using them to build something – together.
Maybe the best elements of conservative thought define the new progressives. The Republican ticket does not offer me these values. Aspen, Wall Street and FEMA are all pretty fickle. If the stuff really hits the fan, as it may, I’m still counting on local response and faith in God.
But I’m voting for Barack Obama.
Barbara Lucks lived and worked in Snowmass Village from 1984 –2007. She and her family lived at Mountain View, where the pickup truck (with NRA sticker) also resided. Barbara makes two–three trips to Snowmass Village each month to serve her local clients and visit her kids. Learn about her business, Effective Membership Services, at www.emshoa.com.
Barack Obama may not have realized just how progressive a town he visited when he showed up at Cross Orchards, a historically maintained agricultural site in the middle of fast-growing Grand Junction. Grand Junction combines the best values of conservatism, personal responsibility and hard work, with the best values of a rapidly evolving technological society.
Feel free to succeed in Grand Junction, but not by defrauding your neighbors. You can’t buy or sue your way out of bad behavior. Trust is the commonly accepted currency at all levels of society, including our homeless.
Just about everyone knows that G.J. is a Mecca for retirees, but fewer people may be aware that it is also a magnet for young entrepreneurs. Small business can still make it in this town. Downtown Grand Junction combines a diverse small town Main Street with wireless Internet and a fun outdoor sculpture walk. The nearby Western Colorado Botanicals Gardens is the pride of the community that transformed a riverside dump into a showcase for high desert flora, without tapping the taxpayers. A staggering number of volunteer hours and a lot of sweat were the funding.
My husband and I first settled in Mesa County in 2000. We live in Mack, a historic railroad town, 18 miles west of Grand Junction. With the exception of Country Jam and Rock Jam, Mack is in a coma.
S-h-h-h!! She’ll wake up again soon enough. Energy companies are buying up tracts of land, and there are rumors of a new energy plant on the western border. Coal, natural gas and oil shale are readily available. Mesa County is growing exponentially, and the Cameo power plant on the Colorado River will close in 2010. A new energy plant makes a lot of sense. DSL high speed Internet just came to Mack. Qwest is going after more than my business.
Since there is no place to spend money in Mack, we often find ourselves in Grand Junction for business, pleasure and shopping. For the purposes of this article, I will use Grand Junction to describe most of Mesa County, though there is as much difference between Grand Junction and Mack as there is between Basalt and Thomasville.
I found it hard to get my head around Grand Junction until I realized that you get your heart around Grand Junction. This is not like some hot infatuation with a drop-dead gorgeous guy with a bundle of bucks. This is more like the gradual realization that the slightly pudgy, dorky guy, who is reliable and honest and accepts your own slightly pudgy dorkiness, is a far better choice for a long-term relationship.
Folks in Grand Junction are pretty reserved. They’re not going to tell you all about it. Apart from the occasional Jesus fish on the bumper, they do not generally wear their hearts or their beliefs on their sleeve. “Don’t complain, don’t explain,” quipped screen siren Rita Hayworth. They must have heard her in Grand Junction.
Still water runs deep. Not very far beneath the surface of a quiet cowboy with a country music ring on his cell phone, it is common to find a citizen who is exceptionally well informed on foreign policy, or a volunteer who cheerfully gives up every Saturday to enrich his community.
Mesa County is not drunk on capital. The sober memory of Black Sunday, when the oil shale barons snuck out of town on the weekend and plunged Grand Junction into an instant depression, tempers long term planning and fiscal oversight.
Despite record high tax revenues and an enviably stable real estate market, local politicians seem more interested in prudent governance than political sideshows. Bernie Buescher is our state representative and chair of Colorado’s joint budget committee. Buescher is a competent, honest and genuinely nice public servant with bi-partisan support. He simply refused to engage in mud-slinging politics with his Republican opponent in 2006.
Sophisticated Aspenites who abhor “drill, baby, drill!” are the same capitalists who are shouting “build, baby, build!” It’s probably best to stop throwing stones and start using them to build something – together.
Maybe the best elements of conservative thought define the new progressives. The Republican ticket does not offer me these values. Aspen, Wall Street and FEMA are all pretty fickle. If the stuff really hits the fan, as it may, I’m still counting on local response and faith in God.
But I’m voting for Barack Obama.
Barbara Lucks lived and worked in Snowmass Village from 1984 –2007. She and her family lived at Mountain View, where the pickup truck (with NRA sticker) also resided. Barbara makes two–three trips to Snowmass Village each month to serve her local clients and visit her kids. Learn about her business, Effective Membership Services, at www.emshoa.com.
