Rather than continue to toss and turn, I got up very early and captured these sights.
Aspen leaves
The way Out is Through
Islands in the Sky shortly after Dawn (in the direction of Denver).
"But mama, that's where the fun is!"
In spite of all the gloom and doom weather predictions, a nice morning in the mountains.
It’s nearly the end of April and I finally got out for the first time this year to take some nature photos.
Willow
In spite of the warm and dry spring (there’s no snow remaining in the area), many trees and plants have been a little slow getting started. I don’t blame them, there are still some cold nights. Last night it was well below freezing at 24 American degrees.
Lichen
Do you suppose this lichen inspired the game of golf? I love glimpses into this small world of the forest floor.
Fir Flowers
I don’t see these flowers very often on fir trees. The part that hangs down provides pollen, and I assume, the flower on top collects the pollen and creates a cone of seeds.
I’m walking to the post office and I pass this guy who is walking in the same direction, albeit slower.
“Fuck you!”, he says.
I do a double take wondering if I heard him correctly. I look at him and he says it again.
“I deserve a fuck you just for walking by on the road?”, I ask.
“Yeah, fuck you. I can say whatever I want. Leave me alone.”
I turn my back to him and walk away. Inside, a lighter clicks, igniting the dry kindling of my rage. About a hundred yards down the road the flames have grown into a respectable fire.
I feel like turning around and fighting him.
I don’t know if it’s still true, but in this state, those words are considered fighting words. So if he thinks he can say anything he wants, he should be prepared for repercussions.
I tell myself that he’s probably missing a few marbles and that he doesn’t deserve me punching him in the face. Any rational person wouldn’t have uttered an unprovoked fuck you.
From inside the post office I see him standing in front of the entrance with a deer in the headlights look on his face. Yeah definitely nuts. As I walk through the exit, I bite my tongue to keep from engaging him further, the fire of rage still burning strong. I’m focused on his face as I walk past, but he is oblivious.
By the time I’m half way home, the fire is out.
Of all of the animals I’ve encountered, humans are definitely the craziest and the least trustworthy.
I love the free thinking of 4 year-olds.
As I was getting on my bike, the boy next door asked, “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to the post office”, I replied.
“Are you going to get a lollipop?”, he exclaimed, excited for me. This was so far out in left field I laughed. I never associated the post office and lollipops before.
“You get lollipops when you go to the post office?”
“Yeah”, he replied, with a questioning tone of “doesn’t everybody?”
I told him he must be pretty special to get lollipops at the post office because I’ve never gotten one.
“Well, if you want a lollipop you could go trick or treating”, he says, as if I could do that at any time.
I decided this town would be a good fit for a small town radio station, much like the one portrayed on the TV series Northern Exposure. Later my friend Daoine O’ became a DJ at the station near her small town. I got to see the studio and even trekked up a mountain side to the transmitter. I was inspired.
So I set out writing my congress critters, pleading with them to pass the bill that had been lingering for years in their committees. The bill was to reverse a law that stopped new LPFM stations from being authorized (long story, short). It took years for the bill to finally get passed in 2011 and signed by President Obama. Now the FCC is busy trying to make sense of the bill and adjust their rules accordingly.
Unbeknownst to me, probably in 2010, a couple of people from town simply put together a studio, put up a pirate transmitter someplace and voila, they’re on the air and streaming. They’ve had in-studio guests and broadcast live from various venues in town. It has a local vibe to it. I admire them and the simplistic route they took to start a station without all of the bureaucracy and regulations of the government. They are not interfering with any other radio signals. They are polite pirates.
Is it a community radio station? Not quite. Members of the community interested in doing a radio show, can’t. Also, it’s only live on the weekends. As far as I can tell, weekdays are just pre-programmed with a playlist of music. I’ve tried contacting them, but haven’t received any replies.
At the beginning of the year, my friend Jacob asked for my help in setting up a podcasting studio in his home. We picked out equipment, set it up, tested it, and now I’m the recording engineer for the bi-weekly podcast Radio Golden. This was my introduction to podcasting in general and through him I was introduced to other podcasts to listen to. One of my favorites so far is Radiolab.
Last summer I started streaming my own weekly radio program called Road Trip. It’s not a podcast yet, you have to listen to it live on Friday evenings. To stream this program requires no bureaucracy or government approval.
I wrote a letter to the local newspaper calling for people interested in starting a radio station to contact me. The response was lukewarm. I received about four replies, most of them wanting to have their own radio show. But no one seems very enthusiastic about trying to work through the bureaucracy of actually making the station a reality.
There is a lot that has to be done:
If the FCC application is approved, there is even a longer list of stuff that needs to be done, more applications, fund raising to pay for equipment, etc. If only four people responded to my call for volunteers, what’s fundraising going to be like?
I’m not the kind of person who likes bureaucracy. (I can’t even spell it.) I see the simplicity of using the internet as a means of audio transmission and I wonder if it’s the future. I ask myself, why do I want to jump through a bunch of hoops and pay a bunch of fees just to satisfy some romantic notion I have of radio? While I have some friends who are supportive of my radio station idea, I don’t know enough locals who are enthused enough to really bond over the idea, to keep the momentum going while getting through the bureaucracy. It needs to be a team effort and there is no team.
If I scrap the traditional radio idea, I will also scrap the community radio idea. If I go with the internet transmission method, then I’m going to join up with my music geeking friends and create a station that is not tied to location. For all the fees I would have paid with submitting various government applications, I can buy each of them mics and mixers. That would be just as fun as my old romantic notion of radio.
It’s been a whirlwind the past week. I made a trip out to Utah and back. I was able to get a website set up for Jack so that people could leave remembrances and condolences.
It’s here: http://drjackcrandall.com. The comments that people have posted are quite touching, everybody from old friends, former patients, to a person that works at the senior center where Jack visited.
Play this while you read.
My friend Jack passed today.
I can’t remember when I first met Jack, but it was probably 15 years ago. He quickly became part of my extended family.
Jack loved music, and big band, jazz and blues were probably his favorites. He made me dozen mix tapes over the years. The song posted above was on one of those tapes. I have pages of his hand-written notes wherein he shares his knowledge and history of the various artists on these tapes. I think one of his favorites was Count Basie. One Christmas I gave him a book on the early blues and the following year I received a blues mix tape.
Jack spent most of his life in Aspen, Colorado. He was the town doctor back before Aspen became the glitzy community for the super rich. He made housecalls in his jeep and delivered babies, including his daughter. He built his house and the commercial building that housed his practice, both of which were designed by Tom Benton.
After he retired from medical practice, he continued to manage the commercial building (now re-named The Crandall Building). His office located in the basement boiler room was his man-cave and it was a treat to see Jack’s other side.
Jack was the epitome of “easy going.” He never let stuff bother him very deeply. If it was something out of his immediate control, he didn’t spend much time dwelling on it. He was extremely easy to talk to.
Several times a week, he would go to the Weinerstube for coffee and breakfast and join the Stammtisch. I joined him on a dozen occasions and met some of the old-time colorful characters behind Aspen.
Jack had been living with cancer for years now and he’s been a real trouper — another thing he didn’t let bother him deeply.
He passed very peacefully with his immediate family at his bedside.
Goodbye, Jack. My life is better for knowing you.
Gesine and Jack Crandall on Jack's birthday Sept 22, 2002.
It snowed more than 32 inches over the past 24 hours. I step out into the sunless early morning to a muted white landscape. It’s so quiet, even my own sounds don’t propagate far. My snowboots don’t make a sound in the fresh powder. The scent of woodsmoke fills the air.
My walk to the post office to pick up yesterday’s mail will take me across the two-lane state highway and the center of town. I see that the road is already getting congested with skiers and snowboarders heading up from the cities. None of the sidewalks are clear so I have to walk on the edge of the roadway.
Leaving the highway, I turn down First Street. I peer into the co-op to see if it’s open yet. The lights are off and the sign in front says “closed”, but I can see steam accumulating on the inside of the windows. I know someone is in the back kitchen baking scones and muffins.
I continue to the other edge of town where the post office is. The air here has a different scent of woodsmoke. It smells like fine tobacco being smoked in a pipe. One thing I love about this town is the variety of wood that is burned in stoves and fireplaces. Each block has a different scent.
I pickup my junk mail and deposit my Netflix DVD into the mail slot. I contemplate taking a different route back home, but decide I want to pass the co-op again to see if it is open. The idea of a fresh baked muffin sounds so appetizing.
I walk up First Street and peer into the co-op windows. Yes! The lights are on and the sign says “open”. I ask the clerk if there are any muffins yet. Just then a women carrying a tray of fresh baked chocolate covered raspberry scones emerges from the back, answering my question. She puts the scones into the display case and tells me about all of the other baked goods in there. It was a tough choice, but I settled on the banana cranberry, peach muffin, a large one.
Outside, I break off the crispy top part and begin nibbling on it as I walk up the road. The bottom part of the muffin is steaming.
The highway has even more cars on it now. Although the traffic is only crawling along, nobody wants to stop to let me cross. Finally I just go for it, forcing the issue.
Looking up at the Divide as I walk west, I see the sun is shining. It won’t be long before it’s sunny here.
Back at home, I make some Earl Grey tea and finish my muffin. I look out the window, between the houses, and see the traffic is stopped dead on the highway. I’m content not to be in that mess.
I was hiking down a nearby gulch after work last week, when I saw what I thought were the fingers of a leather glove sticking up through the snow. When I took a closer look, I realized they were raptor talons.
I dug down through the snow and ice and uncovered an eagle. This was next to a power pole. I determined the eagle had been electrocuted when his/her wings crossed two of the wires. The power pole even had a raptor guard on it, but that didn’t save this eagle.
I later confirmed that it was a juvenile bald eagle, a little over a year old. It was a meaningless death that left me sad.
Power pole where the eagle was killed, with trianglular raptor guard on the left.
