Interesting weather around the ol’ rancheroo lately. One minute it’s hotter than the proverbial hubs of Hell and drier than a popcorn fart, and the next the trees are all sideways and the hail is bucketing down like Someone tipped the bed on a celestial gravel truck.
I don’t even want to think what the trails look like this morning. And from the look of things out the office window, there’s more on the way.
Just as well, I suppose. An unholy convergence of deadlines means I’ll be logging some hard miles in the office chair over the next couple of days instead of sluicing through the goo. And me with three befendered bikes in the garage, too. Oh, the shame.
Meanwhile, I’d say something filthy about what took place in Wisconsin on Tuesday if Charles P. Pierce hadn’t already said it, funnier, better and faster, too. What say we all move to Italy and sponge off Larry and Heather until the Republic comes to its senses?
Longtime Colorado scribe Ed Quillen went west on Sunday. He was just 61.
When I was a young punk in the journalism program at the University of Northern Colorado at Greeley, where Ed had run the student paper some years earlier, an exasperated adviser told me Ed was probably the only editor in the state who would hire me.
And he did, eventually — though not to work at the Longmont Scene, the Middle Park Times in Kremmling, the Summit County Times in Breckenridge or the Mountain Mail in Salida. I’d burned through a half-dozen newspaper gigs in 12 years and had turned free-lancer before Ed finally hired me to do a thing or two for his Salida-based magazine, Colorado Central, which goes to show you how much academics know about the real world outside their ivy-covered cloisters.
Once, when I was seriously overtrucked and living outside Weirdcliffe, my friend and colleague Hal Walter, then and now a Colorado Central columnist, prevailed upon me to loan Ed a vehicle so he could drive to a speaking engagement in Trinidad. At the time, Ed smoked like a landfill fire, and I asked him not to befoul my ’83 Toyota’s cab with nicotine (though I myself had smoked in the thing back in the Eighties). Ed agreed, and the trip took a good deal longer than it should have because he stopped every 15 minutes or so to step out and burn one.
When Ed and his wife, Martha, weren’t wrangling Colorado Central he wrote for The Denver Post, High Country News and HCN’s Writers on the Range syndicate. A selection of his Post columns was published in 1998 as “Deep In the Heart of the Rockies,” and you can read a number of his more recent pieces in the Post‘s archive.
Here’s hoping they’re enjoying smokes and jokes at the Thirty Club. Ed, you will be missed.
Ed Quillen is survived by his wife, Martha; their daughters, Columbine and Abby; and a few million words squirreled away on his website. My condolences to his family, friends and many readers.
Rain today, finally. Maybe the dust on the trails will finally turn back into sand. Asking for actual mud would be too much.
Stately old pile, ain’t it?
Last night Herself and I enjoyed cocktails and snacks at The Broadmoor, courtesy of an old college pal whose line of work dollars up on the hoof a little faster than does free-lance rumormongering. Our shared and violently colorful past was disinterred for inspection, tales of relatives, pets and exploding toilets were exchanged, and the whereabouts, whys and wherefores of absent friends came up for extended and critical examination. Hilarity ensued and the four of us agreed that we see each other far too seldom. Good times.
The Broadmoor is a Forbes Five-Star resort, so naturally it draws Republicans in the way that a gutpile does buzzards, and I felt as comfortable as John Edwards at a NOW rally as various Suits ambled past, occasionally glancing at me as though I were encamped on the pine-board stoop of a 9-by-40 single-wide with my bib-alls around my ankles, a copy of Maxim in one hand and a 40 of Olde English in the other, irrigating my tooth while a half-dozen three-legged pit bulls chased chickens, social workers and red-headed stepchildren through an overflowing leach field.
Happily, a couple drams of Bristol Brewing Company’s Compass IPA removed all apprehension and I even managed to shake hands with one of the sonsabitches when my bro’ engaged him in polite conversation (though I cleansed the hand vigorously in an unflushed toilet afterward).
It was something of a late night for us, and today we barely managed to get breakfast, chores and a two-hour ride done and dusted before the rains came. Rain? I don’t mind. Shine? The world looks fine.
Here in Bibleburg, the unemployment rate nudged up to 9.2 percent in April, considerably worse than the statewide average of 7.9 percent, which is only marginally better than the 8.2 percent rate nationwide. The figures indicate that more than 28,000 of my friends and neighbors were looking for work, while an unknown number have simply given up the hunt.
And the folks who are supposed to be empowered to have a go at doing something about this? They’re too busy running for office, running from their records, or simply running their mouths.
As Charles P. Pierce notes: “We have 300,000 long-term unemployed who, all evidence indicates, their government largely has abandoned, and about whom their country’s corporate landlords could care even less. Perhaps this isn’t the best time in history for the president to be boasting regularly about how much federal spending he’s cut.”
Charles, a wiser and funnier man than I, warns that the prez “cannot win re-election on the merits if he’s mixing pale middle-class nostrums with deficit-hawk snake oil.” Troo dat, Brother Pierce. If enough Donks and indies get depressed, say “Fuck it” and stay home on Election Day, leaving Teh Crazy to jerk levers from San Fran to Savannah, we will be enjoying the tender mercies of President Romney come 2013.
Live updates … getcher live updates here … live updates, get ’em while they’re hot. …
If any of you folks enjoy Charles “Live Update Guy” Pelkey’s play-by-play from the grand tours, especially the Tour de France, pop round to his website and let him know.
He’s on the bubble about calling this year’s Tour, as he has a bit of lawyerin’ to do in his button-down persona as Consigliere Pelkey, Lawyer of Laramie. So if you’re a LUG nut stuck in the cube farm for three weeks in July, desperate for news from Le Show Beeg, give Charles a shout-out.
And if he comes off that bubble to call the Tour for us, think about plinking a dime or two in his tip jar by way of a thank-you. It ain’t often you see a lawyer working for tips.
• Full disclosure: I chime in from time to time during Charles’ live updates. But don’t let that deter you.
