While looking through some old file folders at the San Juan Water Conservancy District office, I came across a 59-page booklet entitled Designing Development Strategies in Small Towns, written by Glen Pulver and David Dodson. The inside page gives the copyright date, 1992, by the Aspen Institute, Washington DC.
I was looking through these file folders in SJWCD’s uptown office in preparation for an upcoming work session of the District Board — on which I now sit, much to my own amazement. Never, in my wildest dreams, did I imagine myself sitting as a board member of this public, tax-funded district, when — back in 2008 — I began writing editorials critical of the proposed Dry Gulch Reservoir project, a plan that eventually generated significant anger and dissension among Archuleta County residents, especially in the business community.
Our work session had been scheduled to discuss a “strategic planning” process — something the SJWCD Board had not done recently. Perhaps, not ever? What are appropriate short range and long range goals for this tax-funded District? That question hung in the air, after the voters — in November 2017 — rejected a modest tax increase to help move the Dry Gulch reservoir project forward. A project that was once estimated, by expert consultants, at $357 million.
SJWCD’s annual budget is around $80,000. From what I could tell, as a new board member unfamiliar with the District finances, the District’s legal fees alone, in 2017, had exceeded its annual budget. Probably a good time to stop and take stock of where the District had been headed, and where it wants to head in the future.
But actually, what I wanted to talk about, this morning, was the little Aspen Institute booklet.
The booklet begins like this:
Rural America is in trouble. Despite significant population — roughly one-fourth of the US population — rural America is seriously lagging behind urban America in personal income, health, and education. Although remoteness and lack of scale are often tagged as the culprits in rural stagnation, it is not clear how serious these economic disadvantages really are.
If rural people are to have any hope of achieving a level of living approximating that of their urban neighbors, local leaders must become very adept at identifying the most effective strategies for community development.
I personally find this introduction to be fascinating, considering the organization that published the booklet: the Aspen Institute. This ‘think tank’ was not always located in Washington DC. and if you visit the website, you can find a brief history of the Aspen Institute, that starts off this way:
Chicago businessman Walter Paepcke (1896-1960), chairman of the Container Corporation of America, first visited Aspen, Colorado in 1945. Inspired by its great natural beauty, he envisioned it as an ideal gathering place for thinkers, leaders, artists, and musicians from all over the world to step away from their daily routines and reflect on the underlying values of society and culture. He dreamed of transforming the town into a center for dialogue, a place for “lifting us out of our usual selves,” as one visitor to Paepcke’s Aspen would put it.
To make this dream real, in 1949 Paepcke made Aspen the site for a celebration of the 200th birthday of German poet and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The 20-day gathering attracted such prominent intellectuals and artists as Albert Schweitzer, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Thornton Wilder, and Arthur Rubinstein, along with members of the international press and more than 2,000 other attendees.
We can probably imagine the consternation of certain Aspen residents, in 1949, as they watched 2,000 “urban neighbors” and intellectuals pour into their tiny, rural mountain town — population 916, in 1949 — to celebrate a German philosopher just four years after the conclusion of World War II.
The Aspen Institute has posted a video about that moment in time, when certain intellectuals and artists were envisioning a brave new world of universal peace and understanding, and where urban culture and wealth might flow unhindered into every rural town and hamlet. The future, in 1949, looked bright to Chicago industrialist and philanthropist Walter Paepcke and his wife Elizabeth ‘Pussy’ Paepcke, as they sought to remake Aspen, Colorado into a center for culture, intellectual thinking, and of course, recreation.
Here’s the 11-minute video from the Aspen Institute:
In 1949, when Walter Paepcke began assembling what is now the Aspen Institute, he was a trustee of the University of Chicago and participated in the university’s ‘Great Books’ seminar, led by philosopher Mortimer Adler. That experience inspired Paepcke to create Aspen Institute’s ‘Executive Seminar’ — a forum where selected captains of American industry could read and discuss selections from the works of classic and modern writers, “with the goal of better understanding the challenges facing the organizations and communities they served.”
“The Executive Seminar was not intended to make a corporate treasurer a more skilled corporate treasurer,” said Paepcke, “but to help a leader gain access to his or her own humanity by becoming more self-aware, more self-correcting, and more self-fulfilling.”
Half a century later, we can see the results of Walter Paepcke’s attempts, through the Aspen Skiing Corporation and the Aspen Institute, to uplift the residents of Aspen Colorado and give them access to the great benefits normally available to people living in cities like Chicago and Washington DC.
We can also see, half a century later, just how wonderfully those ‘economic advantages’ have played out, in places like Chicago — Walter Paepcke’s hometown —or Washington DC — the current home of the Aspen Institute. Apparently, both of those cities ranked in the top ten American ‘urban communities’ for the number of murders per 100,000 residents, according to 2009 FBI figures. Washington DC was ranked 11th in violent crimes overall, and Chicago was ranked 28th.
Many people — perhaps, people who don’t know better — might rank Aspen, Colorado, as an economic, recreational, and cultural paradise. Some of us might have a different take.
In this article series, we’re going to consider a trade-off. Does rural America really want the ‘benefits’ of living in a big city, as the Aspen Institute booklet is suggesting?
Or did we move to Pagosa Springs — and remain in Pagosa Springs — because we found something here, more valuable than the ‘benefits’ of living in a big city?