The other shoe droppeth
I feel not-so-good-so about the recently announced resignation of the VEP CEO, and I'm certainly not one to pile on, or demand credit when a surprising and completely unpredicted outcome goes a certain way (meaning my way, but that comes across as insolent). We pick people and then we pick on those people - My only weasel justification is that I wasn't ever asked to pick this particular person, sit in on the interview process, or weigh in with my thoughts. I'm just the buzzard that hangs around hangs around stranded emigrants, and either you acknowledge the wagon train is being circled by carrion eaters, or you start boiling your shoelaces and culling the stock
I don't know if the CEO is who I originally thought she was, or bowed to the inevitable weight of who too many people, particularly people who wielded power (meaning not me), incorrectly thought she wasn't. Her coffee circle will decry the bum rap, her enemies will bay at the moon and hope the door taps her less than gently on the way out.
I actually never had any personal conversations with her. And that is one of those things where, had she actually spoken with me or some of her other detractors, whether she would have staunched the rancor flowing like blood from a cannulated vein, turned the script and earned a permanent ally or allies, or walked away saying, "Well, that was a waste of everyone's time" is anyone's guess. These things aren't predictable, and are rarely attempted in Estes Park anyway. But that too is leadership, stepping in, head held high, where you know you aren't welcome.
All I know is, our initial email communication was not good (we didn't get off on the right foot or even the right pinkie toe), and I have only myself to blame for that, but undoubtedly, Trotsky blamed himself for being airbrushed out of Lenin's pictures. Point is: Neither one of us was without sin, but it was she who flinched, not me. You may have been dealt Big Slick, but I caught running jacks. What the lumpenproletariat fails to recognize in Estes Park is the richness of possibilities: You may be wrong and I may be right, or you may be right and I may be wrong, or (and this is the important one) WE BOTH MAY BE VARYING DEGREES OF WRONG, only you currently hold the reins, and are somehow threatened by even the suggestion of not being 100% right. When you walk away from the table, though, I win. Even if I'm bluffing.
This is Estes Park, after all, so we admire street fighters, enjoy participating in or circling around a street fight up to the very point where we don't, and so probably she lost critical support, or maybe she got a better offer elsewhere. She will be amply rewarded for the sleepless nights, or maybe she will turn around and sue for mental anguish. Who knows, and who will cover it properly in any event?
What will likely be the accepted explanation of her downfall is she made the mistake of putting out the hit on a duly elected mayor and trustee, or condoned and facilitated and conspired with those who did, in any event, she overreached, but why hire someone with short arms and zero ambition?
So, for the record, here is the final paragraph of what I wrote back the only time she did initiate (or pretended to - the matter was VEP's unwillingness to list programs on their calendar, or if that wasn't what it started out as, that's what it immediately downshifted into, again, because I needed to get it off my chest - we had a later generic group email confab where she was friendlier and more engaged than any of the other participants, but nothing substantial came of it, in that none of my concerns or suggestions were ever put in play) a conversation, not that it reflects well on me, but when you speak in a**wipe mode, I want you calling me by your name:
So here are my final two thoughts on us getting together, after a decade of Estes Park and Visit Estes Park, however long it's been in existence, going out of its way to ignore the efforts of the Estes Park Archives and the precursor Estes Park History Rescue Project: Graciously and in the most delicate way possible, go fuck yourself. Enjoy your Jim Pickering-centric centenary.
And that's the way it was. December 4, 2017.
I don't know if the CEO is who I originally thought she was, or bowed to the inevitable weight of who too many people, particularly people who wielded power (meaning not me), incorrectly thought she wasn't. Her coffee circle will decry the bum rap, her enemies will bay at the moon and hope the door taps her less than gently on the way out.
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| Alma-Ata is what happens when you cross Stalin with a rooster |
All I know is, our initial email communication was not good (we didn't get off on the right foot or even the right pinkie toe), and I have only myself to blame for that, but undoubtedly, Trotsky blamed himself for being airbrushed out of Lenin's pictures. Point is: Neither one of us was without sin, but it was she who flinched, not me. You may have been dealt Big Slick, but I caught running jacks. What the lumpenproletariat fails to recognize in Estes Park is the richness of possibilities: You may be wrong and I may be right, or you may be right and I may be wrong, or (and this is the important one) WE BOTH MAY BE VARYING DEGREES OF WRONG, only you currently hold the reins, and are somehow threatened by even the suggestion of not being 100% right. When you walk away from the table, though, I win. Even if I'm bluffing.
This is Estes Park, after all, so we admire street fighters, enjoy participating in or circling around a street fight up to the very point where we don't, and so probably she lost critical support, or maybe she got a better offer elsewhere. She will be amply rewarded for the sleepless nights, or maybe she will turn around and sue for mental anguish. Who knows, and who will cover it properly in any event?
What will likely be the accepted explanation of her downfall is she made the mistake of putting out the hit on a duly elected mayor and trustee, or condoned and facilitated and conspired with those who did, in any event, she overreached, but why hire someone with short arms and zero ambition?
So, for the record, here is the final paragraph of what I wrote back the only time she did initiate (or pretended to - the matter was VEP's unwillingness to list programs on their calendar, or if that wasn't what it started out as, that's what it immediately downshifted into, again, because I needed to get it off my chest - we had a later generic group email confab where she was friendlier and more engaged than any of the other participants, but nothing substantial came of it, in that none of my concerns or suggestions were ever put in play) a conversation, not that it reflects well on me, but when you speak in a**wipe mode, I want you calling me by your name:
So here are my final two thoughts on us getting together, after a decade of Estes Park and Visit Estes Park, however long it's been in existence, going out of its way to ignore the efforts of the Estes Park Archives and the precursor Estes Park History Rescue Project: Graciously and in the most delicate way possible, go fuck yourself. Enjoy your Jim Pickering-centric centenary.
And that's the way it was. December 4, 2017.
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