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We live in a town with members incapable of speaking in public without first apologizing, then droning on and on when they get to the microphone, taking five minutes to say what could be said in one, while the audience laughs nervously in support, and at the end of the exercise, we are all so proud we somehow feel like we deserve to wear the big boy pants. Thank god these meetings aren't open to outside observers from larger towns, or actual media, or even Parkland High School seniors, because they would give major side eye - The ballots still haven't arrived, the first quarter financials were awful (but expected, so that makes it okay - "Look, I know our entrepreneurial dog mouthwash business declared bankruptcy this quarter, guys, but we predicted it would, so our shareholders will understand, won't they?"), Larry gets pre-scripted questions from board members to counter the notion their third party attorney was somehow anything but impartial, yet can...

Two Portlandia sketches featuring SNL alums.  Jsyk, Fred Armisen is legally insane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL3dBKCOJlE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZEkDtist0o

You have to admit, Michelle Wolf is fearless.  But whether or not she helped the cause (I'm not completely sure of the cause, but she set back "know your audience" about 50 years) remains to be seen.  Like in November.  Like in how many unscheduled appearances she makes in Republican candidates' campaign advertisements.  Oh well, watching her beats running down to the mailbox every afternoon to check on the hospital board ballots. For comparison, because it's the one the press is currently comparing it to, view the first 15 minutes (the last 8 are an unfunny snooze) of Stephen Colbert's WHCA monologue from 2006.  Note that Stephen was at least attempting to follow the roast format.  His performance was also widely panned, but now, a dozen years later, he holds Letterman's spot on the Late Show.  Topical comedy never ages well, but hard-working, proficient comedians manage to still get the gigs.  Michelle Wolf isn't going anywhere, and neither i...

Photographer:  Check Preyed on underage girls:  Check Not previously honored with a pika:  Check Which downtown business wants to prominently display him for the kids to find?

Man, I've been working under a fog for the past month, keeping Ernest LeRoy Baldwin separate from Roy and Hazel Baldwin separate from Jack Baldwin and the Baldwin Inn in the Big Thompson Canyon. Thank you Boulder County historian Silvia Pettem for setting me straight. Ernest LeRoy Baldwin and Roy Baldwin were the same person.  They were both born in 1894 and died in 1976 and were the same exact person.  So however you want to refer to them, as Roy Baldwin or Ernest LeRoy Baldwin, they both were adopted by Edward L. and Flora Baldwin, they both married Hazel Epler in Greeley in April 1918, they both went away to fight in the war in the summer of 1918, and they both had a sister who died in the State Industrial School for Girls in Morrison in November 1918, thanks to our pedophile pika honoree. Here is the first specific mention I can find of Marguerite as an actual person rather than an adopted baby.  Throughout her short, troubled, abused by older males life, she a...

Esther Margaret "Ritta" Baldwin died on Wednesday, 6 November 1918, less than one week before the end of the Great War.  Her adoptive mother and father had moved to Estes Park in 1894.  This mortuary record indicates she was 16 years old, but she was actually 15.  She died in the hellhole known as the State Industrial School for Girls in Morrison, Colorado, a place she never should have been sent.  But because of pedophiles like W.T. Parke, she WAS sent there, because she was pregnant through no choice of her own, because she had to get out of the toxic environment that was Estes Park, and the enablers that allowed W.T. Parke to continue to molest young children. Her mother died less than one month later.  A family was ruined, and we honor the men who destroyed them.  Really?  Is this what Estes Park wants to be known for throughout the world - The town that places pedophiles on pedestals?

the Estes Ark has been sold after a less than stellar two years' struggle under the current ownership. I would love for this rumor to be disproven, but if it's true, it wouldn't particularly surprise me. Stuffed animals were so early 2000s.

One step forward, one step back.  At least Spain didn't set them all five gang rapists free.  They will likely spend 1-2 years in jail, tops.  Kind of like another person we know, enshrined in the form of a pika atop Rustic Mountain Charm.

is in the news today, but for those of you just emerging from hibernation, she's been with us musically for over 10 years. Yes, those are wiggle eyes glued to her puffs She has a voice, and she has the look (hence the more recent movie roles), and she definitely has the swagger.  But some call her (musically) the next Lauryn Hill, to which I take exception, and there is no way she has the bite (or bank) of Nicki Minaj.  I admit I haven't been paying much attention either, but should I have been?  I may need a crash refresher, but this is the only video I could find (featuring her mentor) that didn't look fake derivative/hit factory or style overwhelming substance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwnefUaKCbc

When do you think Estes Park is going to get woke? I love how this ostensibly straight news account verges into modern editorializing (the word "pervert" is apt but subjective) while the language behind the law remains unchanged:  The charges Cosby faced are identical to those W.T. "Pedophile Pika" Parke faced 100 years ago right here in Estes.  And the first jury of his peers found Cosby essentially not guilty (a hung jury gives you freedom until the taxpayers agree to fork over more money for another trial), while this second jury of his peers found him guilty, guilty, guilty.  Cosby's behavior from decades ago hadn't changed, only our willingness to overlook or accept or or minimize or explain away this behavior. Oh what a bea-yu-ti-ful morning.  I'm going to go out and buy me some off-brand pudding to celebrate.

Remember last Friday when I told you what you must do if BRK-B dropped below 200 and closed below 200 on three consecutive days?  Unless it rallies significantly over the next 3-1/2 hours, Friday is going to be a bloodbath.  Don't believe me, but watch your precious take a duck dive manana.  Hope you can weather the storm.

We learned yesterday, courtesy of social media, that our town administrator follows Facebook and "Social media" [sic].  Surprisingly, the pedophile pika still hasn't been removed, so he is a selective reader, or only looks at the pictures. The only place I've seen concern expressed about timely completion of the Elkhorn Avenue utilities replacement project is Facebook, but admittedly, I don't follow Tinder or Grindr, so it could possibly be a hot topic elsewhere. In contrast, the town administrator doesn't follow his own estes.org website, or much care about it if he does.  Nor does his PIO, nor does the taxpayer-supported museum staff, because the town museum still has its only April 2018 program listing, an expired bookclub from a week ago, still on the agenda.  Perhaps the museum staff has invented time travel.  I'm sure they are all standard IQ or above, so, if they haven't, I'm puzzled why this outdated listing remains on the calendar....

With the burgeoning "Bad Lip Reading" video stable on YouTube, I always wonder if the staff assembles in a big room, turns off the audio and lets the myriad possibilities influence the script, or if they already have some off-the-wall ideas and graze for particular snippets of video that sync up with their preconceived notions? The water-slurping take is genius, as is the idea of senator using his time to hawk a used van.

Hey everyone, want to put the loved ones in your life at higher risk of stroke or heart attack? Why not consider a beef bouquet? The sodium content of beef jerky is equivalent to setting out a salt block for cattle to lick on, but my only question is, "How soon before Diane opens an outlet in the hospital gift shop?" Estes Park, where our motto is, "We may not yet have a Wellness Center, but that doesn't mean we can make tourists unhealthy enough to benefit other communities' Wellness Centers."

Well you gotta be known for something

Took her own life in 1918, after being sexually abused for years by men our town administrator willfully chooses to glorify.

All the newly-elected trustees responded in a very courteous way, and I am encouraged they are going to allow emails from stakeholders to be viewable on the town website.  I think it's a win-win:  The taxpayers get a view into how their government works, the trustees don't have to issue any disclaimers about why they don't think it's necessary or how it might squelch public input, Estes Park wins.

Here's a tip for buying on Friday, which should hold over the next few weeks:  If the market opens down on Friday, and there is a stock or stocks you are interested in, put in a bid about 0.5% below the current bid, and your order should get filled by the close. Here's a better tip.  This is the one-year chart for Berkshire Hathaway common shares.  This is your proxy, your canary in the coalmine, for whatever you are invested in over the next three months.  As long as BKR-B stays above 200, you should be in the market, and hold or acquire more of what you like.  If it drops below 200 and stays below 200 for three consecutive closes, you should think about reducing you exposure.  I recognize it costs money to get out, but it costs more to be down 10% and having to wait six months until you get your head back above water.  Obviously, if you own 10 shares of Under Armour or Kraft Heinz, this advice doesn't apply to you, so just keep on enjoying ...

Well, the only shocker was Cody Walker becoming the EDC rep.  We already knew that Greg White was making most of his living wage from his town of Estes Park gig.

Do/did privacy rules apply in these instances? So why is this Colorado State Supreme Court case suddenly inviolate?

This isn't from a play, this is real life mug shot One year ago, I made it eminently clear that, if public funds were being spent to honor a criminal, the public should probably have a say. I don't see how any of this ends well for our town administrator or the storekeeper who insists on keeping a criminal's name assigned to a silly pika. What does Estes Park want to be know for - A family-friendly destination, or the town that continues paying homage to a pedophile, knowing that he was a pedophile?

Blame it on Southwest.  An email was sent out to the newly-elected trustees, asking if they were going to participate in the "make emails public" initiative begun a few years ago, in the name of transparency.   The message looked something like this: I am contacting the newly-elected trustees to find out if they intend on participating in the "making trustee emails available on the town website" transparency initiative that started a few years back.  As you know, two outgoing trustees opted out, for their own personal reasons.  I'm fairly certain most trustees take certain delicate or potentially controversial conversations "off-line" to a private email account anyway, but making communication public gives citizens a good "excuse" to place trust in their elected officials, if at least the opening letter from a constituent gets on the town website.  Plus, other citizens potentially know what is going on in their community, on topics they ...

We hired an outside headhunter, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a search, and ended up with two of the three candidates who cut their teeth right here, in Ms. Forgery's toxic environment?  Is this a reward for, what, not exploding?  Not shivving her when they had the chance? Some community members will participate in the final interview process, others will drink poison You've heard this slogan before, and before that, and before that:  Estes, the more things never change, the more they stay the same.  Why do we even bother?  Now I understand the allure of the Loop.  It's a hamster wheel, a nostalgic attempt to recapture (or reincarnate) Estes past.  Are we that tunnel-visioned?  Do we not understand there's a great big world out there, full of new ideas and fresh faces and iconoclastic approaches to using the computernet?  Naah, let's just bring back Eliza Doolittle and sell any remaining town property to F.O., sorry, John Cul...

New rehearsal footage and a supposedly previously unreleased 1984 recording of the original "Nothing Compares 2 U" by Prince (and the Revolution, or the Family, or whatever, I'm not that up on the Principedia) just appeared on YouTube, on the same day that Minnesota officials said no criminal charges would be filed related to Prince's death from a Fentanyl overdose (supposedly, he thought he was taking Vicodin, and Vicodin is much less dangerous than Fentanyl, similar to cobras being much less deadly than boa constrictors). The video is a required watch for Prince's dance moves, on really tall platform shoes no less, but the arrangement (which appears to include a pipe organ and a clarinet) is way too intrusive compared to the later Sinead O'Connor cover.  So I don't know who took liberties with the commercial arrangement, stripping it of all the scrim and washing clean the guitar stains (with massed human voice, like Gregorian chant) and molassesing th...

Markets are now in listless consolidation mode through the end of the week, so take this opportunity, if you still haven't gotten in when I told you to weeks ago (and have been reminding you since that time) to buy any of your favorites on the dips. I have made bunches of money in physical silver over the past 30+ years, but none recently, in fact, my last major purchase was a few years back when silver was $20/ounce, and I knew it was a bad decision when I bought it (at least I knew I was going to be holding onto it for awhile before another pop). Today's action, and that of the past week, looks like silver is ready for said pop (sorry for your loss, Greg).  Fridays are always the heartbreaker, and we could see it fall right back down into the mid-16's tomorrow, but if it doesn't, I would be happy with acquiring a bit (we'll, I'm not going to, but you might be happy doing so) and selling when it hits $20.  Twenty bucks is your ceiling, because I've lo...

The Estes Park Museum held a book club program yesterday.  It was the only program open to the public in April.  In fact, the once-a-month book club has been the only history-related program offered by the museum and open to the public for the past six months (whether or not it was "free and open to the public" depended on how quick you were reserving any library copies of the book). Note how quick the museum changed their sign after the Senior Center was kicked down the road. Lightning fast (any thoughts about trimming back th at bush?) Now, let's count the number of days they leave their one and only already-expired program up on the town website. Screen-grabbed earlier today - April 19, 2018 Screen-grabbed earlier today - April 20, 2018 Yet somehow, they were able to update their Facebook page - Screen grab from 3:30 p.m. Friday, April 20 - 8 hours earlier would be 7:30 a.m.

why Bon-Ton went bankrupt. This news will impact our Iowa and Nebraska readers more than loyal Colorado fans (oh, and the one infrequent browser from Rock Springs, Wyo. - sorry for your loss), but Bon-Ton has declared bankruptcy, and will be liquidating all of its Herberger's, Younkers, Bergner's, and Carson's stores across the nation. How does that impact Colorado?  Well, it impacts Colorado about 50% less than you might think Chubbuck is in Idaho, not Colorado. C'mon, Bon-Ton.  Are you that frazzled you don't even know where your own failing stores are located?

The Park Hospital District ballots are out, and the three candidates running all have advertisements in this week's Estes Park News.  When you click on the link for the Batey/Bagley ticket, this is the latest post: This is from December 5, 2017.  This tells readers nothing about the current campaign. C'mon Monty.  Get busy.  When are you going to provide your eyewitness insight on a forum you couldn't attend because you were down in Old Mexico? Addendum:  I was intrigued by those 7 likes, so here they are: The candidates themselves liked themselves, as did the hospital CEO, a technical systems analyst at the hospital, the wife of the current hospital chief of staff, and the wife of a former board member, forced to resign rather than undergo a recall.  Dennhardt is Diane Muno's former last name, so this is probably a daughter or an alias, and Bob Beberfeld is a non-registered voter in Larimer County, friends with Diane Muno. So at least the curre...

Whenever this photo of "The Patcher" pops up on the town website, I can't help thinking of two things: (1) The Lopper (for completely unrelated reasons) AND (2) Why do we have a piece of equipment sporting the sign "Iowa Tax Dollars At Work"? I figured this was a loaner or demo from Des Moines, or we had just purchased it used from Iowa and were in such a rush to show it off to photographers, we hadn't had time to remove the sign. However, today I saw the actual vehicle driving down Moraine, and caught a glimpse of the same sign, and it struck me as very stupid that Iowa taxpayers were still supporting our pothole filling efforts, or that we hadn't gotten around to removing the sign UNLESS Thunderclap:  The sign was actually attempting to represent something other than the abbreviation for Iowa.  The first word or abbreviation in the sign, I realized, is an attempt to say "One-A" the first number in the cardinal numbers, and the fi...