Whatever you thought about EstesTruth

You've got to admire this image.  A perfect bookend to the photo that greeted readers each morning checking up on what was really happening in Estes Park.

Someone acknowledged today that alternative media provided the initial election results prior to mainstream media.  It's always helpful to have someone driven by passion (rather than paycheck) delivering the news.  They just seem hungrier, and the truth they uncover (without any assistance or cooperation from public information officers, mind you) more relevant.

I never really learned who was truly behind EstesTruth, but think of all the news that broke there before it appeared anywhere else.  The newspaper business always used to be about getting the story first, beating the competition, uncovering something hidden, now our papers have to check and see how much advertising an institution provides before dispatching a reporter (this is not a low blow - Read the latest T-G editorial about how they need advertisers to survive).  That's just the way it is now that people worry more about what they are adding to the landfill, and why outlets like personal websites and vanity blogs have exploded, to electronically fill this gap.  Think of stories important to Estes Park thus far in 2018:  We simply would not have learned about the hospital/WWE roughing up Dr. MacElwee without EstesTruth.  How far would the post office petition have gotten (BTW, where exactly are we in that process?) without EstesTruth's initial stamp of approval?

In any event, with EstesTruth temporarily going dark, and EstesParkian clearly on permanent hiatus, readers who prefer something deeper than a press release aren't left with a lot of local options.  FB's Estes Park Jibber Jabber is now the go-to source for a community forum, but their moderator is either slow or doesn't like me, because I haven't been allowed to join, and I'm fairly sure I live within the town limits.  Sprayin tends to leave comments on every third story the T-G posts on their website, but that's generally a one-cretin show, and we already learned a long time ago, without his help (I'm comfortable using that possessive determiner because he's admitted to being an older white male, no question), they can't spell and aren't going to learn how to spell.

I don't get paid for this, nor do the other folks who contribute, and rely solely on my investment savvy and retirement savings and the overabundance of free computers and internet access scattered throughout town to drive everyone crazy.  (Hey, if you don't like me on them, remove them or charge for them.  At some point, if you really hate me, you will wake up and stop providing free services using taxpayer money that private enterprise should supply but can't, because we subsidize public institutions to outcompete them - Video stores (well, they were dead anyway, but I can't believe I can find "Brad's Status" (released last September) already on the library shelves - how exactly does having just-released to video DVDs fulfill the mission of educating the public again, when Netflix and Redbox are available and perfectly capable?), fitness centers, internet cafes - Every tourist town throughout the world, regardless of size, regardless of oppressive government system in place, has internet cafes, but not Estes Park, oh no, we allow out-of-towners and LDS missionaries to spend all day on a free library computer without exhausting time limits, without charge, without even having to go through the formality of obtaining a library card).

Readership is growing, if any of the numbers Google provides can be believed, but it was only when EstesTruth linked to one of my entries that readership of a particular entry really exploded.  EstesTruth had a bully pulpit, and one that actually scared people in power, because they knew their friends and employees were reading it, echoing beliefs that were obvious but had yet to coalesce, granting voice to voices that weren't being heard, providing substance and succor to those gaslighted by their town administration, plotted against and manipulated instead of serving as, oh, what's their job title again, public servants.

What became very clear to me a few years back is that everyone has an agenda, and that everyone approaches their hobbyhorse like they were professionally advocating for it, rather than behaving as a disinterested observer working towards happiness and progress for everyone.  Folks like Greg Rosener wake up each morning and apply a thick coating of insolence (I remember at one town board meeting he was advocating for removal of the requirement for fire-suppresion sprinklers in buildings, because, and this was his true belief, who had ever been killed in Estes Park as a result of fire?  This guy is the same guy blocking the fire exits at the mall in Kemerovo, the same guy locking the doors to the stairwells at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.)  He is only worried about one thing:  How much wealth can he personally extract from this piss-ant community?  Honey, if he were qualified for anything besides selling real estate in a location where it is harder to spit in a bucket from 5 feet than sell real estate, somebody from Longmont or Boulder would have swooped in long ago and swept him away.  I can't get within 10 feet of the guy without having to shower.  But you have to admire how Greg has Estes Park boards figured out, and knows exactly what buttons to push and who to fake schmooze to get what he wants.

Towards the end, it became clear EstesTruth was simply unable or unwilling to commit more than words and the time it took to post information to the goals espoused.  It is no secret that some of us put real money into the effort to stop the Loop, renting a building and distributing information and literature, attending all the meetings, writing letters, speaking out. We didn't print T-shirts at cost or yard signs at cost, we lost money.  So it was disappointing to see this effort negated by EstesTruth's endorsement of the opposition at least once every election - CDIV initially, Bobbsey #1 on follow-up.  How exactly do we stop the Loop if the town trustees we field as candidates, endorse, and elect are pro-Loop?  That bizarre behavior failed my Turing test absolutely.  I had no way of distinguishing someone who said they were against the Loop yet behaved exactly as a pro-Loop supporter would from someone who was unmistakably pro-Loop.  And don't even get me started on the hospital board, which presented its citizens not one but two opportunities to field viable candidates in the past six months.  Because I was obviously too close to the inside (yet curiously, not ever allowed inside), I witnessed the recall committee spending most of their time, I don't know, doing everything in their power once they had achieved their initial goal not to file for a position themselves after the county commissioners made a mess of things, and not being all that interested in finding any candidates with a chance of unseating the appointed temporary board.  Last November, I was livid, because I was the only one out recruiting potential candidates rather than drawing up lists of potential candidates.  This March, I just laughed.  Kathy Asche (who I liken to the Wizard of Oz, no one can be granted an audience, ever, and she doesn't return phone messages, because she is too busy playing computer solitaire) has lost my respect completely (I refer to her office as the Asche-Hole, because any intelligent life that goes in escapes less intelligent, or Asche-witz, for less defensible reasons) and EstesTruth's constant leaping to her defense left me nonplussed:  I get that people in town vehemently disagree with me, my opinions, and my approach, but I am not blind, and I am definitely not stupid.  Unless I need a random excuse generator, the Aschen one is a complete waste of cortex.

Look, I know I'm difficult (I strongly believe one of my old girlfriends, who I should have been thrilled tolerated me as long as she did - we had one of those wonderfully supportive relationships where we looked out for each other and rarely argued - secretly hated dogs, even though she claimed she didn't) and I demand a level of perfection from others it's very clear I myself cannot achieve.  Sometimes I think self-deprecation and self-understanding makes one more human and relatable - in Estes Park it is just dismissed as a weakness, because most residents up here, sorry to say, just ain't all that worldly or smart, or in touch with how things operate in the big city.  EstesTruth didn't live up to my standards, I didn't live up to EstesTruth's.  That's basically the end of that story.  But what's the point of having a sky you know you can't touch?  Should we deny the existence of such a thing just because it is beyond our grasp?  Or should we wake up each morning trying to improve on yesterday, learn something new, type in two more pages of the 1907 Loveland Reporter, despite knowing there is no earthly reward for doing so, and much derision?  I would much rather be the churlish me who I know is right and God knows is right than that person who purposefully avoid every time you're stuck in the same town with them, because they can't even lie with a straight face.