Albatross

You all know the story of Jonah, and the albatross tradition among whaling vessels can be easily searched on Google using the words "albatross" and "Cape Cod".

Some people just have all the bad luck, even when they are completely and adequately equipped to handle this bad luck. Our previous town adminstator was so adept at handling major crises, the weather and the environment joined to dish him up much more chaos and destruction than his share, meaning long-term Estes Park residents now have to walk around permanently crippled emotionally whenever they get back-to-back days of rain, or smell smoke (even cigarette smoke). Whether the hospital will ever recover from all its real or pretend trauma is irrelevant, a simple thunderstorm or a curl of steam sends them into a tizzy of frantic handwringing, dredged up repeatedly during campaign season. It is perhaps enlightening to compare the pretend tempest in a teapot vis a vis the Farmer's Market getting cancelled and then uncancelled for one week with the actual meltdown that is about to occur, that of shelving a fireworks show on the Fourth of July because drops of forecasted rain make someone gun-shy. I have no idea if our previous town adminstator was consulted on either recent decision - The other trustees act like there were completely in the dark on the Farmer's Market decision (so why do we need trustees?), and the speed at which this pretend "disaster" was rectified FOR MERCHANTS WHO DON'T LIVE HERE OR CONTRIBUTE ANYTHING TO OUR LOCAL ECONOMY beyond a few Thursdays in the summer was staggering. Meanwhile, while every other fireworks display in Larimer County and throughout Colorado was postponed for 30 minutes, ours was cancelled so early on the morning of July 4 everyone left town early, and driving around hotel row in perfect weather this evening at 9:00 p.m., the number of lit "VACANCY" signs on hotel rooms was staggering. Imagine a Estes Park Fourth of July in the past 30 years where you could drive around that very night and have your pick of hotel rooms. There is going to be hell to pay over this decision, and everyone involved in the consultation is going to have to answer, with a timeline and a communication tree. Of course, in reality they won't have to answer for anything (this is Estes Park, after all), and the complex, stochastic details certainly won't be fleshed out by our local newspaper of record, who will roll over for belly rubs and probably not even print angry letters to the editor from all the downtown businesses who suffered through their worst July 4 ever, because someone was so hyperefficient as to cancel an event based on a lousy weather prediction filed 24 hours earlier. Will NOAA reimburse those restaurants with a 50% decline in seating and revenue compared to previous years? Will any of the trustees contribute to a fund to make everyone whole? Watch the unified effort already underway to point the blame elsewhere, or say how lightning strikes routinely kill thousands gathered for outdoor concerts or monster truck rallies, while, in reality, its the waterfalls in our beloved National Park that are doing the real bodily harm to our utes. Will Kyle Pitter-Patterson cancel the waterfalls? And then ask yourself - Do we really want a person in a permanent position of power who can handle every traumatic event thrown their way, and, as a consequence, suffer through multiple, inexplicable traumas at the far right end of the bell curve, all acts of God or acts of (let's be honest) "I'm in a powerful position so I must make powerful, town-altering decisions", or do we want to have people in elected and appointed positions who are lousy at handling emergencies, and, somehow, by blind luck, suffer or create or ignore zero emergencies during their reign?