Day 50, Tuesday April 16: Grand Junction, Colorado to Idaho Springs, Colorado

Carnegie libraries visited: Delta and Salida, Colorado

I’ve been having a couple of recurring dreams lately. Last night, I dreamed that I was told I had to teach an advanced math class, and I didn’t know the material and had not even read it. I frantically tried to prepare as the students poured into the large lecture hall. Even in my dream, I kept reminding myself “It’s not how much you know, it’s how much you can get the students to learn.” I’ve had versions of these anxiety dreams as long as I had been teaching – over three decades – and they never went away. True story: The dream is easy to interpret because I often didn’t really know the material I had volunteered to teach. It was a point of pride (aka hubris) to think I could teach anything related to political science, and some that were not, such as data visualization. 

Gapminder bubble chart

Data visualization, the art and science of turning numbers into beautiful and informative pictures, fascinates me. I have long used graphics in my own work, but their potential to teach (and even inspire!) was revealed to me by Hans Rosling and his Gapminder videos. (Check them out at www.gapminder.org If you do, you’ll see the banner “You are probably wrong about [followed by various topic icons]”) A pet peeve of mine was bad (ugly, misleading) graphics. One benefit of having tenure was that I was able to get a data viz course approved even though I lacked the requisite knowledge to teach it. “Don’t worry,” I told this class, “the world today requires lifelong learning, so I’m going to learn the material with you.” I also gave these students a valuable teaching tip: When you get stuck, JFGI. Before you fret that my students were paying exorbitant tuition to take a class from an incompetent teacher, I’ll only note that one of my students in this first class has gone on to become a skilled visualizer (later, he became my teaching assistant and then co-instructor before taking the class over for himself) and an advisor in the Biden White House.

It’s great to be out on the open road, and that’s exactly where I’ll be today. My route takes me through central Colorado, through the Gunnison Gorge Wilderness and the Gunnison Gorge National Forest. I’ll take a rare side-trip to see the library in Crested Butte and, after returning to my route, I’ll drive north from Salida through Leadville and then to Idaho Springs, where I’ll spend the night. The forecast is from cloudy to sunny; my mood promises to be sunny throughout.

I rely heavily on Wikipedia for its state-by-state lists of Carnegie libraries. Wikipedia is valuable only to the extent that the volunteers who contribute provide accurate information. As with any volunteer organization, the work is rarely perfect. So when I arrived in Delta and drove to the address provided by Wikipedia for the library – listed as currently serving in that capacity – I was disappointed but not surprised that the Carnegie building was serving as Delta County’s Sheriff Office. The building is the only Neoclassical style building in Delta (the town does have an Egyptian Revival movie theater) and, when it was opened in 1912 (beating the Egyptian Theater by more than two decades) it must have been the pride of the town. 

Delta Carnegie Library (now the Sheriff's Office)

The Women's Club of Delta is credited for initiating the campaign to obtain a library for the town. The earliest letter to Carnegie, on July 1, 1907, comes from the mayor’s office, and it makes no reference to the Women’s Club. It does assure Carnegie that “our people are almost entirely of the higher grade of American citizens…We have seven churches and no saloons.” Correspondence ensues, and then local women ratchet up their efforts. In December 2009 Miss Ethel Bear, the secretary of the Women’s Club, wrote to Carnegie to enquire what Carnegie will require in return for providing a library. Ethel wrote back in January, asking Carnegie whether the site the Club was planning to buy would be a suitable location for it. The Women’s Club also obtained a report from a civil engineer to show Carnegie that, in neutral assessment, Delta was likely to grow and thrive in the future. The archives do not show Carnegie responded to these letters. When the Mayor and city council wrote to Carnegie on March 3, 1910, their letter stated that 

In the matter of the preliminary details, looking to the establishment of a library will say that the Womans [sic] Club of the city have taken the matter in charge. They have to date accomplished the following, 1st Secured a site for the library. 2nd Have subscribed $3,500 in pledges for the building. 3rd Have secured from the City Council the promise of a levy of one mill per year upon the taxable property within the municipality to maintain the library. 4th Have secured over 300 volumes for use in the proposed library, with [a] promise of 1200 more.

A Congressman and Senator, as well as other luminaries,  weighed in: “No city…has a more intelligent or appreciative class of people” wrote Representative Edward Taylor, while Senator Simon Guggenheim praised the residents as “intelligent, preserving, and wide awake.” These letters are rather brief and pro forma, unlike the lengthy, handwritten, missive from a Mrs. Thomas Lamb (how great is it that the Women’s Club had both a Bear and an Lamb!). Lamb begins by noting that the Women’s Club has complied with all conditions in the filing out the application form. More personally and passionately, Lamb writes that the library will be so important for the children and “It will fill a crying need that is close to the heart of every mother – to promote a place for the boys to spend their [illegible]. At present there is no attraction to win them from the pool rooms or the street corners.” A library would help the boys (and girls!) become “good and loyal citizens.”

She closes the letter “As the Woman’s Club has this matter in charge, kindly address all communications to Mrs. Thomas E. Lamb, 648 Dodge Street, Delta, Colorado.” As the Mayor had noted, the Women’s Club was in charge.

Miss Ella New, the Secretary of the town’s Library Board (probably an offshoot of the Women’s Club some a few public officials grafted on), conducted most of the subsequent correspondence. The letters involved the usual haggling over the construction site, the building design, and the funding. New, no more a fan of brevity than Lamb, writes pages of context rich material; Bertram’s responses are curt. Carnegie’s donations were proportional to the assessed value of local property, so in New’s final letter to him was to ask for just a little more money, as Delta was now just a bit richer. Bertram was blunt and specific: “Mr. Carnegie’s promise was of a specific sum for a specific revenue, which is not elastic according to the movement of the asset valuation.” So, no. The library, funded by $6500 for the building from Carnegie and $650 for operations from the city, opened in 1912.

I was disappointed to pull up to the Delta Carnegie to learn that it was now the Sheriff’s Office. After the building was renovated in 1984, attempts to fully modernize it burned out sometime in the 1910s, and a new library was built a few blocks away. It had not yet opened for the day when I arrived in the morning, and the parking lot was empty. Two persons, to my eyes a clearly homeless one on the left and an obviously social welfare type on the right, sat down on a bench near me and chatted amiably. I eavesdropped from Goldfingers for a few minutes before clicking the ignition and slowly pulling away.

My visit to Crested Butte required me to retrace my route for 30 miles – don’t backtrack is one of my core traveling principles – and it was well worth it. One of Colorado’s prime four-season outdoor sports destinations, at an elevation of 8555 feet the town was still blanketed in snow. The drifts pushing up against the library were piled halfway up the front door. A quick tour of the library’s history reveals that its current building was a two-room, two-story schoolhouse built in 1883, then it became a storage unit, a gym, an abandoned relic, a museum, and finally a community library. 

Crested Butte Public Library

Coincidence? Today was the second time on this trip I made a stop, checked my Meeting Guide app, and found that an AA meeting was beginning in less than 10 minutes at a place only steps from where I had stopped. Today I attended a meeting in Crested Butte, and it was one of only two in-person meetings held that day. The phrase “whenever two or more gather” was appropriate, as only two people were there when I walked in. One was homeless. The other had just lost his wife to cancer. All three of us, I believe, were glad to be there.

My next stop was Salida. Located on the banks of the Arkansas, with a dozen of Colorado’s over 14,000 foot tall mountains, Salida is a place I could get on a crush on. It’s one of only two Colorado towns designated as a “Creative District” by the governor, which certifies the community as contributing to the state’s economy through creativity, culture, and the arts. In 2009, Outside Magazine listed it as one of the top 10 best small towns.

I also hit the jackpot at its Carnegie library. The library was established through the efforts of the (Women’s) Tuesday Evening Club. This Club, organized in 1894, had already been the leaders of the community’s efforts for twenty years before they applied for a Carnegie grant. The library has extensive digitized archives of the Club and its various library activities. [NB: how about using those archives sometime, buster?]

Salida Carnegie Library

The road between Salida and Idaho Springs is memory lane for me. It passes through Leadville, at an elevation of 10,158 feet the highest incorporated city in the US. It’s famous for its silver mines, and I would have thought that the local chamber of commerce would have named it after that more valuable metal (although Colorado does have a Silverthorne, Silver Plume, and Silverton). Lisa and I brought Chris and Kitt here on our trip from Berkeley back to the east coast in 1997, mainly so that we could take them on the scenic steam train ride. When the boys were young, we took them on steam trains whenever we had the chance, and we sought those chances whenever we could. I love riding the rails and wonder why I only did this when my sons were young. It’s not like there is some train rule that says “Only those with children present may ride.” 

I also stayed in Leadville with three other health policy scholars from my postdoc in Berkeley. We stayed at a rustic lodge that had live music and dancing in the bar. Loving bars, music, and dancing, I encouraged my colleagues to join me. All three begged off, saying that they wanted to get some rest. I was baffled. Music! Dancing! Drinking! Getting rest was boring. Sleep after you die. All three guys ended up having very distinguished careers in academia. Maybe I should have passed on the partying, too. 

At the time (not quite but pushing 30 years ago) I already knew that I had a drinking problem. That’s all I thought it was: a problem. Sometimes problems have solutions, and one potential way I could have addressed mine was to stop drinking. Instead, I focused on managing this problem by managing my drinking. 

Are alcoholics born that way, or do they become that way? Reports from AA meetings are mixed on that point. Some alcoholics firmly believe in the former and report that, from their very first drink, they knew it (although they may not have recognized that until years later). Others contend that their alcoholism emerged slowly: first drinking was fun, then it was fun with problems, and finally it was just problems. Drinking becomes a destructive habit. My feelings run both ways, but tend to the latter. Like alcohol, nicotine is addictive. I don’t think anyone becomes addicted to cigarettes at the time they smoke their first cigarette. The addiction emerges slowly, one smoke at a time. If this is true, then addiction arises one decision at a time. Should I smoke this cigarette, yes or no? If the answer is yes, yes, yes, then the addiction takes hold. The more often you say no, the less likely it is that you will become addicted. In some sense, avoiding addiction is simply a matter of saying no. Repeatedly, until the habit of saying no sticks.

Would it have made any difference if I had joined my colleagues in retiring for the evening rather than staying at the bar? If that were the only instance of my saying no, then almost certainly not. Yet if I had said no more often…who knows, although a statistician might predict. Predictions are easier looking back:

By [date], the once-vibrant writer was drifting into obscurity, his health deteriorating due to years of heavy drinking. [Name’s]  alcoholism had always been a part of his life, but as he aged, it took a more dominant role, affecting his relationships, work, and physical well-being. The man who had once roamed the country in search of life’s mysteries was now confined to his home, watching as his dreams faded into disillusionment.

Danny Dutch, a social media personality, wrote the paragraph above about Jack Kerouac. Jack and I those things in common – the only time I will make such a comparison – while I still have the chance to bury the Ghost of Christmas future.

Leadville is the home of the Leadville 100, a legendary one hundred mile ultramarathon which twice crosses the 12,600 foot Hope Pass. It’s a brutal, high altitude race. My niece Zoë ran it several years ago but, after 84 miles, she withdrew at 3 am in a freezing rain because she was stuffing from exposure (sleet?) and exhaustion. In running circles, her withdrawal is called a DNF: Did Not Finish.

Zoë created the DNF podcast to feature stories of athletes who gained insights from their DNF’s and used these insights as a guide to their life. In episode 13 – Zoë’s final episode – she features the cartoonist Alison Bechtel who uses running to overcome a drinking “habit”. 

This route also passes the Copper Mountain ski resort. I had skied there on a trip or two while in college.  One vacation began with a trip to the Cotton Bowl, a college football game that once held a large place in the hearts of all true Arkies. Arkansas was not playing in the Bowl, and I went there on an all-expenses paid trip by virtue of being the Arkansas representative on the Southwest Conference sportsmanship committee. Committee membership was a straight up boondoggle, which I was too naive to recognize, so I had taken it seriously, because that’s the kind of guy I was: I wouldn't recognize a boon if it doggled me in the face. One time I had driven the four hours to Little Rock to present a ham to the coach of the opposing team. An Arkansas Razorback is a hog, and ham comes from hogs. Why I thought that giving a ham was symbolically appropriate was a good idea baffles me (“you can eat the Hogs for lunch!”) But anyway. 

I took my girlfriend Danielle as my date to the Cotton Bowl festivities. The highlight was the ball on New Year’s Eve, the day before the game. Danielle and I got all dolled up for the dance. Well into the evening and into our cups, we were shaking it on the dance floor. This was towards the end of the disco period so, like John Travolta, I was wearing a three piece suit. (Unlike Travolta, I was wearing a tie. No open shirts for me!) Doing the white boy thing, I was waving my arms around while I danced. All of a sudden, I felt a weight on my sleeve, which I thought might be a raccoon, but was a long blond wig. I had danced too close to a woman sitting by the dance floor, and a button on my jacket had caught the wig and pulled it off her. There she was, in glittering gown, with her real hair up on a net. Her boyfriend/lover/husband, big as a linebacker, was giving me the stink eye. She just laughed as I untangled the hair and gallantly offered the wig back to her, and the b/l/h relaxed.

The 43rd Annual Cotton Bowl Classic was hard on hangovers. The stadium was barely half-full because Dallas had been hit with its worst ice storm in 30 years. At kickoff it was 22 degrees, with a wind-chill factor of -6. We didn’t have any vested interest in the game between the 9th ranked Houston Cougars and 10th ranked Notre Dame. By the end of the 3rd quarter, with Houston up 34 - 12, we decided to leave, so we headed to the bus that was going to take us to Copper Mountain. Oh, if I had only known. Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana led the Fighting Irish to a 35-34 victory, scoring the final points as the clock expired. It was one of the best bowl games of all time.

Weirdly, I don’t remember what happened next. I distinctly remember the parts leading up to the bus station, but I don’t remember much after that. I don’t remember Danielle riding the bus with me, but I do remember a scarf that I wore. I remember skiing at Copper Mountain, but I don’t remember if she skied with me. I know that humans, fortunately, forget much of what happened in their lives. Now, however, I can’t help but wonder how much I have forgotten because of my alcoholism. Heavy alcohol use is associated with both short term and long term memory loss. The saying “Last night I killed a few brain cells” is not quite correct: it’s actually brain nerves that you’ve killed. 

We know that humans do not remember everything that happened to them, and that many memories grow dim as we grow old. I know that. Still, whenever I have a hard time remembering anything, I can’t help but wonder….

Copper Mountain is where Kitt died. Two years later, I wanted to ski to the crash site, to pay my respects. I contacted the resort and they sent me a map with an X marks the spot. I met Chris in Fort Collins and we made the drive, arriving early afternoon. It was not a good day for skiing, cold and very blustery. We did a few practice runs to get our legs ready, and then rode the lift to the slope where Kitt made his final run. I was in anguish. Riding the lift up, I was imagining what Kitt must have been thinking, not knowing that a few minutes later he would be dead. Pausing at the top, I imagined him tightening his boots and adjusting his goggles. Sliding forward, I felt the lightness of skis and the weight of what was to come. 

When we arrived at the fatal tree we paused for a long time, in silence. There it was, a snow covered fir, snow piled high around its base. Did Kitt catch a tip and lose control? Had he not shifted his weight to make the turn? Did he feel pain? Was he aware that he was dying? If he had skied two feet in either direction he would have been safe. If he had missed this tree he would have been safe – it was the last one at the bottom of the wooded grove. I broke off a twig, which is now resting in the box that contains his ashes. Afterwards, we rode the lift up so that we could ski back to the base. We didn’t feel like doing any more runs that day.

At almost the same time that Kitt died, Colorado had another ski fatality. Scott Elligott, an Air Force Academy graduate, was skiing with his 20 year old daughter at Telluride. She saw him lose control and go over a ledge. It took some time for the ski patrol to find Scott, and they were unable to revive him. When I think of my own father, I really can’t imagine how hard this was for Scott’s daughter. I don’t think I would have been able to recover if I had seen Kitt crash.

I parked overnight across the street from the Indian Hot Springs Hotel. I could see happy and I hope properly soaked tourists inside. It was chilly outside, and Goldfinger quickly fogged over, creating a sort of low rent steam room.