S’light Resort weighs options after rejection

by David Frey, Aspen Daily News Correspondent

GLENWOOD SPRINGS — Developers of the proposed base village at Sunlight Mountain Resort are considering their options after the Garfield County Planning and Zoning Commission rejected their plan for a commercial and residential development at the foot of the ski area.

“It’s in the developers’ hands,” Sunlight General Manager Tom Jankovsky said on Thursday. “They haven’t given us any indication one way or the other. We could appeal to the Board of County Commissioners. We could resubmit. Or we could pull the application.”

RFTA misses bus, raises fares, considers dogs

by Brent Gardner-Smith, Aspen Daily News Staff Writer

CARBONDALE — After voters approved a big tax increase for regional transit last week,
RFTA board members may have expected a warm and fuzzy meeting Thursday.

Crews recover pilot’s body from crash

Aspen Daily News Staff Report
Search crews Thursday recovered the body of a pilot killed when his single-engine plane crashed in the remote wilderness of the upper Fryingpan Valley.

Due to the terrain and weather conditions, Eagle County sheriff’s spokeswoman Shannon Cordingly said crews had been unable to reach the wreckage until Thursday.

Prickly pair picked up by the Aspen police

by Andrew Travers, Aspen Daily News Staff Writer
In two separate incidents this week, men were arrested in Aspen for allegedy turning berserk while on the booze.

Police arrested a transient man near the Hyman Avenue pedestrian mall fountain last weekend, after receiving a report that he was “yelling obscenities, threatening passers-by, and making comments about shooting people.”

Three arrested at Parachute pot field

Aspen Daily News Staff Report
Three men were arrested Tuesday for allegedly farming marijuana near Parachute, in the same location where a large growth site was found in September.

The bust, carried out by the Two Rivers Drug Enforcement Team (TRIDENT) and the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office, was announced yesterday afternoon.

Last day for early season pass discounts

Aspen Daily News Staff Report
Today is the last day to purchase Aspen Skiing Co. season passes while still enjoying early season rates.

Starting Saturday, the going rate for a Premier Pass, giving unrestricted access to all four mountains, jumps from $1,959 to $2,079. The Premier Chamber pass, available to locals working for Aspen Chamber Resort Association member businesses, goes up in price from $1,599 to $1,759. One and two day per week passes also will be going up in price, as will Highlands-Buttermilk passes. The 20-day college pass rate will remain unchanged at $599. Full season pass pricing information is available at www.aspensnowmass.com.

New travel limits proposed for White River forest

by Catherine Tsai
DENVER — Proposed U.S. Forest Service travel limits on hikers, bikers and ATVs in western Colorado’s White River National Forest would keep motorized vehicles off about 150 miles of dirt roads while formally adding 280 miles of routes created by users over the years.

The Forest Service released its proposal Thursday in a supplemental draft environmental impact statement for the 2.5 million-acre forest, home to some of the country’s top ski resorts. It incorporates public comments on a 2006 plan.

Editor's Pick: 'Under the Influence' of Snow

Aspen Daily News Staff Report
The lifts on Aspen Mountain and Snowmass Ski Area are set to start running in just under two weeks, so Aspen Youth Center has decided to throw a well-timed benefit featuring Teton Gravity Research flick "Under the Influence." This latest film is all about the people, places and moments that define riding

'Quantum of Solace' is Disappointing

by By Michael Phillips, AP Movie Critic
Chilly-eyed, bullet-shaped Daniel Craig is the right man for the James Bond franchise, and his second outing confirms it. At their wussiest, Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan seemed determined to fulfill creator Ian Fleming's fleeting, facetious description of 007 from the novel "Casino Royale" as "an expensive gigolo." Craig is nobody's trick, although one of the many virtues (at least for straight women and gay men) of the hugely entertaining 2006 film version of "Casino Royale" was the shot of Craig rising out of the ocean looking like the best kind of trouble. Suddenly Craig was the new Ursula Andress, at least for a few seconds. Yet "Casino Royale" brought Bond back to basics, providing a satisfying origin myth, keeping the action human-scaled and the gadgetry to a minimum while retooling Britain's killer diller for a nervous new century of spy-versus-spying.

Compared with "Casino Royale," "Quantum of Solace" is a disappointment. Craig anchors it, and Judi Dench's M enjoys some fine, stern scenes, but director Marc Forster ("Finding Neverland," "Monster's Ball," "The Kite Runner") isn't much of an action man. There's plenty, but half the time it's visually incoherent. A minute past the (drab) opening credits, a superhumanly implacable Craig is careening through a snaky Italian tunnel, pursued by enemy agents with vehicular or machine-gun homicide on their minds. Simple premise. Oldie but goodie. Yet the way it's shot and cut, it plays like a parody of a car commercial shot in the style of a Bond film.

Passion Behind Performance

by Christine Benedetti, Time Out Staff Writer

Big-name talent often rains on the valley during its busy summers and winters, but fall is a time for local stars to shine. With a lull in the usual commotion, it's a chance for thespians - from those that are taking their first crack at it to others with Broadway experience - to devote their extra energy and time to community theater.

The repertoire is impressive, and often the shows are too.

The Seasonal Gourmet

Aspen Daily News Staff Report, Time Out Staff Writer
I got to serve lunch to some of our Paonia and Hotchkiss farmers yesterday. These particular growers belong to a group called VOGA (Valley Organic Growers Association at vogaco.org). They were having a meeting about how to make farming more viable for them as a group. Of course I strongly support them, because I never want to lose them as growers in my community. Each year, many of them are forced back into the labor pool with the rest of us trying to make a common living, because their farming jobs don't make enough income to live year-round. It is a catch-22 for them, because during the winter when they should be resting, repairing equipment, working on fences and irrigation lines, ordering seed and making property improvements, they run out of money. It is a rare employer who can offer a position knowingly to someone who has to have nine months off each year to actively grow food.

So, on that note, I make even a more conscientious effort to find and use local food whenever possible. Not only is it more nutritious to eat fresh food grown nearby, it also helps the farmers and the planet and take it from me, it tastes better! Our organic farmers are more in demand now then ever before and most of them have taken the huge risks of investing more money into farming. They are plowing up more fields, hiring more workers, taking on more farmers' markets and putting up green houses to lengthen the growing season in the spring and fall. What this means is they will be able to feed us better.They are the new American farmer and you, my readers, must commit with them and become the new American consumers.

The Capacity to Enjoy

Aspen Daily News Staff Report, Time Out Staff Writer
The ability to taste wine involves many factors. On the surface, one simply looks, swirls, sniffs and sips. But underneath the mechanics of this ritual lie processes and factors so vast that lifetimes worth of research have been devoted, yet still have not produced complete theoretical explanations for how and why we we taste what we taste. The perception and comprehension of what we see, smell, feel and taste is only the tip of the sensory iceberg. Deeper emotional development and wiring from early childhood may well be the foundation of how and what we ultimately perceive via the senses.

We smell with our noses. It is one of the most ancient and primal of the senses and one of the most evolved. Olfaction is the apprehension of odor particles of specific shapes that line up to nerve endings called odor receptors. Olfactory receptor neurons transmit axoms to the olfactory bulb in the brain, then mitral cells travel along the lateral olfactory tract to five major regions of the brain. Through highly complex processing, we perceive odor. Scientists have logged as many as 17,000 different types of smells. When your nose is at its best, it can detect 4,000 smells. Really sharp ones attached to active brains can do 10,000. Children are said to have a better sense of smell than their parents. The almond-sized amygdala inside of the brain is known to combine memory with emotional responses to odor. We smell 75 percent of what we sense. We remember with our noses. 

'The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It'

From the By Rebecca Santana, Associated Press Writer
Mazzeo's book details the life of Barbe-Nicole Clicquot, who took control of her late husband's wine business and turned it into a worldwide empire known for its orange-labeled bottles of champagne called Veuve Clicquot, French for the Widow Clicquot.

Mazzeo writes that her interest in Clicquot began during one Midwestern winter when she was drowning her sorrows over a career that was going nowhere. In the aisles of a discount warehouse store she found a small card slipped in a box of Veuve Clicquot describing the story of the woman who made the champagne a worldwide phenomenon, and Mazzeo eventually became obsessed with discovering her story.

'Dewey, The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched The World'

Aspen Daily News Staff Report
This book combines two things that seem to go together quite naturally:cats and books. This is a relationship that we understand quite well here since we operate under the benevolent dictatorship of Kashmir, a 20-pound regal Russian Blue - a cat who runs a very tight bookstore, and yet, is remarkably forgiving of our human frailties

This is the life of Dewey Readmore Books. The story begins when the author, Vicki Myron, director of the Spencer Public Library, hears scrabbling in the book-returns slot and finds a shivering and bedraggled little orange fur ball that someone had dropped off the night before. No stranger to the challenges of life herself, including an alcoholic husband and the frightening experience of breast cancer, Myron takes in the young Dewey. Thus begins the inspiring relationship between a cat and a town that would last for 19 years. "Dewey" is a story of love and affection that would eventually bring global attention to this small Midwestern town and enrich the lives of those who lived there.

‘Improving’ the goodness out of a good thing

by Connie Harvey
Someone left a package of Mrs. Field’s cookies at my house last week. I remember buying Mrs. Field’s cookies in New York City an eon or two ago, and they were truly wonderful, but the individually packaged eponymous cookies left here bore no resemblance whatever to their delicious forebears. I didn’t like them much at all, and the list of ingredients sounded more like a chemical experiment than anything the original Mrs. Field could have made from ingredients bought at a grocery store.

Something similar has happened to most commercially available foods sold for both human and pet consumption. An extreme case is, of course, the addition of melamine to milk powder sold in China, and also exported to the U.S. and other countries. A Canadian wholesaler added it to many brands of dog food sold here, including some big name brands, but it was never listed on the label. Melamine, an industrial product that is poisonous to ingest, killed and sickened many babies in China and dogs in the U.S.

Obama should apologize to accused terrorists

by Ted Rall
The accused terrorist appeared before the military tribunal, charged with conspiracy in a plot against national security. Because state secrets were involved and because harsh interrogation techniques were used to extract information, the defendant was deprived of a look at the evidence. Also denied were the defendant’s traditional right to a lawyer, to face accusers, even to see the judges — they wore hoods.

No, this wasn’t at Gitmo. This “court” met in the military dictatorship of Peru. And the defendant wasn’t an Afghan or Arab turned over to U.S. troops by a warlord out for the $10,000 bounty. She was Lori Berenson, a 31-year-old American citizen accused of aiding the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, members of whom she befriended.

LOL on Plum article

by Andrew M. Israel
Editor:

The item on the Aspen Daily News front page Thursday entitled “Plum lays off 10 nationwide” caught my eye.

It’s a sad day

by Frieda Wallison
Editor:

I want to take this opportunity to protest the article published this week in your paper under the headline “City Hall critic late on tax bills.”

Buddies are on Cloud Nine

by Lindsay Lofaro
Editor:

The Buddy Program staff is on Cloud Nine after our annual celebration dinner, held on Nov. 6, at the St. Regis hotel. Over 200 Big and Little Buddies and their families attended to feast, dance and say thank you to the amazing volunteers, board members and National Council members who make our organization so incredible!

Concerning pro-lifers

by Vanessa Corona
Editor:

While I do not agree with yesterday’s letter to the editor titled “Disappointed in Colorado,” I have to say that I appreciate different opinions and value people who respect the same.