Oct. 26, 2002 - 23:00 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Catch Up

We were so busy trying to keep up with life today that we didn't get a chance to read the paper until late tonight. Almost passed by the article telling about Travels With Harry. Harry lived here for some time and came to love the area and the folks who shaped his life.

I sat with my head practically crammed into the TV. I think every word was heard by me. What a wonderful program it was too.

Colorado scenery, scenes from Denver. A long section on Gene Amole, some of it showing Gene much older than he was a few years ago when I talked with him on a street corner at the Cherry Creek Art Festival. He aged rapidly than the years passed as his health began to fail. What a man he was, still is in my heart. It seems that Gene was more or less a mentor of Harry Smith.

The Tattered Cover, my home away from home here in Denver is featured. I remember shopping at the Tattered Cover in its original store at 2823 E. 2nd Avenue, it was as unique then as it is now, because Joyce Meskis, the owner's philosophy hasn't changed a bit. Her employees had to love books and like people, which has never changed. And from personal training I received as a newbie one Christmas season, a clerk had to be the soul of discretion and utter diplomacy. A trusting lady with faith in the goodness of humans. Even over on 2nd Avenue a person could write a check to pay for a book and not have to show a drivers license or credit card or the dreaded, "Two forms of ID," One could pick up a book and ask to have the bill sent to one's residence, a book could be ordered by phone to be mailed to one's residence along with the bill. A champion of First Amendment rights who successfully kept the right to keep her sales records and customer lists private. There for quite some time many of us bought our books, cash over the counter. Were we paranoid ? Jeepers, if I wanted to read Karl Marx, a book or two on civil disobedience and my name showed up on a customer list as having bought that book as well as a few other books that show the independent spirit of us Americans I got a bit paranoid that maybe I would be picked up as a suspect for who knows what ? Much as many of us are now feeling during the Homeland Security fiasco wherein many of our civil liberties are threatened. At least that is how I think things stand.

Some outstanding footage of our Colorado mountains was also shown as well as our eastern prairie where farmers grow things we eat.

Sort of points up the fact that we have in our state elements of every type of terrain and most every type of climate. The plains where things are grown and cattle are raised, our mountains green and lush (pre drought) which many normally hold snow through the heat of summer, the snow melt supplying water to the low land cities until the next snowfall replenishes. And then just slightly west of Grand Junction the Western Slope as it is called shows up as if blasted by a blow torch. Eastern side green and Western side of the mountains and hills parched. In the southern part of the state is an area called the Wet Mountains where there is usually more water than anywhere else in the state I think. The growth there resembles something seen in a semi-tropical land.

Too late I fear did my entry go up and notify go out for folks to tune to A&E. What a grand hour it was. Too bad that through the day Heather and I had to play Catch Up . . . . . . . . . . .

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