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Upward of a million words of mine have appeared in various prints, but never even on acid-free paper, let alone for preservation in a sealed vault to be examined by future generations.
So I was excited to read recently that there will be a time capsule at Denver International Airport. Further reading dampened my ardor somewhat; from what I could gather, it will contain poetry, which has never been one of my strong points.
You can see for yourself. After a lengthy struggle, I produced a rhyming haiku quatrain, a poetic form so rare that it does not appear in any of my reference works:
[START ITALICS]
Hey!
The ETA for DIA
Is 15 May
Or so they say
[END ITALICS]
The resident critics pointed out that such doggerel
wouldn't even qualify as a commercial jingle on late-night
TV ad for a psychiatric clinic. They gently encouraged me
to study the works of a master, such as Kubla Khan
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
[START ITALICS]
In Kansas West did Mayor Fed
A giant aerodrome decree
Where Silverado had some land
On prairies measureless to man
Offered for a handsome fee
So miles and miles of arid ground
With gate and fence were girdled round
A tented terminal, bright and airy
Blossomed on the barren prairie
But in its bowels a baggage train
Could not learn to tip its cars
As specified by coded bars
And Continental did not gain
In fact it cut its Denver service
The bondholders became real nervous
But 'mid this tumult prophesying gloom
For DIA, Webb heard a voice, predicting boom
Once it was open and wings were flappin'
But none could say when that would happen
[END ITALICS]
[ADDED MATTER]
That seemed promising, but some suggested that I look to
my own culture, rather than Romantic England, for a model.
So I adopted the pen name of Kwylan and composed Like a
DIA
:
[START ITALICS]
Once upon a time, you were comin' on line
Threw the voters a line, back in '89
Didn't you?
Critics call, saying it was all
Too much for fall, you thought they were all
A kiddin' you
How does it feel?
To be late each day
Like a long delay
Like a DIA
[END ITALICS]
[END ADDED MATTER]
Given those efforts, it's doubtless for the best that I return to other work, such as continuing to try to get a handle on urban-rural relationships in the Mountain West. I'm beginning to see DIA as a unifying factor, but not for any of the obvious reasons.
On its own, DIA won't improve rural access to Denver or Denver's access to its hinterland. In fact, the opposite will occur. After DIA opens, it will be more difficult and expensive to get from Farmington, Grand Junction or Casper to downtown Denver, or the other way, than it is now.
However, Denver borrowed heavily to build DIA, Coors stadium, an expanded library, etc. To make the payments, the urban area will have to generate more revenue, which means attracting more business.
As Phil Burgess of the Center for the New West has
pointed out, the days of metropolitan monogamy are
over
because rural residents can pick their cities. No
matter where you are physically, you can do business via
phone and fax with New York, follow the Chicago Cubs on
cable TV, and bank in Minneapolis.
This means Denver can't take its old hinterland for granted. It will have to compete with Salt Lake City for the connecting-flight business of someone flying out of Grand Junction, and with Albuquerque to be the provider of specialized urban services (zoos, medical care) for southern Colorado and northern New Mexico.
Thus Denver, with big bills to pay, must market itself. It's already started. This weekend, about 5,000 Colorado mayors, along with municipal and county officials and their guests, will visit Denver to tour DIA and watch a Cubs game, courtesy of the city.
According to Mike Dino, an aide to Wellington Webb,
there's a reason for this hospitality. Hopefully people
will go back to their communities and say something nice
about Denver.
Such hospitality and concern for civic image is a novelty; usually, the city gives visitors parking tickets, not Rockies tickets.
But it's a start, and if the effort continues, then the marketing of Denver to the Mountain West, occasioned by the need to make bond payments, may inadvertently pull our region together. It's about time that the Law of Unintended Consequences produced a beneficial result.
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