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Those social critics who complain that Americans are
bowling alone
and cocooned in their wired domiciles,
never interacting in person -- well, sometimes I wish they
were right, so that life could be less hectic.
When I moved here 20 years ago, Salida had but one summer festival -- FIBArk, an acronym for First In Boating on the ARKansas, which occurred on the third weekend in June. It started in 1949 as a boat race to Cañon City, quickly became a sanctioned kayak and canoe competition, and now includes a parade, carnival, sidewalk sale, concerts in the park and the like.
Every town should have an annual party, and we just managed that one last weekend, with a full house if the lines at restaurants and the paucity of parking were any indication.
But no town stops at one now. We have the Artwalk this weekend, when local painters, jewelers, weavers, photographers and sculptors show their stuff. Then comes Independence Day, which offers not only fireworks but the Colorado Brewers Rendezvous combined with the Big Water Beer Festival -- perhaps in the spirit of Samuel Adams, the brewer and propagandist who helped foment the American Revolution.
This year, I figure that if I can't beat 'em, I'll join 'em. Please avert your eyes now if shameless self-promotion bothers you.
On this Saturday evening when Salida's real artists are in their studios and galleries and talking about their creations, I will be perched at First Street Books here, pen in hand for signing copies, hoping to sell a lot of books.
The book is a collection of about 100 columns published
in the Post during the past dozen years, and it's called
Deep in the Heart of the Rockies.
Vanity and ego had for some years inspired me to seek a publisher for such an anthology, but none of the regional publishers I approached -- Johnson, Pruett, University Press, Roberts-Rinehart -- displayed much interest.
There was the option of self-publishing, but that's a lot of work, and it's also a bigger ego trip than even I was willing to embark upon.
So I set the book notion aside until last summer, when
Bob Thomason of Music Mountain Press in Westcliffe was in
town to promote his first publishing effort, a collection
of photos and essays called Sangre de Cristo Wilderness:
A Territory of the Heart.
Bob's a major-league photographer with a Time cover to his credit, but like many of us in little mountain towns, survival demanded that he become a jack of many trades -- now even politics as he serves on the Westcliffe town board.
We retired to Il Vicino, Salida's brew-pub, where I
asked Bob about his next publishing venture. I'd like
to do a book of straight text,
he said.
Do I have a deal for you,
I proposed. How
about a collection of my columns?
Under the influence of the third pitcher of Wet Mountain India Pale Ale, Bob nodded enthusiastically, and even remembered it a few weeks later.
The book needed an introduction by someone famous and
literate, and former Gov. Richard Lamm graciously agreed,
observing that he was flattered
that we had asked
an old has-been.
We also needed two editors, one to
select and organize, and the other to refine the text.
Mary Jean Porter of Pueblo, who wrote the Sangre book, took the 150 or so columns I selected (out of about 1100), winnowed them to fit into an affordable book, and organized them.
Ray Dangel of Englewood, who retired as one of the Post's editorial-page copy editors several years ago, always did a superb job of making my prose fit to print, and he got back in harness for this project. Just after reading the final proofs this spring, he suffered a major heart attack, but he's now up and about, spouting bad puns.
I'd like to say this is a wonderful book and you should rush right out and buy one, but in truth, I haven't seen it yet. The books are supposed to arrive tomorrow. The printer has offered solemn assurances that we'll have books for me to sign Saturday night in Salida, and soon afterward there will be books for the other independent small-town bookstores in the mountains and for Chinook in Colorado Springs and the Tattered Cover in Denver.
Ah, printers. They're the reason we celebrate Independence Day on July 4 instead of July 2 -- the Continental Congress was all set to adopt the Declaration on July 2, 1776, but it didn't arrive from the printer until two days later.
But for some reason, the printing industry has never
taken credit for establishing our nation's birthday, and
since then, Americans in small towns seem have developed
celebrations on dates just as arbitrary -- call it the
pursuit of happiness.
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