The West is an exploiter’s paradise

High on a mesa where everyone can see it, a trophy house is going up in the northern Colorado valley where I live. Some of my neighbors hear that the house will be as big as 15,000 square feet. Others say it will take three years to complete. Whether that is valley gossip or truth, the house is now the center of everybody’s attention.

Until this happened, my valley seemed to o er much of the best of what Colorado has to o er, including views of a snow-capped mountain range, and spread out below, irrigated hay elds with black cows on tan rangeland. But now, right in the center of the valley, will be one person acting out a lack of consideration for others.

Gigantic trophy houses seem to signal, “I built here to see, but also to be seen.” It’s a jarring reminder that we in the New West are remaking the Old West in our own image, a job that apparently requires a drastic redoing of topography.

ese big homes seem to follow a pattern of complicated roo ines, lots of windows that re ect the light and “ego gates” at the beginning of

Letter To The Editor

Dangerous legislation

With House Bill HB23-1003, Colorado lawmakers are considering allowing schools to join a Mental Health Assessment program, administered by the Department of Public Health and Environment, and aimed at 6th through 12th grade students.

Interested schools would have to notify parents and establish a two week period to allow dissenting parents to opt their child out of the program, children 12 years or older could then nullify their parent’s opt out decision.

Suppose the program discovers a child who su ers from what the program de nes as a “mental Illness”

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Writers On The Range

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