SoapBox

Snooze on first chair

Parking at Purgatory Resort is only bad during peak times. Those tend to be holidays, weekend mornings, powder days and the trifecta – when all three happen on the same day. This might be more of an issue of everyone showing up at the same time than singles in one car.

My guess is that most singles are season pass holders who tend to avoid Purg during peak hours (but are inevitably the culprits on powder days).

It makes me wonder how much of an impact the lack of a half-day ski pass has on parking. If you spend $140 on a day pass, you’re showing up at 9 a.m. even if you only end up skiing for a few hours.

Maybe the answer to the problem is figuring out how to incentivize showing up later.

– Alicia Hill, Hesperus

Stay sane

A recent article by Stacy Schiff in Smithsonian (October 2022) focused on one of our founding fathers, Samuel Adams. Schiff described him as “Deeply idealistic – a moral people, Adams held, would elect moral leaders – he believed virtue the soul of democracy. To have a villainous ruler imposed on you was a misfortune. To elect him yourself was a disgrace.”

As we open the new year and a new Congress begins, I can’t help but wonder what Adams would think of the current state of one of the major political parties in the U.S. and its control of the House of Representatives.

The 118th House of Representatives recently convened with the Republican Party holding a slim majority, which enables them to set the legislative agenda and make committee assignments, as well as determine the chair and makeup of each committee.

Included in this majority are some of the most outrageous members imaginable. QAnon supporters, climate change skeptics, election deniers, believers in space lasers and Italian satellites “rigging” our elections, school shooting-victim harassers, pathological liars and gun- toting bombasts.

We can be thankful that the Senate and the presidency are in the proven, capable hands of Democrats, and they will serve as the necessary check on the outrageous use of power by the House. As the disgrace foretold by Adams, the “villainous rulers” elected to lead our House of Representatives goes about its business, we can be thankful for a sane and moral Senate and presidency.

– Gene Orr, Hesperus