Driving south along the Oregon coast is a journey through natural wonders that adorn calendars and offer spectacular vistas of a rugged coastline where waves crash and send fountains of sea spray into the cool, moist air.
Author Archives: Paul Andersen
Paul Andersen has lived in the valley for 40 years and was a reporter, editor and regular contributor to The Aspen Times. He has authored 15 books about the region. Before reporting on the series "In search of community," he last wrote for Aspen Journalism in 2014, penning stories on environment and history.
Posted inEnvironment
Cutting up the commons
As generous and readily available as local land grants were, the Roaring Fork Valley was small potatoes compared with enormous public land grants that mark vast Western landscapes today and could foreshadow a similar trend if the political powers that be in Washington take on the directives and intentions of the current Trump administration.
Posted inEnvironment
Common ground: Protecting our public lands
Citizen involvement amplified the call to protect national assets and save something for the future. A campaign to win hearts and minds for preserving the inspiring vistas was beginning to sensitize America to the natural treasures of which it had taken possession.
Posted inEnvironment
Becoming the White River National Forest
The story of the WRNF is therefore a weave of time and place, and of a people for whom the forest is both an economic lifeblood and a battleground for conservation and preservation.
Posted inEnvironment
A crisis of the commons
The idea of selling off lands held in public trust throughout the United States is grounds for national reflection on the significance of these very lands. Historically, the privatization of land across the continental United States has been, in large part, a protracted scandal of greed, corruption, exploitation and opportunism.
Posted inThe second coming of Albert Schweitzer
The ‘Aspen Idea’ becomes a lasting legacy
Most media describe Aspen as a monument to excess marked by an ambiance of opulence. Perhaps the Machiavellian triad is conspicuous in Aspen because the Platonic triad made it so appealing. Money, fame and power are drawn to Aspen because the good, the true and the beautiful are still here.
Posted inThe second coming of Albert Schweitzer
Aspen’s renaissance and the birth of the Aspen Institute
The history of Aspen is not complete without an understanding of how the Goethe Bicentennial of 1949 transformed this mountain town almost overnight and led to the founding of an organization of global repute and influence.
Posted inThe second coming of Albert Schweitzer
The Goethe Bicentennial and reverence for life
“I have great confidence in the incalculable forces of the spirit. The future depends on it. If these spiritual forces are brought into play, the world’s future will be improved. Behind materialism it is often possible to discover great spiritual forces at work. And behind spirituality an element of materialism also exists.”
Posted inThe second coming of Albert Schweitzer
Aspenites call for restoring humanistic values
A new and growing movement launched in September by a handful of community thought leaders is seeking to revive the foundational values of Aspen. They are reaching back 75 years to the lofty moral tone that Albert Schweitzer brought here when he honored another moralistic avatar: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Posted inIn search of community
Housing solutions are many and challenging
The housing issue has become a pressing concern throughout the region, where necessity becomes the mother of invention as seen in varied approaches striving to address a growing community crisis.