Aspen. Just the name conjures for many the image of private jets overreaching runways and furry skins that are not on the backs of their original owners. But right out there with the enormous wealth, and still-impressive beauty is an astonishing array of cultural and intellectual pursuits that serve as perfect foil to the conspicuous consumption (more houses, more shopping malls) and formerly one-street down valley neighborhoods accommodating the urban-style sprawl. Everyone knows that the mountain resorts are serviced by people who can't afford to live in them; this makes their problems akin to those of much bigger cities. But by channeling the very finest minds and talents, the Aspen Institute, The Rocky Mountain Institute and the Aspen Music Festival are managing to hang on to the spirit of the founders and let you forget the more local problems while allowing you to muse more globally.
Walter Paepcke may have morphed into Walter Isaacson, and Herbert Bayer into McMansion, but the thrill of the cultivation of the mind is still rarely celebrated so nakedly. Where else, in the space of six hours could you hear John Edwards and Bill Clinton speak (though both a tad too wheels down -- wheels up for my liking), take a creekside hike up a mountain or go fishing, and finish up by listening to Madame Butterfly?
Some might say that's just a lot of rich white people making themselves feel connected without having to really get their hands dirty, and there is that. John Edwards, touching down briefly for a speech on "Fairness and Responsibility" danced around this point in front of the tie-free crowd (Edwards, after noticing the laid back look of the group took his off at the outset). When one questioner stood up to point out that Edward's definition of the middle class was unrealistic (dwellings for $250,000 -- the Edwards point of departure, did not necessarily hold up in places like Aspen, she said, where starter homes are easily upwards of one million), I wasn't sure that people were really taking in what Edwards speech was really about. This was the first time I had heard Edwards speak; my son the Greenie had attended a college forum earlier this year and come away less than impressed with his duck-the-issues responses. But despite my differences with a number of his stands on the issues (gay marriage for one) I found Edwards hard-working (Elizabeth -- whom he said was symptom-free -- and his daughters, were in Italy) and extremely well-versed on issue, eager to offer specific proposals on health care and education and how to fund them (cap gains cuts, rollback of corporate tax relief, carbon caps) even if it seemed like the pot of money gained couldn't necessarily accommodate all those competing visions. He didn't talk about the war or the environment (until pressed) or how deeply these issues are affecting the economy but I believe this was because he had been given a limited amount of time and a specific brief.
Despite the lapses, he touched on something basic that has been keeping me up nights in this era of finger-pointing and complaint: the issue of personal responsibility. Even for people who think of themselves as liberal, there is self-delusion about how much we are modeling the right way for our children. How can we expect them to be engaged when we aren't? We're all worried about our kids and our pocketbooks, so very OIMBY (Only in My Backyard). Change, said Edwards, does not start in the Oval Office. The great movements of social change in the sixties -- Civil Rights, Anti-War, Feminism -- did not begin because the President willed them into being. They began because people, especially young people, were stimulated by events, by each other, and by committed citizens, to make a difference.
I looked around the overflowing crowd in the room: most were graying second-home owners or visitors, average age surely upwards of sixty. In other words, people who weren't necessarily role-modeling for their children anymore despite their good intentions. But you, readers of the Huffington Post, are. And I would like to make this proposal to you: can you find a way in your busy lives, one way to make a difference next year, not just by giving money, if you have it to give, but by personal, visible action?
Unlike Mia Farrow, whose recent work awes me, most of us can't afford the time or money to fly over to the Sudan to help. But there are so many ways to help the crisis in our own communities, the widening gulf between rich and poor which is not being addressed by the administration and couldn't possibly be micromanaged by anybody as well as you!
Find a social service organization in your own community that does something you care about. Mentor a child. Tutor a student. Plant a garden. Help source alternative energy for your child's school or better yet, for somebody else's. The most important thing: make it personal. Bring the advantages of your own, overstimulated, overscheduled children into the life of one who has none. Go to the local public school, or an inner city library and walk in the door and ask what you can do. Help edit a college essay, or take a student who has no other egress out into the world. Volunteer to be a child advocate in the courts, or help fund an inner city sports league or team and then go to the games. Go to the Boys and Girls Club or its equivalent and go IN and speak to the counselors and find out what they need. Get in touch with your local vets organization (ye whose children do not serve) and invite one to your home for dinner to hear about the war first hand.
One day you'll be able to kick back in Aspen while they pick your brain for nuggets of wisdom at the Institutes (this year: profitable business led climate solutions, nuclear weapons, women and Islam, Shakespeare etc.) You'll be able to duck the bears at the gloriously refurbished and newly-gallerized Aspen Meadows (this year, because of the drought, they are down in town sharing the splendor with everyone else; we saw two: a baby at our neighbor's rummaging in a left-out room service tray; one casually making his way across a path behind the music tent moments before Madame Butterfly did herself in after being abandoned by Pinkerton).
In the meantime, let's sit up and take John Edward's words to heart whether we decide he should be the next president or not. Instead of retreating and worrying about our own stuff (school admissions, mommy wars, corporate advancement) let's re-kindle the ardor we once had in our own children so we can save them so that they can eventually save us.
Believe me, it will take you higher than any peak in the Rockies. You know the old saying: what goes around comes around -- even if it's hurrying to keep up with the wheels of a G2.