Roger Kahn, whose past spans such diverse experiences as research sociologist, community organizer and university professor, is now a small business owner and author. After being connected to Crested Butte for 50 years and spending 10 years writing about it, Kahn this year published, How Crested Butte Became a Tourist Town: Drugs, Sex, Sports, Arts and Social Conflict.
Kahn, a resident of Park Hill, writes, “I think of it as a detailed, fun-filled, social history of a typical, modern tourist town and recreation community, or what I call a ‘recreation exurb.’…I watched it evolve from the remnants of a tiny mining town with a working class population of 250 people with a hard work ethic to a population of several thousand residents who have a hard play ethic.”
The long-time editor of the Crested Butte News, Mark Reaman, offers this review of the book: “Kahn writes a love story to the small town…when old miners, young ski bums, wandering hippies, and anonymous outlaws all convened in a idyllic high mountain nirvana that included cheap dope, copious sex and free roaming dogs. … But that nirvana came with a clash of cultures. … He delves into the politics of growth and gentrification and … explains how these communities … continue to attract interesting, creative people looking for an alternative lifestyle.”
The executive director of the Crested Butte Mountain Heritage Museum, Shelley Popke, writes: “Drawing on extensive interviews, archival research and personal experiences, Kahn vividly describes the social forces that defined the 1960s and 70s in Crested Butte. …. an engaging read about a wild time in a wild place.”
The book is available in hard cover, paperback, or e-book on Kahn’s website: rmkahn-cbauthor.com or on Amazon.
Zoe Argento is a mother, lawyer and writer whose young family has been living as if they were vulnerable 70-somethings in order to keep grandparents safe while staying in touch with them. Her experience with life during the pandemic led her to write a children’s book, Isolation Island: A Pandemic Story, to help families handle loneliness and social isolation.
In Argento’s words: Our kids played with each other and made up increasingly creative projects. But all was not well. At least once an hour, screaming arguments erupted among some combination of the kids. (I’ll admit, my husband and I, struggling to manage childcare along with two demanding jobs, did not always keep our cool with these disputes.) My daughter complained regularly of stomach aches that the pediatrician finally attributed to anxiety. At a loss, I tried something new.
“Once upon a time,” I began, “there was a girl who lived in a house just like ours. One day she heard a cracking sound. She ran to the window and saw her street cracking apart. The ocean had rushed in and now each house was separating into its own island …”
Like most parents, I had discovered that stories work wonders at soothing, entertaining and explaining the world to children. Over the months, I came up with a stream of bedtime stories in which each family lived in a separate submarine or everyone was stuck in bubbles. Telling stories is one thing we can do to help our kids make some sense of it all and deal with emotions they do not yet have the ability to name.
Argento, a Central Park resident, is donating all royalties from Amazon sales of her book to America’s largest hunger-relief organization, Feeding America, which reports that 1 in 4 American children does not regularly get enough to eat. She can be found on Instagram at @ZoeArgentoLives and on Twitter at @ZoeArgento. The illustrations are based on the North Park Hill neighborhood.
Kathryn Haber is an organizational psychologist and executive coach who wrote a self-help book based on her experience of losing her mom, dad and brother to pancreatic cancer, her sister to breast cancer, and her own experience of getting a lymphoma diagnosis at a time when she had 3 babies under 3 years of age. The book also includes stories about the experiences of her clients. “As a psychologist,” she writes, “the impetus for writing the book has always been about sharing what I learned through my loss and challenges to help others with their own challenges—life can be hard and we need each other to get through!”
To help make it through these losses and other life challenges, Haber, a Central Park resident, explored spirituality, researched the greatest minds, and concluded that there are Five Choices that can help us live a peaceful and fulfilled life:
- Faith: Believe in something beyond yourself.
- Love: Choosing money, power, prestige over love, turns us away from each other rather than towards one another.
- Prayer: Spend time each day centering yourself with the divine of yours.
- Divine Intervention: Seeing our experiences as the universe speaking to us helps us know we are where we are meant to be, and there are lessons to learn in our spiritual journeys.
- Vulnerability: When we share our life challenges and stories, we are helping others and ourselves.
Haber illuminates these Five Choices through personal and professional vignettes in her book.
Her story addresses what it means to be human and how we often operate from a position of fear. We find ourselves in “protect” mode, falling prey to our egocentric behaviors rather than thinking beyond ourselves, considering the whole environment, our community, what’s in the best interest of others.
Fear Less, Love More can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Nobel and www.kathrynhaber.com.
Another great edition of FrontPorch. Especially enjoyed the Colorado new book listing — ordered all three! Thank you for interesting, informative journalism.