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Old 08-08-2008, 11:51 PM
 
Location: Unlike most on CD, I'm not afraid to give my location: Milwaukee, WI.
1,766 posts, read 4,119,342 times
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Lookls like the original poster got scared off and never posted again. Maybe he couldn't handle the truth which came out in many of these posts.
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Old 08-09-2008, 08:51 AM
 
Location: Wherabouts Unknown!
7,841 posts, read 18,925,448 times
Reputation: 9579
Hey if I had a dime for everytime I posted in a thread where the OP never responds, I could retire tomorrow. Good thing I do this just for fun, or I'd get pretty frustrated.
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Old 09-30-2008, 02:13 AM
 
175 posts, read 438,030 times
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I know both sides regarding towns like Telluride and other smaller town ski resorts.

They can be fun and you get to ski and you get the beauty and you get to be in smaller area. However, if cold winters, short summers, a lack of variety of quality young people probably through the 30's, lack of normal shopping, very touristy, doesn't bother you. Then you'll be fine.

As moving to a small town ski resort area in northern new mexico, I liked it. But I'm moving to a bigger city so I can meet a variety of people and have more opportunities.

It seems the best way to enjoy these small towns ski areas is to live part time or vacation. I would really give it a think about before you go right into full blown full time.
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Old 10-02-2008, 02:26 PM
 
Location: Northern Illinois
165 posts, read 435,743 times
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I have not lived in Telluride, the closest I can say is that I lived in Aspen. Beautiful place, nice people. That can be said for most of my experiences in all of Colorado. Even Fort Collins had some nice people though I cannot stand the town.
I find it fascinating that the town itself gets all the blame for how a child raised there would come up. That is ridiculous and a cop-out. I am 29 and I personally have no kids. Thank god. So no, I cannot claim to have raised any. And I am certain I will be branded by quasi-politico scared backwoods hacks on here as some sort of yuppy-liberal, which couldn't be farther from the truth. The city I am from, Colorado Springs-sized, in northern Illinois has a lot of variety of people and some socio-ecnonomic diversity, though it is a largely blue collar manufacturing-based city. I have met people there that are some of the best people I have met in my life. I have met people there that are the worst I have ever known. Similiar backgrounds, coming from the same town, different results. You can't just blame the town. It is so much more than that.
Also, as a bit of a rant, I am so tired of people using work or hard work as a justification for everything in their lives. I am sorry, working hard, first of all, is relative. What is hard to you may not be hard to someone else. Even moving rocks. Secondly, and most important, working doesn't make you a good person. I will never understand the mentality that oh, that person works real hard so they must be good and humble and blah blah blah. It is total BS. So a hardworking person has a free pass to be obnoxious, close minded and full of hate because they work? Not to mention an instant-expert on all things work-related? Wrong. That's like saying all Christians are good people. Or even some Christians are good people. There is no way there is any actual truth to that statement. Personally I prefer to look at it as some good people happen to be Christians.
I have set my life to live it how I see fit and for what's most satisfying to me. I do not kill myself working everyday. I hopefully never will. I also hopefully will never define myself by my job, that to me sounds like a living hell. I like to find balance. That is just me though, it works for me, though others may never understand it. So you work 80 hours a week at a mill to pay your bills? So what? That makes you better than someone that skis all day, doing what they have to do to pay their bills? The answer is no, no it does not and it never will. If you're doing anything, skiing, welding, flying, some people make sandcastles for a living, if you're doing it to pay the bills, it's your job. How a person can hate on someone else for simply having differing views and life values just absolutely blows me away. You want to snowboard every day for the rest of your life? Sounds boring to me, but by all means go ahead. You want to farm every day for the rest of your life? That sounds even more boring to me, but more power to you.

Phew. Anyway, good luck with the family and with your restaurant. I hope it is successful.
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Old 10-02-2008, 02:33 PM
 
Location: Wherabouts Unknown!
7,841 posts, read 18,925,448 times
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BlueSimple wrote:
Also, as a bit of a rant, I am so tired of people using work or hard work as a justification for everything in their lives. I am sorry, working hard, first of all, is relative. What is hard to you may not be hard to someone else.
I agree with your assessment, and I would add this. Many of those who place hard work on a pedestal are people who refuse to exercise their intelligence to find an easier way to support their chosen lifestyle. Rather than admit to their intellectual laziness, they portray hard work as a virtue because that is the only way that works for them.
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Old 10-02-2008, 02:48 PM
 
Location: Northern Illinois
165 posts, read 435,743 times
Reputation: 113
It did turn into a bit of a rant to which I do apologize. I find it interesting that there are people that are at least partially in agreement with me.
I would say that the ability to handle stress, which can include work, in a non-destructive manner, is a virtue. The ability to simply to work, well draft horses do that also.
I can enjoy hard work. A day of labor actually doing something productive can lead to a certain sense of satisfaction the same way an author might be satisfied by writing a particularly good chapter. My stance is that I don't see a fundamental difference with those two scenarios. Work in general can help teach good things, but it can help teach just as bad things because it is invariably in an evironment where people will interact with each other and that's what happens when people interact.
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Old 10-02-2008, 08:15 PM
 
8,317 posts, read 29,357,988 times
Reputation: 9305
Quote:
Originally Posted by NewAgeRedneck View Post
BlueSimple wrote:
Also, as a bit of a rant, I am so tired of people using work or hard work as a justification for everything in their lives. I am sorry, working hard, first of all, is relative. What is hard to you may not be hard to someone else.
I agree with your assessment, and I would add this. Many of those who place hard work on a pedestal are people who refuse to exercise their intelligence to find an easier way to support their chosen lifestyle. Rather than admit to their intellectual laziness, they portray hard work as a virtue because that is the only way that works for them.
What people get sick of is lazy-***es who rely on others to support them. When you see ski bums picking up welfare checks and food stamps, it tends to upset people who work, pay their bills, and don't mooch off of other people. If someone chooses to forgo income and career opportunities to do something they want, that is their business--so long as they don't expect the rest of us to partially or fully support them.

Today, I walked past the local social services offices. What did I see? A young couple, both able-bodied, happily talking about getting their welfare benefits approved. They got into a brand new $45,000 pickup and drove away. There is way too much of that going on in this state, and all across this nation.

I also don't have any respect for the trust-funders who have never done an honest day's work in their lives who plop their sorry ***es down in Colorado resort towns to goof off on their rich relatives' nickel.

I don't think this US President was "full of it" when he said this:

Quote:
"I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being."

"Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering."
Theodore Roosevelt
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Old 10-03-2008, 12:47 PM
 
228 posts, read 592,308 times
Reputation: 157
Quote:
Originally Posted by BlueSimple View Post
I have not lived in Telluride, the closest I can say is that I lived in Aspen. Beautiful place, nice people. That can be said for most of my experiences in all of Colorado. Even Fort Collins had some nice people though I cannot stand the town.
I find it fascinating that the town itself gets all the blame for how a child raised there would come up. That is ridiculous and a cop-out. I am 29 and I personally have no kids. Thank god. So no, I cannot claim to have raised any. And I am certain I will be branded by quasi-politico scared backwoods hacks on here as some sort of yuppy-liberal, which couldn't be farther from the truth. The city I am from, Colorado Springs-sized, in northern Illinois has a lot of variety of people and some socio-ecnonomic diversity, though it is a largely blue collar manufacturing-based city. I have met people there that are some of the best people I have met in my life. I have met people there that are the worst I have ever known. Similiar backgrounds, coming from the same town, different results. You can't just blame the town. It is so much more than that.
Also, as a bit of a rant, I am so tired of people using work or hard work as a justification for everything in their lives. I am sorry, working hard, first of all, is relative. What is hard to you may not be hard to someone else. Even moving rocks. Secondly, and most important, working doesn't make you a good person. I will never understand the mentality that oh, that person works real hard so they must be good and humble and blah blah blah. It is total BS. So a hardworking person has a free pass to be obnoxious, close minded and full of hate because they work? Not to mention an instant-expert on all things work-related? Wrong. That's like saying all Christians are good people. Or even some Christians are good people. There is no way there is any actual truth to that statement. Personally I prefer to look at it as some good people happen to be Christians.
I have set my life to live it how I see fit and for what's most satisfying to me. I do not kill myself working everyday. I hopefully never will. I also hopefully will never define myself by my job, that to me sounds like a living hell. I like to find balance. That is just me though, it works for me, though others may never understand it. So you work 80 hours a week at a mill to pay your bills? So what? That makes you better than someone that skis all day, doing what they have to do to pay their bills? The answer is no, no it does not and it never will. If you're doing anything, skiing, welding, flying, some people make sandcastles for a living, if you're doing it to pay the bills, it's your job. How a person can hate on someone else for simply having differing views and life values just absolutely blows me away. You want to snowboard every day for the rest of your life? Sounds boring to me, but by all means go ahead. You want to farm every day for the rest of your life? That sounds even more boring to me, but more power to you.

Phew. Anyway, good luck with the family and with your restaurant. I hope it is successful.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Since I think this post is an obvious response to one of my posts from awhile ago, let me clear some things up here. Whether deliberate or not, you've completely misconstrued my comments.

Jazzlover sums my feelings up very well above. Let's make one thing clear: I feel that there is dignity in all lines of work, if you are contributing to society and if you do something constructive which makes you happy in any capacity- and if you are able to support yourself doing it- then absolutely, I have no problem with that. If you are able to finance your own life, meagerly or not, and this enables you to enjoy the things you like to do, that is fine- if you are a professional skier and can make your money by skiing, snowboarding, biking, whatever, then I have no problem with that (keeping in mind that the percentage of the population who are able to do this, however, is so miniscule it's basically negligible. The number of people who are making a living strictly via their athletic endeavors in a place like Telluride is virtually nil. But I digress.) Likewise, if you're splitting rocks, farming, whatever, you're contributing to society at large and performing an essential function.

But that is not what this discussion is about. The word "ski bum" implies just that- a person whose existence is made possible and subsidized by the work of others, who simply meanders through life feeding off the contributions of the work of society at large. To me, a young, able-bodied individual who spends his life and someone else's finances- parents' or whomever- under the guise of "this is what makes me happy", is no different or less pathetic than a young, able-bodied 20-year old panhandling on the streets for change or the unemployed welfare mother. The only difference between the two is that one comes from a family who can and does finance said "bum"'s wasteful lifestyle ad infinitum. The problem as I see it is that these are people who ride the coattails of society, feeding off the rest of us who work to produce the things that they enjoy while giving nothing back in return. If you see nothing wrong with that, then I can't help you. If you want to live off the grid, grow your own food, consume no resources or goods produced by the rest of us, and live completely self-sufficiently, then fine- but if not, and you're enjoying a lifestyle made possible by the efforts of the rest of us without contributing a thing, then you are a leech and a parasite. That is what I mean by the term "ski bum".

I think it's really a sad reflection of our society that certain people feel "entitled" to enjoy a standard of life that they've done nothing to earn. It's also truly sad that some among us condone it, and raise their children to believe that this is an acceptable way to live. In many ways, I attribute the current sad state of our economy to this mindset- we're a bunch of spoiled consumers who've never learned the work-reward correlation and are simply content to wander aimlessly through life, spending money we don't have, consuming more and more while producing nothing.

In Israel, young men are required to perform military service for at least a short duration of time. I am completely in favor of this. People should have to go through some process which forces them to understand what it takes to sacrifice for their way of life, therefore develop an appreciation of it and respect for it. Not enough people in our society anymore understand or respect that correlation. Your post is a good illustration of that. And that's just really too bad.
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Old 10-03-2008, 01:36 PM
 
229 posts, read 747,935 times
Reputation: 252
I lost my job a few years back with no severance. I claimed unemployment for several weeks - went to the mountains, skied all day and looked for work at night. I guess I could be considered a sponge. I never really felt guilty though. I felt like I had paid into it over the years and was using it to keep my sanity in a rough time while looking for another high paying job. I easily could've found some ski-bum job to support myself. I eventually found a good job again and look fondly back on my very brief ski-bum time. But in a sense, I'm almost as guilty as the people being mentioned - "Woo Hoo, I got my unemployment check! Time to take take some turns!"
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Old 10-03-2008, 01:46 PM
 
Location: Northern Illinois
165 posts, read 435,743 times
Reputation: 113
All of the posts after mine have valid points for sure.

The issue of welfare is huge, and was not part of my statement. There are of course countless factors that can change the perception of something. Seeing people take advantage of the welfare system for whatever purpose makes me sick, I agree.

And no, I have to say that my post was not a response to anyone specifically, was just something that came to me while reading the whole thread. If it felt like you were singled out by me, I aplogize.

As far as working and deserving money. That is a sticky issue. Yes there are people who never worked or even earned their money in this life, I know quite a few of them. There is the perception that all trust funds are not earned as well, which is not always the case. But when it comes down to it, I cannot hold that against them. I believe it is wrong to do so. It is not perfect, but I am a staunch believer in capitalism, and one of the main tenets of capitalism is to accrue wealth throughout one's life. Now what is done with that wealth I believe should be the sole decision of the person that made the money in the first place. Personally I believe not one single dime of inheritance or accrued savings should ever go to the federal governement. If you made your money honestly, you've already been extensively taxed on the money you have made. You could give it to organizations, many do. Even in the tougher economy Americans give more gifts of money and goods as donations than any other country in the world. And that leaves what, the rest of your family. And that is what happens most of the time. The money doesn't make a person bad, the parenting does. If you're a sleaze of a father, you will most likely have a giant sleaze of a son. Though not always, there are exceptions to every rule.

The thing to me is, sacrifice and hard work are relative. That is what I believe anyway. When I see a person with not a care who may obviously be a trust fund grandbaby or whatnot, I just see a person. If they are worthless then I feel badly for that person. I don't hold against them the fact that they had money given to them from family or whatever. That's just me. And economically speaking, the places these people live and visit benefit from them being there. An individual that constantly purchases goods and services while not taking a job away from someone that needs it? As far as an economy goes, you couldn't ask for more than that in a resident.

It's called capitalism.

I am certain there are other countries that have fiscal policies that would make you feel like everything should be nice and fair...

Spending money you don't have is a whole different issue.

And as an aside, while I don't have a problem with national service, I do take issue that it makes you a good person. It can provide a different perspective, which is usually good. Being in the military, which I nearly joined but was disqualified at MEPS medically, doesn't always provide the clear lens that people like to think it is.

Quote:
Not enough people in our society anymore understand or respect that correlation. Your post is a good illustration of that. And that's just really too bad.
That little tidbit sure makes it sound like you are dead sure that people ever did understand or respect that correlation and that it has changed for the worse. I am sorry, but if you think now is less than it ever was you are simply mistaken.
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