Planatlaw

A professor I had in college once told me he rarely read the front page of a paper because the writer’s agenda was obscured. Instead, he recommended I read the opinion pages and judge the advocacy evocated by those writers. I still followed that advice, which is why I read Karl Isberg’s editorial every week in the Pagosa Sun . Last week, Karl was advocating for a position I judged as flawed. The title was “A Slice of the Ideal”. The “ideal” he spoke to was the dream of a perfect mountain community people were expecting Pagosa Springs to be, but his is a simplistic assumption. He was pushing a myth lauded by residents who had been here from birth, which demeans new-comers and extols the virtues of the old-timers. It has been tried many times in many mountain towns, and with the same result. Karl has a folksy style that lulls one into thinking he really is a “salt-of-the-earth” common sense kinda guy. However, after reading his editorial a couple of times, I concluded his a...