Letter from Jeanne Englert
Water – October 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Dear Ed and Martha,
Loved the full-color warmth of the last [September] cover.
In regard to the Letter from the Editors, you probably cannot reiterate enough how our lives get directed by small, obscure government units. Reminded me of how we in TAR struggled to get the Front Strange enviros to understand how behemoth water projects like A-LP get fostered. You two have done more than anybody in the press to make these districts visible.
In a collateral struggle, though no less important, is the observation that Terry Scanga would get asked to comment on Salida waterworks. I was never able to solve that problem. Repeatedly, I would demonstrate that Sam Maynes’s views were colored by his clientele’s interests.
Also, we had amassed considerable knowledge, yet we were still consigned to opponent view, rather than recognized for our hard-learned expertise. But I did notice that my successor, Michael Black, has gotten the Durango Herald to note that Barry Spear, one of Sam’s associates, be identified in his client-lawyer capacity rather than as legal expert. So maybe there has been some progress.
I know that this won’t stop you from doing it or me from subscribing, but I could do with less burro-racing. (Oh, Heaven Forbid!)
In September, Ed, you spared me from buying the Casimir Barela biography. Gracias. (Yeah, Martha, I also know who he was.)
Most moving report of the year: Poignant and heartwarming in contrast to the atrocities so far revealed about American treatment of POWs in Iraq was the article about POWs in the Valley. How they got passes to go to see the movies, etc. A wonderful quote, “They’re just boys….” And some German POWs even came back for a visit after the war.
My uncle supervised Italian POWs in Utah during World War II, and they handcarved beautiful WWII fighter planes as gifts for him. In contrast, from one who has dislocated her shoulder, a dislocated shoulder from handcuffing (a Denver Post report) is torture. The twist it must have taken to pull that shoulder out of its socket cannot otherwise be explained.
Warm regards,
Jeanne Englert
Lafayette
