Columns

How can we talk about the shootings in Connecticut — or Aurora or Columbine or Virginia Tech or an Oregon shopping mall or anywhere else — without getting into an argument?

“The America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Novelist Kurt Vonnegut considered almost nothing to be sacred — except libraries. He viewed them as a place to go when you are bereft, lost, lonely, a place which offers the sort of sustenance that calories alone can’t provide.

When I first started working, some of the best advice I ever got was, “Don’t let the urgent get in the way of the important.” Over the years, that idiom has helped me to step back and think about long-term priorities, immediate needs and how they should be balanced and prioritized.

It’s often said, “ ‘Tis a pleasure to live in Colorado.” And it is. We have some of the best quality of life of anywhere in the world. But one odd blemish that researchers have yet to fully understand is why we have a higher incidence of multiple sclerosis than most anywhere else.