Letter from Slim Wolfe
Colorado Central – August 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
It’s time for a shot across George Sibley’s bow: Give us some grounds for your insinuation that Europeans are lacking in creativity, sir, or retract your slander.
Is America such a wonderment of genius that we can afford to look down our noses at an entire continent of intelligence? Do you base your assertion on our creative inventions like look-alike subdivisions, fast burgers and fries, tanks spewing depleted uranium, elevator music, and Inna-gadda-davida?
If this is the sort of judicious wisdom we can expect from our professors-emeritus, maybe we ought to shut down our universities entirely and send our kids to polytechs where they can learn to hook up solar panels and wind generators, to build stone structures with the grace of the masons of Prague and Valencia, or to study with the master weavers and composers you belittle.
In fact, rather than your suggestion (hardly original) of letting college grads work off their bills with community service afterwards, I rather prefer the idea of a year or two of service first in relevant occupations, and then the reward of a year or two in the classroom, with work-ripened minds.
About railroads: Ed’s nostalgic pieces would serve a double whammy if he could turn them into a major lobbying effort to re-introduce rail service at the level they have in (ahem) Europe, at least. Imagine commuter trolleys on all the major routes here, powered by massive solar installations like the new one in Mosca. We don’t need more competitive science-and-technology grads, we just need the will to take advantage of the knowledge we already have and the wisdom to appreciate the skills learned over past millennia.
Slim Wolfe
Villa Grove
