Some of us from TRUU were able to hear an inspiring presentation this week from the Aspen Community Foundation on their Cradle to Career project, improving educational and life outcomes for the many poor children in our valley. When they gave us the figures on the large number of children here, both white and Latino. who are not able to read at their grade level, who don’t graduate from high school, and who end up as teenage parents themselves, I think many of us in the room were shocked. Knowing these things about where we live, and responding, seems like a deeply moral issue for me as a Unitarian Universalist. Every day I ride the bus with workers, some traveling 80 miles or more to work, and walk by the large trailer park in the floodplain of the Roaring Fork. This led me to the book The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants Versus the Environment in America’s Eden, written by two sociologists, which I’m hoping to read in October. Here’s an article in the Denver Post if you’d like to know more: http://www.denverpost.com/ci_19642218,  I’d like to organize a book group at TRUU in October to read and discuss it together. If this is of interest to you, please email me at truu.minister@gmail.com. The Glenwood Post Independent is also doing an excellent series this week that they are calling, “Price of Paradise“, about the effects of the high cost of housing here on middle class, white collar workers -like school teachers.

I will be gone next week to Boston, but look forward to returning and starting classes and other activities at TRUU. Keep your eyes open for interesting events in October!