Around Aspen: Busy summer

The Aspen Institute held its annual summer celebration during the week that the Dalai Lama was here. There were so many attendees that a tent was built over the Marble Garden and Fountain at the Aspen Meadows to accommodate them all.Friends of MaryAnn Hyde held a luncheon in her honor at The Little Nell because she will be selling her home on South Original Street in Aspen and moving to Tennessee, where she has a family home. MaryAnn will return to Aspen in the summers. Steve Harrison, who is with Syracuse University in New York, came to town to try to organize the alumni who live in Aspen; there are some 35 of us. Only a few of us were able to make the first meeting at the Aspen Meadows, but it was a good start as many of us have talked about getting together for years. More alumni include Renee Crown, Georgia Hanson, Gaard Moses, Mia Margolis, Jeffrey Yusem, Charles Israel, Jimmy Yeager and Betty Jane Seigle. Longtime Aspen photographer Jeffrey Aaronson, who now lives in California, has a new exhibition titled Borderland, which opened last week in Zurich, Switzerland, and will be running through mid-October before heading to Miami in December. To view the work you can go to the Kashya Hildebrand Gallery website at kashyahildebrand.org (click on Artists and then Jeffrey Aaronson to navigate through the images and his artist statement). Or you can also go to Jeffreys website, which he just relaunched before heading to Zurich, at jeffreyaaronson.com. He worked on this current project for nearly a year, driving more than 25,000 miles all along the U.S.-Mexico border, creating visual metaphors that raise many compelling questions.Aspen photographers will be holding an exhibit of their work at the Aspen Chapel Gallery with an opening reception on Sept. 10, from 5-7 p.m. The exhibition runs through Oct. 9. MarySue Bonetti is coordinator. Photographers who are showing their work include Sheila Babbie, Joel Belmont, MarySue Bonetti, Mary Eshbaugh Hayes, Jordan Curet, Cliff Mohwinkel, Jill Sabella, Linda Sandrich, HW Smith III and Steve Williams.Robie Harris, a childrens book author who has spent every summer since 1973 writing in Aspen, has published three picture books for young children this year. Maybe a Bear Ate It! was published in January. It is about falling in love with and then losing your favorite book just as you are off to bed, and the creature in the book cries out, I Need My Book! The next book, which was published in June, is Mail Harry To The Moon and is about an older brother who wants to send his adorable-adored baby brother to the zoo and the moon; when he does, though, he misses his baby brother and has to go as big brothers do to the moon to rescue baby Harry. Then on Sept. 1, another book was published titled The Day Leo Says I Hate You! This book is about a young child whose mother has to say NO to him several times, but finally he becomes so angry that he tells her that he hates NO, and that those three dreaded words pop out of his mouth: I Hate You. But in truth this book is about love, the relationship of a loving child and his mother, and what happens when two people who love each other become angry with each other. In the end, as Leos mother tells him, I could never, ever hate you … because I love you. All the books are on the authors website at robieharris.com.

The October 2008 issue of Cowboys & Indians magazine really focuses on Aspen. Kevin Costner is on the cover and in a feature article at his Aspen ranch. Then there is another feature article about Jane Smith and her farmhouse in Emma; she has remodeled the farmhouse, built as a log cabin in 1902, into a charming residence with a wrap-around deck, massive stone fireplace and walls of windows to let the views in. I hear that the house is under contract to be sold and Jane may move to Franklin, Tenn. Jane originally had a clothing boutique called 20th Century Fox in the Brand Building, then an Aspen sweater boutique with Jill St. John, and then a clothing boutique and design studio in Santa Fe, N.M., before returning a few years ago to the Roaring Fork Valley.Undercurrent … September is the most beautiful month in Aspen.