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Horse Country

Mary Eshbaugh Hayes

The Roaring Fork Valley is now filled with “gentleman ranches” and horseback riding arenas instead of the former potato and cattle ranches. Every summer or so, Kathy Weiss Stephenson and her husband, Dick Stephenson, put on a horse riding exhibition at their Crystal Springs Ranch near Carbondale, followed by a dinner and dance in the big barn. The horses and riders put on a fabulous show and the horsey set all came in Western outfits. Kathy gave everyone a colorful bandana to top off their outfits. The ranch is set in a lovely valley, the sun was hot, the cowboy dinner was tasty and the dancing great fun. The Wall Street Journal in its Oct. 8 issue wrote about Felicity Huffman, daughter of Woody Creeker Grace Huffman, and is one of the stars in the new television series “Desperate Housewives.” This is what the Journal wrote: “When it comes to lifting hearts, there is nothing like the prospect of a wildly successful series built on premises of the purest trash. Very quickly we were introduced to a cast of female characters best described by the title, and all portrayed with considerable panache. Of no character is this truer than that of Lynette, once a hot-shot careerist, and now housewife and mother of an enlarging brood of sons who could pass for Satan’s spawn. The portrayer, the excellent Felicity Huffman, manages to look credible in the most improbable of scenes.” Felicity’s mother, Grace, has acted in several plays in the Roaring Fork Valley and Aspen.Melanie Friedersdorf Humphrey of Snowmass is taking her children’s book to “Read Colorado,” a celebration of some 200 Colorado authors and their books on Saturday, Nov. 6, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the West Club Lounge at the INVESCO Field at Mile High. The event is free and there is free parking. Madison Burke of Little Elk Creek Avenue in Snowmass is majoring in art at the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. Aspenites have been getting lots of press lately. Early in October the Denver Post had an article about Aspenite Susie Krabacher, written by Jenny Deam. The article tells how Susie is being given the Rose Award, presented by the People’s Princess Foundation at Kensington Palace in England. The foundation was established by Princess Diana’s son, Prince William, to further his mother’s commitment to help the needy. For the past 11 years, Susie has devoted her life to helping orphaned and dying children in Haiti through the Mercy and Sharing Foundation established by Susie and her husband, Aspen attorney Joe Krabacher. Susie, a beautiful blonde who was once a Playboy centerfold, oversees three orphanages, six schools and a library in Haiti. She says Hurricane Jeanne has made things even worse.The Denver Post also included a column by Joanne Davidson on Oct. 3 about Aspen writer and polo player Linda Lafferty. Linda had written an article about the history of polo 100 years ago at the Hotel Colorado in Glenwood Springs. Linda wrote that brothers Horace K. and Walter B. Devereux, who helped establish Glenwood Springs as a spa resort (they built the hotel and swimming pool), had a passion for polo and established the Devereux Cup as an annual polo event. The Devereux brothers had made their fortune in the Aspen silver mines as engineers, and they tapped into the skilled horsemanship of local cowboys and ranchers to create the Glenwood Polo and Racing Association. Tradition was revived this year with the reinstatement of the Devereux Cup and with a match in which Team Hotel Colorado scored a decisive victory over the Roaring Fork Polo Club.This year will be the 50th anniversary for the Aspen Ski Swap at the Aspen Middle School that was started in 1954 by Trudi Baar and Pam Beck and run for many years by them. The Swap will be Nov. 56. People can drop off items between 4:30 and 6:30 p.m. on Friday, and the sale will be from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday. Pickup of unsold items and collection of money will be between 2 and 3 p.m. on Saturday. This year, in celebration of the 50th, $2,000 (in increments of $50) in shopping certificates will be given out. During the 50 years of the Swap, organizer Mary Ryerson says that some $850,000 has been raised for the Aspen School District.Undercurrent … And now our mailboxes are filled with Christmas catalogs.

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