On Tuesday night I went to see Jared Diamond speak at the historic Wheeler Opera House, a beautiful theater built in 1889, with seats in rich Moroccan leather and an azure ceiling with silver stars that appear as though they are popping out of an early evening sky.

Diamond, a professor of Geography and Physiology at the University of California, was being presented by  the Aspen’s Writers Foundation Winter Word Series as one of America’s most celebrated scholars.

The lights went down and the spotlight landed on Diamond, who would be speaking for the next hour about his latest book titled, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive.

I was immediately taken in by Diamond, an avuncular man dressed in hiking boots and high wasted brown pants with a tucked in pink Oxford shirt and I sat mesmerized as he spoke about how and why whole societies have lost their way in the past and descended into chaos.

He spoke of the demise of highly advanced civilizations like the Maya who developed astronomy, calendrical systems and hieroglyphic writing as far back as 200-400 AD and who were noted for elaborate and highly decorated ceremonial architecture all built without metal tools. They were also skilled farmers, clearing large sections of tropical rain forest and, where groundwater was scarce, building sizeable underground reservoirs for the storage of rainwater. The Maya were equally skilled as weavers and potters, and cleared routes through jungles and swamps to foster extensive trade networks with distant peoples. Source.

Diamond also referred to the prehistoric Native American Anasazi Indians that lived from 200 to 1300 AD, in the Four Corners of the southwest United States. The Anasazi Indians were adept hunters and food gatherers discovering how to cultivate maize, squash and beans. They were also astute pottery makers.

He continued to talk about the people of Easter Island, “who in just a few centuries, wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism. Are we about to follow their lead?”

“Their vanishing touches us as the disappearance of other animals, even the dinosaurs, never can. No matter how exotic those lost civilizations seem, their framers were humans like us. Who is to say we won’t succumb to the same fate? Perhaps someday New York’s skyscrapers will stand derelict and overgrown with vegetation, like the temples at Angkor Wat and Tikal.”

Diamond was by no means taking an apocalyptic stance about the state of the world, giving us glimpses of hope by speaking of the people in Papua New Guinnea who have been around for 46,000 years because they have learned how to sustain themselves by reserving and transplanting their resources.

On my drive home in a blinding snowstorm with black iced roads, I thought about the message that this extremely fluent and amicable author was giving to us, a message that I have heard repeatedly that has always left me in a stone cold sweat.

If we don’t make the choice now to study the past and fix the problems that exist today, than in a mere fifty years time it is quite possible that we will be following in the footsteps of those intelligent civilizations who either were destroyed by civil wars or who committed “serial ecoside, straightforward abuse of their physical environment that precipitated their demise” and we will not be the ones to suffer but instead it will be our children and grandchildren.

At the end of his lecture Diamond directed his last sentence to the younger people in the audience and said, “It’s your choice on whether you want to make a world that is worth living in,” but it is our responsibility as well and we must take the environmental problems of today seriously and make the right choices together, now.

I picked the boys up from school and we headed up to Snowmass for the Mardi Gras celebration.

As we ran up the hill from the car we were amazed at the skiers leaving who were so draped in beads I worried that there were none left for the boys. Getting closer we were forewarned by other moms of the aggressive  crowd who seemed to be going for the gold by catching as many of the 24,000 beads as they could. It was all about quantity.

I just love when the energy of an event gets me so excited that I can hardly stand myself and the mall for “Fat Tuesday” was pulsing with adults and children alike who were drowning in  strands of beads and as we approached we got hit with  bead fever.

People were behaving as if forbidden jewels from a Pirate’s treasure chest were being tossed freely into the air. We feared that if we didn’t learn the art of capturing the attention of the bead throwers we would be left naked and penniless.

As the Basalt Dance Troupe shimmied along in the parade I had that same feeling that I always have when I see young girls dancing, envy. I  always wanted to be a dancer when I was younger but the programs were always dull with old ninnies teaching the classes and bad music. Who knows where I would be today if there were the likes of Jayne Gottlieb teaching hip hop in my home town, probably right here typing away at my computer with my split toe Bosch shoes on which, come to think of it, I need to wear more often.

At the end of the day, the boys devoured delicious pizza at Long Fellows and they weren’t even embarrassed when I realized that I had forgotten my wallet at home, I guess their getting use to having a scatter-brain for a mother.

Once again the kindness of the locals amazed me as they let my starving children eat and handed me an IOU to pay them back later.

We then walked down Fanny Hill to ride back up on the Skittles Gondola, Tucker’s favorite. As the boys scampered down, I slowly made my way in the warm afternoon light absorbing the beautiful surrounding views and breathed a very happy sigh.

On the way back up a man from Bali got into the gondola wanting to know where and why the boys had gotten all of the beads. He had left his beautiful country and his ten year old daughter behind to try and make a life for himself in America. With a big smile on his face he watched the boys and all of their energy and I watched him, wondering if life working in a kitchen in Snowmass was better than being with his family at home.

When we were leaving the apres-ski parties were just beginning and I couldn’t help but notice that I was walking right by a Jagermeister party at the Blue Door and I felt a deep pang that evaporated quicker than they used to.

The boys went to sleep staring at their beads and the next day showed off their new wealth to all of their friends at school.

Even though I couldn’t help but wish that I had been able to haul my boys all the way to New Orleans to celebrate in real cajun style, Snowmass did not disappoint!

“OMMMMMMMM”

What a smile!!!

I’m sure I know the daddy but can’t place him

The Basalt Dance Troupe

The Glenwood Springs Marching Band

Nothing like a little Brazilian color

I saw a man that I know from the children’s school the other day. He was pushing one of those un-maneuverable racecar shopping carts with his two little boys gleefully air driving in the front.

When I commented on how sweet they looked he retorted, “Yeah, they can be sweet sometimes,” and I couldn’t relate more.

He continued to say what everybody says, “boys are high energy when they are young but girls give you hell when they become teenagers.”

“Really,” I said. “My sister’s and I were relatively easy on our parents,” right Melanie, Mommy and Tutti? (If you haven’t noticed yet, my family often comments on my posts)

He went on to say, “Boys just try to kill themselves by being reckless with their bodies, girls don’t listen and do things that can be life altering,” and that made me feel oh so much better.

The other night, Brevitt and I were wrestling together, he in his red footsie pajamas, a popular trend at school. We lay on top of each other laughing as he smooshed my face into “hilarious” positions and a memory of my sister, Michele, flashed into my head. Her now fourteen year old was five and he was lying on top of her soaking in all of her love and it reminded me that I must hold on to this moment for as long as possible because soon, real soon, Brevitt will not feel comfortable with feeling me so close to him. We lay there forever wrapped in each others arms as he told me a whole lot of insightful information about his friends, school and life in general.

The next day I went to my friends house to pick up my boys. They were playing their favorite sport, dodgeball, down in her basement with her two sons. It sounded as if a sacrifice was being performed. When I went down to check on them a speeding ball whizzed by and landed smack into Axel’s face, which didn’t seem to phase him.

I walked upstairs and asked horrified, “Is this how people feel when they visit my house? Stunned and psychologically disturbed by all of the noise and energy? It is no wonder why I don’t have many visitors anymore.”

As she sat there calmly reading the newspaper, she replied, “I love it….or at least, I have learned to embrace it.”

It is true that quite often I reach a breaking point with my boys and need to tell them that, “mommy is closed”. It is my dysfunctional way of getting a brief respite from all of the chaos.

But I will say this, when I am outside with the boys, or when we are indoors and they are being sweet and calm, they are my entertainment and my companions, filling the house with laughter and there is nobody in the world who I would rather be with.

In two to five years from now they will transform into different beings and I will have to connect with them on a different scale. For now though, I’ll embrace them and all of their energy and wrap them into my arms as much as they will allow, when I’m not reprimanding them for riding their bikes down the enormous ski ramp that Wade built in our backyard. Anybody care to share their Xanax with me????