By Mike Lavelle
I have always wanted to write something starting with this well know phrase from Charles Dickens’ novel, “A Tale of Two Cities.” In Dicken’s novel, this phrase is part of a longer sentence that references a time of contradictory duality when change was coming, along with conflict.
I was reminded of this phrase following a discussion I had right before I wrote this column. It seems that depending on who you talk to, or what channel news you turn to, that either great things are happening, or not. Without going into the merits of what is the case, if so; it is true that as time moves on, we often enter into new periods that often bring new challenges. This is as true for Vail as for our nation and it is true in our lives as well.
I am also reminded of Bob Dylan’s 1964 ballad, “The Times They Are A-changing.” Perhaps one of the simplest and wisest observations ever noted came from the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who noted that the only constant in life and nature was (constant) change. A mainstay of The Vail Voice is to report on some of these changes in the community, some are welcomed (by some) and some are not (by some).
Sometimes people want the paper to take one side or another or to advance their (often worthy) cause. However, The Vail Voice is a community paper and we have no special ties to business, political parties, or causes. We do not have reporters to assign stories and rely on volunteer writers. We do not censor stories or tell our volunteer writers what to write about, as they write on what interests them.
As such, we welcome diversity of opinion and, starting in this issue, have opened a new section (page 7) called “In My Opinion – A Guest Editorial.” If you have something important you want to communicate to the community, send us your (approximately) 350-word article.