Opinion

Is it over yet? Following what seems an endless succession of snowstorms, squalls and outright blizzards, the skies have finally cleared.

    Slowly, Mother Nature returns the heavens to the sunny disposition Colorado is famous for. Nice as it sounds, it’s about damn time for some sunshine around here. I actually heard a couple from Seattle reminiscing last week about how nice it’s been lately, the soggy gloom boosting their waterlogged memories.

Lyrical yet frustrating, Terrence Malick’s “To The Wonder” doesn’t try to say quite as much as his truly universal “The Tree of Life” but uses the same sparsity of on-screen dialogue to masterfully tell a story of longing and loss.

I now realize there really is a war on women.

Unfortunately, this war is not being waged on birth control pills or abortion or even on women obtaining what is often called “equal pay.”

The new and very real war on women is being waged upon women themselves. And this war will have casualties.

Few things mark passing anniversaries like traditions, even if that tradition is as unassuming as an annual membership meeting.

After the trouncing of Marilyn Musgrave in the 2008 elections, hopes were raised that voters in Weld County had finally had enough of legislative moralizing.
    A national laughingstock, Musgrave sprang to prominence on the back of the gay marriage debate, subsequently losing her congressional seat in the second worst margin of defeat for a republican incumbent in the nation.

As kindling for debate about the war on terror, torture and America, director Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” was a success before it debuted.
    As an exercise in storytelling, it’s a tedious, tiring and confused look at the search for terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, as seen through the dogged effort of CIA operative Maya (the Oscar-nominated Jessica Chastain).

One has to wonder at the intent of the Weld County Commissioners. Hot on the heels of overriding their constituency on Amendment 64, the board took yet another step toward determining what is best for landowners in the county, despite recommendations to the contrary from a state commission assigned to study oil and gas development.

Scott Klinger
Guest Columnist

While America’s CEOs are fretting about the government’s so-called “fiscal cliff,” millions of American workers face a financial disaster that gets much less media attention. There’s a half-trillion-dollar deficit in the nation’s worker retirement benefits.

A hauntingly beautiful song was song this year at A Colorado Christmas, which I was privileged to be part of with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. It was entitled “Believe” from “The Polar Express,” and the words go like this:
    “Children sleeping. Snow is softly falling. Dreams are calling like bells in the distance. We were dreamers, not so long ago. But one by one, we all had to grow up.