A former editor
of several Telluride newspapers and a weekly columnist there for almost 30
years, Art Goodtimes is serving his fourth term as a San Miguel County
Commissioner in southwestern Colorado, the only Green Party commissioner in the
inner basin West. He is involved in a number of collaborative processes,
including the Public Land Partnership and the Burn Canyon Monitoring Task Force.
He has served as chair of the National Association of Counties Gateway
Communities Subcommittee and Colorado Counties representative on NACo’s Public
Lands Steering Committee. He was twice appointed to the BLM’s Southwestern
Colorado Resource Advisory Council and has won several awards for his work at
bridge-building among diverse constituencies.
A member of San
Francisco's Cloud House Poetry center and the Union of Street Poets in the
Sixties & Seventies, Goodtimes continues to work as a performance poet and
was the founding poetry editor of Earth First! Journal (1981-1991),
poetry co-editor of Wild Earth (1991-2000), and is currently poetry
editor for the Mountain Gazette. His first book was Embracing the
Earth (Homeward Press, Berkeley, 1984) and his most recent As If the
World Really Mattered (La Alameda Press, Albuquerque, 2007). Widely
published, his work has appeared most recently in Pilgrimage magazine of
Pueblo, Colorado, (v. 35, #2) and the anthology New Poetry of the American
West edited by Lowell Jaeger (Many Voices Press, Kalispell, Montana, 2010).
In 1989, Art received a $4000 Poetry Fellowship from the Colorado Arts Council.
He was founder/director of Talking Gourd poetry gatherings in Colorado, New
Mexico and Mexico (1989-2008) and remains poet-in-residence of the Telluride
Mushroom Festival (since 1980). He was named Poet Laureate of Colorado’s Western
Slope at the first annual Karen Chamberlain Poetry Festival in Carbondale in
2011.
A basketweaver
since college, Goodtimes took classes in California with Mabel McKay, one of the
celebrated Pomo basketmakers of her generation. He's had several shows of his
baskets, and uses non-traditional materials with an emphasis on color and
design.
Basketweaving
I do
politics by matching
fixed
attention with free intention.
At meetings
I pull out my bag.
Take needle
& hemp twine
& wind a
coil around the work.
Some call it
hobby.
Others mere
annoyance.
But for me
it’s philosophy.
My essential
sacred practice
& a
reminder of what I do
in the
contentious realm
of the
public arena.
Weaving
opposing strands
into baskets
of integrity.
Listening to
voices & colors
that I love
& that I hate
to make
decisions by design
& some
shared beauty.
For me
holding office is a tension
woven of
rules & heart. A vision
tied into
shape & formed
for the
benefit of all.
