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Welcome to Paleohippie

A website for Art Goodtimes—performance poet
Cloud Acre / 92 Lone Cone Road / Norwood
Colorado / 81423-0160 / 970-327-4767
[under construction v. 20may15008]

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NEW POEMS

Norwood Hill

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BIO

A bioregionalist student of Dolores La Chapelle, Art writes from Cloud Acre on Wright’s Mesa, in the San Miguel Watershed cusp between the Colorado Plateau and the San Juan Mountains.

When not serving as Colorado’s only Green county commissioner, he grows organic heirloom seed potatoes, hosts various Talking Gourds performance poetry events, takes his family on vacation to the annual Rainbow Gathering, runs the parade at the Telluride Mushroom Festival and serves as poet-in-residence, as he has for the past 27 years.
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Origin of Paleohippie

Here is the Denver Post story that first sprang the term Paleohippie on an unsuspecting world:

Paleohippie weaves third term in San Miguel

by Nancy Lofholm
Friday, November 05, 2004 –

Polished and politically correct politicians who failed to capture enough votes in this week’s election can look to San Miguel County for a lesson in how to be an off-brand “paleohippie” and hold office.

San Miguel County commissioner, Green Party member, basket weaver, poet laureate of the Telluride Mushroom Festival and Rainbow Family follower Art Goodtimes won a third term in office Tuesday even though he faced more straight-laced opponents, including one who outspent him 3-to-1 in campaigning.

“I am not a one-size-fits-all kind of candidate,” said the long-haired, copiously bearded Goodtimes from his home in Norwood, where he grows heirloom potatoes and writes poetry. “I look like a Haight-Ashbury hippie. I like to call myself a paleohippie. I am who I am, and I don’t try to hide it or pretend it doesn’t exist.”

For Goodtimes, that free-spirited transparency includes his habit of weaving hemp baskets at public meetings and giving spirited performances of his poetry at conferences and meetings around the West.

“It’s interesting to have a poet be a politician. Poets view the world differently, and I think that’s one of Art’s strengths,” said former Telluride Mayor Amy Levek.

Voters must agree. They gave Goodtimes another four years in office with 1,910 votes. His closest contender, Democrat Brian Ahern, who sometimes operates a Telluride taxi service catering to drunks, received 1,213 votes, and independent Kay Hartman garnered 674 votes.

Goodtimes continued the distinction of being the only politician in Colorado who gained office by running as a Green Party candidate.

He ran on a platform promise of continuing to balance the ecology and the economy of San Miguel County, which includes the liberal-minded, mining-turned-resort town of Telluride and the conservative ranching community of Norwood. He also promised to continue protection of high alpine watersheds and to champion “green” building codes.

Goodtimes said he has evolved as a politician over the past eight years. Key, he said, has been becoming a better listener. That, and his well-known propensity for being a peacekeeper and bringing factions together, helped him win every precinct except for the tiny community of Egnar, where Ahern topped him by four votes.

Goodtimes, 59, said he’s also proud of his political popularity outside San Miguel County. He said that as a Club 20 board member, he has been embraced – literally – by conservatives like former state representative and Meeker sheep rancher Nick Theos. Goodtimes also serves on several environmental task forces and a federal public lands advisory board, in addition to his participation in Earth First and the San Miguel Greens.

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WEBSITES

“http://colopoets.unco.edu/poets/goodtimes_art/index.html”
“http://greens.org/colorado/artgood.html”
“http://www.ventanawild.org/news/se01/jojopan.html”
“http://www.sfpoetry.org/goodtim2.html”
“http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs03/goodtimes.html”
“http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/archives/art-goodtimes.html”

Dolores LaChapelle

“http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC05/LaChapel.htm”
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PERFORMANCE INFO

Art performs his poetry solo or as part of a performance ensemble group called EAR, which includes Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer of Placerville at "rosemerry@wordwoman.com" and Elle Metrick of Norwood at "waterwoman@frontier.net"

Contact Art at his personal email "gourds@paleohippie.com" or at his county email "commish3@sanmiguelcounty.org"

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TALKING GOURDS

Past: April 23-27, 2008, Telluride, Colorado

Upcoming: April 17-26, Telluride, Colorado (20th Anniversary)

It was in response to Dolores La Chapelle’s identification of drumming, dancing, chanting, gourds, talking circles, bardic poetry and tai chi as seven pathways to lead us out off industrial growth society and back to the rapture of deep ecology that we founded the Talking Gourds gatherings around the region. For over 19 years, folks have been gathering to read their work out loud in Talking Gourd circles, often as part of a traveling poetry gathering of the same name. Poets, storytellers, singers, actors, dancers, journalists, writers, and even diarists bring their words and creations to share. Talking Gourds has been held in Telluride. Up at Faraway Ranch. Out on the Uncompahgre Plateau at Windy Point. At Rockmirth in New Mexico. And at smaller gatherings around the region, including Durango, Grand Junction, Salida, Crestone and Gunnison.

In the process, we’ve seen a cycle of earth festival gatherings that have come and gone, or continue on, in which Gourds Circles are integral components, including SPARROWS in Salida, Fire Gigglers in the Wet Mountains, Rockmirth in New Mexico, Headwaters in Gunnison, and the Festival of the Imagination in Del Norte.

For more on Talking Gourds, visit the website:

"http://coyotekiva.org/t-gourds.html"

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NEW BOOK

"http://www.laalamedapress.com"

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CRITICAL TAKES

“Art Goodtimes is truly a bard. He has the unique ability to take all of our individual stories—each human story within the on-going story of our place itself—and combine them into a vast epic. He can do this because he is registering more than the ‘merely’ human; he speaks for the land itself.” -Dolores La Chapelle, The Way of the Mountain Center

“The largest applause went to Art Goodtimes, a poet, a county commissioner, and a man with a long scraggly beard who dresses as if he were still in the 1960s and Haight-Ashbury.” -Ed Marston, High Country News

“A hippie with a wild mop of dark hair that reaches his shoulder blades and a ZZ Top beard. Easy to take one look and assume he’s a mere Deadhead who never outgrew the Sixties. But it would be a foolish mistake. Art can argue politics, philosophy, science or economics with the big boys. He’s a walking encyclopedia with a cutting logic and metropolitan lawyer’s smooth command of language. F. Lee Bailey in a Cheech and Chong disguise.” -Kenn Amdahl (The Land of Debris & the Home of Alfredo)

“The Transmissions page is worth the price of admission, which is free; also Napalm Health Spa 2003 which has incredible poem by Art Goodtimes, After the Elections, ‘Waiting once again to vote out the rascals and vote in the lyric valuables.’”
-JB Bryan, La Alameda Press

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LINKS

“http://www.word-woman.com”:
“http://www.chrisransick.com”