Category Archives: News

Joining the Movement

Posted on by

 

Ahh, Nature!

Detail-from-Adam-and-Eve--007

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colorado is certainly blessed with a generous portion of it, plus a goodly share of hardy folk who embrace its primitive charms. Unfortunately, the armies of avid outdoor enthusiasts answering the siren call of Nature’s scenic bounty must also heed a call more urgent, though decidedly less agreeable, and too often heap malodorous indignities upon the very Eden they’ve come to exalt.

bearPoopWe’re talking about poop, of course, and pee, and the astonishing quantities of both that are deposited each year at Nature’s most popular franchises. Because the least trammeled localities are rarely provided with even primitive public conveniences, most hikers’ burdens wind up in a shallow grave or simply dropped onto the forest’s green carpet behind a likely rock or bush. Either way, out of sight doesn’t necessarily mean out of mind, and busy trail heads and inviting arbors can quickly become noxious mine fields thickly strewn with pungent ordnance. Must it always be thus? Not if Lara Usinowicz can help it.

restopPeeA devoted mountain-biker who’s seen Colorado from atop all of its 14ers, Evergreen resident Usinowicz has wrinkled her nose at many an improvised wilderness latrine, so when she learned that a California company was looking for a motivated individual to market its portable powder rooms to the tent-and-trail-mix set, she didn’t piddle around.

“It just sounded like me, so I went for it,” she says. Today, Usinowicz is the main pipeline for Restop portable human waste disposal pouches to nature-lovers the world over. “I’m a believer,” she smiles, “but then you really have to be. I’ll never become a billionaire selling poop bags.”

foxpoopBy “poop-bag,” Usinowicz means Restop’s tidy Wilderness Waste Containment Pouch, a five-pack of feather-light, wafer-thin, tough-as-nails, sacks-within-sacks that can accept the most charitable donations without complaint and tightly confine their cargo’s scent and substance till trail’s end. Each landfill-friendly unit comes with toilet paper, an antiseptic wipe and a measure of hungry enzymes that get nature’s recycling work off to a brisk start.

restopPoopbagNumber 2, though, is but a single part of the dietary equation and with chocolate must come lemonade, for which Usinowicz recommends Restop 1. A durable, unisex plastic pouch designed with a one-way internal spout and ample 20-ounce capacity, Restop 1 contains both enzymes and a space-age powdered polymer that instantly transforms Number 1 into a thick gel that couldn’t escape into one’s socks and map-kit even if given the chance.

As remarkable as they sound, Restop’s products aren’t new, and for nearly 20 years the company has sold them by the boxcar load to the military and various utility-related industries where employees routinely find themselves up a figurative creek with neither pot nor window. By hiring Usinowicz, Restop hopes to bring their expedient effluent-management systems to a leisure market that badly needs them.

“They wanted to base their wilderness-marketing in Colorado because there’s so much outdoor activity here,” Usinowicz says. “500,000 people hike the 14ers per year, and Fruita has become a mountain-biking Mecca. All of these areas are impacted by human waste.”

deerpoopSo far, her biggest clients are raft companies, particularly those plying the mighty Arkansas. “The Arkansas River is the most commercially-rafted in the world,” Usinowicz says, “and in a canyon on the river there’s just no place to go.” Given the greater payload possible aboard an inflatable boat, rafters are able to enjoy two other Restop products – a small plastic stool upon where one can perch and take ease, and a pop-up privacy tent for shrinking violets that become self-conscious when defecating before an audience. “They’re just more convenient if you have the space and don’t care about a little extra weight.”

41RI5lSfjsL__SY355_

More than one skeptic has suggested to Usinowicz that, because all manner of woodland creatures are wont to loose their bowels upon the virgin land, humans should do no less, an argument she rejects out of hand. “The human diet is full of chemicals, preservatives and a lot of other things that wild animals don’t eat,” she says. “If bears dig through our garbage and eat our trash, I think they should pack out their waste, too.”

While Usinowicz freely admits that, across most of Colorado’s vast wild lands, a few pounds of people-scat aren’t apt to upset nature’s perfect balance. At dozens of the state’s heavily-trafficked areas, however, even the time-honored expedient of excavating a small “cat-hole” in which to bury one’s depleted rations is no longer practical.

“The Chicago Basin is horrendous,” Usinowicz says. “You can’t dig a hole anywhere without digging up somebody else’s waste.”

Several national parks and wilderness areas now recommend – some even require – that all hikers and campers carry sufficient waste containment pouches to supply their back-country itinerary. While that’s good for business, Usinowicz believes that anyone who enjoys vacationing in a pristine wilderness should accept some responsibility for keeping it that way.

restop%20004“I like to think I’m helping them do that,” she says, flashing a here-it-comes grin. “I’m saving the world one poop at a time.”

 

The Face of Valor

Posted on by

heroguy2What does a true hero look like? A small army of local schoolchildren filed into the Evergreen High School gymnasium to see one for themselves.

As they discovered, retired Army major Bruce Crandall isn’t 10 feet tall, doesn’t speak in thunder and can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound. Nor does he have an NFL contract, a song on the Top 40, or a sure-fire plan for the economy.

A comfortable-looking man of 74, Crandall stands medium height, dresses neatly, but casually, and has an entirely unremarkable, self-effacing manner of expression. If there was anything visibly distinctive about him at all, it was the tall, black hat he wore – a poignant relic of the combat missions he flew over Vietnam as an Air Cavalry flight commander with the 229th Helicopter Assault Battalion.

heroguy1Still, as one of only 100 living Americans to hold the Congressional Medal of Honor, Crandall’s a true hero, all right. To their credit, most of the kids packing the great room seemed to appreciate that fact.

“This is a huge event for Evergreen,” said EHS senior class president David Schultz. “Some kids might think this is just another assembly, but to me it’s a reminder that there are guys like him who’ve put their lives on the line for us. We’re lucky to have him here.”

Indeed, Schultz can thank kindly Providence that Crandall and dozens of other true heroes happened to be in Denver for the Congressional Medal of Honor Society’s annual convention, and that EHS happened to be one of only three Jeffco schools slated for a visit. But it was fast action and hard work that made Thursday’s assembly a morning to remember.

“I think it’s a great opportunity for the kids,” said assistant principal Bernie Hohman, who organized Crandall’s admirable hero’s welcome. “The lesson I hope they get is the importance of doing the right thing, of stepping up to help other people, of being a good person.”

Crandall’s address was scheduled for 8:30 a.m., but excitement started building long before that. Out front, the Stars and Stripes waved from the fully-extended boom of Evergreen Fire Rescue’s gleaming Tower No. 2, and county vehicles began showing up in company strength.

Inside, kids from Rocky Mountain Academy joined the EHS students in the bleachers, while two rows of folding chairs near the podium were reserved for local worthies including State Senator Dan Gibbs, Jefferson County Sheriff Ted Mink, and virtually every school principal from Bergen Park to Aspen Park. The color guard from Evergreen’s American Legion Post 2001 stood ready to greet the guest of honor in proper military style. Most significantly, two-dozen seats directly in front of the podium were filled by distinguished area men wearing more than a half-century of bravery and patriotism on the breasts of their crisp uniform jackets.

“The Medal of Honor represents the ultimate in courage,” said Dick Over, who fought with Colorado’s own 10th Mountain Division during the punishing Aleutian campaign in World War II. “It’s always interesting to me to hear how other Americans have become heroes to those of us who also served.”

As a combat veteran, Over knows only too well that becoming a true hero has precious little to do with trumpets and ticker-tape, and that the Congressional Medal of Honor is a tribute that most soldiers hope they’ll never have a chance to earn. For starters, more than half of the 3,467 Americans so honored since President Abraham Lincoln launched the tradition in 1863 received their medal posthumously. For the rest, the phrase “conspicuous gallantry and valor during time of war” usually refers to the single most terrifying, desperate hours of their lives.

“I can tell you that everyone who wears this feels uncomfortable being introduced as Medal of Honor ‘winners,’” Crandall began. “We didn’t win anything. We are Medal of Honor recipients, and what we did to receive it was an uncomfortable experience.”

A transparent understatement, that, but then Crandall’s remarks were not aimed to shock, or upset, but to convey his own thoughts and best advice in the best way he knew how. For the next 80 minutes, Crandall touched on numerous topics using simple, direct language and easy good humor.

On a military career: “People think that all they teach is how to kill and fight. That’s nonsense. The doctor that fixed my back was a West Point graduate.”

On the personal rigors of a professional military: “You want to know the secret of a happy marriage? Marry a woman who won’t admit she made a mistake.”

On the Vietnam War: “What most young people don’t understand is that we were in Vietnam to stop the spread of communism, not to beat the North Vietnamese. The political goal was not necessarily compatible with the military goal. We achieved the political goal, but did not achieve the military goal. We don’t want to do that again.”

On his Air Cav unit: “They called me ‘the old man,’ and I wasn’t an old man. It was a sign of respect, so I loved being called that. We trained together for a year and a half before we got to Vietnam. My biggest stateside concern was safety. Combat changed everything. My biggest concern was my people. They were like my children. When they had a problem at home, I had a problem at home. It’s something you can’t really understand unless you’ve been there. I lost four guys, missing in action. The hardest thing I did over there was writing the letters to their families.”

On his work as a story advisor during the filming of “We Were Soldiers,” a 2002 Vietnam War movie starring Mel Gibson: “It was about 75 percent real and 25 percent Hollywood. And that’s pretty good.”

On self-sacrifice: “They want us to say something about ‘sacrifice,’ but I prefer the word ‘service.’ We don’t necessarily need to sacrifice things in our lives, but we all need to be of service.”

On the current fashion of mandatory volunteerism: “Patriotism can’t be taught. This is, without a doubt, the greatest country that’s ever been conceived. If you don’t believe you’re living in the greatest country in the world, and that your country deserves your support, and that you owe something to your country, nobody can teach it to you.”

On personal responsibility and family: “You each have a duty to look after those who came before you, and those that came after you. All of you have all the benefits that we – the group ahead of you – can give you.”

And, appropriately enough, on the nature of heroism: “Courage runs through all of us, and you don’t know what courage is until it’s been tested. As humans, we have a tremendous capacity to do what’s right when the time comes.”

heroguy3Curiously – or maybe not – he said next to nothing about the actions for which he received a grateful nation’s highest honor. On Nov. 14, 1965, Crandall’s flight of 16 helicopters was ferrying troops from a base in Plei Me, Vietnam, to a landing zone in the la Drang Valley. By the fourth lift, the enemy had targeted the landing zone and the unarmed aircraft began taking fire. By the fifth, the shooting had grown so intense that Crandall’s group commander suspended further flight operations. Rather than abandon the besieged soldiers to their fate, Crandall moved his base of operations closer to the landing zone and – at appalling personal risk – continued flying desperately needed supplies and ammunition in, and flying wounded soldiers out.

“Despite the fact that the landing zone was still under relentless enemy fire, Major Crandall landed and proceeded to supervise the loading of seriously wounded soldiers aboard his aircraft,” reads the official account. “Major Crandall’s voluntary decision to land under the most extreme fire instilled in the other pilots the will and spirit to land their own aircraft, and in the ground forces the realization that they would be re-supplied and that friendly wounded would be promptly evacuated. That day he completed a total of 22 flights, most under intense enemy fire, retiring from the battlefield only after all possible service had been rendered to the Infantry battalion. Major Crandall’s daring acts of bravery and courage in the face of an overwhelming and determined enemy are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.”

heroguy4“My wingman and I flew 14-and-a-half hours, that day, 12 of them after the med-evacs refused to fly,” was about all Crandall would say on the subject. “If we didn’t go, nobody would go.”

At about 9:45, the kids gave Crandall a hero’s ovation and headed off to less dramatic studies. In the parking lot out front, a line of yellow buses was discharging swarms of Evergreen Middle School students, because Crandall’s mission to Evergreen was still only half done.

It was hard to nail down exactly what the EMS kids’ older counterparts gathered from the event and, like so much that we learn as children, it may be years before the kids are able to appreciate the significance of what they heard. For one action-movie-steeped young fellow, the Medal of Honor recipient’s wartime piloting experiences left a strong impression.

“I liked his call-sign, ‘snake,’” he said, incorrectly remembering Crandall’s actual wartime radio call-sign, Ancient Serpent Six. “It sounds kind of cool.”

On the other hand, junior Emma Stewart might have come away with something closer to the message Crandall hoped to send.

“I liked what he said about duty, and doing what’s right,” she said, thoughtfully. “You shouldn’t feel obligated to do something, you should do it because it’s the right thing to do.”

Spoken like a true hero.heroguy5

Let’s Get Something Straight

Posted on by

America-Flag-11

It’s okay to not vote.

All the folks in a lather about people who don’t vote need to towel off and pipe down.

Voting is a right “granted us by our Creator”, not a requirement, or even a responsibility. Like every other right, it can be exercised or not.

You have a right to own a gun, but you don’t have to. If you shoot somebody with your gun you have a right to counsel, but you don’t have to accept it. You have all kinds of rights that you never use and nobody bats an eye. Voting is – or at least should be – no different.

Voting is your right, and not voting is also your right.

Nobody has to vote.

If you hate all the candidates, you don’t need to vote for any of them. It’s your right.

If you’re disillusioned with the process, you don’t have to participate in it. Not voting doesn’t make you a Bad American, it just makes you a taxpaying citizen who didn’t happen to vote.

If you simply don’t believe your vote will do any good, it’s okay to shrug it off. There’s a good reason voting isn’t required by law.

It’s not “wrong” to not vote.

And it’s not always “right” to vote.

Contrary to the sweaty emanations of the screaming classes, voting is not, of itself, a noble act. The undemanding feat of pulling a lever or filling in a little circle does not constitute proof of patriotism, virtue or wisdom. If you have no interest in, understanding of, or opinions about the issues, the candidates or the behavior of government, you should absolutely not vote. That being the case, the most responsible thing you can do is not vote. Anybody can throw a dart at a ballot and call it voting, but it’s not. It’s a safe bet that many people who don’t vote give a lot more thought to that decision than many people who do.

And one other thing ~

Get-Out-the-Vote types like to scream that those who don’t vote automatically give up their right to complain about the government. They can take that ridiculous statement, carefully place it inside its provided “security sleeve” and stuff it straight up their poll.

You always have a right to complain. Voting is a right, just like every other right enumerated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, including the right to “seek redress”, and by not exercising one right you don’t magically forfeit all the others. Every American is entitled to all the rights and protections that come with citizenship, and if government moves to entail those rights, or abuse those protections, every American is entitled to cry “foul”, regardless of what they did, or didn’t do, on election day. You have a right to your rights, and you have a right to insist on them.

And a right to yield them.

Either way, the ballot box has got nothing to do with it.

I’m glad we got that straight.

election-2012-busy-vote-election-romney-obama-reminder-ecards-someecards

 

 

Jury Instruction

Posted on by

barajasYou’re probably aware of the curious case of David Barajas.

Two years ago, Barajas and his two young sons were pushing the family’s stricken pickup truck along the road near their Houston-area home when 20-year-old Jose Banda, definitely drunk, possibly stoned, and reportedly an avid gang-banger, ran his car into the pickup, killing Barajas’ sons.

The way prosecutors tell it, Barajas immediately retrieved a pistol from his house and shot Banda in the head. Prosecutors charged Barajas with murder. The case against him wasn’t precisely a slam-dunk, but there was some physical and lots of circumstantial evidence pointing to his guilt, and there was every reason to expect a speedy and resounding  conviction. Certainly American juries have convicted fellow citizens on far, far less.

On Aug. 27 of this year, Barajas was acquitted of the murder charge by a jury of his peers. Many people, most of them in legal professions, denounced the verdict as unjust. They said juror sympathy trumped the facts. They said a murderer is walking around free. They say the decision heralds a bloody “open-season” on those suspected of as-yet un-adjudicated crimes. Some, determined to correct what they consider a grave miscarriage of justice, even called for Barajas to be tried again on federal civil-rights charges, double jeopardy be damned.

Me? I’m of two minds.

On one hand, I don’t think people should be encouraged to take the law into their own hands, or be free to kill those who’ve wronged them as they see fit. Our judicial system, for all its faults, is a lot better than folks running around settling their beefs by deadly force, which is simply vigilantism, which is another name for anarchy.

I’m against anarchy.

On the other, I consider the Barajas verdict a signal victory for the jury system. In fact, I believe Barajas’ acquittal is an excellent example of a jury acting as the system’s designers intended. Prosecutors in the case archly castigated the jury for allowing “sympathy” to trump “facts.” It’s quite possible, even probable, they did exactly that.

And that’s quite all right.

A jury represents the one instance, codified in the Constitution and endlessly supported by precedent, when citizens are allowed – no, required – to take the law into their own hands. In the courtroom, the jury is the law.

Judge’s tend to disagree. They like to “instruct” the jury on how to do its job, tell the jurors what evidence they should and should not consider, how they should think about that evidence, how they should deliberate, and how they should arrive at their verdict. Judges like juries to toe the tight judicial line they draw for them.

Prosecutors tend to disagree. Prosecutors like jurors to accept the evidence as they provide it, and they aren’t above telling them in no uncertain terms how they “must” decide. They provide juries with check-lists detailing the “elements” of the case, and flatly state that, if each element has been proven, they have no legal recourse but to convict.

crownpin_11883largeThing is, juries have all kinds of legal recourse. Judges aren’t the kings of the courtroom, regardless of what they think. And provided individual jurors don’t take bribes, threaten other jurors, or defecate in the jury box, prosecutors have very little legal authority over jurors. In the courtroom, the jury is the law.

I’m reminded of a case I saw on TV once. An 18-year-old boy fell in love with a 13-year-old girl. They were, by all accounts, a typical teenaged couple, holding hands and mooning, all hearts and flowers, sickening, really. The girl’s mother didn’t object. She recognized that the boy and her daughter, the calendar notwithstanding, were psychologically and emotionally simpatico. The kids’ friends and adult acquaintances took it in stride, and for the same reason. Then the girl got pregnant. Nobody who knew them minded that, under state law, the union was mathematically proscribed.

The boy took a job, determined to step up and provide for his girlfriend and their coming child like a man. They faced many challenges ahead, and possibly their relationship would not survive those challenges, but they had the support of their families, the strength of young love, and they were determined to try.

juryWhen the local prosecutor got wind the affair, he charged the boy with statutory rape. If convicted, the lad was looking at a minimum two year prison hitch and a lifetime sex-offender brand. Following a short trial, the DA sent the juror off to deliberations with a very short list of elements.

1.)    Is the boy 18? No denying it.

2.)    Is the girl 13? Proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

3.)    If you answered “yes” to numbers 1 and 2, you must convict.

The jury deliberated far longer than should have been necessary, than came back with a guilty verdict. The boy was hauled away to prison, the girl shuffled back to her mother’s house to join the rolls of unwed teens living on the public purse and raising a child without a father. A reporter talked to the jurors after the trial. Said the foreman; “None of us wanted to convict him. We just didn’t have a choice.”

My head very nearly exploded.

I yelled at the TV.

“If you didn’t want to convict him, why the hell did you?”

What those jurors apparently didn’t understand, and what neither the judge, nor the prosecutor, nor even the defense attorney (being professionally invested in the primacy of the legal classes) was about to tell them, is that nobody can make a jury do anything it doesn’t want to do. In the courtroom, the jury is the law.

The function of a jury is not to simply rubber-stamp investigators’ findings and the state’s conclusions, however compelling, or to slavishly adhere to the letter of the law and avoid all contemplation of its spirit. If that were the case, in most cases there’d be no need for juries. Juries weren’t invented by accident. They exist because, despite the assurances of every prosecutor who ever lived, the state enjoys a considerable advantage in the courtroom. Juries balance the government’s power with the power of the governed, and temper dry legal principles with humanity. The jury’s job, first and foremost, is to administer justice as it is understood by the common citizen.

A responsible jury can decide whether or not the law is being applied as intended. It can decide if punishment is warranted in a given case, regardless of guilt. A jury can and should decide what outcome will best serve the community’s interests, and what verdict will best satisfy justice. There can be, after all, a distinct difference between what is legal and what is just. Alas, all too often juries merely decide a person’s fate based on carefully tailored criteria hand-fed them by people adept at using the system to advance their own careers.

In the case of the ill-fated Romeo, it’s nothing short of a tragedy that not one of a dozen solid citizens appreciated their proper role, or mustered the courage to say “Hold the phone!”

“This is not some middle-aged creep exposing himself to school children. This awkward teen romance is not what these laws were crafted to address.

“I, for one, will never vote to send this harmless sad-sack to prison and doom him to a life of constant suspicion and loathing; to deprive his girlfriend of the emotional and financial support that he is willing to provide and consign her into the unloving hands of social welfare agencies; to deprive his child of a father, an example, a loving guide and nurturing presence, and surrender it to the state’s fickle form of fatherhood.

“I see no malice in his actions, no terrible wrong done by them, and no conceivable benefit to this community by his conviction. I do see, however, any number of very great wrongs that will surely result from his imprisonment, and I simply won’t be party to it.”

Nobody said that, of course. The jury followed its orders and put the boy away, and his community’s been paying for it in ways large and small ever since.

Which brings me back to David Barajas.

I don’t know why they let him off the hook. But I’d like to think they did it because it was the right thing to do.

Barajas shouldn’t have shot Banda in the head, if that’s what he did, but if ever a man had cause to seek violent personal retribution it was David Barajas. And while he may have been denied the legal protections afforded all citizens by due process, if ever a person deserved immediate and summary justice it was Jose Banda.

I like to think the jury concluded that society lost little with Banda’s death, and that it would surely lose a great deal by the incarceration of Barajas. I like to think those jurors realized that Barajas’ case fell outside the normal definitions of criminal murder, and that the laws the prosecutor sought to apply against him were simply inadequate to address the circumstances. I like to think they decided among themselves that enough damage was done, and that neither the judge, nor the prosecutor, nor the indifferent letter of the law would compel them to add to the tragedy.

I like to think David Barajas’ jury did its job.

images

Can-do Attitude Launched Beverage Revolution

Posted on by

Or;

Beer baron’s bold bet beggars bottlers

coors

Some people get wound up about fine wine, others go gaga for The Next Top Model. The 50 merry worthies who gathered at CoorsTek on Washington Street in Golden were excited about something far less glamorous than Carol Alt, but infinitely more valuable than the finest Chateau Margaux ever corked.

After briefly addressing the invitation-only crowd that included three generations of the Coors family, longtime Evergreen resident George Krauss officially presented a large bronze plaque to the venerable man of the hour, Bill Coors, on behalf of ASM International, The Materials Information Society. With that, CoorsTek became the 119th site to be awarded the 38,000-member society’s woefully under-appreciated ASM Historical Landmark Citation, an honor established in 1972 to recognize game-changing milestones in materials technology.

“At this site on January 22, 1959,” the plaque reads, “the first aluminum beverage can plant produced its first can, under the direction of William K. Coors, Joseph Coors and colleagues.”

aluminumcan1Beer cans? All that fuss and feathers for beer cans? You bet, and with very good reason.

“It’s exciting to see what can be done with a fairly common material,” explains Krauss, a former materials researcher at the Colorado School of Mines and one-time ASM president. “The aluminum can is ubiquitous, now, but 50 years ago Bill Coors had to fight against all odds to make it happen. Bringing the aluminum can production to fruition on a large scale was really an event, and it happened right here in Golden.”

Picking up where Krauss left off, William K. related the genesis of the Coors interest in that most old-pepsi-canversatile of metals. After World War II, he explained, glass bottles gave way to steel cans, first with awkward cone-shaped tops, and later with sturdy flat lids that required a church-key and strong wrist to breach. While serviceable and convenient, steel cans were relatively difficult and expensive to produce and worse – from a brewmaster’s perspective, anyway – tended to impose its own unwholesome nuance on the golden nectar within.

Enter Lou Bronstein, a smooth-talking, fast-living, semi-dubious Viennese aluminum broker who, in 1954, persuaded Bill to tour aluminum manufacturing plants and research facilities across Germany. Sold on the possibilities of the strong, light, corrosion-resistant metal, Coors set about trying to generate interest on the home front, but met stout resistance on many fronts, including, ironically enough, American aluminum giant Alcoa, which refused to lend its considerable weight to the venture on the grounds that aluminum beverage cans would never be cost-effective. Undeterred, Coors resolved to make the cans in-house and – 5 years and $10 million later – the seamless, 2-piece, extruded aluminum can made its public debut, a wildly profitable industry was born, and bottle manufacturers around the globe sleeping late and muttering to themselves.

secrets_ball2-1024x685“We make literally billions of these things,” Krauss says. “Soda pop, sports drinks, beer, juice – everything comes in aluminum cans. Ball Corporation has another huge aluminum can plant in Golden. They’re perfect beverage containers.”

They are that. Feather-light, tough as nails, aluminum conducts heat like nobody’s business, meaning it cools liquids faster and keeps them cold longer than other materials. Best of all, it’s 100-percent recyclable, making it both more economical to manufacturer and less burdensome to the common ecology.

the-hl-hunley-replicaJust for the record, CoorsTek is the second Colorado institution to receive ASM’s approbation. In 1977, the Climax Molybdenum Mine and Mills Complex near Leadville got the nod, joining such stellar industrial lights as the Outokumpu Flash Smelter in Helsinki-Espoo, Finland, the Forge of Fontenay in Bourgogne, France, and the world’s first attack submarine, the American civil war vessel H.L. Hunley, a modern marvel of its time that was recently resurrected from a watery grave off the coast of South Carolina.

Niceties accomplished, the assembled can-fans dug into a cake fashioned in the likeness of – what else – an aluminum Coors beer can, and then toasted William’s bold gamble with – you guessed it – aluminum cans of Coors beer. More fitting tributes can hardly be imagined.

Metal-Cans-Aluminum-Containers“Aluminum can technology was a huge step forward,” says Krauss. “It took one man with the vision to see that aluminum cans were worthwhile.”