I am starting to keep a collection. No, really, I am. It’s the kind of collection nobody is ever going to believe in a million years because it’s going to be a collection of the dysfunction at the junction that is the bark and soul of Aspen. Aspen, you see, is Paradise set in Cloud Cuckoo Land, and I don’t mean the kind of Eden where the virgins await your sexual jihad. I’m talking about a place where people get furious about the darndest things.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe Aspen makes perfect sense if you merely posit an average age of 12 years old and a lost key to the library. Anger, rage, frustration, pissiness, posing, popping off–you name it, and we can serve it up on a platter garnished with the finest bile.

Here’s the kind of crapola I mean. On “Con Games,” my radio show from 8-10 AM on KNFO (106.1 Aspen, 94.3 Carbondale), I made a command decision to pronounce the “Paepcke Auditorium” the proper way, as in “Pep-kah,” not the “Pep-KEY” that 99 percent of Aspen believes to be the correct name.

The clouds burst. Calls and emails rendered in a generous spirit tried to wise me up. I’ve only been here four years, after all, and my friends out there were only too happy to set me straight about Walter and Elizabeth Paepcke, the couple from Chicago with deep pockets that essentially founded the mind-body-spirit tradition of Aspen over fifty years ago.

Their daughter, Paula Zurcher is a good friend of mine, and so is her daughter Toni Zurcher. One day at Asie a year ago Paula was talking about her family and pronounced the name “Pep-KAH.”

Aha, I said.

“Pep-KAH?” I said.

“That’s how we pronounce it,” she said.

“So everybody’s arguing over a name they can’t pronounce?” I said.

“That’s right,” Paula said.

At the time, the poobahs-that-be at the Aspen Institute had tried to change the name of the Paepcke Auditorium to the Resnick Auditorium (RES-nick) to the tune of $4 million. The clouds burst because the City of Infants said the Paepcke name (mispronounced) was sacred to the town. Put aside the fact that the building would remain the Paepcke Building even with the new Resnick Auditorium–or the fact that every room in the adjacent Koch building on the Aspen Institute campus is named and sponsored. Put aside that an auditorium in Aspen can fetch $4 million.

An auditorium!

No, said the City of Infants, stomping their feet like children: you can’t muck with “The Paepcke.”

Pronounced incorrectly as ”Pep-KEY.”

So that’s Aspen for you. Outraged about a routine practice that would NOT have removed the Paepcke name from the building. Handled with a little more care, nothing would have happened–no protest, no outrage, no nothing. But Aspen loves to go ballistic over the smallest things as long as they are symbolically important.

My suggestion: let’s pronounce the Paepcke name properly. I know that’s a lot to ask in the City of Infants but what the hey–it’s too late to give up.

PS Here’s an email on the subject from one of my “Con Games” listeners:

Given that I virtually “live” for people making mistakes, so that I can imperiously correct them, I must say that you’ve rather adroitly (is that a word “adroitly?”) hoisted me upon my own petard (as it were)  However, Mrs.”P” was very sparing in her spread of the proper pronunciation of the name.  A very, very, close friend of mine was Mrs. Paepke’s housekeeper for five years, and I just now called her (on the north bank of the Rogue River in Oregon yet) to make sure that you were correct.  And of course you are.  My friend, one Kay Jenson, told me that Mrs. Paepke quite consciously hid (from most people) the correct pronunciation because her brother was Paul Nitze (former Sec’y of the Navy? and generally distinguished VIP) and that she was not inclined to end up with a name that sounded like Mrs. Elizabeth Nitze-Pepkah or the like (she was of course Elizabeth Hilken Paepke)….if you see where she was going with her thinking. (you might check out this little snippet with your friend Paula…one person’s recollection doesn’t necessarily always square with the next person’s)
 
Kay said that I could trust whatever Paula told you.  She was also surprised that a relative newcomer (you) would be privy to such an arcane bit of trivia, and on top of that, be inclined to drop it into an otherwise innocuous conversational setting.
 
Once again, I admit defeat.  But I will have to insist that the great majority of people around Aspen have no clue as to the true and correct pronunciation of Paepke, unless of course they were from Chicago, and knew from other contacts with the famous name.  If you were to stop a representative group of Aspenites and started talking about Pepkah Auditorium, I believe they would try to set you straight.  Of course, it could be that I’ve just underestimated the Haavard quality of your intellect.  Could it be that either consciously or otherwise, you were “trolling” for some wiseguy like me, hoping that someone would take the bait?  If it is your intention to correct all and sundry’s misimpression about the Paepke name, I think it might take quite some time to pull it off.
 
My wife’s grave is just down the lane at the Aspen Grove Cemetery from where the Paepke’s are laid to rest, and on more than one occasion I have been up there and bumped into people I knew, and some way or other the fact of the proximity to the Paepke enclosure always seemed to come up, and never did anyone mention that the name ended in a “kah” sound rather than “key.”
 
Please bear in mind that just about every time I send you some kind of correction or enlightenment, my motives are really pure, inasmuch as I want you to sound informed and clued in to the Aspen scene, the history of the place, and maybe from time to time a bit of background on where the best bodies are buried, and I don’t mean the Paepke’s.  At the same time, I am well aware that just because I’ve been around here forever, and have seen hell of a lot, my fund of questionably useful knowlege, may or may not be important in the contemporary scheme of things.  When it comes down to it, humility has never really been my strong suit, but even so, notwithstanding that the question of whether or not I can seem “dumb” once in awhile remains open, I am not stupid.