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Articles by Ron Kokish
Mature Content: Love? – The Sopris Sun
I learned the secret in 1989, while dutifully visiting my parents in Manhattan. Dad, 87, woke up more confused than usual. Mom and I urged him to see his doctor, and he reluctantly agreed. The doctor said to bring him in at once, so I called a taxi. Exam findings were negative. “Go home and take it easy,” the doctor advised, and I started calling another taxi, but Dad was adamant: “I’m walking. I’ll meet you at home.” I followed him into the increasingly blustery October weather.
Mature Content: When Jae was shocked (but I was pleased)
Early this summer, respected local Jae Gregory published a Facebook post about her move to Redstone after 28 years in Carbondale. Since her move, she wrote, she suddenly finds Carbondale “a bit shocking.” “I’ve often wondered,” she continued, “why, when a small town is perfect, the developers and off [sic] the council can still take over and persuade the Town it needs to grow. But [the] new growth never solves the problems.
Litze and Yaz - The Sopris Sun
When the German military marched into deeply Catholic Austria on March 12, 1938, Austrians overwhelmingly welcomed them. The two governments became one a day later in an action called Anschluss. Richard Kapella, a member of Austria’s Catholic majority, was born to landed gentry at the end of the 19th century. A physician and full colonel in the Austrian Army, Kapella commanded all the military hospitals in the Vienna District. On March 13, he found himself a colonel of the Third Reich.
Mature Content: ‘Only in America’
I started writing this column on July 4th, exactly 250 years after our Founders signed America’s Declaration of Independence. The second sentence of that document asserts, among other things, that all men are created equal and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. At the time, it was far from a done deal, and even today we are obviously still struggling with how these once radical ideas ought to play out in everyday life.
Indivisible-ish - The Sopris Sun
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” This is the pledge we learned in the 1940s, on our first day of kindergarten. The principal’s voice came over the loudspeaker; we were told to stand, place our hands over our hearts, and recite the pledge with him. It was the opening ritual for all NYC school children. We didn’t know what it meant, but we knew it mattered.
Revolutionary changes – The Sopris Sun
My granddaughter Sara interviewed me for a college assignment. She wanted to know about the revolutionary changes I’ve experienced in my eight and a half decades on earth, things like computers and Artificial Intelligence (AI). At 18, Sara sees change as pretty sudden. At 85, I see it as more gradual, an “evolution” rather than a revolution.
Mature Content: Travel thoughts
Some people are devout travelers. My friend Harry combined his love of travel with his gift of gab in a career that started as a traveling salesman and turned into life as a Costa Rican citizen and businessman. Zach, a hippy kid, interrupted his education for a year of traveling in India on a shoestring, earned an MBA in London, and, after moving back and forth between London and the USA for decades, is back living in India.
Mature Content: ‘All Used Up’
We’re all “aging.” From our neighbor turning 10 to friends turning 80, if you manage to stay alive, aging happens. For a time, that process means gaining abilities. Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the gains stabilize. Eventually, they become losses. When 55-year-old Susan moved back to the Valley, and Ron made his Valley debut at 68, losses were underway, but not yet noticeable enough to cause much concern.
Mature Content: ‘Don’t worry about it!’ – The Sopris Sun
Editor’s note: Some quotes in this column are paraphrased. Those of us living in America’s moderate- and left-leaning political spaces expected a bad year, and 2025 didn’t disappoint. The Trump-Kennedy Center, Trump-class battleships, masked (secret?) police in unmarked cars abducting our neighbors, the military patrolling city streets, yo-yo tariffs, more mass shootings, the continued dismembering of our already inadequate healthcare system in favor of no healthcare system, precipitous.
Mature Content: Joseph and Gerard – The Sopris Sun
George Santayana was right when he wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In 1960, my friend John and I drove to Miami for spring break and came home with a tiny alligator we named Gerard Swope. We wanted to be cool. We thought having a pet alligator would make us cooler, and that Gerard Swope was a very cool name for an alligator.
Mature Content: A liberal’s hopeful lament – The Sopris Sun
In the mid-1970s I worked for a welfare director named Dave Kelly. Lumber was the regional economic driver and our county’s biggest employer. With mill workers on a prolonged strike, many families applied for food stamps. Dave told his staff that income was the only eligibility criterion and instructed them to grant all income-eligible families.
Mature Content: Turning 85 – The Sopris Sun
This month’s Mature Content, a column about aging and life from the perspectives of older people, has been hard to write. Though I dislike admitting it, it’s because I’d rather not face what I’ve been dreaming about most nights and thinking every morning, in that middle space between being asleep and being awake: the number 85. Eighty-five! That’s when my father stopped living, though he continued existing for another four years.
Mature Content: Another last chance – The Sopris Sun
You’ll be reading this towards the end of the Jewish month of Elul, a few days before Rosh Hashonah (the universe’s birthday) and maybe two weeks before Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement). The 10 days between are called “The Ten Days of Awe.” Here’s how these 39-days work. Yom Kippur, a day of fasting and prayer, is said to be when God decides whether to seal us into the book of life or the book of death for the coming year. So, we better finish our unfinished business before the sun goes down.
Mature Content: Extractions of the heart – The Sopris Sun
I awoke feeling sad about my appointment to explore having some teeth pulled. I love my teeth and don’t want to separate from them, but these thoughts were soon pushed aside by thoughts about another loss I’m even less ready for. My youngest granddaughter decided to complete her senior year of high school in Salt Lake City, where she will be better able to immerse herself in martial arts and take AP classes at a real university.
Mature Content: My billionaire chatbot – The Sopris Sun
Cynics say that Donald Trump gets financial support from billionaires because they think a Trump presidency will make them even richer. But I’m pretty sure that Republican billionaires, like most of us, believe their actions help society. I’d love to interview some of them but what are my chances? So, I had ChatGPT create John Dough, a composite of Andrew Newhouse, Timothy Mellon and Elon Musk, and interviewed John. We talked about the wealth gap, why he supports Trump and what comes next.
Mature Content: Motherhood – The Sopris Sun
Mother’s Day just passed, and I’m thinking about the mothers I met during my 35 years of work on behalf of neglected and abused children. Patricia’s was the first case I assigned to myself after Humboldt County, California, hired me to develop its new Child Protective Services program. Her little girl was in foster care in Elk County, Kansas. Patricia was born and raised in Humboldt but moved to Kansas with Mia’s father. The relationship went badly, and Patricia took to drinking.
Mature Content: Sleepless in Carbondale – The Sopris Sun
My friend Lee died suddenly six days ago of a condition she didn’t know she had. I haven’t slept well since, and I’m surprised to be so affected by it. I should probably be calling Lee an acquaintance rather than a friend. I’d only known her a few years and we never had the opportunity to spend much time together. But it would have been almost impossible to be Lee’s acquaintance. Her heart and her mouth were too big for that. Once you met Lee, she was your instant and lasting friend if she liked you.
Mature Content: Vision 2050 – The Sopris Sun
In the 1990s, I wanted my business to contribute more effectively to my community, so I invested a year in the Teams, Management and Leadership Program (TMLP). There, I learned that to succeed I needed clear goals, a plan to reach them and a “next step.” Although plans rarely go as planned, they provide focus, momentum and a problem-solving framework. When circumstances inevitably change, a good plan allows for new paths to the goals and at least one practical next step down one of those paths.
Mature Content: Storied lives – The Sopris Sun
When my congregation talked about the power of stories last Sunday, I remembered this one. By the time I was 3, it was difficult for my mother to make me behave, so she used drastic measures. She told me she would have to send me to Reform School if I misbehaved.
Mature Content: Bustered – The Sopris Sun
Not yet knowing how the 2024 election would unfold, I ended last month’s column by recommending kindness, humor, and dogs. Still good, I think, now that we know the results. Many of my friends were shocked by those results but having been Bustered, I wasn’t. I was six when I got Buster, a smallish, stout, pink and white, stuffed bear. We bonded at once and soon Buster was keeping me company as I waited out measles in my darkened room.
Mature Content: Dear Mandy, – The Sopris Sun
Mandy and I chatted after a concert last week. She told me that she usually likes this column, but she wasn’t so sure about the last one. Kind of a downer, she thought. The column was about death becoming an ever more present companion when we are old. It was about losing loved ones and losing personal capabilities. It was, in a sense, about the sadness of being old. Is sadness a downer? I didn’t feel down when I wrote it. It was, after all, about LIVING that last part of life.
Mature Content: Living the end stage – The Sopris Sun
A medical team stopped and restarted my heart a few weeks ago, trying to stop its atrium from fibrillating. I considered this a drastic measure, but it didn’t work. It rarely does, with people my age. Consequently, I’ve scheduled even more drastic measures. My cardiac reboot took place two days after a close friend’s memorial service. After living with Parkinson’s disease for 21 years, he died of it last December.
Mature Content: The rest of the story – The Sopris Sun
Remember my marijuana farm from last month’s column? I used that story to make a point about conditions along Highway 133 but probably left you wondering, “How did Kokish resolve the job thing? After burning the plants, wasn’t he still stuck in a soul-crushing bureaucracy?” I want to tell you how that turned out, but first, I want to introduce you to Joan and Erik Erikson.
Mature Content: Kenny Rogers serenades Carbondale – The Sopris Sun
In May of 1985, my job was troubleshooting the most difficult cases for my county’s child protection program, which I’d helped found a few years earlier. A respected expert in my field, I lunched with attorneys, probation officers, and judges. Both of my teenage children were about to enter college and I owned a marijuana farm in Oregon, just across the California state line. Although I liked my work, I now hated the agency I worked for.
Keeping it local — do we? – The Sopris Sun
There’s a plethora of local Facebook posts denigrating Donald Trump. Posts critical of the Supreme Court are also popular, as are posts about a certain congresswoman’s intelligence and passions. There are complaints about our local government too. Carbondale Marketplace and other developments are favorite targets. Unfortunately, relevant decisions about those developments were made 10 or more years ago. These aren’t complaints about local government; they’re complaints about local history.
Mature Content: Carbondale makes room at the inn – The Sopris Sun
About 21,000 people live on Martha’s Vineyard, and median home prices are almost identical to Carbondale. In September of 2022, when 50 refugees suddenly arrived courtesy of Ron DeSantis, the island’s population increased by 0.002%. Volunteers cared for them at a temporary church shelter for 44 hours, at which point Massachusetts’ governor helped move the hapless group to a mainland location.
Mature Content: On the MAP – The Sopris Sun
By Ron Kokish We got our first family car, a blue Nash Statesman, early in 1948. It was a luxury we mostly used on weekends. On Sunday evenings, my father parked it in front of our Manhattan apartment building, where it stayed the week. After school, I often played stickball on the street where the Statesman waited for us. When I left New York (NY) in 1964, it might take hours to find a parking space within a half of a mile from home.
Mature Content: Sex in the library – The Sopris Sun Original
By Ron Kokish Editor’s note: This column contains references to sex and pornography. Like most children, I asked my mother how babies were made. She told me a doctor cuts a small piece of flesh from the mommy’s thigh and places it in a jar filled with a special liquid, wherein the flesh grows into a baby. My father did not contradict her. When I later learned the truth and confronted her she said, “Yes, it can be done that way, but that’s not the best way.
Mature Content: Paths of glory? – The Sopris Sun
By Ron Kokish Memorial Day 2023 is history, July 4th is near, and I’ve been thinking about heroes, fallen soldiers, and how I became a conscientious objector. My Jewish parents fled from Nazi Austria to America in 1938. I was raised on stories about what and who they lost and on propaganda about heroic victories against “despicable Krauts and Japs.” I remember how frightened I was when the Korean War started, but I never doubted that we, the good guys, had to fight it.
Mature Content: CAFCI and me – The Sopris Sun
By Ron Kokish I recently read something in the Carbondale Facebook group that’s worth quoting. It’s what Eric Mitchell tries to convey to recent Carbondale arrivals. “Welcome! Thanks for recognizing that this place is special. We think it’s special too. It wasn’t an accident. It feels the way it does to you, because we’ve prioritized connection to one another. We know each other. We support one another whenever possible. We grow opportunities for each other.
Mature Content: Over the hill and out to lunch? Not really! – The Sopris Sun
By Ron Kokish I’ve always believed that deeds define us and respect must be earned. As a lad, I didn’t understand why I was expected to defer to older people. At age 82, the shoe is on the other foot, and I’m still puzzled. By 70, we’ve taken nearly 588 million breaths and experienced over 2.5 billion heartbeats. But it’s what we’ve done during all this autonomic, cardiovascular activity that, in my opinion, ought to determine the deference we deserve.
Mature Content: To plan or not to plan, that is the question – The Sopris Sun
By Ron Kokish I met Niki when I was 21. She was 19. She enjoyed our first date, so when I asked her to a toga party the following week, she said yes. Then she had second thoughts. “A toga party? At a frat house? Ugh!” She decided to back out, but her mother leaned on her. I was a nice guy. My feelings would be hurt. She had promised, and it was wrong to back out. Niki’s kid sister agreed with Mom and said she’d stand in for Niki as a clothing dummy during toga creation. Niki didn’t back out.
Mature Content: Goners – The Sopris Sun
By Ron Kokish Carbondale Age Friendly Community Initiative This columnist may have gotten a little mired in dying over the last few months, so this month, I’m going to talk about something different, like … dead people. I can hear your profanities already, but please give me a chance. Although it may seem like the same subject, it really isn’t. Stick with me. The approaching solstice heralds the time of year when everything that’s been dying (there’s that word again) is finally dead. But is it gone?
Mature Content: Whose life is it, anyway? — Third and final part – The Sopris Sun
By Ron Kokish “A time to love and a time to die” … Ecclesiastes 3:2 At 85, my father was failing badly enough for his doctor to insist he stop driving. A few months later I called and casually asked how he was feeling. “Fine, physically,” he replied, “but life is hell when you don’t have a goal.” Dad deteriorated gradually and steadily. He became confused, incontinent and often unaware whether or not others were present.
Mature Content: Whose death is it, anyway? – The Sopris Sun
By Ron Kokish Charlie was 10 the day he came home from school to find his father Hugo dead in their Montreal living room, an empty whiskey glass on the table and a cigarette still smoldering between two fingers. Hugo’s decision to overdose was tragic and understandable. Fleeing the Third Reich with his wife in 1938, Hugo spent 12 years seeking refuge in foreign lands. His son was born in Shanghai’s Jewish sector during the Japanese occupation, where tuberculosis found Hugo and Hugo found morphine.
Guest opinion: Medical aid in dying is legal, but not tested
Most people want a peaceful death. About 70 percent of us say we want to die at home, and 80 percent of chronically ill patients want to avoid intensive care. Nonetheless, only about one-fourth will die at home, surrounded by loved ones. My father-in-law Irv died of lung cancer with chronic pain from a leg fracture that was never set properly. I'd loved him 32 years by then and knew he had always wanted to control his own death. He was home with a plentiful supply of lethal painkillers.
Letter: In support of diverse opinions
Should we be eating meat? Dr. Greg Feinsinger thinks not, citing both individual health and environmental arguments to support his position.
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