CREATE The Rest of the Story

Here are remarks I made today at The Wet Mountain Valley Rotary Club meeting about my work as a community leader in Colorado for the Leadon Family Foundation, Sound Century Academy of Recording Arts and Broadcasting and Valley Park and Recreation in Westcliffe. This is the first TAG meeting event.

I am writing the Rest of the Story, the sweat of experience runs off my brow, Adjust the light to give you the glory, starting from here and from now-Oh Wow, the rest of the story. Richard Arnold Beattie

Hello Rotary Club of Custer County. Today is June 1rst and the start of the second half of 2026. As manyy of you know, I have spent a great deal of time writing music and lyrics and performing and recording the songs from "Walking the Same Ground" by my friend and author Dick Jones. Yesterday we were at one of the first neighborhoods in the Wet Mountain Valley at Tanglewood doing the church service for the neighbors. :Walking the Same Ground," is about Dick and Barb Jones' coming and staying in our Valley, teaching, preaching and observing. Coaching and mentoring several generations of students and congregants at Community Methodist Church and Valley Bible Fellowship. The book so inspired me, that we have recorded the stories and songs and they have been playing on my "Folk Heroes" show on Tuesday nights at 7 on KLZR the community radio station. Dick had given me an early manuscript and asked if I could write a couple of songs. That was two years ago. There are twenty songs now and counting.

"I didn't see it coming, it's in the twist and turns. We're all still in the running, its what you catch and what you learn!"

Dick Jones has captured something. As a quiet, reluctant preacher who has an Agarian manner, introverted and out spoken about neighboring, human nature and how we relate to nature. I wondered were he got this stuff- and as a songwriter and journalist, he captured my mind and heart. A few weeks ago, I was going through the giveaway books on Main Street and I stumbled on a title- "What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth" by Wendell Berry. I started taking notes from page 1. Yesterday, I asked Dick if he read Wendell Berry, since what I was reading is the gesture of the themes of "Walking the Same Ground, Reflections of Community."

"Reciting the words of history- the West was won by the hand on the plow. Shedding light on the shadow of mystery, Left to the here and the now...Oh Wow, the rest of the story."

"Humans prosper rightly when their goods come from nature by their good work. Users and consumers prosper by making money work for them." Wendell Berry. We stopped being citizens and began being consumers sometime after World War II. The definition of consumer is "someone who wastes." Oh wow, the rest of the story.

Richard Arnold Beattie is a community leader in Colorado. As President of the Colorado Chapter Committee of Leadon Foundation and Valley Parks and Recreation in the Wet Mountain Valley he is working to reach the next generation of responsible entrepreneurs. Join the TAG Team to Think and Act by email Richardbeattie809@gmail.com.