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Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Shooting in Nederland, Colorado

There was a shooting at a ski resort in Colorado today. An employee shot the manager at an early morning meeting. A Sheriff's Deputy tracked the shooter down and killed him. The Denver Post has the story
    So another nut-case goes off the deep end and people end up dead. Why am I writing about it? Because a friend of mine in Ohio has friends that live in Nederland. There were a bunch of people at that early morning meeting. It is only by the grace of god (or pure dumb luck, your choice) that more of them didn't end up dead. 
    I really wish there was a way to identify people who are ready to go over the edge. I suspect the problem might be that the people we should worry about are the ones who are on the fringe of society. Maybe they've been pushed there because of their poor social skills, or maybe they've gone there for their own reasons. People who are on the fringe don't talk to a lot of people, so there aren't going to be a lot chances for someone to notice that they might be getting a little close to the edge.
    Anyway, I had never heard of Nederland before, so I looked it up. It's just west of Boulder, got it's start in mining and now it has a ski resort. I've excerpted a bit from Wikipedia below.

Nederland, Colorado
with Tungsten (lower right), Caribou (upper left) and Eldora ski resort (lower left).
Nederland was established in 1874. The town started as a trading post between Ute Indians and European settlers during the 1850s. The town's first economic boom came when minerals such as tungsten, silver, and gold were discovered near Tungsten (east of Nederland), Caribou (northwest of Nederland, 1859), and Eldora (west of Nederland, 1875). . . .
In 1873 the Caribou Mine, at an elevation of roughly 10,000 feet and 6 miles northwest of the town, was sold to the Mining Company Nederland from the Netherlands. The high elevation meant fierce winds and deep winter snow, so the new owners of the mine decided that it was beneficial to bring ore from Caribou down to Middle Boulder for milling. In the Dutch language, Nederland ("Netherlands" in English) means low land, and based on casual usage by the Dutch miners, Middle Boulder came to be known as Nederland. (This is ironic, considering that the town's elevation is higher than 8,000 feet and most locations in the Netherlands are near or even below sea level.) In 1874 the town was incorporated and adopted Nederland as the official name. - Wikipedia

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