Boulder Weekly 4.7.2022

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Hometown Hero: Nell Rojas

The fierce Latina and fastest American woman at last year’s Boston Marathon preps for round two

by Emma Athena

■ Trying times for Quiet Skies, p. 8

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Safe, full capacity dining, and outdoor patio. Bar open. news:

Air traffic over Boulder is testing residents, creating tension with airports—but solutions remain elusive

by Will Brendza

8 13

news:

Butterfly pavilion continues expanding community science programs

by Emma Athena

cover:

The fastest American woman at last year’s Boston Marathon, a fierce Latina from Boulder, prepares for round two

by Emma Athena

15 18

buzz:

ArtSticks looks to explore the world of NFTs to expand its digital reach and fundraising options

by Matt Maenpaa

25

overtones:

Greg Schochet, Colorado’s favorite sideman, steps into the spotlight

by Adam Perry

THANK YOU BOULDER

WINNER OF 6 BEST OF BOULDER AWARDS

departments 5 7 26 29 30 31 32 35 37 39

The Unrepentant Tenant: The downward mobility of owning a mobile home City Beat: Finally, some decisions on the library district Events: What to do when there’s ‘nothing’ to do . . .

Savage Love: Vulvodynia sucks Astrology: By Rob Brezsny Film: Don’t miss ‘Deep Cover’ at IFS and ‘Cow’ at the Boe Nibbles: Boulder chefs divulge cooking hacks to beat skyrocketing cost of dinner Drink: A single-malt with echoes of Scotland Cuisine: Eats & Sweets Weed Between the Lines: House passes MORE Act (again) after adding research provisions

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APRIL 7, 2022

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Publisher, Fran Zankowski Circulation Manager, Cal Winn EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief, Caitlin Rockett Senior Editor, Emma Athena News Editor, Will Brendza Food Editor, John Lehndorff Contributing Writers: Peter Alexander, Dave Anderson, Rob Brezsny, Michael J. Casey, Shay Castle, Angela K. Evans, Mark Fearer, Jodi Hausen, Karlie Huckels, Dave Kirby, Matt Maenpaa, Sara McCrea, Rico Moore, Adam Perry, Katie Rhodes, Dan Savage, Alan Sculley, Tom Winter SALES AND MARKETING Market Development Manager, Kellie Robinson Account Executives, Matthew Fischer, Carter Ferryman Mrs. Boulder Weekly, Mari Nevar PRODUCTION Art Director, Susan France Senior Graphic Designer, Mark Goodman CIRCULATION TEAM Sue Butcher, Ken Rott, Chris Bauer BUSINESS OFFICE Bookkeeper, Regina Campanella Founder/CEO, Stewart Sallo Editor-at-Large, Joel Dyer April 7, 2022 Volume XXIX, Number 31 Cover, M. Thurk Photography As Boulder County's only independently owned newspaper, Boulder Weekly is dedicated to illuminating truth, advancing justice and protecting the First Amendment through ethical, no-holds-barred journalism, and thought-provoking opinion writing.

Free every Thursday since 1993, the Weekly also offers the county's most comprehensive arts and entertainment coverage. Read the print version, or visit boulderweekly.com. Boulder Weekly does not accept unsolicited editorial submissions. If you're interested in writing for the paper, please send queries to: editorial@boulderweekly.com. Any materials sent to Boulder Weekly become the property of the newspaper.

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Boulder Weekly welcomes your correspondence via email (letters@ boulderweekly.com) or the comments section of our website at www.boulderweekly.com. Preference will be given to short letters (under 300 words) that deal with recent stories or local issues, and letters may be edited for style, length and libel. Letters should include your name, address and telephone number for verification. We do not publish anonymous letters or those signed with pseudonyms. Letters become the property of Boulder Weekly and will be published on our website.

The downward mobility of owning a mobile home

BY MARK FEARER

A

couple of weeks ago, a ground-breaking Colorado bill, HB 1287, passed out of committee, bringing forward an extension of badly needed protections for Colorado mobile home owners (MHOs). These folks own their own homes, but have to rent the lots on which they sit and follow rules of parks they had no voice in making. Although MHOs are not considered tenants within the traditional sense, they are often at the mercy of similar forces of greed and control.

In the six-hour committee hearing, the main focus was on just one of the provisions: capping the increase of rents on these lots at 3%. If you’re just tuning into this column for the first time, rent control (RC) for all private residential housing has been illegal in Colorado for 41 years, but mobile homes have not been included in that ban.

Mobile home parks are really the last bastion of

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private home affordability. But a buying spree of these parks by out-of-state corporations have been sending lot rents sky high (this trend is happening nationally.)

Representative Andrew Boesenecker of Fort Collins, author of HB 1287, recognizes that mobile home owners are a captive audience, since, in spite of their name, these homes are not very mobile—which is why they are more commonly called manufactured homes. If you own one of these homes (which can cost between $5,000 for a very old, small, one-bedroom version, to $250,000 for a brand-spanking-new multi-sectional custom home with up to four bedrooms), your choices are limited as to where to live or move you mobile home. And unlike traditional homes, these “mobile” homes depreciate over time—so see THE UNREPENTANT TENANT Page 6

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THE UNREPENTANT TENANT from Page 5

the value of your home goes down as the lot rent goes up. And by the way, the land appreciation does benefit the mobile home park owners (MHPOs), never MHOs. Since many people in MHs are on fixed or limited incomes, it is an ever-tightening noose. When MHOs want to sell their homes, it’s a losing proposition, but when a MHPO wants to sell their park, it’s a windfall.

While MHOs have a number of problems with park owners and management, one of the most common complaints is about rent increases, according to Mike Peirce of the Colorado Coalition of Manufactured Home Owners. But it’s not all bad—there is often a sense of community in these parks that doesn’t exist in other dense housing, and you own your own home without having to pay a half a million to a million dollars.

There are almost a dozen states that have some form of regulated rents of mobile home parks, the largest one being California, where local governments are allowed to enact rent stabilization—almost 1,400 mobile home parks have some form of rent protection there. Contrary to dire predictions from the opposition, the sky did not fall and 150,000 MHOs are safe from unreasonable and unpredictable increases, according to the Mobile Home Park Home Owners Allegiance. Again, to no one’s surprise, rent control works.

There are myriad challenges facing MHOs, and perhaps in another column I’ll cover those, but for now, visit cocomho.org for more info.

During the recent HB 1287 hearing, opponents and supporters of the bill lined up to talk primarily about RC, even though there were 17 other protections included in the proposal. Many MHOs talked about the crushing rent increases they experienced over the last few years, especially as their parks were bought by new owners. All MHPOs (along with

their representatives and attorneys) strenuously opposed any form of RC, which was predictable. But they were joined by landlords of traditional housing, even though they had no direct connection to MH parks. All the opponents used the same, worn and disproven arguments against RC, predicting many MHPs would go out of business should this pass.

Some also claimed this would violate the ban on rent control, even though that law makes no mention of mobile homes or the land they sit on.

The bill passed 8-5, strictly along party lines. The good news beyond the victory is that all eight Democrats voted for it.

That is noteworthy because in the past, Democrats sided with Republicans to pass the ban on rent control 41 years ago, and tried to stall/kill attempts to repeal the statewide ban on rent control in 2019. Beyond the protections it would offer MHOs, HB 1287 would be an important step toward restoring the rights of home rule cities to enact some form of rent stabilization during this housing crisis. When legislators realize the sky is not falling after this passes, it adds to the momentum in repealing the ban that affects millions of tenants in Colorado.

It should be mentioned that for any kind of RC, regardless of venue, reasonable profits are allowed—it’s only unreasonable and outrageous rent increases that are curtailed. There are some landlords or MHPOs who are not opposed to curbing unconscionable increases. Rent stabilization recognizes that affordable housing should be a right, not simply a commodity.

The Colorado bill next goes to Appropriations Committee, then on to the House. If passed there, it will go through a similar process in the Colorado Senate.

This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.

RENT STABILIZATION recognizes that affordable housing should be a right, not simply a commodity.

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APRIL 7, 2022

DEFINITIONS FIRST, PLEASE Thanks to Mark Fearer for addressing the current dire situation for renters in Boulder. Rents have been rising dramatically along with housing sale prices, but renters tend to be of lesser means than potential buyers, and in general price increases will hit them harder. So it’s appropriate to give their burdens more of our attention.

Mr. Fearer focused his opinion piece on rent control (RC). This is a good topic to discuss, but it can cover a wide range of regulations, from limits on exorbitant rent increases all the way to locking rents at current rates. Mr. Fearer never specifies just what he means by RC, leaving us only to guess. This is unhelpful. Reasonable renter protections are well-justified and worth considering for Boulder.

Rigid controls, on the other hand, have been failures in cities including New York and San Francisco, resulting in problems like “ghost tenants” (the rental equivalent of vacation-home owners) who benefit to the exclusion of everyone looking for an apartment to rent.

Mr. Fearer also fails to fundamentally understand economics. He says that housing supply doesn’t affect prices. But economics doesn’t say supply affects prices; it says the relationship of supply and demand affects prices, and there’s gobs of evidence to demonstrate this, including in the housing market. In fact we have a recent, tragic example: the Marshall Fire destroyed over 1,000 homes, while demand stayed roughly steady.

The result was prices immediately l

BOULDER

went up. On the flip side, if we could magically conjure up 1,000 homes (or more!), again keeping demand steady, prices would fall as landlords and sellers competed for renters and buyers.

Our housing crisis is dire enough that we need both sensible regulatory responses and market responses. Be suspicious of anyone who dismisses either out of hand.

Kurt Nordback/Boulder WAKE UP FROM WOKE NONSENSE WITH RUSSIA Putin’s recent military actions and his outrageous speech hinting of nuclear conflict and comparing Ukraine’s government to Nazi’s (quite remarkable when their Jewish President was elected by 73% of the vote) proves that his intentions are only motivated by a manic attempt to re-assemble the geography of the former Soviet Union rather than a desire to protect his own people.

However a big part of the blame for this war is the ineptitude of the Biden Administration in not applying pre-emptive sanctions coupled with meaningful diplomacy. There is no coincidence that both Russian incursions into Ukraine were committed during Democrat administrations that Putin saw as feckless and weak. By the time our commander in chief “woke up” it was too late, the invasion had already begun.

There are further steps we can take with truly meaningful sanctions. We can cut off Russia from the world’s foreign currency markets and cancel Russia’s access to SWIFT transfers that see LETTERS Page 7

Finally, some decisions on the library district

by Shay Castle

A

fter four years of campaigning and haggling over little details, Boulder City Council on Tuesday night voted 6-3 to form a library district that would reconfigure how the city’s libraries are funded. The government entity exists only on paper until and unless voters also OK a property tax increase to fund it.

Council decided that the new district can ask for up to 3.8 mills, or around $19 million each year. That would add roughly $200 to the property tax bill for a home worth $850,000, and around $1,000 for the equivalent value of commercial property.

The district would free up around $10 million in the city of Boulder’s general fund by reallocating the sales tax revenue that’s currently budgeted for the library. Although city taxpayers would pay slightly less than county property owners—a 0.333 mill property tax for the library would lapse, saving them a tiny bit of money—many opponents of a district have lamented the tax increase.

“I will be paying double,” said Jean Aschenbrenner during three hours of public testimony—“once to the district, and once to the city.”

Others argued that the city should up library spending, foregoing the need for a district.

Proponents pointed to myriad service cuts under city leadership: The Canyon Theater has been closed for two years; BLDG 61, the library’s makerspace, is open only a few days a week; and the Carnegie Library for Local History is accessible only by appointment. A district could also bring long-promised branches to Gunbarrel and Niwot.

(Niwot may be left out of the proposed district boundaries, which were revised to exclude Jamestown.) Council left that decision up to Boulder

County Commissioners, who will meet Thursday night to consider the resolution.

David Limbach, head of Niwot Community Association, shared results of an informal survey of 111 residents showing that most use Longmont’s library and would prefer to join a district there, which is also being considered by that city.

Commissioners and council members need to agree on terms of the new district, and quickly. There is a May deadline for decisions with property tax implications. City Council kept that in mind when setting conditions for the district, which include: a 3.8 mill-cap on how much property tax the district can ask for (that doesn’t mean the tax increase will be that much, only that it can go no higher); and the establishment of district boundaries to exclude Jamestown and possibly Niwot. A voting precinct that include recent Marshall Fire victims was left in, despite objections, but Mayor Aaron Brockett floated the possibility of rebates for the first few years of the district. These homes will eventually rebuild and recoup their value, he and member Matt Benjamin argued, and the district will be around for decades.

“I’m thinking about the tax base 20-30 years from now,” Benjamin said.

The district will dissolve by 2024 if a tax has not been passed, allowing the district to ask voters twice for funding.

A committee of council and commissioners (two members from each) will select Library District trustees. The board will be ratified by both governing bodies, and reports will be made twice annually to each (per state law).

Still to be determined is whether the district will lease library buildings and/or land from the

city, or take over ownership. There will be more opportunities for public input as those terms are hashed out, city staff said.

Nearly 100 people spoke, with a roughly 65/35 split of those in favor vs. those opposed. Another 25% of folks who had signed up to speak dropped off the call, possibly because of the late hour. The public hearing closed at 11:24 p.m. Council’s vote came around 12:30 a.m.

Bob Yates, Tara Winer and Mark Wallach dissented to the formation of the library district, with Yates issuing a dire prediction and harsh rebuke for his fellow elected officials: “I think tonight’s decision is going to reflect badly on this council,” he said. “I think the tax is going to fail, and we’re putting our library in limbo for some time.”

See you next Tuesday

There are no public hearings (or consequential council votes) scheduled for the next two weeks, but there are some important discussions happening.

Next week, City Council will get an update on racial equity work over the past year, and goals for 2022. That includes a first look at the city’s much-touted Racial Equity Instrument—the 13-page list of questions that is supposed to (eventually) guide all city policies, programs, spending and decision making.

Also next week, the community will get a look at the almost-done plan for building out East Boulder over the next 15-20 years. On April 19, we’ll get an update on flood mitigation work at CU South/South Boulder Creek, and a lengthy discussion on continued outdoor dining and road closures along Pearl Street.

The program has been popular with council members and the public, but some restaurant owners along West Pearl have complained about reduced traffic and revenue.

This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.

LETTERS from Page 6

would cripple their economy.

We must also reverse the lunacy that the left wing Democrats have created in destroying our nation’s energy independence. This has not only shut down our pipelines but also destroyed tens of thousands of American jobs. It also created grave foreign policy failures by causing our allies to have to rely on Russian gas and oil exports rather than our own. This was done with two strokes of Biden’s pen when he cancelled the Canadian/American Keystone XL Pipeline and then approved the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Europe. This is exactly what gave Putin the currency to fuel

his war machine and his leverage to threaten cutting off Europe’s gas supply if they agreed to sanctions.

What is truly lost on our leadership, but not on the people of America, Europe and the Ukraine, is this fight is fundamentally about freedom and the type of world we desire our children to grow up in. Today I heard an interview with a Ukrainian mother, Olena Gnes, carrying her 5 month old baby in her arms. She talked of freedom and Putin’s desire to steal it from her country. She also spoke of the threat Putin poses to the rest of Europe. A common citizen who loves her children has spoken more eloquently than any world leader.

—Brett Kingstone/Orlando, Florida

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CONVERT ALL OIL COMPANIES TO UTILITY COMPANIES Americans should ask this fundamental question: What is the difference between what a public non-profit utility company provides and what a private for-profit oil company provides?

After all, they both sell energy to all United States citizens. The difference is that natural gas and electricity are sold in the form of a public good, whereas oil is sold in the form of a private good. Accordingly, on the grounds of promoting national security, the U.S. Congress should convert all oil companies to utility companies. This would eliminate the windfall profits and force the oil industry to earn just APRIL 7, 2022

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enough income to cover operating expenses just as natural gas and electric utility companies are required to do.

The resulting drop in gasoline prices would further stimulate the economy and lighten the energy stranglehold upon the United States by the Middle East. It would also eliminate the influence of the oil lobby. In this case, desperate times call for deliberate measures. But as pathetic as the energy policy is in the United States, the effort to develop alternative sources of energy won’t really be accelerated until the oil dries up and the Saudi’s place solar cells all across their desert and then sell us the electricity.

Joe Bialek/Cleveland, OH 7

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he droning buzz of low-flying propeller aircraft circling over David Segal’s house won’t stop, he says. The sound of their engines is an allbut constant part of his life in North Boulder and it’s driving him and other residents to their wits’ end.

“It’s like having a lawn mower flying over your house all day,” says Segal, who lives in proximity to Boulder Municipal Airport (BMA), and who’s an admin for the Boulder “Quiet Skies” Facebook group. “There are literally days when you can’t sit outside and enjoy the outdoors because of the constant droning of these planes.”

In 2005, BMA recorded 59,400 operations (takeoffs or landings), according to the City of Boulder’s 2007 BMA masterplan. That number was projected to approach 85,000 a year by 2023, or roughly 233 per day.

Approximately 73% were categorized as “local operations,” consisting of flight training, touch-and-go operations (where pilots practice flying around an airport, touching down and taking off in circuits), and recreational flying. The remaining 27% were aircraft stopping in for short periods, for business or transportation.

That’s a lot of airplane traffic no matter how you slice it—especially considering that BMA shares airspace over Boulder County with a dozen local flight schools and both Longmont Municipal Airport (LMA) and Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (RMMA) in Broomfield.

“They fly loops ... they fly low ... and they fly over the same area for 5 or 10 minutes or more. Just circling,” Segal describes. He says it’s a risk to public health. Not just because the noise is testing people’s sanity, but because those planes are burning lead fuel over the communities below.

Some residents and activists in the Quiet Skies group even attest that they’ve been directly targeted and harassed by retributive pilots who are frustrated by individuals lodging frequent noise complaints.

Many Boulder residents living 8

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Noise from above

Air traffic over Boulder is testing residents, creating tension with airports and pilots—but solutions remain elusive

by Will Brendza

in designated “noise sensitive” areas might be surprised to learn airplane noise is such a problem. But for two very invested and divergent groups, this is an extremely heated subject.

For local homeowners in “recommended” flight areas such as Segal, this is as much an issue of mental and physical health as it is an affront on their sanctuary. For the pilots flying over those residents, it’s a matter of livelihood (or training to gain one).

Morgan Katnik, the assistant manager at Journeys Aviation, a flight school based out of BMA, says they’re just doing their jobs, operating within the rules of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and following Boulder County’s noise abatement protocols—which are voluntary.

“A lot of our neighbors don’t know the specifics of the noise abatement guidance nearly to the level that the pilots here do,” Katnik says. “There’s got to be some education element between the City of Boulder and the residents who are complaining about airplane noise.”

The policy Katnik references stipulates where planes should fly to avoid dense neighborhoods or parts of Boulder, outlines what engine RPMs are ideal and at which altitudes, recommends that pilots avoid touch-and-go training before 8 a.m. and after 5 p.m., and requests no flight operations whatsoever between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.

APRIL 7, 2022

These procedures are highly encouraged by BMA, but if a pilot strays over “noise sensitive” areas, or practices training maneuvers at an odd hour of the night, as long as they aren’t breaking any FAA rules, they have every legal right to do so. BMA can’t do much to change that, without refunding the FAA millions of dollars or shutting down entirely.

As John Kinney, the airport manager for BMA, explains, like most municipal airports in the U.S., BMA receives grants and funding through the FAA’s Airport Improvement Project (AIP). Those funds pay for necessary maintenance and upgrades for runways, taxiways, markings, signage, and so forth. Any airport participating in the AIP has to follow the FAA’s rules and regulations to a T—and the FAA has some very strict and very clear rules forbidding local airports from regulating their own noise.

“Noise abatement in a community surrounding airports is very complicated, and a challenging situation,” Kinney says. “I’ve spent a lot of time with this topic and Boulder Municipal Airport has a lot of room for improvement.”

Kinney is new to BMA, but has been in the aviation industry since the ’80s and has worked at some of the “most noisy, contentious airports in the nation,” he says. He has decades of experience with this problem, and he’s got some progressive ideas l

for improving the situation in Boulder. He notes, though, that the simple fact this issue has been ongoing around the country for over 40 years speaks to its Gordian nature.

Kinney says that back in the ’80s and ’90s, airports around the country all had their own noise abatement regulations.

Back then, communities got to dictate their own rules for how air traffic could operate in their air space. Sometimes that meant permanent noise monitoring and single event maximum noise limits, closing the airports at night, or banning certain types of operations, like touchand-go training.

That caused confusion for pilots, who often visit between two and seven cities in a day across the country, and created unnecessary air chaos in more than a few instances.

“The FAA became fatigued,’” Kinney says, “and they said, ‘No more.

This is compromising safety.’’’

It led, eventually, to the creation of the FAA’s standardized Aviation Noise Abatement Policy around the year 2000, Kinney says. That policy did away with local noise abatement regulations and it prohibited local airports from creating, implementing or instituting any operational changes based on noise at any airport accepting AIP grants.

“That uniformity is the safety feature that the FAA has built into the system. So we no longer have this hodgepodge of noise abatement programs,” Kinney says. “It’s all the same now.”

In the last 10 years, BMA has accepted around $8 million through the FAA’s AIP. Kinney says the airport received one grant last year for a runway overlay, and another just weeks ago as part of the COVID relief package. Those grants come with grant assurances that the airport has to deliver on—terms and conditions that govern how an airport can operate—and they last for 20 years beyond the date of acceptance.

“So each one of those that we receive ... starts the clock over for

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

20 years,” Kinney says, meaning that BMA has to follow the FAA’s noise abatement rules for at least two more decades. And unless BMA and the city of Boulder agree to start funding all future improvements out of pocket, there are few options for mandating noise regulations.

However, pilots like Christina Montgomery, a flight instructor at Journeys Aviation, say they’re doing their best to adhere to Boulder’s noise abatement policies and to avoid flying over people’s homes. Montgomery says noise abatement is one of the first things she teaches her students at Journeys Aviation. She maps out where noise sensitive areas are and encourages aspiring pilots to avoid them as best they can. She encourages other pilots to do the same.

“Those of us that are based here and fly here, we do actively tell people on the radio if we notice they are [flying in] noise sensitive areas,” Montgomery says. It’s in Journeys’ best interest as an aviation company to make sure everyone is following the rules, she says.

Beyond annoying noises, some residents point out that heavy air traffic poses other hazards to a community. Former Gunbarrel homeowner Kim Gibbs says that unlike commercial airliners, the types of aircraft flying over Boulder County burn a fuel that has been banned in cars in the U.S. since 1996.

“Piston engine aircraft run on leaded aviation gas, and it’s spewing airborne lead all around, often-

times landing on children’s schools and nearby properties that are near the airport,” Gibbs, who advocates nationally for the Quiet Skies group, says. “It is a health and wellbeing issue.”

One MIT paper published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology in 2016, titled, “Costs of IQ Loss from Leaded Aviation Gasoline Emissions,” supports that claim.

That study found IQ losses resulting in roughly $1 billion in damages from lifetime earnings reductions, and $500 million in economy-wide losses from decreased labor productivity.

Another study, commissioned by the Reid-Hillview airport in Santa Clara, California, explored how lead aviation fuel affects children in proximity to that airport. The study found a statistically significant relationship between exposure to aviation gasoline and lead levels in the blood of children, concluding, “The ensemble evidence compiled in this study supports the ‘compelling’ need to limit aviation lead emissions to safeguard the welfare and life chances of at-risk children.”

As a result of that study, the Reid-Hillview and nearby San Martin Airports ceased the sale of lead aviation gas.

“For people who [spend a lot of time] outside, it’s something that they really should pay attention to,” Gibbs says. “A lot of people don’t realize that.” see NOISE Page 10

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APRIL 7, 2022

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NOISE from Page 9

Gibbs moved from Gunbarrel out of state several years ago. Not just because of airplane noise, but in large part because of it, she says. She and her husband had bought a home in 2006 adjacent to 100 acres of open space. But as the airports got busier and as more flight schools opened up, their once-peaceful neighborhood was submerged in noise.

She formed the group Citizens for Quiet Skies in 2011 as part of the National Quiet Skies Coalition. She started consistently lodging noise complaints, writing representatives, using flight tracker apps to identify planes and out their owners. And eventually, Gibbs noticed that one company in particular was making a lot of noise over her home—a skydiving company out of Longmont based at LMA: Mile-Hi Skydiving Center. Not only was this company flying a very loud twin propeller airplane (known as a Twin Otter), but it seemed to be flying over her neighborhood with increasing frequency and, seemingly to her, deliberacy.

“Our home was heavily targeted by rogue pilots,” she says. “That’s not to say that all pilots are that way, but it doesn’t take a lot of them to target you and make your life absolutely miserable.”

As Gibbs’ noise complaints continued and the Quiet Skies group grew, tension escalated. In 2012, she says members of the group received a mailer, “Compliments of Mile-Hi Skydiving,” that included a bumper sticker featuring the outline of a Twin Otter and the words “I LOVE AIRPLANE NOISE.” Gibbs shared documentation with BW showing that she was doxxed online: her name and home address were posted to pilot forums; Facebook users would comment on her posts, threatening to buzz her home and promising to do flyovers if they were ever in the area. She got threatening voicemails from people claiming to be pilots or FAA officials.

Other members of the Quiet Skies group say they experienced this too. Lafayette resident Bri Lehman also believes she was targeted after 10

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LEFT: Lafyette resident Bri Lehman recorded the flight path of an airplane flying circles over her home under the required altitude of 1,000 feet.

She lodged a complaint of targeted harassment, but pilots argue these are standard training maneuvers.

BELOW: A mailer received by members of the Quiet Skies group, allegedly from the Mile-Hi Skydiving Center.

filing noise complaints against local aviation companies.

Gibbs’ situation got to a point in 2015 where she and other members of Quiet Skies sought legal action against Mile-Hi Skydiving Center.

During the court case, one of MileHi’s own pilots testified under oath that he had been in the cockpit with the company’s owner, Frank Cacares, when he “pointed out where her house was and proceeded to do repeated circles over it,” the court transcript reads.

“He flew differently than the standard or typical climb sequence or descent sequence that we operated during alones ... He descended in a props forward condition, meaning propellers in a fine pitch condition which yields higher noise,” the pilot, Andrew Hill testified. “His exact comment, if I do recall, was, ‘Hello Kim, hoping you’re having a nice evening.’”

Despite that testimony and Gibbs’ other evidence of targeted harassment, the judge sided with Mile-Hi, concluding that they had not broken any FAA rules and that the plaintiffs’ accusations of nuisance and negligence were unfounded.

Mile-Hi Skydiving Center did not respond to multiple attempts by phone and email for comment.

“That would be very concerning behavior,” Kinney, BMA’s airport manager says. “And it’s not the type of behavior that we would want at the APRIL 7, 2022

Boulder Airport under any circumstances. That should be turned over to the FAA, and there’s a threshold where law enforcement should be involved as well ... that maybe should have been turned over to the police department.”

Kinney says that with pilots, just like in any industry, you can have “bad apples.” But he is confident that no one operating out of BMA is targeting homes to harass individuals who file noise complaints. Most pilots want to fly quietly, he says.

Both Montgomery and Katnik agree, asserting that pilots often have good reasons to make circles in the air.

Sometimes simply to put more space between themselves and the pilot flying in front of them along the same flight path.

“No one flying and no one taking flight lessons here out of the Boulder Airport is flying over someone’s house intentionally for the purpose of being loud to them,” Katnik says.

They’re not out there flying with malice, Montgomery says. That’s a surefire way to get more noise complaints filed, and it could even put your pilot’s license at risk, she says—which for many pilots is their livelihood.

So what can be done? How can community members living near airports like BMA, LMA and RMMA, living within “recommended” flight areas, coexist with the airports near their homes? Predictably, both sides of the argument have their own ideas.

Gibbs suggests instituting landing fees that would make touch-andgo flights preventatively expensive.

But Montgomery and Katnik argue that wouldn’t stop most pilots from l

flying—it would only further price out people of lesser means, minorities and females from becoming pilots in Boulder County.

Segal suggests moving the touchand-go traffic elsewhere, where fewer people live. Though even he admits that would only push the problem over other people’s homes and it would use more gas in the process.

The National Quiet Skies Coalition advocates for a robust community engagement process for all new flight paths or changes to existing flight paths, and wants to mandate the FAA permit and fund noise mitigation.

For his part, as director at BMA, Kinney has some progressive ideas as well. He recognized early on how hard it was for community members to lodge noise complaints with the airport, so on April 1, BMA rolled out a noise abatement hotline specifically for that purpose (303-441-4000). BMA is also launching its very own airplane tracking system online, reporting data in real time. Additionally, he’s considering installing cameras on the runway, so anyone can check in and see what’s going on at the airport.

He adds that unleaded aviation fuel is being pursued “aggressively” by the FAA and by airports around the country, and many operators like Journeys Aviation plan on switching over to it as soon as it’s officially approved by the FAA. But the single most important way to address airplane noise in Boulder County is to create a dialogue between the two contending groups, Kinney says—to get the pilots and concerned homeowners in the same room and to cultivate a civil discourse between them.

“It would be [productive] to help bridge the two groups together because I think they’re so far apart right now,” Kinney says. “I think everybody would be happier if we could get them all together and just get creative as opposed to contentious.”

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Citizen-science symbiosis

bage whites is but one of the many ways Butterfly Pavilion is updating our modern perception of science, as it’s been doing for nearly a decade via CBMN and other programs like the Colorado Dragonfly Monitoring Project and the Urban Prairies Project, all of which rely on trained volunteers from around the state to help with data collection. he year Abraham Lincoln was elected pres“A lot of times, when people think about science, ident, cabbage white butterflies arrived in they tend to think about traditionally trained acaQuebec, Canada, carried over via European demics and white lab coats, right?” says Ashley White, ships across the Atlantic. You can tell the manager of community habitats at Butterfly Pavilion. sex of the small, flittering creature by the And while the work and perspectives of those types number of dots on its papery-thin white wings: two of scientists are valuable, “so are the perspectives of the black eyes highlight each of the females’ wings, only wide variety of people that represent our communities one on the males. here in Colorado.”

Upon their arrival in North America, these Seeking to expand its roster of communiPieris rapae butterflies dispersed and used, as they ty scientists and honor CBMN’s 10th year of always do, UV guides in data collection, Butterfly their search for nectar. CerPavilion is hosting its 2022 tain petals reflect UV light, monitor training sessions attracting and enticing the virtually, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., butterfly to snuggle up and Sunday, April 10 or Monday, feed off its nectar, collecting April 11 (interested folks can and spreading its pollen also request a recording of the along the way. Cabbage trainings to watch at a later white butterflies love purple, date). The training covers how blue and yellow hues, and to be a successful butterfly therefore tend to seek out monitor: recording the flying cabbage, hence their name creatures out in the field, then and status as a serious pest submitting observations to among many agricultural Butterfly Pavilion scientists. communities. They’re part Each participant is assigned of the Pieridae butterfly a site to monitor 6 to 8 times ON THE BILL: Colorado Butterfly Monitorfamily, a collection of mostly between May and September, ing Network virtual volunteer training, 10 white and orange butterflies and is expected to conduct a a.m.-12 p.m. April 10 or 11. Free. Sign up speckled with characteristic 1-2 hour survey during each to attend (or request a recorded copy): black dots that now fly all site visit. butterflies.org/research-and-conserve/ over the Northern hemi“There’s so many people butterfly-monitoring/ sphere. with unique knowledge and exIn 2021, 585 Pieriperience—community science dae butterflies were recorded in Boulder Counreally creates a way for those really valuable perspectives ty, according to data collected by the Colorado to enter a conversation [both] local and global [about] Butterfly Monitoring Network (CBMN), one of decision-making for conservation,” White says. the many research and community science projects When Butterfly Pavilion opened in 1995, the orchestrated by Butterfly Pavilion, a world-class 30,000-square-foot facility became the world’s invertebrate zoo-slash-international-research-hub first stand-alone invertebrate zoo; currently, a new, located in Westminster. At the end of March, 81,000-square-foot facility is in the works and will Butterfly Pavilion called out the cabbage white as open in Broomfield in 2025, expanding the zoo and its “most wanted” butterfly for the spring season, adding more world-class education and research urging Coloradans to join in a statewide “scavenger labs, as Butterfly Pavilion conducts research and hunt” via Instagram. “By helping Butterfly Pavilion upstarts conservation programs all around the scientists record the first butterflies of the season, globe—projects in places like Tanzania, Mongolia, participants expand our understanding of how Saudi Arabia and Sumatra, where they’re building butterfly populations are changing year after year in a butterfly farm, contribute to Butterfly Pavilion’s face of changing climate conditions,” the scavenger mission to transform the way the world thinks organizers wrote. about invertebrates.

Calling in everyday folks to help identify cabData collected by CBMN community scien-

Butterfly Pavilion continues expanding community science programs

By Emma Athena

T

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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APRIL 7, 2022

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tists in Boulder County and elsewhere across the state has been distributed to land managers for use when making conservation decisions. Invertebrates (spineless creatures that include butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, worms, snails, mosquitoes, etc.) provide a wide range of important ecological services: organic matter recycling, soil creation, pollination, exerting natural biological controls, providing the base of food webs, and much more. According to Butterfly Pavilion communications director Jennifer Quermann: “The loss of biodiversity would have unimaginable impacts and lead to the collapse of the ecological systems upon which humanity and most other life depend.”

Since its inception in 2013, Colorado Butterfly Monitoring Network has recorded 107,811 individual butterflies, accounting for 3,795 hours of volunteer monitoring over the last nine years. In 2021, butterflies were monitored in 12 counties; serving as both pollinators and food for other animals, butterflies often act as indicator species— knowing which butterflies are active across different parts of Colorado imparts information about the health of local ecosystems. “If we have an inadequate population of a number of these invertebrate species, then we can really see ecosystems collapse,” says White, who leads the Urban Prairies Project, which trains everyday people as “restoration masters” and will begin data collection across open space prairie sites in June. “When we have healthy open spaces, we have healthy habitats for these invertebrates. And we ultimately end up with healthy habitats for our human population.”

Butterfly Pavilion will also teach people how to create quality habitats in their yards and/or neighborhoods this summer. The idea, White explains, is to create corridors throughout populated areas like Boulder County, “where healthy open spaces are connected to healthy neighborhoods, and ultimately providing that great habitat for invertebrates and all kinds of wildlife.”

Ultimately, getting everyday folks intimately involved in science really “benefits the community scientist and the community,” she says. “We’re getting a lot of great data—but the person engaging in the practice and the collection of the data gets to be immersed in the outdoors, and they get to be connected to wildlife and to these spaces, too.”

Which is a powerful way to enact change: research shows directly involving people in problem-solving keeps them engaged, focused, and motivated in pursuit of solutions. As the Stanford University social psychologist Albert Bandura wrote, “If people believe they have no power to produce results, they will not attempt to make things happen.”

After getting up close and personal with invertebrates, you’ll find “they’re actually pretty cute,” Quermann says. “[People then] understand [invertebrates] are not such foreign concepts or animals, and then people are more likely to protect them.”

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M.THURK PHOTOGRAHY

Hometown Hero: Nell Rojas

The fastest American woman at last year’s Boston Marathon, a fierce Latina from Boulder, prepares for round two

by Emma Athena

O

ne morning in March, low clouds hung heavy over the springy rubber track behind Boulder’s Manhattan Middle School of Arts. It was a perfect morning for running, if you like that crisp-cool air hitting your chest and reddening your cheeks. At 7:30 a.m. that Tuesday, half a dozen women and men clustered around each other, layering spandex, fleece and polyester shells; slowly, they began to warm up their bodies, swinging their limbs, jogging easy laps, gradually growing faster and faster around the copper-orange track. At the finish-line, a baseball-capped coach shouted numbers from his watch, encouraging the group of long-distance athletes. Among the churning legs and pumping elbows, Nell Rojas was nowhere to be found.

She was miles away from where she was supposed to be; instead of the track, she was at home, in bed, sleeping. The elite marathoner had a hard time falling asleep that night, so she’d let herself snooze, rescheduling her track workout for later that day.

“I think that’s the most important thing for self care,” she says, especially with a big race coming up: Be flexible and “make sure you get enough sleep.”

The 34-year-old is resting up for her second “Marathon Monday” attempt on April 18, when she’ll be toeing the Boston Marathon start line, competing again at the world’s oldest continuously running marathon (the first race dates back to 1897 and is now New England’s most widely viewed sporting event).

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At last year’s Boston Marathon, Nell DETAILS, sent ripples through the running comDETAILS: Marathon munity when, as an unsponsored athlete, Monday, 9 a.m. she finished as the fastest U.S. woman, in EST/7 a.m. MST, sixth place overall, in a time of 2 hours, April 18, NBC 27 minutes, and 12 seconds.

Sports and USA A few days before flying back to Network, Boston in mid-March to review parts nbcsports.com of the 26.2-mile course—infamous for its hilly sections—she says,“It’ll be a different race this year.” But she’ll be a different person, too, all the wiser and more motivated as someone returning to a task and defending a title. “There are faster Americans [racing] this year, so I’m nervous about that, but I’m also excited about it, because I know it will lead me to a faster time.”

Though she’s still the down-to-earth, born-and-raised Boulderite who fellow runners and outdoor creatives describe as “humble,” “trusting,” “curious,” “driven,” “incredible,” and “talented,” Nell’s life changed substantially after her October 2021 Boston Marathon performance and the national title she’d won the month before, at the USA Track and Field 10 Mile Championship in September in Washington D.C.; at the beginning of 2022, her success culminated in a running contract with Adidas. (Nell’s first request of Adidas was to help replace a friend’s running gear that was lost along with their home in Boulder County’s Marshall Fire.)

Before this new sponsorship, she’d always worked for herself, “like, hustled really, really hard my whole life,” she says. In college at Northern Arizona University (NAU) she supported herself via athletic scholarship; then, returning to Boulder after graduation, she operated her own gym, training herself for triathlon and obstacle-course racing when she wasn’t coaching classes, teams and personal clients.

Now, a newbie to the professional running scene, she has an see NELL ROJAS Page 16 APRIL 7, 2022

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NELL ROJAS from Page 15 M.THURK PHOTOGRAHY

hour to nap everyday. Spending more time taking care of herself as an athlete than other people, she says, “is actually a weird mind transition that I’m still working on.”

Finally able to scale back her coaching services this winter, Nell spent a month in Arizona at her first “training camp,” where she and others from the Rojas Running training team— founded and coached by her dad, Boulder running legend Ric Rojas—gathered to live and breathe nothing but speed and form in the high, dry desert landscape.

Charging through “more volume and more intensity than I’ve ever done,” Nell says, “all I did was work out, train and recover. It’s amazing how much more you can do when you have that time to recover.”

Running is, afterall, terribly tough on the body. As Nell’s strength-endurance coach, Keith Mueller, says, “If you’re a runner, you’re a put-force-into-theground-and-breathe athlete.” Pounding and pressing, a runner’s work is that of a repetitive grind. And if you’re Nell, you’re grinding out miles at a 5:40-minute pace, without wavering, for nearly two and a half hours, foot after foot after foot.

When running, Nell doesn’t like listening to music—it makes her feel claustrophobic, she says. “I need to listen to my breath,” and uses the time to focus on building visualizations in her head: sections of courses at upcoming races, tasks needing to be done at home, what she’ll eat for breakfast.

As a long-distance runner, Nell is somewhat famous for her commitment to strength training, but using weights and doing mobility work in the gym has been a part of her life since she was a kid, playing all kinds of sports, growing up in North Boulder with an athlete for a father. Soccer fields, basketball courts, tracks, softball diamonds—it all existed within a couple blocks of home, where her dad, Ric Rojas, spent hours training himself as an elite runner.

Ric moved to Boulder in the ’70s as a road racer, but “I cut my teeth running trails growing up in New Mexico,” he says. “We’re indigenous Americans from Central Mexico,” and after his grandparents emigrated to Texas, his dad became the first Mexican-American to join the ironworkers union in the ’30s, which eventually brought the family to Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Ric fell in love with running early, and started designing training plans for his high school cross country team after reading mail-to-order books he’d pick out from Track and Field News—training plans that took the team to the state cross country championship podium, he says. As a coach, Ric is completely self-taught. “I made all the mistakes myself, trying to do different things,” he says—it may have been a process of elimination, but now he says he’s found what works.

In any case, the record books speak for themselves. Just for one example: In 1979, Ric won the inaugural Bolder Boulder 10K race; in 2019, Nell went on to win it herself.

The secret to their decades-long, father-daughter coaching relationship is compartmentalization, Ric says. “My job with my kids growing up was to play mostly, and read,” he says. With her two brothers, Nell spent a lot of time at the track, around Ric’s training weights, abiding by his running schedule. And now they have a personal relationship—which sometimes looks like Ric taking care of Nell’s dog a few days a week—but when they talk about running, they schedule time to transition into their coach-athlete relationship—“more analytical and objective”—Ric explains. “I treat her like any other athlete.”

At Boulder High between 2002-2006, Nell was a superstar on the track, cross country course, and basketball court. Shooting hoops together back then, Ric was constantly asking Nell to give him a break: “She would just dribble l

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

and run circles around me. Really the only advantage I had over her was I was taller,” he says. “She is just a natural athlete.”

Nell has always run around Boulder (her favorite routes loop near the Boulder reservoir), but she hasn’t always been a runner—competing on the world marathon stage wasn’t always the plan. After running in college, Nell switched to racing triathlons professionally and competed in obstacle course racing. She only ran her first marathon, at age 31, as a training objective in preparation for a future Ironman, a race demanding competitors swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, then run 26.2 miles.

“She ended up running [that first marathon] fast enough to qualify for the Olympic marathon trials,” Ric says, which Nell then raced a few months later, in Atlanta, Georgia, finishing in ninth place. She promptly dropped the triathlon and obstacle objectives to hone in on running.

After Nell’s 2021 Boston performance, Kara Goucher, a two-time Olympian and NBC commentator who lives in Boulder, told the Daily Camera, “I’ve been watching [Nell] build, and I knew she just needed to be in a bigger race for her abilities to stand out. ... In fact, I’m the one that told NBC we needed to chat with her before the race because I was so sure she’d do well.”

Ric says Nell is “committed to [marathon racing] long-term, and we’ll probably go through the 2028 Olympics—she’ll be 40 at that time, but, you know, women nowadays can run very well into their late 30s, as evidenced by a lot of really good people,” Ric says. Indeed, among the dozens Nell will compete with at the 2022 Boston Marathon are 42-year-old Longmont resident and Kenya native Edna Kiplagat, and 38-year-olds Stephanie Bruce and Des Linden.

After recovering from the 2021 Boston Marathon, which had been held in October due to COVID delays, Nell promptly began training again for the 2022 race, to be held on its original Monday of Patriots Day Weekend in April.

She’ll be emerging from a 16-week training cycle that she and Ric designed, and which is being documented by Boulder filmmaker Nate Castner. At the end of 2021, “we started meeting a couple times a week to cover gym sessions, some of her outdoor workouts, nutrition and mindset things,” Castner says.

“She’s really good at connecting with people [and it] shows in our work.”

Nell contacted Castner with a desire to create the YouTube series “Back to Boston,” because “she was interested in getting more female-forward content out there,” Castner says. “There’s a whole bunch of runners who are male and putting out tons of content; she felt like there wasn’t a lot of representation for women.”

In the sixth episode, “How Can I Incorporate Speed Work in Marathon Training? Back to Boston: Conquering the Course,” Nell glides through five-minute miles on Manhattan Middle School of the Arts’ track during a sunny December 2021 workout. And in a video published Feb. 1, 2022 about how she prepares the night before a race, Nell is filmed in her hotel room on the eve of the January 2022 Houston Half Marathon. Nell admits to Castner’s camera: “There are a couple key things I remind myself of again and again. One of them is that you just have to have fun. You have to just let your ego go— number one rule is: Don’t have an ego about this. Don’t care what those people think. Even research shows that’s not going to help you.”

The number two rule, she says, is presence: “Staying in the present helps to calm you down, and it’s good practice, especially for when you get in that race and you’re thinking about mile 12 and your brain starts to panic, and so it brings you back to where you are, because where you are, you’re always OK.” In Houston, Nell went on to race a personal best—an experience that she and Ric had designed as a critical check-point to see if their Boston Marathon training plans were tracking on target.“She has everything going for her.... her strength and her drive and her desire,” Castner says.

In 2020, Nell spoke at Boulder High School’s graduation commencement: “You may have uncertainty about your future, but it’s OK as long as you keep going,” she said. “Go down many paths to find your own, but remain true to what you love, do it in a way that works for you, and help in a way that inspires you.”

And speaking to the importance of acceptance, in the pre-race Houston video, Nell shares how approaching a big task requires anticipation without fear. “Like, this is gonna happen, and it’s gonna be awesome, and it’s gonna be hard, but that’s what it’s about: instead of avoiding that pain, or being scared of it, just being excited to get there is important.”

No stranger to competition pains, Ric is ready for Nell to hit the starting line: “Let’s go execute it. She knows exactly what to do.”

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MATT MAENPAA

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veryone from the MLB, video game companies and celebrities are hitching their carts to the non-fungible token, or NFT, caravan. One Boulder County art nonprofit, ArtSticks, is looking at the realm of NFTs to expand the reach of local artists and secure new sources of fundraising.

ArtSticks, co-founded by Cassie Clussman and James Clark, operates a trio of sticker vending machines in Boulder County; two on Pearl Street at Trident Bookstore and Illegal Pete’s, with another at Longmont’s Firehouse Art Center. The stickers, now on the eighth series since 2018, are designed by Colorado artists.

With ArtSticks, Clark and Clussman aim to put high-quality, low-cost art in the hands of the community. Each sticker costs only a dollar, distributed randomly from the vending machines. The nonprofit also sells stickers by series and with a virtual sticker machine on their website, ArtSticks.net, sending them through the mail for those looking for other methods to acquire their favorite stickers.

Like many smaller nonprofits, ArtSticks is an all-volunteer operation. The stickers themselves are printed and donated by Longmont-based StickerGiant. Funds go to supporting artists, maintaining the machines and other operating costs, and neither Clark nor Clussman take a paycheck for their work.

The seventh and eighth series focus on the theme “Art as Resistance,” a purposefully broad category that

encourages artists to interrogate social commentaries, environmental concerns and any other subject matter in the PG territory to keep the stickers family friendly. But that sense of resistance and disruption for the accessibility of art is now being directed at the world of NFTs and fundraising.

“The purpose of what we’re trying to do is not to generate wealth for individuals. We believe the NFT space and whatever form it’s going to take in the future will be built on what it is today,” Clark says. “It will be a continuous evolution of the NFT marketplace and now is a good time to get into it, to learn, experiment, and even fail but also have some success.”

Clark and ArtSticks aren’t trying to get wealthy through NFTs, he explains. Though the relatively few people who are exploring the world of NFTs and other forms of crypto-economics may enter into the field with designs on building out an investment portfolio, ArtSticks’ motivations are geared toward getting in on the ground floor of this new phenomenon.

“It’s the idea and joy of joining a community, participating in something new and unique and learning about it,” Clark says.

When something is non-fungible, it essentially means it’s unique—truly one of a kind—and can’t be interchanged with something else. Fungible, on the other hand, means something is one of many. A dollar is fungible, worth the same amount no matter the serial number. The “Mona Lisa” is non-fungible, worth a different amount than any other painting, even others by da Vinci.

Nonprofit goes non-fungible

ArtSticks looks to explore the world of NFTs to expand its digital reach and fundraising options

by Matt Maenpaa

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

ARTSTICKS from Page 18

NFTs are like works of art in their uniqueness. They are created on a blockchain—a digital public ledger that exists across a network of computers—by a distinctive alphanumeric tag called a hash. Blockchains are capable of tracking every transaction, whether it’s cryptocurrency or an NFT. An NFT works like a certificate of authenticity and ownership for whatever the NFT is tied to, whether that’s video game tokens, tickets or rare works of art, which can then be bought and sold. The NFT can contain information on the creator, when it was made, and the price of every transaction related to that hash.

The sense of ownership is murky. Buying an NFT isn’t necessarily like walking into the Louvre and buying the “Mona Lisa,” more like owning the documents of authenticity for the famous painting. While the majority of NFTs sold also include an experience of some sort—music videos, digital art, etc.—the NFT itself is effectively a receipt that can be held or traded.

Tim Rohde, tech analyst and CEO of Boulder crypto-company Blockchain Guru, explains that, like many collectibles, NFTs are as valuable to collectors as anything else with what he calls “lasting value.”

“I’m concerned when I see an NFT sell for $90,000 and it’s not associated with something we already apply lasting value ideas to,” Rohde says. “I’d be totally comfortable if I saw an NFT of the ‘Mona Lisa’ officially sanctioned by the Louvre. If that sells for a million dollars, that’s fine, I get it.”

Established works of art aside, Rohde’s concern is when big sale prices get attached to digital art from relative unknowns. Not that the artist should benefit, he clarifies, but that there’s no way to gauge how long that high value will hold as a trading item. Buying, selling and even producing NFTs is a high-risk gamble. Rohde compares NFTs and cryptocurrency to gambling at a casino or trading stocks, only with a higher cost of entry and less regulation.

“The thing to understand about NFTs is that it is a game. You’re playing a game. And in some cases those NFTs will have lasting value, but we don’t know if they all will,” he says.

Rohde has been helping Clark navigate the world of NFTs, he explains, though he doesn’t want to call it consulting. Still, he sees benefit in how NFTs can help local art.

“Some of the things that make sense for maintaining lasting value are present with ArtSticks. They are an organization, they put out a physical thing. People consume it, they collect it,” he explains. “It’s associated with emergent and established artists.”

The tangible aspect of ArtSticks—stickers from local artists, already accessible and collectible—is what gives Rohde confidence that the nonprofit’s artistic ideology could play well in the market.

“Those people make stuff in the real world that sells, so there is structure under the NFT in that sense,” Rhode says.

“It is a cultural phenomenon with real artifacts, in the real world that people pay for, made by people who will continue to make these things and maybe become famous.”

Clark is looking at the Rarible platform for ArtSticks’ NFT sets, both for its use of multiple forms of blockchain, BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

but also because of how Rarible uses “proof of stake.”

Blockchain validates transactions through two different means—proof of work and proof of stake.

While the technical differences between the two are borderline arcane, proof of work costs significantly more in technological and energy requirements, leading to a higher buying cost for things like NFTs in that blockchain.

Proof of stake is owned by several people, instead of just one, leading to more efficient systems and a distributed cost structure for NFT hosting.

Clark is still working out the details, whether to release digital versions linked to previous sticker series or bring in artists to generate new designs entirely. The important thing for him is that artists continue to see financial return for their creations.

“The beautiful part of it is that every time they are bought and sold, a percentage of that future purchase would get back to the artist in perpetuity,” Clark says.

Before ArtSticks moves forward with any NFT creation or auction, Clark is concerned with how artists get paid; whether artists would be required to start their own crypto-wallets to see a pay out, or if payment would be handled by more traditional means.

Because the majority of NFT series on the market are tied to one artist or entity, ArtSticks’ collective approach to art introduces some minor complications. Another issue ties back to Rohde’s notions of lasting value and what experiences and rights come with the purchase of an NFT. Clark wants ArtSticks supporters to find value in the NFT without impinging on the creative rights of the artist themselves. As such, any ArtSticks NFT wouldn’t include distribution rights for the artwork.

“We have the task of educating our own artists about NFTs and there is a concern from them about what it means when their art goes out into the world,” Clark says. “We want to make sure we’re protecting the artists as much as possible.”

Even with challenges and limitations, Clark is excited for the possibilities for where art, nonprofits and commerce can meet. Creating an NFT that offers value for a buyer while still protecting the artist is a puzzle Clark is sure he’ll solve, particularly because he isn’t looking for a $90K sticker price.

“Our goal isn’t to create some form of astronomical revenue stream, our goal is to continue to get exposure and help get artists exposure in a new community and know, ‘I’m being helped,’” Clark says. l

APRIL 7, 2022

Dreaming big, Clark hopes that NFTs can provide even more future opportunities for the organization to reinvest in local arts. For ArtSticks itself, NFTs could provide an alternate revenue stream to fund the organization, buy more sticker machines and even start offering scholarships within the community. Clark doesn’t want to get rich off ArtSticks, just learn a new method of reinvesting in art itself. If NFT auctions can provide that method, who’s to say it isn’t worth exploring?

Clark sees a future where lower-cost NFT options can create new forms of memorabilia, like concert tickets

or posters, managed by the creEXCITING POSSIBILITIES: atives themselves. It’s not just about lasting value to the world NFTs have taken at large, he says, but what has the world by storm value to the person who bought over the last year, it, which includes records of an with high-profile experience. artists like Grimes “I think artists have the best making millions on opportunity to really drive adopdigital creations. tion of the NFTs,” he says.

On the consumer end, Rohde encourages people engaging in NFT auctions to go in with the right frame of mind, supporting arts organizations and artists, and not necessarily look at the potential ArtSticks NFTs as a form of long-term investment.

“I think that NFTs are an exciting thing for nonprofits in the art world,” Rohde says. “It’s fun to play in new markets, it’s an exciting thing. I think that as long as people keep their heads about what they’re doing—supporting the arts—they can have a lot of fun with NFT transactions at auctions like with ArtSticks.” l

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

LISA SICILIANO / DOG DAZE PHOTOS

ON THE BILL: Greg Schochet & Little America.

7 p.m. Friday, April 29, Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder; 7 p.m. Thursday, May 12, Caffè Sole, 637R S. Broadway, Boulder

Best Western

Greg Schochet, Colorado’s favorite sideman, steps into the spotlight

by Adam Perry

I

met Greg Schochet in 2017 when he toured with Gasoline Lollipops in Belgium and Holland, filling in with us on lead guitar when Donnie Ambory was unable to travel. He’s good-natured and bright, able to crack up a room full of people with an onstage joke or lighten the mood with a zinger when tension gets tough on the road. With his elegant cowboy hats, Western shirts, jeans and boots, Schochet doesn’t immediately cut the image of someone born and raised on Long Island.

Over tacos at Torchy’s in Boulder recently, Schochet laughed when told he doesn’t come off as a New Yorker at all.

“I can if I need to,” he jokes.

Schochet, winner of the 2021 Rockygrass flatpick-guitar contest, released his first solo album (a slick, well-crafted Colorado-country record called Amblin’ Man) last year after decades as a renowned sideman in various highly regarded Colorado bands. However, he doesn’t feel like the project represents a veritable coming-out-of-the-shadows moment.

“I’ve been playing around here a long time,” Schochet, who sings lead and plays multiple stringed instruments on the new album, says. “I’ve been a pretty big part of everything I’ve been involved in, and I’ve established some element of a musical personality. It wasn’t that big of a leap in a way, but the reception was so good that it felt good right away, and it’s a really good record, I think.”

On Long Island, Schochet grew up with a father who “had a serious kind of Western fixation.” That’s partly why he ended up heading for the University of Colorado Boulder to study English after high school.

“We had been coming out to Idaho for summers since I was 9. My sister was already in college in Utah. I was headed West. I was sure of that, and I had traveled around following the Dead all the way to California in high school.”

Schochet started playing guitar in high school—cradling an old Gibson J-50 his aunt gave him—but didn’t start playing in bands until he got to Boulder.

“The social/musical aspect became important,” he says, “because I was pretty introverted.” Schochet played in a “typical college jamband” called Contraband as the ’90s began, playing classic rock at now-defunct venues like Tulagi’s and Penny Lane as the Samples and Big Head Todd were breaking out.

Schochet eventually moved to Nederland and “got enamored with bluegrass” as the genre was taking over

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Colorado and fomenting jamgrass.

“I went whole-hog on the mandolin and found the bluegrass community, and there was the Millsite in Ward on Saturday nights,” Schochet recalls. “It was huge. It was an amazing thing for a young guy who was into music and found other people doing it.”

Out of that obsession with bluegrass came Runaway Truck Ramp, Schochet’s first serious band, and one that emerged as Yonder Mountain String Band and the String Cheese Incident put the Front Range on the map at the turn of the century.

“We all wrote and we all sang,” Schochet says. “It was a kind of hippie version of the Band.”

Schochet’s romance with the West inevitably took over, though.

“Towards the end of my run with Runaway Truck Ramp I was getting really into country music. I started listening to Hank Williams, George Jones, Bob Wills, and I knew people who were into country—people in the bluegrass community who were adjacent to bluegrass. I started playing guitar again, and me and (local musician) Danny Shafer started the All-Night Honky Tonk All-Stars. It was great. It was sort of like what’s going on right now with Colter Wall and Tyler Childers: bluegrass, jamband-adjacent, rootsy, cool stuff. That pretty much set the course for what a lot of my musical identity is now.”

Getting so deep into country music led Schochet to playing with Halden Wofford and the Hi*Beams, a band he recalls being a fan of before joining. He spent 16 years with the Hi*Beams, playing pretty much every venue in Colorado, jamming with many other artists during l

APRIL 7, 2022

that time and cementing himself as one of the most respected players in the area.

On Amblin’ Man, Schochet—who produced the album himself—played a plethora of notable stringed instruments, from a 1944 Martin OO-18 and 1993 Fender Telecaster to a 1987 R.L. Givens F6 mandolin, and some of the beautiful sounds he was able to produce are the result of playing through unmistakably classic amplifiers: a 1965 Fender Reverb, a 1940s Webster Chicago, and a 1951 Fender Pro. “I took my time,” Schochet explains, “picking the songs, choosing the arrangements, choosing the players. I like well-crafted, even ‘polished’ musical recording, and so I put that kind of effort into it because that’s what I like to listen to.”

The album—which focuses on gorgeous covers of Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Dylan and more—was recorded and mixed in Denver and mastered in Boulder, and the personnel listening is a Who’s Who of Colorado talent.

“There were sections,” Schochet says. “I got my swing guys; I used the Hi*Beams for what we do; I used (Boulder-based band) Katie Glassman and Snapshot for some of the Western-swing stuff; and it was almost like a couple of different teams. I really enjoyed it. It was the classic ‘party in the studio’ thing, although we were actually working our asses off.”

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that everything Schochet has learned and experienced since picking up a guitar in the eighth grade led to Amblin’ Man. This is him.

“I don’t think it’s possible to truly represent everything, but it represents where I’ve landed and it’s all in there somehow.”

Along with a fond reference to a University of Colorado class called Poetry of the West that sent Schochet down numerous rabbit holes of Western culture, Schochet repeatedly paid tribute to his late father during our lunch conversation.

“Musically, I definitely think the amount and quality of music I heard as a kid due to my father is a big factor in my development.” l

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E VENTS

EVENTS

If your organization is planning an event, please email the editor at crockett@boulderweekly.com

■ ‘The Current’: Dance works by faculty and guest artists

7:30 p.m. April 7, 8 and 9, 2 p.m. April 10, Charlotte York Irey Theatre, 261 University of Colorado Boulder. Tickets: $22, cupresents.org Experience the dynamic works of CU Boulder dance faculty and the Roser Visiting Artist. From the micro-undulations of transnational fusion to the sweeping attack of contemporary dance, The Current brings vanguard artists of today’s dance scene to Boulder.

■ Winter Walkabout Music Showcase

■ Opening reception—‘DISGUST: unhealthy practices’

6:30-8 p.m. April 7, east window SOUTH, 4949 Broadway Unit 102-C, Boulder, eastwindow.org DISGUST: unhealthy practices, a group exhibit curated by Todd Edward Herman—filmmaker, photographer and founding director of east window—is the culmination of an open call for work by nearly 100 writers and visual artists around the world. Our collective actions relative to our experiences of disgust often bear witness to damaging prejudices and rhetorics. This project aims to confront, subvert and transform these prejudices.

■ Firehouse Art Center presents ‘Exquisite Connections: Month of Poetry’

April 8-May 8, Firehouse Art Center, 667 Fourth Ave., Longmont, firehouse.org ‘Exquisite Connections’ showcases the work of 10 artist/writer pairs.

The pairs each decide who will create first, and who will respond. This call and response form of creation often leads to unexpected results, pushing each participant out of their comfort zone. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence.

2-9:30 p.m. Saturday, April 9, Downtown Longmont. Tickets: $25 ($35 day-of-show), downtownlongmont.com The WWMS consists of a variety of music performances throughout multiple venues—all within walking distance of each other in downtown Longmont’s Certified Creative District. One all-inclusive ticket allows festival-goers access to every show, and performance times are staggered to facilitate attending as many shows as possible throughout the day. The event features a wide variety of musical styles and genres from some of the best and brightest talent around the Front Range. Performers range from up-and-coming teenage artists to well-known regional acts, all based in Colorado.

■ Astronomy: Lions and Dogs and Bears!

7:15-9:30 p.m. Friday, April 8, Near Lyons. Registration required: bouldercountyopenspace.org The spring sky is filled with hidden constellations, including fun animals.

Discover how to find these pictures in the sky in a short program, and then enjoy viewing the sky with telescopes provided by the Longmont Astronomical Society. All ages are welcome.

■ Out Boulder County: The Open House

4 p.m. Friday, April 8, Equality Center, 3340 Mitchell Lane, Boulder.

Free Out Boulder County recently moved into a new and improved community center and its programs are expanding. The Open House will be held on April 8 at 4 p.m., beginning with a ribbon cutting, then a short program with tours to follow. For more information, please contact Juan Moreno (he/him) at jmoreno@outboulder.org.

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■ ‘Man Up: A Musical’

April 8, 9, 10, 14, 16 and 17, The Nomad Playhouse, 1410 Quince Ave., Boulder.

Tickets: $24, nomadplayhouse.org Man Up is an original musical about a boy’s struggle to overcome expectations of masculinity, a deep sibling bond and the redemptive power of love. Inspired by the 2017 #MeToo movement, this show serves to understand, unpack and ultimately heal the wounds all genders carry from a culture shaped by unattainable ideals of masculinity.

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

POLAR PLUNGE

■ 2022 Boulder Polar Plunge

11 a.m. Saturday, April 9, Boulder Reservoir, 5565 51st St., Boulder. Free —Fundraising minimum for Plungers, specialolympicsco.org/event/boulderplunge Get your chill on at the 2022 Boulder Polar Plunge and raise funds and awareness for Special Olympics Colorado athletes. New this year is a sensory safe Young Athletes Foam Plunge for kids 8 years and younger! $75 fundraising minimum for all adults, or $50 for students and Special Olympics Colorado athletes.

WWW.FOXTHEATRE.COM

WWW.BOULDERTHEATER.COM

1135 13TH STREET BOULDER 720.645.2467

2032 14TH STREET BOULDER 303.786.7030

FRI. APR 8

APR 20 ................................................................................ 4/20 FEAT. MADEINTYO JUL 23 .......................................................................................... JAMES MCMURTY OCT 4 .................................................................................................................... RY X OCT 8 ........................................................................... HERE COME THE MUMMIES

JUST ANNOUNCED TERRAPIN CARE STATION PRESENTS

KEEP OFF THE GRASS THE ROCKY COASTS, BUTCHCOP

THU. APR 7

SAT. APR 9

MONSTER ENERGY UP & UP FESTIVAL PRESENTS

SAN HOLO

WESTEND

MERCI, GANO B2B RYNE, CHASYN

RYNE, GANO

■ Author Talk and Reading: Wendy Rochman—‘Quirky’

4 p.m. Saturday, April 9, Boulder Bookstore, 1107 Pearl St., Boulder. Free, registration is required, boulderbookstore.net Quirky is a brave, curious, musical canary who ventures away from the neighborhood nest to learn about different places and faces. Quirky makes friends at every turn. Together they celebrate and admire the unique contribution each new friend adds along the way. As they travel and sing together, Quirky and crew quickly attract others to join in their chorus of diversity and discovery. Enhanced with rich and engaging illustrations and told through clever vocabulary, rhyme and rhythm, Quirky celebrates the joy and power of inclusive friendships.

FRI. APR 15 - SAT. APR 16

WED. APR 13

ROOSTER & PARTY GURU PRODUCTIONS PRESENT: THE DOIN SHOWS PLAYIN MUSIC TOUR

OPIUO

88.5 KGNU PRESENTS

STEVE GUNN

SUN. APR 17

AMERICAN CULTURE

BOB MOSES AMTRAC

FRI. APR 15 ROOSTER, TERRAPIN CARE STATION & PARADISE FOUND PRESENT

FRI. APR 22

DRY ICE, ROSE VARIETY

THE GREYBOY ALLSTARS

THE VELVETEERS

97.3 KBCO & SKA BREWING PRESENT: GET A JOB TOUR 2022

JOEY DOSIK

SAT. APR 16

SAT. APR 23

NO SIGNAL

97.3 KBCO, WESTWORD, PARTY GURU PRODUCTIONS & TERRAPIN CARE STATION PRESENT

BOOMBOX FEAT. BACKBEAT BRASS

MELLOWPUNK, SHADY OAKS, BIG PINCH THU. APR 21

ETHNO (JEFF FRANCA OF THIEVERY CORPORATION)

BARSTOOL’S SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD TOUR

MON. APR 25

BRIANNA CHICKENFRY

■ ‘SCORE’: a unique, interactive fundraiser for Greater Boulder Youth Orchestra

CHANNEL 93.3 & ROOSTER PRESENT: PUP RETURNS: THANK FUCKING GOD

PUP

SAT. APR 23

SHEER MAG, PINKSHIFT

97.3 KBCO & PARADISE FOUND PRESENT

5 p.m. Saturday, April 9, Center for Musical Arts, 200 E. Baseline Road.

Lafayette. Tickets: $20, greaterboulderyo.org Enjoy a once in a lifetime experience as composer Tom Hagerman of Devotchka works with students of the Greater Boulder Youth Orchestras and you, the audience, to create a piece of music before your very eyes. The work will be performed at the end of the evening and will be your only chance to hear it. Appetizers catered by Guillaume’s European Catering.

MIKE CAMPBELL & THE DIRTY KNOBS

SUN. APR 30

EVERYONE ORCHESTRA

FEAT. ALANA ROCKLIN (STS9), KEVIN DONOHUE (SUNSQUABI), JEREMY SALKEN (BIG GIGANTIC) & MORE

SAMMY BRUE

THU. APR 28

FRI. MAY 6

GRATEFUL SHRED INDUSTRIES, RELIX, PHILM & TERRAPIN CARE STATION PRESENT: GO EAST III TOUR

GRATEFUL SHRED

SUN. MAY 8

SAT. APR 30

GOOD TO SEE YOU 2022

HENRY ROLLINS

ROOSTER PRESENTS

■ MyCultureMyRules Presents: An American History Film Series

6 p.m. Sunday, April 10, Trident Booksellers & Cafe, Trident Bookseller & Cafe, 940 Pearl St., Boulder Dedicated to films that honor, celebrate and elevate Black culture and traditions.

Enjoy film, food, and engage in conversations that educate, inspire and build solidarity.

BURY MIA

THE LOSERS CLUB, DAYSHAPER, SLAP HAPPY THU. MAY 5

SUN. MAY 15

DAVID BROMBERG QUINTET

FRI. MAY 6

PERFORMING DISRAELI GEARS & CLAPTON CLASSICS

KNUCKLE PUPS

TUE. MAY 17

THE MUSIC OF CREAM

DELTA SPIRIT

FEAT. WILL JOHNS & KOFI BAKER THU. MAY 19

MON. MAY 9

5 p.m. Tuesday, April 12. Tickets: $26-$36, boulderbookstore.net In this lyrical new book, Anna Quindlen argues that there has never been a more important time to stop and record what we are thinking and feeling. Using examples from past, present and future—from Anne Frank to Toni Morrison, from love letters written after World War II to journal reflections from nurses and doctors today—Write for Your Life vividly illuminates the ways in which writing connects us to ourselves and to those we cherish. Quindlen makes the case that recording our daily lives in writing is essential.

For more event listings, go online at boulderweekly.com/events

MON. MAY 9

WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE

MR. MOTA’S GRADUATION PARTY

PALM PALM

■ Anna Quindlen—‘Write for Your Life’ (virtual)

THE PURPLE TOUR

PI’ERRE BOURNE

105.5 THE COLORADO SOUND PRESENTS: 50TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT

AN EVENING WITH BRUCE COCKBURN

INDIE 102.3 PRESENTS

THE CHURCH

SUN. MAY 22

THU. MAY 12

105.5 THE COLORADO SOUND PRESENTS: PICKIN’. GRINNIN’. TELLIN’ STORIES.

FOX 30TH ANNIVERSARY

TAKIN’ REQUESTS TOUR

THE THUGS

TODD SNIDER

FRI. MAY 13

MON. MAY 23

THE CODY SISTERS

FEAT. VERY SPECIAL GUEST SEAN KELLY

VERSIONS OF THE TRUTH TOUR

BOUND FOR PEACHES: TRIBUTE TO THE ALLMAN BROTHERS & TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND

THE PINEAPPLE THIEF FEAT. GAVIN HARRISON WITH SPECIAL GUESTS

SAT. MAY 14

MAY 28 ............................................................................. BUILT TO SPILL JUN 8 ....................................................................... TIGRAN HAMASYAN JUN 12 ................................................................................. PURITY RING AUG 4 ........................................................................................ SON VOLT OCT 5 ........................................................................................ STEVE VAI

FEAT. MEMBERS FROM EMINENCE ENSEMBLE, ENVY ALO, LEGATO & MORE 88.5 KGNU PRESENTS

START MAKING SENSE

see EVENTS Page 28

MAY 17 ............................................................................. NILÜFER YANYA MAY 20 ......................................................................................... SON LUX MAY 21 ............................................................................... ELDER ISLAND MAY 28 ......................................................................................... JANTSEN JUN 2 ............................... MICHAEL FRANTI & SPEARHEAD (FOX 30TH)

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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APRIL 7, 2022

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2028 14TH STREET NOW FT. MCDEVITT TACO SUPPLY SUPER HEADY TACOS! 303-786-7030 | OPEN DURING EVENTS

27

EVENTS

EVENTS from Page 27

CONCERTS

Thursday, April 7

Ashlei Priest. 7 p.m. Trident Bookseller & Cafe, 940 Pearl St., Boulder San Holo with MERCI, GANO B2B RYNE, CHASYN. 8 p.m. Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St., Boulder. Tickets: $35-$40 Lerman Brothers. 8 p.m. Supermoon, 909 Walnut St., Boulder

Friday, April 8

Son Ravello. 7 p.m. Trident Bookseller & Cafe, 940 Pearl St., Boulder Hunter Burnette & Heavy Diamond Ring. 8 p.m. Chautauqua Auditorium, 900 Baseline Road, Boulder. Tickets: $20 Keep Off The Grass with The Rocky Coasts, Butchcop. 8 p.m. Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder. Tickets: $15-$18

Saturday, April 9

Chelsea Cutler. 8 p.m. Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St., Boulder. Tickets: $29.50$32.50 Westend with RYNE, GANO. 9 p.m. Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder. Tickets: $20-$25 80’s Ski Lodge: End of Season Celebration: Eric Lake & Revel n’ Rhythm. 10 p.m. Supermoon, 909 Walnut St., Boulder

Sunday, April 10

Ministry with Melvins, Corrosion of Conformity. 7 p.m. Mission Ballroom, 4242 Wynkoop St., Denver. Tickets: $45-$48

Monday, April 11

Journey: Freedom Tour 2022 with very special guest Toto. 7:30 p.m. Ball Arena, 1000 Chopper Circle, Denver. Tickets: $79.50 Girl Talk with Hugh Augustine. 8 p.m. Ogden Theatre, 935 E. Colfax Ave., Denver. Tickets: $25-$60

Tuesday, April 12

Forester with Shae District and Fi Sullivan. 7 p.m. Globe Hall, 4483 Logan St., Denver. Tickets: $15 The Brian Jonestown Massacre with Mercury Rev. 8 p.m. Ogden Theatre, 935 E. Colfax Ave., Denver. Tickets: $32-$65

Wednesday, April 13

Charley Crockett with Vincent Neil Emerson. 8 p.m. Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St., Boulder. Tickets: $25-$30 Steve Gunn. 8 p.m. Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder. Tickets: $20-$22.50

For more event listings, go online at boulderweekly.com/events 28

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BY DAN SAVAGE Dear Dan: I am a 29-year-old woman specialists may be needed to investigate and I have a problem when I have sex and treat the potential causes of LABIA’s or masturbate. I always feel an annoying pain,” says Dr. Gelman. So, in addition pain, a stinging sensation in my vulva, to seeing a pelvic floor specialist, Dr. at the entrance of the vagina, that does Gelman recommends you consult with not allow me to enjoy it, as the pain is a vulvar specialist. (You can find a list of too overwhelming. Unfortunately, this vulvar specialists at the website of the Nasituation has led me to avoid having sex tional Vulvodynia Association: go to nva. or masturbating in order not to feel that org, and click on the link to their “health pain. I have consulted several gynecolocare provider list.”) gists, but no anomaly or infection of any “A vulvar specialist would be able to kind has been found. With the last doctor perform appropriate tests to tease out what we also talked about a possible psychois going on beyond what a general gynecollogical component but, apparently, even ogist may look at,” says Dr. Gelman. “And on this level everything seems normal. Do it’s important to note that the tissue around you or an expert have the vaginal opening is highly ROMAN ROBINSON advice for someone with a dependent on hormones problem like mine? to stay happy and healthy.

—Lost And Baffled Certain medications or Inside America medical conditions can impact hormone levels, which can Dear LABIA: “Vulvodyin turn impact vulvar tissues nia, or pain in the vulva, is and lead to pain. There are unfortunately very common, also underlying inflammatory and it sucks,” says Dr. conditions that could also be Rachel Gelman, a clinicausing this pain.” cian, pelvic floor specialist And even if you don’t and author based in San have an underlying mental Francisco. “But there are a health or psychological variety of treatment options condition, LABIA, the pain and providers that could help LABIA out.” you’ve suffered—along with the resulting Dr. Gelman says it’s good that you’ve sexual deprivation—sounds like a lot, and already had infection ruled out as a talking about it with someone could help you possible cause. But there are lots of other reconnect more quickly with your ability to things that could be going on—nerve irritake pleasure in this part of your body again. tation, inflammation, hormonal imbalance, “The brain is powerful and having vulsomething genetic—and she urges you var pain or any kind of sexual dysfunction not to give up until you find an answer. can be mentally draining which can furAnd while Dr. Gelman is too polite to say ther exacerbate pain,” says Dr. Gelman. it, I’m an asshole, so I’m just gonna blurt “So, a good sex therapist may also be a it out: It’s shocking that not one of the helpful ally here. Bottom line, vulvar pain gynecologists you consulted referred you is common and typically requires a team to a pelvic floor specialist. of providers—but help is out there.”

“The muscles inside the pelvis, aka Find Dr. Rachel Gelman online at the ‘pelvic floor,’ and the surrounding www.pelvicwellpt.com and on Instagram musculature can contribute to or cause @PelvicHealthSF. the pain LABIA is describing,” says Dr. Gelman. “Just like tight muscles in the Dear Dan: I’m a young gay man who neck can cause pain in the shoulder, needs to break up with his boyfriend. arm, or jaw, a tight muscle inside the I know it, my friends all agree, I even pelvic floor can cause pain at the open- think it’s what he wants. I’ll spare you the ing of the vagina. A pelvic floor physical messy details. I just need a push. Maybe therapist, like myself, would be able to if you tell me to do it, Dan, I’ll do it. assess and treat this kind of muscle —Just Another Word dysfunction, which would decrease LABIA’s symptoms and get her back to Dear JAW: Marry him. enjoying sex again.”

But don’t stop at just getting a referral Email questions@savagelove.net to a pelvic floor specialist. “Due to the Follow Dan on Twitter @FakeDanSavage. fact that so many systems live inside the Find columns, podcasts, books, merch pelvis which impact the vulva, several and more at savage.love.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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APRIL 7, 2022

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BY ROB BREZSNY ARIES

LIBRA

principle: If I’m afraid of it, then I must do it.” Aries author Erica Jong said that. Since I’m not an Aries myself, her aspiration is too strong for me to embrace. Sometimes I just don’t have the courage, willpower and boldness to do what I fear. But since you decided to be born as an Aries in this incarnation, I assume you are more like Erica Jong than me. And so it’s your birthright and sacred duty to share her perspective. The coming weeks will be an excellent time to carry out another phase of this lifelong assignment.

nating discovery in Costa Rica. When the group planted a single tree in pastureland that had no trees, biodiversity increased dramatically. For example, in one area, there were no bird species before the tree and 80 species after the tree. I suspect you can create a similar change in the coming weeks. A small addition, even just one new element, could generate significant benefits. One of those perks might be an increase in the diversity you engage with.

MARCH 21-APRIL 19: “I have lived my life according to this

TAURUS

writes novelist Kate Jacobs. “It doesn’t make you stronger.

It doesn’t build character.” Now is your special time to shed suffering that fits this description, Taurus. You are authorized to annul your relationship with it and ramble on toward the future without it. Please keep in mind that you’re under no obligation to feel sorry for the source of the suffering. You owe it nothing. Your energy should be devoted to liberating yourself so you can plan your rebirth with aplomb.

GEMINI

MAY 21-JUNE 20: “I am very much afraid of definitions, and yet one is almost forced to make them,” wrote painter Robert Delaunay (1885–1941). “One must take care, too, not to be inhibited by them,” he concluded. He was speaking of the art he created, which kept evolving. In his early years, he considered his work to be Neo-Impressionist.

Later he described himself as a “heretic of Cubism,” and during other periods he dabbled with surrealism and abstract art. Ultimately, he created his own artistic category, which he called Orphism. Everything I just said about Delaunay can serve you well in the coming months, Gemini. I think you’ll be wise to accept definitions for yourself, while at the same time not being overly bound by them. That should ultimately lead you, later this year, to craft your own unique personal definition.

JUNE 21-JULY 22: As a postgraduate student in astronomy,

Cancerian-born Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered radio pulsars in 1967. Her supervisor, who initially dismissed her breakthrough, was awarded the Nobel Prize for her work in 1974—and she wasn’t! Nevertheless, she persisted. Eventually, she became a renowned astronomer who championed the efforts of minority researchers. Among the 25 prestigious awards and honors she has received is a three-million-dollar prize. I urge you to aspire to her level of perseverance in the coming months. It may not entirely pay off until 2023, but it will pay off.

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has the winning cards,” wrote author Oscar Wilde. Let’s make that your motto for the next six weeks. If life could be symbolized by a game of poker, you would have the equivalent of at least a pair of jacks and a pair of queens.

You may even have a full house, like three 10s and two kings. Therefore, as Wilde advised, there’s no need for you to scrimp, cheat, tell white lies or pretend. Your best strategy will be to be bold, forthright, and honest as you make your moves.

VIRGO

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to vaccination, but it was once among the most feared diseases. Over the course of many centuries, it maimed or killed hundreds of millions of people. For 35% of those who contracted it, it was fatal. As for the survivors, their skin had permanent scars from the blisters that erupted.

As disfiguring as those wounds were, they were evidence that a person was immune from future infections. That’s why employers were more likely to hire them as workers.

Their pockmarks gave them an advantage. I believe this is a useful metaphor for you. In the coming weeks, you will have an advantage because of one of your apparent liabilities or imperfections or “scars.” Don’t be shy about using your unusual asset.

SAGITTARIUS

NOV. 22-DEC. 21: Sagittarian author Pearl Cleage sets the tone for the future I hope you’ll seek in the coming weeks.

The Black feminist activist writes, “We danced too wild, and we sang too long, and we hugged too hard, and we kissed too sweet, and howled just as loud as we wanted to howl.” Are you interested in exploring such blithe extravagance, Sagittarius? Do you have any curiosity about how you might surpass your previous records for rowdy pleasure? I hope you will follow Cleage’s lead in your own inimitable style.

CAPRICORN

DEC. 22-JAN. 19: “I can never rest from tenderness,” wrote

CANCER

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AUG. 23-SEPT. 22: “In all the land, there is only one you, possibly two, but seldom more than 16,” said comedian and actor Amy Sedaris. She was making a sardonic joke about the possibility that none of us may be quite as unique as we imagine ourselves to be. But I’d like to mess with her joke and give it a positive tweak. If what Sedaris says is true, then it’s likely that we all have soul twins somewhere in the world. It means that there are numerous people who share many of our perspectives and proclivities; that we might find cohorts who see us for who we really are. I bring these thoughts to your attention, Virgo, because I suspect the coming months will be an excellent time for meeting and playing with such people.

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author Virginia Woolf. I won’t ask you to be as intense as her, Capricorn. I won’t urge you to be constantly driven to feel and express your tenderness. But I hope you will be focused on doing so in the coming weeks. Why? Because the astrological omens suggest it will be “in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender.” (That’s a quote by aphorist Jenny Holzer.) For inspiration, consider trying this experiment proposed by Yoko Ono: “Try to say nothing negative about anybody: a) for three days; b) for 45 days; c) for three months.”

AQUARIUS

JAN. 20-FEB. 18: “I gamble everything to be what I am,” wrote Puerto Rican feminist and activist poet Julia de Burgos, born under the sign of Aquarius. Her gambles weren’t always successful. At one point, she was fired from her job as a writer for a radio show because of her progressive political beliefs. On the other hand, many of her gambles worked well. She earned awards and recognition for her five books of poetry and garnered high praise from superstar poet Pablo Neruda. I offer her as your role model, Aquarius. The rest of 2022 will be a fertile time to gamble everything to be what you are. Here’s a further suggestion: Gamble everything to become what you don’t yet know you must become.

PISCES

FEB. 19-MARCH 20: Piscean jazz saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman was a trailblazer. He created the genre known as free jazz, which messed with conventional jazz ideas about tempos, melodies and harmonies. In the course of his career, he won a Pulitzer Prize, Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and MacArthur Fellowship “genius” grant. He was a technical virtuoso, but there was more to his success, too. Among his top priorities were emotional intensity and playful abandon and pure joy. That’s why, on some of his recordings, he didn’t hire famous jazz drummers, but instead had his son, who was still a child, play the drum parts. I suggest you apply an approach like Coleman’s to your own upcoming efforts.

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here’s no such thing as an American anymore. No Hispanics, no Japanese, no Blacks, no whites, no nothing. It’s just rich people and poor people.” That’s the line David (a slick and oily Jeff Goldblum) feeds drug kingpin Hector (René Assa) at the climactic confrontation of 1992’s Deep Cover.

ON THE BILL: But Hector knows David is just ‘Deep Cover,’ 7:30 looking for something philosophical to hang his hat while p.m. Friday, April 8, trying to cut Hector out. It’s as if The Godfather’s “nothCU-Boulder Internaing personal, strictly business” and Bonfire of the Vanitional Film Series, ties’ “master of the universe” metastasized into a systemic 1905 Colorado Ave., cancer we’re still trying to excise.

Boulder But Deep Cover isn’t about David or Hector; it’s about the third man present: undercover narcotics agent Russell Stevens (Laurence Fishburne). Russell, under the name John Hull, hooks up with David, who has an in on a wholly synthetic designer drug, one he can peddle to the rich and the poor without having to rely on overseas imports. He’s Iago to Russell’s Othello, and David’s twice as tempting.

Directed by Bill Duke, Deep Cover is a rich and satisfying film anchored by Fishburne and Goldblum’s performances and given weight thanks to Russell’s ongoing moral crisis of surviving a world that forces you to become the worst version of yourself.

It’s a movie more people ought to see. It’ll be playing CU-Boulder’s International Film Series (IFS) on Friday, April 8, at 7:30 p.m.

• • • • Somewhere in England, a beautiful Holstein gives birth. There’s nothing unusual or complicated about the delivery, just another day on the farm. The mother cleans her newborn calf, feeds it, and when it is old enough, the young calf is separated from the mother. The mother cow calls after her baby in pain, but this is more supposition than fact. The mother may be bidding adieu and giving ON THE BILL: advice for all I know.

‘Cow,’ April 13-17, Directed by Andrea Arnold, Cow follows the mother as she Dairy Arts Center’s lives on this farm, births at least one more calf, gets milked Boedecker Theater, regularly and then finds the end awaiting every animal in food 2590 Walnut St., production. Cow is less a documentary about livestock as it is a Boulder nearly wordless look at life in captivity.

The calf gets the rougher part of things. Separation, tagging, antibiotics, horn burning—life’s a struggle. Momma cow, on the other hand, looks resigned. If she were an animated character in an episode of The Flintstones, you’d half expect her to look into the camera while an industrial suction cup slurps away at her udders and say, “It’s a living.”

Arnold provides no commentary and no argument beyond simply watching these two cows. Daily life looks cruel and heartless, but a few moments of relief for our noble bovine, where she gets to wander in a pasture of fresh green grass and plenty of sunshine, look bucolic. It almost makes you wonder if Arnold is making a movie about cows or about us.

That Cow could be seen as allegory or documentary speaks to the strength of Arnold’s movie. There’s plenty here that will put a few viewers off an animal diet, but others might also see this farm as something worth aspiring to. If you’ve ever driven past the feedlots of Fort Morgan, then you know that the cows in Arnold’s doc have it pretty good—for a while, at least. Screening at the Dairy Arts Center’s Boedecker Theater, April 13-17.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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JIM SMAILER

WHOLE BIRD: A whole chicken can produce several meals—such as coq au vin, soup or chicken mole, plus stock.

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’m not going to tell you anything you don’t already know, but you’re not alone when you experience sticker shock at the supermarket.

I’m stunned weekly as I walk the aisles in search of bargains.

The Associated Press reported that last month alone food costs climbed 1.4%, the most in nearly two years. With high gas prices, you can expect food prices to rise, as well as the cost of having groceries delivered. Restaurant menu prices are also climbing.

How can a poor cook stand such times and eat well?

sliced lemons, carrots, fennel and/or onion, plus garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil. Roast at 325 degrees for about an hour until dark meat is well cooked. About 20 minutes before it’s done, add about one cup of white wine to the pan.

Later, take the chicken carcass and remaining vegetables out. Add a cup of water or broth to the pan to get the browned bits to loosen. Strain and save for soup. Remove all the meat from the chicken and put the carcass in a big pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil, turn down and simmer for several hours. Strain the broth and set aside. Skim the chicken fat and save.

To make chicken soup, saute a cup or so of mirepoix—fine-chopped celery, onion and carrots in a few tablespoons of chicken fat. Add pan drippings and broth. Bring to a simmer and add pieces of chicken and wide egg noodles. Taste and adjust seasoning.”

Supermarket sticker shock Boulder chefs divulge cooking hacks to beat the skyrocketing cost of dinner

by John Lehndorff I put the question to four Boulder culinary professionals: Jim Smailer, Paolo Neville, Aaron Lande and Kate Lacroix.

Go whole bird: Jim Smailer, the recently retired veteran executive chef at Boulder Cork, is now catering and cooking at home.

“Food prices really are rising and my wife and I are trying to be more frugal. I have to tell myself to use the last of something before I buy some more. Chicken is one solution. Buy a large, whole, locally raised chicken. Pat the outside dry, rub with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Sprinkle dried thyme inside. In a deep roasting pan, place

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Three meals, one chicken: Longtime Boulder chef Aaron Lande owns Eridu Farm Dinners.

“It’s relatively easy to make three different meals out of one chicken, small turkey or other birds. Buy them whole and cut them

APRIL 7, 2022

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up or use whole bone-in, skin-on pieces. Leg thigh quarters can be braised with wine in a hot oven to go in dishes like coq au vin or chicken mole. Dark meat lends itself well to cooking low and slow with stock, wine, vegetables, herbs and garlic.

White meat chicken breasts dry out and become tough in a braise, so utilize those in quick stir-fry dishes. Try cutting breast meat in chunks or slices, dip in egg and bread crumbs and pan-fry in until crispy. Be careful not to overcook.

The bird carcass is your source of stock, and stock is the lifeblood of good food. It can become soup, be part of a sauce or used instead of water to cook rice and grains.”

Never less than a gallon: According to Paolo Neville, executive chef at 95A Bistro & Sushi in Lafayette, if you’re going to cook and make a mess of your kitchen, you might as well go big and save money.

“As a chef my job is to manage the cost of ingredients, especially with food prices rising every week. If food is wasted, the restaurant doesn’t survive. I love making soups and stews using all the leftover ingredients in the refrigerator. I never make less than a gallon. After it cools, freeze soup in plastic containers in mealsized portions. Recently, I made a bean stew with sausage and used up some extra spinach before it went bad. I pulled a pint out of the freezer for breakfast, simmered it until thick in a saucepan, poured beaten eggs and a little cheese over it and put it in the oven to make a frittata. The possibilities are endless.”

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

KATE LACROIX

Hello Boulder!

Get even with a pot of beans: Culinary veteran Kate Lacroix founded First Bite Boulder and runs Stocked, a Substack that helps women save money on their grocery bill and invest the savings.

(Details: stocked.substack.com) “My simple hack to get through a week of meals inexpensively is to make a big pot of beans. Google a basic dry bean recipe that includes citrus, herbs, onions and garlic. I like using Rancho Gordo dry cassoulet white beans because they are sturdy but creamy. Buy a crusty loaf such as Moxie Bakery’s Farmhaus loaf, and then go through a week’s bean-y menu.

To start, serve a bowl of beans with garlic bread—butter or olive oil, lots of garlic and herbs. Next, spoon heated beans on buttered toast with jammy eggs for breakfast. For lunch, try beans pureed in a food processor on bruschetta—thicksliced bread toasted, olive-oil brushed, topped with herbs, garlic, and veggies like chopped tomato. One dinner idea is to simmer cooked beans with dry pasta, chunks of Italian sausage and sautéed kale topped with brown butter-sauteed breadcrumbs. Another is poor man’s cassoulet: cooked beans baked with pre-roasted bone-in chicken legs and vegetables.”

Got a great dollar-saving meal?

Share your best, simple, practical, money-saving ideas to: nibbles@boulderweekly.com

Local Food News

BEANS, BEANS: Make a week’s worth of inexpensive meals with a pot of white beans. Kate Lacroix likes Rancho Gordo dry cassoulet white beans “because they are sturdy but creamy.”

Boulder’s coffee culture is being refreshed.

January Coffee recently opened at 1886 30th St., and McDevitt Taco Supply has opened Heady Coffee Co. next door in the Meadows Shopping Center. ... Coming soon: Brasserie Ten Ten, long-shuttered by the pandemic, is set to reopen in June. Also: Death & Co. (where The Med was located), Maria Empanada and Mason’s Dumpling House in Boulder. ... The menu on the cool FED Boulder food truck recently included this dessert: red algae vegan caramel tarts with cinnamon chestnut mushrooms and sprouted cashew cream.

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Words to Chew On

“How could we have advanced from Stalingrad and Kursk on to Berlin without American aid and foodstuffs? We had lost our grain-producing area (Ukraine). ... Without SPAM (from the U.S.), we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army.” —Former U.S.S.R. leader Nikita Khrushchev John Lehndorff hosts Radio Nibbles at 8:20 a.m. Thursdays on KGNU (88.5 FM, kgnu.org).

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

A single-malt with echoes of Scotland

by Matt Maenpaa

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cotland is famed for its single malt whisky, sought out by whiskey snobs all over the world, including this writer. Each distillery spread across the highlands and islands that litter the Scottish coast produces a unique spirit, varying in levels of smoke, peat, brine and other qualities whiskey snobs tell you it has before you catch a sharp scent of moss in your glass.

Boulder Spirits/Vapor Distillery owner Alastair Brogan is Scottish, but his distillery most definitely is not. Boulder Spirits’ variety of single malt whiskies are not Scotch whisky, but they bring the best of Colorado and Scotland together in the DETAILS: quality of the spirit.

Boulder Spirits/ Vapor Distillery was Vapor Distillery, started around a decade 5311 Western Ave., Unit 180, ago by Ted Palmer to Boulder, boulmake gin and vodka. derspirits.com Brogan had just moved to the States and toured Colorado distilleries looking for a place he could set up a single-pot still to produce a Scottish-style single malt, he explains. Brogan described Palmer as the “friendliest and most open” distiller he’d met in the state at the time and they hit it off from there.

Brogan and Palmer struck a deal—Vapor’s gin would continue to flow and Brogan would start making single malt whiskey the way he wanted to.

Since then, Brogan and his team have continued to produce a few varieties of gin, but Brogan’s real passion and focus is on single malt.

Distributed as Boulder Spirits, the distillery now boasts a substantial portfolio of aged whiskeys from single-malt to bourbon that boast characteristics of both Scotland and Colorado. The single malt, particularly the peated malt, can hold equal ground with most other whiskies for quality and consisten-

cy, no matter their MATT MAENPAA country of origin.

Making whiskey is a patient art, affected by time, the quality of the barrels, how they are distilled and how long they age. When Brogan explains it though, it sounds much simpler.

“There are only four ingredients in single malt whiskey,” Brogan says. “The barley, the yeast, the water and the barrels.”

Brogan doesn’t discount the effect of water quality, climate and other factors in how whiskey is produced and aged. Quite the opposite, Brogan found when he was building his recipes, malted barley grown and produced in the States had a different temperament than what he was used to in Scotland.

The flavor he wanted required going straight to the source, so the malted barley comes in from Scotland by the ton, as well as the peated barley and yeast. His massive copper pot-still was made by the same manufacturer that produces stills for many distilleries in Scotland, including Macallan.

Even though the whiskies are rooted in Scottish traditions, Brogan calls it a “distinctly American” spirit.

Because American whiskies must be aged in new American white oak barrels charred on the interior, as opposed to the second or third fill barrels used in Scotland and Ireland, Brogan had to make some adjustments to the distillation process and produce a more robust spirit to stand up against the

oak of new barrels.

Boulder Spirits also brings in another aging tradition from Scotland, finishing whiskies in sherry and port wine barrels. The port casks soften and sweeten both the single malt and bourbon, while the sherry brings out sharp, robust notes that can challenge the palate in a delicious way.

For those uninitiated to the world of single malt whiskies, Boulder Spirits is a rich, flavorful and approachable entry point. The best way for readers to discover it themselves is by visiting for a tour.

During the pandemic, Brogan and his team made the difficult decision to shut down the tasting room for normal bar operations. Instead, the distillery offers tours Thursday through Sunday for a reasonable $20 per person, including a sampling flight of the whiskies and a steep discount on bottle sales. The tour is worth it for the classic, dark wood of the tasting room and the significant knowledge imparted by Brogan and the other tour guides on the distillation process.

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

JOHN LEHNDORFF

by JOHN LEHNDORFF

Eats & Sweets

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he daily lines of folks waiting to get cones with sprinkles make it clear that Eats & Sweets is a favorite local scoop shop. Step inside, as I finally did recently, and you discover a comfy menu of savory and sweet treats. The small Lafayette destination has a patio next to a public plaza with art and plenty of seating.

Scratch-made soups are always available. On a blustery cold day, I sipped a good tomato basil soup next to a Denver quiche with ham, cheese and veggies.

When I returned, it was a creamy New England chowder thick with clams and spuds paired with a griddle-pressed hot pastrami JOHN LEHNDORFF sandwich on 21-grain bread with Swiss, sauerkraut, pickles and mustard.

Besides Boulder-made Glacier ice cream in cones and sundaes, the small shop’s bakery cranks out an impressive array of sweets including a massive chocolate peanut butter bar, macaron, lemon bars and New York-style cheesecake. We sampled an upgrade on the common ice cream sandwich featuring moist, dense banana bread slices squeezing a couple of inches of chocolate crunch ice cream.

I was impressed by the tall, butter-crusted mini-pie full of fresh pear slices in light spice and sugar. Ask for it to be warmed in the regular oven and by all means, make it a la mode.

Another Roadfood Attraction: New Saigon Bakery & Deli

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hirty years ago, New Saigon Restaurant on Federal Boulevard in Denver helped introduce the Front Range to Vietnamese cuisine, from pho sided with bean sprouts, sliced jalapeno and lime, to crunchy duck salad and roll-your-own spring rolls.

The next generation of owners added the New Saigon Bakery & Deli next door, offering a world of Vietnamese prepared foods, snacks and sandwiches including street food specialties like sticky-rice pudding with boba. The must-try bakery item is a 30-layer mille-crepe cake.

I grabbed a banh mi sandwich on chewy freshly-baked baguette buttered and layered with marinated grilled pork, pickled daikon radish and carrots, garlic aioli, cilantro and jalapeño. For dessert: creamy cold and caffeinated Vietnamese coffee.

Culinary Calendar: Spring Food Fun

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fter a couple of quiet years, the 2022 spring schedule of food and drink events is rapidly filling in. Plan ahead for: A Celebration of Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Through Food, April 16, History Colorado Center, Denver, historycolorado.org ... The Big Stir Festival celebrating women in the food, drink and hospitality industry hosted by Les Dames d’Escoffier Colorado Chapter, April 23, Tivoli Turnhalle, Denver, thebigstirfestival.com ... Chicken pot pie class, April 29, Ginger and Baker restaurant, market and cooking school in Fort Collins, gingerandbaker.com ...

The free Art of Food Fest, May 14, on Fourth Avenue, between Main and Coffman streets, Longmont. ... Ya Ya Sisters High Tea, May 15, Ya Ya Farm and Orchard, Longmont, yayafarmandorchard.com. … Send information on up upcoming local food and beverage events, festivals, tastings and classes to: nibbles@boulderweekly.com

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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Food Hacks: Jar Whipped Cream

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uests at spring and summer gatherings always smile and ask: “Can I help with anything?” Surprise them by looking them in the eye and saying: “Yes, please make the whipped cream for the strawberry shortcake.”

Before they can object, hand them a jar filled with heavy cream and ask them to shake it good.

Here’s how it works: When someone shakes the jar— say, an overenergetic 8-year-old—air is injected into the cream, eventually whipping it.

To make a couple of cups of whipped cream, fill a pre-chilled Mason jar with one cup of chilled heavy or whipping cream plus about four tablespoons of confectioners’ sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Shake it for about two minutes and then check to see how stiff the cream is. If it’s too loose, keep shaking. Taste it. You’ll wish you had made twice as much. If you overdo it, call it butter, serve it with warm bread and start over on the whipped cream.

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Crusading for MORE

cannabis.

More specifically, MORE will decriminalize cannabis at a federal level, leaving it up to individual states to decide how they regulate it. Cannabis products would be subjected to a federal excise tax of 5%—increasing over five years to 8%. Nobody could be denied public benefits based on cannabis use or possession. People could no longer be penalized under federal immigration laws for any cannabis crimes. It would create a process for expungement of past cannabis convictions.

A Community Reinvestment Grant Program would fund nonprofit community organizations to provide services

House passes MORE Act (again) after adding research provisions—now it faces an uphill battle in the Senate

by Will Brendza

O

nce again, in a step some are calling “historic,” the U.S. House of Representatives voted to end the federal prohibition of cannabis by approving a new version of the Marijuana Opportunity and Reinvestment (MORE) Act on April 1. The new and improved bill includes all of its original provisions to federally deschedule cannabis and address the toll prohibition has taken on communities of color, and includes two new provisions to provide funding for marijuana research for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

It would herald a new era in America, for cannabis and for justice. However, now the ball’s in the Senate’s court. Because while this bill has passed in the House twice now, the bill has already stalled in the Senate once.

“For far too long, we have treated marijuana as a criminal justice problem, instead of as a matter of personal choice and public health,” Representative Jerry Nadler of New York, who introduced the bill, said in a statement on the House floor. “Whatever one’s views are on the use of marijuana for recreational or medicinal use, the policy of arrest, prosecution and incarceration at the federal level has proven both unwise and unjust.”

According to Forbes, there are 40,000 people currently incarcerated in the U.S. for cannabis crimes.

Those Americans, many of whom are of African American or Latin American descent, are behind bars even in states that have legalized cannabis. And all of them (at least those with drug felonies on their records) will struggle to find employment for the rest of their lives.

The MORE Act aims to address that.

In the broadest terms: The act would remove marijuana from the list of scheduled substances under the Controlled Substances Act, and reverse decades of failed federal policies based on the criminalization of

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for individuals adversely impacted by the war on drugs; including job training, reentry services, legal aid for civil and criminal cases (including for expungement of cannabis convictions). The MORE Act would also support funding for substance misuse treatment for minority communities, fund loans for businesses owned by people affected by the war on drugs, create incentives for states to promote equity in legal cannabis markets, and would also impose certain labeling and packaging requirements among other provisions.

The new provisions, just added this session, would provide $10 million in research funds for the National

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Highway Traffic Safety Administration to conduct studies on “technologies and methods that law enforcement may use to determine whether a driver is impaired by marijuana.” It also requires the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health conduct research on how legalization might affect the workplace and develop “best practices for use by employers that are transitioning their policies related to the use of recreational cannabis.”

Importantly, this legislation also mandates that all references to marijuana under federal statute are changed to cannabis. (For the uninitiated, the word marijuana, or marihuana—which is likely derived from the Native Mexican-American word for “prisoner,” mallihuan—was adopted by the federal government in the 1930s because it sounded scarier than the plant’s actual name, cannabis sativa.) However, it’s unclear if that provision would apply to the act itself, changing MORE to CORE. If passed into law, the MORE Act would be a tectonic shift in the American saga of cannabis. It could undo some of the damage that the failed war on drugs has caused communities, families and individuals around the county. It isn’t just cannabis legalization legislation—it’s partly crafted like a reparation bill.

But that’s a big if. Forgive the cynicism, but even with a Democrat-controlled Senate, the MORE Act now faces an uphill battle. Not just because it would need 60 votes to pass (and not every Senate Democrat supports legalization), but because it’s competing with several other cannabis bills, sponsored by other legislators. Nancy Mace (R-NC) introduced the States Reform Act in 2021, the first comprehensive Republican bill to end cannabis prohibition, which some anticipate will have its own hearing this month. And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) are expected to be introducing their wish-list decriminalization bill, the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act (Weed Between the Lines, “A progressive wish list,” July 22, 2021) later this month as well.

I hope I’m wrong and the skepticism is misplaced.

But if history is any indicator, lots of hullabaloo gets drummed up around cannabis legislation on Capitol Hill every April, and so far none of it has really gone anywhere.

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