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5 T HE HIGHROAD: How Budweiser locks out free enterprise competitors 6 COMMENTARY: Democrats and race 6 GUEST COLUMN: Think about our future 8 LETTERS: For our grandkids; Roses are red; Don’t fix it; Colorado Legislature; Stop getting a daily dose 10 HOLIDAY GIFTS: Gifts for the home 31 BUZZLEAD: CU professor looks into the interconnectedness of culture and nature OVERTONES: Boulder Chamber Orchestra explores seasons ARTS & CULTURE: Texas-sized miss for Miners BOULDER COUNTY EVENTS: What to do and where to go POETRY: by Jim Daniels SCREEN: ‘Creed’ starts a new legacy FILM: No stone goes unturned in ‘Chi-Raq’ CUISINE REVIEW: Johnny’s Cigar Bar is a hamlet just off Pearl TIDBITES: Food happenings around Boulder County DRINK: Exploring Burgundy’s Côte d’Or with seven wines ASTROLOGY: by Rob Brezsny IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Unbelievable; What the media wishes it could say WEED BETWEEN THE LINES: A giant step for public consumption SAVAGE LOVE: Trust issues; Size issues; STI issues

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December 3, 2015 Volume XXIII, Number 18 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-holdsbarred 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 www.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. 690 South Lashley Lane, Boulder, CO, 80305 p 303.494.5511 f 303.494.2585 editorial@boulderweekly.com www.boulderweekly.com Printed on 100% recycled paper with soy-based ink.

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 We do not publish anonymous letters or those signed with pseudonyms.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.

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the

Highroad How Budweiser locks out free enterprise competitors by Jim Hightower

he word “free” in “free enterprise” is not an adjective, it’s a verb — as in, let’s “free up” the enterprise of small businesspeople who’re locked out of the marketplace by monopoly power. From cable TV to chickens, market after market has been seized by a few corporations, enabling them to set prices, cut quality and shrink service. We could cry in our beer about that,

but even brewskis are falling to monopolists. The latest (and biggest) example is the proposed merger of Anheuser-Busch InBev with SABMiller, creating a colossus that would control a third of all beer sales in the world and a whopping 70 percent of all U.S. sales. Yet, the resulting A-B InBev behemoth asserts that there’ll be no antitrust problems, because hundreds of small breweries are popping up like dandelions everywhere, creating a wideopen competition for customers. How free-enterprise-y! And fallacious. You see, to get customers, first you have to be able to get to them — i.e., be able to get your beers in the bars and on store shelves. That access is mostly controlled in the U.S. by beer wholesalers, and they decide which products they will, and will not, distribute. Now, guess which big honking beer maker has been aggressively buying up

For more information on Jim Hightower’s work — and to subscribe to his award-winning monthly newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown — visit www.jimhightower.com.

wholesale distributorships in recent years? Yes, A-B InBev, giving it the power in various markets to lock out those pesky small breweries. No shelf space, no sales. No sales, no business. Anheuser-Busch InBev gloats that it will be the “first truly global brewery.” But who cares? We quaffers of the brewers’ art don’t want One Big Beer, but many good ones, and this bully is becoming “global” only by rigging the market to shut down our good beers. To revolt against this monopolizer, connect with the California Craft Brewers Association: www.CaliforniaCraftBeer. com. This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly. December 3, 2015 5

commentary Democrats and race by Dave Anderson

n a major American city, the mayor closes 50 public schools in impoverished minority neighborhoods and tries to destroy the teachers’ union. Parents conduct a month-long hunger strike to keep their last neighborhood school open. The mayor closes many public health clinics and installs red light cameras to increase fines. This same mayor recently won reelection after a tough battle with a Latino challenger who identifies with Elizabeth Warren and was supported by national progressive groups such as Move On. Bernie Sanders even came to town to campaign for him. You might think that the mayor is a rightwing Republican. You would be wrong. It’s Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel who is a nationally prominent Democrat. He was White House chief of staff for President Obama and senior adviser to President Clinton. He is a former U.S. congressman who was the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2005 to 2007 and as the chair of the House Democratic caucus from 2007 to 2009. During the mayoral campaign, an unarmed black teenager was killed by a Chicago cop. The police claimed he was menacing the officer. Recently, independent media has forced the release of a police dashcam and autopsy report which reveal that the killing was totally unjustified. The cop has been charged with murder. The Emanuel administration has been accused of being involved in a cover-up. This shouldn’t be too surprising since the relationship between African Americans and the Democratic Party has always been rocky. It was the party of the South during the slaveholding days and the era of Jim Crow segregation. The civil rights movement would shake up the party and it would struggle with becoming a multi-racial party. When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he said the Democrats would lose the South for a generation. It’s been longer than that. Meanwhile, President Nixon would transform the Republican Party when he created his “Southern Strategy” and mobilized the racial resentments of many whites in both the South and the North. In her new book Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide, MSNBC national correspondent Joy-Ann Reid examines the history of race relations in this country while tracing the political shifts in the Democratic Party through the relation6 December 3, 2015

ship between the Clintons and Obama. She writes, “The fundamental question that the Democratic Party has faced over the last 50 years is what to do with Johnson’s legacy, whether to run away from it, which the party by and large did, really spearheaded by Bill Clinton, who really shifted the party to the right, as a corrective to what I think a lot of party leaders saw as the electoral consequences of embracing so much social change.” Hillary Clinton has been confronted with the legacy of her husband’s presidency. Alicia Garza, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Network, says she told Hillary, “You ran one of the most racist presidential campaigns against what is now the first black president in this country, in 2008. You were an adamant supporter of policies that led to hyper-incarceration. Now, your campaign speeches are all about saying ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ending mass incarceration. But you helped facilitate it.” Reid’s account of Bill Clinton’s relationship with civil rights leader Jesse Jackson is fascinating. Jackson was the first serious black candidate for president. He ran in 1984 and 1988 with a multi-issue progressive platform. He advocated interracial coalition building and pushed a class politics that would allow blacks, whites and Latinos to get together on the basis of shared economic interests. It was called the “Rainbow Coalition.” He was opposed by the Democratic Party establishment and the black political leadership. He praised two white leaders who “crossed the color line” to support him: Bernie Sanders and Jim Hightower. In 1988, Jackson got 8 million votes and won Democratic primaries and caucuses in 11 states by appealing to blacks and working class whites. He registered millions upon millions of new voters, many of them African American. He had a big impact. Reid says “the party had to decide what to do with him.” Bill Clinton would “rebuke” him. He would marginalize, humiliate but also cajole and be-friend Jackson. The “Rainbow Coalition” would disappear. The Bernie Sanders campaign presents us with another opportunity to build a “Rainbow Coalition.” Those of us supporting Sanders need to use our work for the campaign to build local, multi-racial coalitions that advocate for transformative change for the long term. This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.

guest column Future, our future: think about it By Douglas Henderson

he other day, while listening to the radio, I heard an ad from the gas industry that said gas provides energy whenever you need it, even when the sun is not shining — inaccurately implying that the energy from solar panels cannot be used at night. The ad ended with the industry’s catch-phrase “Think about it.” Well, millions of us are thinking about it, a lot. We know that our energy future will shape humanity’s future and Earth’s future. We think that continuing to rely on fossil fuels — including gas — is a road to assured disaster, the scale of which we have begun to see in huge fires, prolonged droughts and super storms occurring with increasing frequency. In spite of rhetoric from antiscience denialists, evidence of environmental and climate impacts from fossil fuels is mounting. We think that to avert bigger catastrophes caused by fossil fuel pollution and extreme climate change, we must change direction away from fossil fuels as rapidly as possible. We know that economical renewable-energy technologies exist now that can meet a large portion of our power needs. We think that because humans are highly inventive, more and better green technologies will come quickly, and more quickly if we prioritize their development.

We think that instead of investing hundreds of billions of dollars and more years into dirty climate-damaging fossil fuels, we should be putting that investment now into clean renewable energy. We think there are more jobs in clean renewable energy than in fossil fuels, that sustainable jobs in clean energy will be around long after jobs in fossil fuels have gone bust, and that jobs in clean energy are steadier and far healthier than daily exposure to the dangers and poisons of fossil fuel production, transportation, storage and inevitable pollution clean-up. We think the oil and gas industry should stop obstructing renewable energy, stop treating our environment as a dumping ground for its pollution and stop corrupting our political environment to serve its interests. And they should stop calling gas “clean” when in truth its production and use causes dangerous pollution, and its climate impact is as bad or worse than that of coal. We think it is time to recognize that to retain a habitable planet, we need to bring the era of fossil fuels to a rapid close. To avert radical climate change and environmental disasters, fossil fuels need to remain in the ground. We think it is great news that comsee GUEST COLUMN Page 8

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Of all the things we’d love to leave our children and future generations, a healthy place for them to raise children of their own may be the most important. But today, we use fuels that pollute the air our kids breathe and the water they drink. We are changing our climate and, with it, many things we depend upon for the future. What do we want to work for and be remembered for? We can leave our children and future generations an America where the air is clean and the water is safe. By increasing the use and production of the safe sources of sustainable energy we have now, like wind and solar, we can be proud of what we have created for generations to come and have a happy surprise when we open our energy bills. The choice is ours to make for a clean energy future. The best way to get there seems to me to be supporting our clean energy municipal utility here in Boulder and, at the national level, asking Sens. Bennet and Gardner and Rep. Polis to support a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend. This would place a fee on the carbon content of fuels and return all that money to American households on an equitable basis. A market-based approach like this will protect the poor and the middle class and help the economy without growing government, while cutting carbon pollution in half. This is a future I can be excited about. Randy Compton/Boulder

Roses are red and thanks

Thanks for running the best column I have seen in alternative newsweeklies, and I’ve read and written for many: American Life in Poetry. These are wonderful, thought-provoking, soothing

interludes in what is often an edition full of anxiety and accusation. Which is what ANs are for, that and entertainment news. Excellent move to stop taking local submissions and let U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser provide the selections. At least I think you were taking some local stuff before, because I stopped reading them. Smart move running this column, “our great good luck.” Richard Wall/Lafayette

Rep. Polis, as we say in Colorado, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

All across the state, Coloradans are expressing their deep disappointment in Rep. Jared Polis’ vote to support [Nov. 19] SAFE Act, which adds yet another layer to an already years-long process of admitting refugees into the United States, in the wake of the bombing of Syria. And yet, in the faraway distant time of Sept. 11, 2015, Rep. Polis was among the more than 70 Democratic members of Congress who signed onto a letter in support of the Obama administration’s plan (tinyurl.com/p78vc7b) to increase the number of refugees admitted to include 100,000 Syrians by the end of 2016. He was among those who pledged to commit “adequate additional resources ... for security checks, to meet the increased demand.” Additional resources does not equate to additional hurdles for people fleeing for their lives, not in our book. To make matters worse, Rep. Polis has to date declined to hold the Obama administration responsible for the unconstitutional escalation of hostilities via bombing and undeclared perpetual see LETTERS Page 9

guest column GUEST COLUMN from Page 6

mitments to divest financially from fossil fuels now total more than $2.6 trillion, from $50 billion just one year ago, a 50-fold increase in one year. We think this is evidence that leaders of major institutions in the U.S. and around the world are thinking seriously about our energy future and taking decisive action to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to clean renewable energy. We think this gives hope and inspiration that our children and their children will have a better future. There is no Planet B. Think about it.

Doug Henderson is a natural resources management professional with over 30 years of experience in the United States, Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands. With a background in natural resource economics and management, he has worked with government agencies, international organizations, NGOs, the private sector, and local stakeholders in more than 20 countries. He hangs out near Allenspark as much as possible. This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly. Boulder Weekly

letters war in the Middle East. Essentially, he has done nothing to stem the tide of refugees in the first place. The combination of Rep. Polis’ failure to call attention to unauthorized war and his bait-and-switch regarding “resources” for refugees has caused an inhumane vise in which Syrian refugees are now squeezed. This vote is, put plainly, unconscionable. And what is the cynical political rationale for linking arms with the extreme right-wing, xenophobic beneficiaries of the profits of war gifted by the military industrial complex? The security screening that refugees have undergone thus far is more than adequate. In fact, out of the 750,000-odd refugees resettled in the United States since 9/11, only three have been arrested on terrorist charges (tinyurl.com/ o5zg3z5) This situation ain’t broke, and it doesn’t need the SAFE Act’s “fix.” Perhaps Rep. Polis finds himself in a not-so-safe electoral district after all, since last year’s corporate Democrat stunt of withdrawing support for two anti-fracking ballot initiatives. Perhaps after spurning his base, he now has to scramble to be in the good graces of what right-leaning voters might still live in CD-2. Now is the time for Coloradans of good conscience to finally abandon the DNC hijinks and games of bait and switch. The Green Party of Colorado is now recruiting for a candidate to challenge Rep. Polis next year, and we will be working to fix what’s “broke” in Colorado’s CD-2. Will the challenger please step forward? Andrea Merida, Co-Chair, Green Party of Colorado/Denver

Colorado Legislature — interested but impotent

In 1999, with over 10 percent of Coloradans living in poverty, the Colorado Legislature declared minimum wages to be a matter of state interest in the Labor Peace Act (C.R.S. Title 8, Article 3) and denied Colorado cities the legal authority to raise minimum wages. For the next seven years the Colorado legislature failed to pass any minimum wage legislation. So in 2006, Coloradans put the state minimum wage outside the legislature’s control by initiating and passing a constitutional amendment to raise the minimum wage and index it to inflation. Now, in 2015, with 15 percent of Coloradans living in poverty, Colorado Revised Statutes still claim exclusive Boulder Weekly

control of minimum wages by the state legislature, in violation of the Colorado Constitution. HB15-1300 would have fixed the Labor Peace Act by repealing the legislature’s claim of statewide control. But the Senate State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee killed the bill on April 15. It is time to hold the Colorado Legislature accountable with a court

suit to strike down its unconstitutional claim to control of minimum wages. Harry Hempy/Jamestown

Stop getting a daily dose

A recent 20-minute film by awardwinning documentarian Jeremy Seifert, entitled “Our Daily Dose,” is worth viewing if you care about your children’s health. In the words of Erin Brokovich, “My career has been about

making people aware of harmful exposures and the deception that often accompanies those exposures. Drinking water fluoridation is harmful, we’ve been deceived to believe it is safe, and with new found knowledge we must all act now to stop it.” The film is viewable online. For more detailed information, check out www. fluoridealert.org. William Pollauf/Boulder

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• BOULDER WEEKLY’S ANNUAL ESSAY ISSUE • Jorge Gobbi via Flickr

THE ANSWER IS COLOMBIA by Caitlin Rockett

wish I could say my passion for Colombia was born from a deep intellectual yearning — from the pages of a Gabriel García Márquez novel or a love for Spanish Baroque painting or a lifelong exploration of the Spanish language — but that’s not the case. Not even a little. Like most Americans I read more European and North American authors. I took my last art class in high school and I’m sure it involved more clay than Baroque. I studied French through college. Nope, my passion for Colombia, the reason I traveled there, was not particularly intellectual at all. A little more Eat, Pray, Love than The Motorcycle Diaries. Yeah, that’s right: I was in love with a Colombian. And no, this is not easy for me to write. The more I fell in love with the Colombian, the more I fell in love with his country — I was enamored with the idea of the chilly mountains of Bogota, with the eternal spring of Medellín, with the colorful streets inside the walls of Cartagena. But most of all I was enamored with the Colombian. He and I would spend hours talking about… well, anything: our families, his childhood in Colombia, mine in North Carolina, about world politics, about music and movies. 12 December 3, 2015

I started to learn a little Spanish. I became obsessed with rock en español, particularly a band called Soda Stereo (Que descansa en paz, Cerati). I learned a little more Spanish. I met sus abuelos y tías y tíos. I read 100 Years of Solitude. I ate buñuelos and orejas de elephante. A little more Spanish worked its way into my brain. Halloween costumes, Indian food, inside jokes, a bungled bus ride from Aspen to Snowmass that left us begging for a ride at a Mexican discothèque in Carbondale… the memories piled up. And one day I couldn’t take it anymore: I professed my love… en español, por supuesto! It was calculated, as Spanish makes a distinction between types of love; te amo is for romantic love, te quiero for familial or very close platonic relationships (it gets even more nuanced than that, but I digress). “Te amo… Y creo que lo sabes,” I wrote in a text — I love you… and I believe you know it. I couldn’t bear to say it out loud. I could barely stand to wonder if I’d chosen my words wisely — should I have used pensar, to think, instead of creer, to believe? Did I forget a word? Why am I thinking about this shit? I felt foolish, at 29, telling a man “I love you” via text, but I knew, despite our laughter and sweet talk and piles of memories, he didn’t feel the same way. His response took time. Hours, at least as I remember it. “No lo sabía,” he finally wrote back, “pero lo sentí.” I did not know it, but I felt it. I knew what his vague response meant. In the end, he didn’t love me, at least not the way I loved him. And later

on, as we analyzed the situation, he wondered what was wrong with what we had. Honestly, nothing was wrong with what we had, except it wasn’t what I wanted. I felt childish. Selfish, even. We were so entrenched in each other’s lives that we continued to talk and visit one another even after realizing we had different goals. I couldn’t tell what hurt more: the fact that he didn’t love me, or the fact that he wouldn’t just go away. In his defense, I wouldn’t push him away. I would try, he’d object, I’d relent, and around we went. I was exhausted and angry, with him and myself. But mostly I was ashamed: Ashamed that I couldn’t find the strength to push him away; ashamed that he didn’t want to build a life with me; ashamed that I loved him; ashamed that I’d told him. I was ashamed of my life. I found myself staring at 30 and wondering when that happened, and what exactly was I working toward? Other things were compounding my pain — overwhelming bills, my grandmother’s deteriorating health, and, perhaps most draining, a toxic situation at work. I stopped running and going to yoga and rarely left my apartment beyond work and the occasional trip to the grocery store. I gained weight and rarely looked in mirrors. It was a small victory if I managed to wear something that didn’t have elastic in the waistband. I felt hollow. I tried to date, to disastrous results, and the emptiness expanded. Through it all, Colombia had become a fascination. A geographic

representation of the person I loved. I could love Colombia, all its beauty and history, without fear of rejection. South America in general became a fantasy. It began to represent my hope that there was somewhere else I could be, that maybe life could be about more than just keeping my head above water and tolerating what could only be called emotional abuse at work. But living out my dream would require real money, and that was in short supply. And then it happened — an overbooked holiday flight home to see my family left me with a $600 flight voucher. I booked a ticket to Medellín a month later. A close friend who speaks Spanish joined me and, true to our strange relationship, my unrequited Colombian love arranged for us to meet with his best friend for our first few days in Medellín. And before I knew it, I was stepping into José María Córdova airport in Medellín — the city of eternal spring. The first thing I remember seeing in the airport was a sign that read, “Todos por un nuevo pais: Paz, Equidad, Educación.” All for a new country: Peace, Equality, Education. At that moment, bleary-eyed from too much wine on the plane and nervous about speaking Spanish with the customs agent, the phrase merely translated itself into English in my mind. But first impressions are often shallow, and we’ll come back to the sign later. Most Americans don’t think of European-tiny, rain-soaked streets lined Boulder Weekly

• BOULDER WEEKLY’S ANNUAL ESSAY ISSUE •

with broad-leafed trees and tropical flowers when they hear Medellín. They don’t think of concerts in university centers or sipping a latte in a quaint cafe because for decades, Colombia’s second largest city suffered extreme violence as the center of Pablo Escobar’s drug operation. The drug kingpin created a bloody urban war in Medellín as he competed with other cartels for control of the country’s cocaine trade. In 1988, Time magazine called it “the most dangerous city on earth.” When people hear Medellín, the first associated word is still often “cartel.” But the city has worked hard to shed its violent reputation, and indeed, it’s now called one of the most progressive cities in Latin America. It’s situated in the Aburrá Valley, the basin of the Medellín River, where its downtown skyline and high-rise apartment buildings are set against the jagged peaks of the Andes from every direction. There are still vestiges of Medellín’s troubled past — shanty towns, favelas, hug the hillside, far higher than you’d believe possible. Many of these neighborhoods, like the infamous Comuna 13, were built illegally during the reign of Escobar. People simply poured into the hillside and built makeshift homes with tin roofs. The houses, however simplistic, are colorful, just like the flowers that grow seemingly everywhere in the city. Medellín’s consistently spring-like weather keeps flowers blooming yearround — everywhere you turn there are bursts of tropical colors and the shimmer of water built up from humidity. The dreamy climate makes Medellín the epicenter of the North American commercial flower market. If you’ve ever gotten a dozen roses on Valentine’s Day, it’s more than likely the flowers came from Medellín. The airport sits on a hill overlooking the city. My friend and I shared a cab from the airport into town with another American, and I giggled with delight as the driver weaved in and out of traffic down the hill. Everything was glistening from fresh rain. We’d traveled to Colombia during the rainy season. But the rain didn’t get me down. It felt like it was washing away a year’s worth of built up pain and frustration. For the first time in a long time, I felt light. I felt new. Because our “tour guide” lived there, we stayed in El Poblado, the wealthiest neighborhood in Medellín. The swanky district grew in the early ’90s when the city’s elite fled the drug-fueled violence occurring in the city’s center. The Boulder Weekly

streets are narrow, and most businesses reside in open-faced buildings since the climate is so mild — it makes people watching a necessary pastime. Our hostel was nothing special, but it was clean and the owners were kind. There was a patio that overlooked a street lined with bars, dry cleaners, other hostels, hole-in-the-wall eateries. Young folks rode scooters to deliver Dominos pizza from the very American store at the corner. American pop and rock music poured out of nearly every bar and restaurant. A few blocks from the hostel was Parque Poblado, an urban park where young people often meet in the evenings to plan their night’s adventures and drink. Our new friend, and appointed guide to Medellín, met us at our hostel just a few hours after we’d settled in. There were hugs and kisses on each cheek, and away we went into the drizzle of our first night in Medellín, a complete stranger leading the way. The next four days went by in a blur — we explored the flower-lined greenways of the city, meandered through crowded street markets, walked around public gardens, watched a band play Sublime’s “What I Got” at La Universidad de Medellín and partied alongside the beautiful young people in El Poblado’s clubs. Everywhere I looked there were trees and flowers and running water. Nature seems like it’s working around the clock to take back what man has unrightfully deemed his. But my favorite experience in Medellín was riding the cable cars that run up the steep hillside of the valley and through those colorful favelas. The public transportation system was created to help people in the least developed areas move around the city and, believe it or not, public transportation played a pivotal role in reducing crime. The addition of two Metrocable lines in 2006 provided access to those hard-to-reach shanty towns. Now Medellín’s poorest residents don’t have to rely on unpredictable buses or make arduous journeys down the mountainside for jobs, schooling, healthcare or even basic shopping trips. I’ll never forget watching to city grow smaller and smaller as we rode up, children playing soccer seemingly everywhere across the hillside neighborhoods, laundry hung across every balcony, scooters and tiny taxis zipping down

every street. I looked out and saw a city that had overcome its adversity despite decades of senseless violence. I saw a city that was proud of what it had become. I saw poverty, but I saw happiness. I saw hope for the future. I saw kids who were going to have safer childhoods than their parents had. From that cable car I stared at the city and wondered why I couldn’t rise above my own tribulations. I spent another week in Colombia, experiencing the magical realism of Cartagena’s calm waves, and learning about how climate change is affecting coffee production on a small organic finca in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, a costal mountain range in Northern Colombia. I ate fresh crab on a beach and rode a donkey up a mountain. I talked to other travelers about their journeys and ate mangos and avocados fresh off the trees. I cried some nights thinking about the pain from the past year. I cried about my selfish “firstworld” problems. I cried because I felt better and just the same all at once. When the time came to fly home, I was back in José María Córdova airport, back in the city of eternal spring where my heart had felt light for the first time in a year. As I dropped my bag off and made my way through customs, I noticed the same sign I’d seen when I first arrived in Colombia, “Todos por un nuevo pais: Paz, Equidad, Educación.” All for a new country: Peace, Equality, Education. It had meaning to me now. I felt like my passion for Colombia was rooted in something much larger than my unrequited love of the Colombian. Perhaps it was rooted in some deep intellectual yearning after all — the desire to know myself. The desire to find inner peace. The desire to see myself as equal to those around me. My constant search for education. Hadn’t my love for the Colombian and for his country led me to start learning Spanish? Hadn’t I discovered new music and new literature? Hadn’t I become well-versed in South American politics? And hadn’t I learned that love doesn’t always mean the same thing for different people? It seemed to me that if Colombia could rise above the violence and desperation, I could rise above my sadness and fear. It would take time. It would take patience. I would have to continu-

ally seek peace, equality and education. Todos por un nuevo Caitlin. I guess the answer to all of my questions was Colombia.

THE PORCH by Angela K. Evans

’m sitting on the porch in a low wooden chair in front of the open doors leading to the common room. The wooden porch runs the length of the building and is covered by a grass-thatched roof that absorbs the rain falling outside. It’s summer in Thailand, and it’s always raining. We live in a long house on small stilts, one of many buildings that outline the central grassy field. It sits directly across from the school’s entrance gate. Behind the house is the jungle path leading into the village of No Boh, a small community nestled on the banks of the river that separates Thailand from Burma. It is populated mostly by Karen people (pronounced Kuh-REHN) and is in close proximity to the Mae La Refugee Camp. Established in 1984, Mae La Camp houses 50,000 refugees from nearby Burma, 90 percent of whom are Karen. Most of our students at No Boh Academy are also Karen refugees. They live at the school, while their families live at the camp. Teachers live at the school as well, including three of us teaching English. We spend most of our time on the front porch — preparing lessons, talking, reading and hanging out with students. Tonight, I hear beetles chirping, the cook cleaning up after dinner and the children laughing in the dining hall. Breathing in fresh rain and the setting sun, my eyes drift shut. I feel a tap on my shoulder and look at my watch. Funny. I wear a watch here but not at home, seeking to keep time in a place that is not dictated by it. It is just past 7 p.m., after dinner but before the students are required to be in their dorms. This particular student standing next to me comes to the teacher’s house every night. I still remember his inquisitive eyes and his distinctive English. I remember our conversations and his questions. I call him “Baw,” a common title for our students. He smiles in greeting, but rarely anytime else. This is so unlike the Karen culture, which highly values the art of smiling. He is See ESSAYS Page 14

December 3, 2015 13

• BOULDER WEEKLY’S ANNUAL ESSAY ISSUE • ESSAYS from Page 13

mostly quiet in large groups, always sit- country. ting with a thoughtful expression on his Baw sits and face. Like many of my students at that listens, intrigued. time, he is in his early 20s and older As I pause, he genthan me. tly lifts his eyeI often find Baw pouring over the brows, encouraging encyclopedias and an old version of the me to continue. Guinness Book of World Records that we “Do you know have in the common room of the teach- what a coup d’etat er’s house. Baw loves history and has an is?” I ask. incredible capacity to remember details. “Yes, like in He speaks about European history with South America?” authority, gaining most of his knowlI’m not exactly sure what he’s referedge from the incomplete set of encyring to, but I also don’t want to get off clopedias. I often sit with him separate topic. So I nod again and continue. from the rest of the teachers and stuIn 1962 General Ne Win took condents socializing on the porch, laughing trol of the dwindling parliamentary and singing along to someone strumgovernment in a military coup. He susming the communal guitar. We discuss pended the constitution and the milithe World Wars, the Holocaust Wikimedia Commons and the U.S.S.R. He teaches me just as much as I teach him. Tonight, as I struggle to wake up from my brief rest on the porch, Baw stops tapping my shoulder and hands me a stapled packet. It is about five pages, typed in English, with handwritten Karen on the back of each page. “I was wondering if you could read this, and then explain it to me?” he asks. “No one has ever taught me this, and it is not in the encyclopedia.” As I begin reading, I realize this will take some time. Baw just handed me the history of his people. • • • • A few nights later, I meet Baw back on the porch, under the single light in front of the common room, to talk about the tary took over all aspects of Burmese history packet. Entitled “Understanding Burma’s life. The ethnic minorities had no place Problems” and written by a Thai pastor in government, only the majority working with refugees, the document Burmese held positions of power. gives a brief account of the nation’s General Ne Win ruled Burma until independence and turmoil, focusing on Aug. 8, 1988 when a nation-wide strike the Karen more than the other ethnic started by students led to his resignatribes also caught up in the on-going tion. The State Law and Order civil war. I had heard briefly about the Restoration Council (SLORC), run by situation during my volunteer orientamilitary generals, took control and tion, but in reality I knew very little. announced national elections. That’s “Do you know what a federal union when Aung Sang Suu Kyi, the daughter is?” I ask. of nationalist hero Aung San, formed “Like America and its states?” Baw the National League for Democracy responds. (NLD). The NLD won 80 percent of I nod and continue to explain what parliamentary seats in the 1990 election I learned from the packet. After indebut the SLORC ignored the election pendence from Great Britain in 1948, results and put Suu Kyi under house and under the leadership of a man arrest. named General Aung San, ethnic lead“The military still governs Burma to ers in Burma signed a treaty to form a this day,” I conclude. federal union. But Aung San was assasI hand him the packet and sit back sinated before the agreement was in my chair. implemented and civil war broke out Baw is quiet for a moment. “Is that with ethnic uprisings all across the all the information? There is nothing 14 December 3, 2015

more?” “Well,” I hesitate, “that’s all the history it explained. But it does talk about what the military does to the people, your people. Do you want to know about that? It might be difficult.” “Yes, please tell me what else it says,” he says frankly. “When I was young, my family and I ran from them. I only have small memories and in my family, we don’t talk about it.” He reaches out his hand with the packet, offering it back to me.

I let out a sigh. I realize I am trying to protect him from a life he has already lived. This part of the packet was difficult for me to read and will be difficult for me to retell. But Baw and the other students at No Boh have experienced at least some of this first hand. So I just read. I don’t look up. I can’t look into his eyes. I tell him, in the author’s words, how the Burmese military regime uses forced labor. They move ethnic groups in order to build infrastructure projects for foreign companies. They relocate ethnic Burmese to these former villages trying to confuse and dispute the origins of ethnic groups and their right to the land. They make some children work instead of go to school and some of these children become soldiers. There are international problems too. Drugs, mostly opiates, are trafficked into China. The Burmese have bribed Thai officials in order to raid refugee camps. They persecute Karen

villages because the majority of this ethnic tribe practices Christianity and the military wants Burma to be a strong Buddhist nation. The author’s solution is not only democracy. He thinks respecting the ethnic ownership of land and honoring the 1948 treaty to create a federal union is the only way to bring peace. I finish reading out loud and finally look up. Baw is nodding. The history of why he had seen so much suffering is new to him. But the reality of that suffering is not. We sit there for a few minutes in silence. Then the school bell rings, calling all the students back to their dorms. • • • • I met Baw in the summer of 2004. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to keep in touch with him. Cultural norms deem it inappropriate. But I have stayed in touch with female students who also visited us regularly on our porch. Some have moved to the U.S. as refugees and have even become U.S. citizens. Others still live in Mae La and other refugee camps along the border. Still others have crossed back into Burma and work with the Karen National Union, the democratic organization continuously working to give Karen a political voice in a federal Burma. But my interactions with Baw have had lasting impact. Since my summer teaching English at No Boh, I have learned and continue to learn about the situation affecting the friends I met there. I defended my college thesis about civil-military relations in Burma; I held “Free Suu Kyi” events on my campus; I read her writings about democracy, freedom and peaceful protest; I listened to Damien Rice’s “Unplayed Piano” written about Suu Kyi’s house arrest on repeat; and I did my best to follow when Burma made it into the Western news, which was rare. I watched from afar as Suu Kyi was finally released from nearly 25 years of house arrest in 2010. In the summer of 2012, she traveled back to England to visit her husband’s grave. (He had died almost 15 years earlier while she was under house arrest.) She went to Sweden to accept the Nobel Peace Prize she had won in 1991. She traveled around the world, including the U.S., meeting with political leaders to raise awareness about the situation in Burma. See ESSAYS Page 16

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After five decades of insular military control, things slowly started to change. In 2011, there were 1,673 political prisoners in Burma according to the Wall Street Journal. As of July 2015, there were only 115. The Burmese press is now more autonomous than ever. GDP is rising rapidly, as is access to technology, such as cell phones and the Internet. In October of this year, the military signed a Wikimedia Commons ceasefire agreement with eight different ethnic minorities, including the Karen National Union. But some things remain the same. Burma spends a higher percentage of its GDP on the military than the U.S., while 70 percent of the population still lives in abject poverty in rural areas. A startling 69 percent still use firewood to cook their food. In some areas ethnic violence has increased. Systematic persecution against the Rohingya ethnic minority caused 140,000 people to flee their homes in the Rakhine state in 2012, according to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. The majority of the Rohingya people practice Islam and are battling a growing nationalist Buddhist movement. Approximately one million Rohingya lack citizenship and were unable to vote in the most recent elections on Nov. 8, 2015. In these historic elections Suu Kyi’s NLD party again won almost 80 percent of available parliament seats. And although 25 percent of the seats are reserved for the military and were uncontested in the election, it looks as though — this time around — the military will hand over parliamentary control to the NLD. Regardless, the military will still command the country’s defense and security ministries and has to approve any constitutional changes. As hopeful as the most recent elections are, there are many questions left unanswered as the NLD prepares to take over political control of Burma in February. And there are many stories left to be told. It would be easy to reduce the story of Burma to statistics, to data-driven news stories, to politics. But the 20th century history of Burma needs to be told in light of the people who were,

and still are, deeply affected by it. Editor’s note: The People like Baw. refugees referred to in this essay prefer the name Burma over Myanmar for their home country, believing the latter legitimizes the military government.

HILLS LIKE UPSIDEDOWN ELEPHANTS by Matt Cortina

e left the old merchants’ quarters with a flat bottle of champagne and handfuls of meats and cheeses. The wind brought fishy air from the Saône down the corridor and broke up the reverberations of bistro laughter that waited like helpless dogs left at home for their owners to return at night. We wouldn’t see the sun until we reached the church at the top of the hill, but pretty pastel buildings, blackened as if by design from a century of soot, leaned over us like watchful aunts with a faint robin’s egg blue between the crowns of their heads. We started up the cobbled, proud Rue du Boeuf and laughed that, back home, the name “Beef Street” would have the energy of a homoerotic fraternity hazing ritual, or else be a nickname

Shia LaBeouf had for himself. Before the main arterial we turned into a narrow stairway. The steps were small and covered in moss. Gazing upwards, our eyesight quit before the stairway did. But there in the distance was an old couple easing down each little step. First her, then him, with his hand gripping the one metal railing. It seemed they must have set out on the journey to Beef Street before dawn, and god knows when they’d return. Step by step they descended, and we reciprocated from a steep distance below and out of their eyesight. We passed the bottle of flat champagne back and forth as we climbed. Each swill brought fertility back to our tongues, re-signaling the frequency at which we dined the day prior on meals of succulent tête de veau, escargots hot and effervescent in butter and garlic, grenouilles that we cracked like chicken wings and andouillettes of pork stomach in poppy mustard that Americans like us should not have ordered because we’re classless assholes. And, OK, we didn’t like it, but, yeah, we’re Americans so we gave it a go, and we did like the table liters of Beaujolais and Grand and Premier Crus, and the local minstrel strumming some punchy, anachronistic tune on a beat-up classical guitar. That frequency dipped into our souls on each sip of flat champagne, only to be gone again from our dry tongues after seconds on our climb to the church. And what a church it was supposed to be. But that didn’t mean there was any reason to believe we’d delay our joyride to Nice that afternoon where we’d lay on hot grey coals along the salty Cote D’Azur just to climb the stairs and slog through the park and climb more stairs to the promenade overlooking the city and the front of the church. We’d had enough of church. The Church; the Church that required natural family planning and marriage preparation classes on football nights during football season. We’d drive down to Denver on Thursday nights and Sunday mornings and post up for an hour or two at this bar outside the church school called Ernie’s. The first night, the Packers and Vikings Boulder Weekly

• BOULDER WEEKLY’S ANNUAL ESSAY ISSUE • were playing, and I had two glasses of some high-hopped red ale brewed nearby. What Father Deacon taught that night in the third grade classroom at the top of the stairs of the church school I don’t remember, but the next week we made sure to order more than two beers. By week three, one couple had dropped out because Father Deacon, a muscular, salt-and-pepper New Zealander with 80-some children, made one too many jokes about gender roles. Also by the third week, we started to see more couples join us at Ernie’s, and we tipped our glasses to our fallen tribesmen from atop our barstools of disengagement and generational superiority. We passed the elderly couple on the stairs and exchanged pleasantries in French, and I thought as we continued to climb that his name probably wasn’t Father Deacon at all — those are just two Church words that I’d slurried together in a haze of Buffalo Trace and football pining as we sat in plastic seats meant for children. “He made it,” Father Deacon said when we went up to thank him after the final marriage preparation class, one in which the group discussed the factuality of the story of Noah’s ark, learned about Woman being physically born of Man’s flesh and endured a red-faced talking-to about Internet porn. What frequency, then, compelled our pregnant bellies and joyful, empty minds up to the top of the stairway on a Tuesday morning way after the fact to look at a church? We passed two local teens playing hooky with an old boom box and cracked wise about the goofy French graffiti on the wall of the stairway, images torn from the pages of worn-binding editions of eighth grade French class textbooks. We gave the final swigs of our champagne to the young Lyonnais and walked across the street into the park that sat at the distant foot of the church grounds. The trail traversed, first in long, slow inclines, then quick, steep bursts as we climbed higher, like the flourish up through a piano’s octaves from low to high. Our backs were damp with sweat. We took a break at the crevasse of a low frequency turn and waited as two jolly groundskeepers drove down toward a graveyard. The trees crowded around us and gave us only a glimpse of the midmorning sun, a yolk over easy frying under the white of clouds. The answer to every question in the Church’s natural family planning class was “Or birth control.” Can someone tell me how many days to wait for ovulation when the cervix is closed? Or birth control. What does it mean for Boulder Weekly

fertility if the discharge is mucousy and thick? Or birth control. Do you want to get up at five every morning to chart your vaginal temperature before your body is awake to get an optimal reading? Or birth control. You want to come into this room with me, just some dude free on Sundays who holds no medical degree, and tell me about your medications, sexual history and subtleties about your reproductive system? That one, yes, actually. Surprisingly enough. But that was all part of the process in order to get married in the Church. It was a perfectly fine proposition for us, who both grew up in Christian homes, if maybe one more than the other. And considering the CFO of the whole wedding operation had preferred the ceremony was in the Church, we were more than happy to oblige. We snarked and snickered our way through the classes and through the one-on-one meetings with the priest where I explained I didn’t really know what saints were and asked if the church had a softball team I could play on. But we gladly sat on the altar of a stunning church at one of the oldest missions in California as a priest we’d barely met wrought fire and brimstone over our unsuspecting congregation, imploring them that the day was not about us. More people than we knew were with the Church took communion that day, even a bodacious friend who was the only one to take the wafer in his mouth, prompting the priest to ask him, “Are you Catholic?” We laughed later that in between hell-raising sermons, the priest came over to give us oddly cute reminders to stay calm and enjoy the day. And we certainly enjoyed the ceremony of it all. But then we’d part ways with the Church like the crew on a film set and ride off to our lush European getaway and drink and eat out of our means. Yet there we were back at the doorstep of the Church. From the top of the promenade, we leaned over the edge of the railing and took in the city. Soft reds and yellows were cut by the twin turquoise rivers, and off farther stood modern skyscrapers, then hills of Burgundy then a clementine sky, just about to break the wool away from the sun. There was no one else on the

promenade and no wind nor sound. We embraced arms around backs and caught our breath. The Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière is a monstrous, gaudy Disney castle that overlooks Lyon. It is pristinely white with green Church statues that rise from its towered peaks. Inside, too, the artwork is plushy, with period paintings of a quality that hasn’t yet gained the benefit of antiquity. It looks like a particularly tasteful cruise ship ballroom with the ceiling jacked and columns erected. As we stood in the doorway, a group of schoolchildren left the church, and it was just us. We walked around the side and sat on a bench midway through the church, and then it was just me. The wind picked up to a whir, starting at a low vibration and picking up to a steady, high-pitched stream that rushed past the building. The bass dropped out of the church and in its stead was presence, like when you wake up in the middle of the night and think there’s a mouse running around the molding. I looked up and the sun finally broke through the clouds and shone through a small red triangle at the very corner of the gigantic stained-glass window that stood from floor to ceiling behind the altar. I shit you not, the bells started to ring. The light grew brighter and brighter, and I couldn’t look away. My wife said, “Your face is pink,” and I said, “Yours isn’t,” which was a stupid thing to say, but come on, was fucking Jesus Christ talking to me right then? After all that? Didn’t Jesus climb a mountain and become inundated with light and sound before his disciples, and didn’t that show the union of god and man? Did I learn that? And just as soon as it started… well. The sun rose a degree higher and the light faded from my face, the highpitched wind reduced to a low murmur. The presence left, and I said, “Welp. Wanna go to Nice?” At what point do we suspend our perceptions of reality to consider the plausibility of things we cannot prove? Rationally, I had endorphins pumping after a long climb, I’d been drunk for days, the stained glass window was probably built to have that light-concentrating effect, the bells rang on the hour and the church was on a cliff so of course it gets gusts of wind. But, the frequency was bone-rattling. There’s a Hemingway short story called, “Hills Like White Elephants,” that features a man wondering why the people in a Spanish bus stop act more “reasonably” than the young woman he’s See ESSAYS Page 18

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ESSAYS from Page 17 Joel Dyer/Hand-tinted photo; “Turning Their Backs”

with as she decides whether to follow the man’s implied wishes to have an abortion. Reason is dumb there, and so I’m glad for the silly coincidence that locals, noting the similarities in appearance, call Notre-Dame de Fourvière “l’éléphant renfoncé,” or the upside-down elephant, because sometimes we just smile and feel the frequency.

LESSONS FROM THE HOTLINE by Joel Dyer

ack then, Glen didn’t sleep much. Rumor was he had apnea or some other sleep disorder, but it seemed to me that the middle of the night was just when most farmers chose to kill themselves, so 2 a.m. tended to be rush hour around Glen’s place in Oklahoma City. Glen Wallace is a psychologist, my friend, my brother’s father-in-law and the guy who answered a lot of the hotline calls from suicidal farmers back during the farm crisis of the 1980s and early ’90s. Of course the myth is that the crisis ended back then, which it didn’t. It’s still alive and well in quite a few places. It just slowed down on paper because once most of the small family farms had disappeared by way of foreclosure, there were fewer mediumsized farms left to fail and now it’s the big farms. So, statistically, it all looks to have improved, but looks don’t mean much when the bankers come around. Losing a big, medium or small family farm all feels the same to the families left behind to clean up after a shotgun under the chin. Yes, you can reach the trigger from that position. Trust me. I was looking for a big project to report on when I first met Glen. Being from Oklahoma, the idea of farmers being forced off their land seemed a good fit for me emotionally, but I had 18 December 3, 2015

no idea how the path I was about to head down would change the course of my life. Not only would I be following this story and its many twists and turns for the next 25 years, I also learned a few lessons from Glen along the way that I like to think have served me well both professionally and personally. The farm crisis and the fact that suicide had become the number one cause of unnatural death on the family farm is the kind of under-reported story that grabs you and won’t let go. Thanks to Glen, I was given the opportunity to observe, and in some ways come to understand, the profound grief that accompanies losing a family farm or ranch, at least as much as a writer descended from a line of landless barbers can. It’s not a simple thing to wrap your

head around. The loss of a family farm is a powerful force that defies logic in many ways. It’s not like other business failures. You can’t just move on. It’s more like losing a member of your family or more precisely, like losing all the members of your family at the same time. When a family farm goes into foreclosure, it’s most often a farm that someone’s grandparents built and passed on to their kids who then gave it to their kids with the intention that it be passed on to future generations. In many ways family farmers see themselves as trusted caregivers given the monumental responsibility of passing on the family’s heritage via the land itself. So when a farm family loses that land, they feel they have failed, even betrayed all those who came before, as

well as their own kids, grandkids and the countless generations that should have inherited the place down the road. The shame of this failure creates an unimaginable guilt that often leads to severe depression, which explains why suicide is so often the final outcome of farm foreclosures. This is true not only in the U.S. but around the world from Mexico to Australia to India. It’s hard to understand the level of anguish until you see it. Consider the case of Katherine Copeland, a 54-yearold farm wife, kindergarten teacher and mother of three who was a model of stability until the stress of losing her family’s farm to forces outside her control got hold of her. Katherine lived on her farm with her husband Eugene in Chattanooga, Oklahoma, where they raised cotton and cattle. It all seemed to be going well until the Federal Reserve decided to fight inflation by radically raising interest rates on farm loans in the early 1980s. That, combined with low commodity prices brought on due to years of corporate consolidation that left only a few giant monopolies to dictate the prices that farmers would get for their crops, was simply too much to overcome. But, like I said, it’s not like other business failures. The pain for Katherine Copeland grew so bad that she needed a way out, she needed a way to punish herself for failing generations of her family. So on July 9, 1986, she walked out to a burning barrel of trash in her backyard and laid herself on top of it until she burned to death. What kind of mental pain can even make such a horrible thing an option? Katherine Copeland was just one of nearly a million family farmers forced from the land that year alone. One of those other families was the Stalders who lived just outside Gracemont, Oklahoma. Like the Copelands, they were losing their farm to global economic forces they couldn’t control. The anger, pain, despair and See ESSAYS Page 20

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guilt finally got the best of Bill Stalder and in the early morning hours of Aug. 19, 1986, he killed his wife Susan, his 16-year-old daughter Jamie and his 10-year-old son Jeremy. He then went outside and shot the family dog and carried it inside and laid it with the rest of the family. He then covered the house and barn in gasoline and lit them on fire before finally turning the shotgun on himself as he sat with the bodies of his family members and dog. The Stalders were a much beloved family in the tiny town of Gracemont. Nobody saw it coming. When investigators arrived to sort things out and look for a motive, it didn’t take long. In the burned out ruble of the barn they found Bill Stadler’s journal. The last entries described his anxiety over losing the farm. And then, like a scene from a movie, the final entry was simply the word “responsible” written over and over again until the pages ran out. It’s hard to fathom that kind of pain. It’s hard to understand what losing a family farm means to those who experience it. As I reflect back on the days when I did ride-alongs with Glen on farm suicide calls, I am still in awe of what I witnessed and the lessons I learned. First came the calm in the face of the storm. Most times the farm we were headed for was a couple of hours away. So we had, from my perspective, way too much time to think about what we were walking into. The original phone calls often came from a spouse or child who would explain that someone in the family had been drinking, had a gun, had locked themselves in a room and were saying they were going to kill themselves and anyone who tried to stop them. Glen’s response during our twohour drive was to make me play a game of spades on the dash of his car while careening down old two-lane highways and dirt roads at 70 miles an hour. Thank God most of Oklahoma’s roads are laid out in pencil-straight lines. Even so it got pretty crazy at times as cards slid into the defrost vents or under the seats, but the ensuing laughter and distraction was exactly what the doctor, being Glen, had

ordered. He understood what I didn’t back then, namely that we would find what we would find when we got there, and that we couldn’t impact a single thing between now and then so why waste two perfectly good hours of life imagining some horrific scenario that may or may not exist. Just a reminder, this was in the days before cell phones so there really wasn’t anything that could be done while driving. Next came bravery or insanity… or faith if you asked Glen, that moment of truth when you’d pull up in front of a farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere knowing that something terrible was going on just inside that front door. Glen never hesitated, never took a deep breath, never cut loose a sigh. He just hopped out of the car and marched straight up to the door and knocked. If it wasn’t answered quickly he just pushed it open and went inside announcing that it was “just ol’ Glen Wallace dropping by.” For me, these times felt like being the first to arrive at a car wreck. You know you have to stop and help but you sure wish you didn’t. I’d sigh. I’d hyperventilate. I’d take as long as I could to get from car to door in the hope that someone would stop me before I got there. Glen was always in and out of sight before my brain could make my legs take steps. It’s hard to describe what would happen next, a combination of bravery, truth, empathy and strategy. Here’s a real example as best I can still recall: “Get out of here or I’ll do it,” yelled the man in the recliner holding a shotgun and sitting next to a mostly empty bottle of whiskey. The room looked like a tornado had blown through. “Well, if you’re gonna do it I won’t try to stop you, but I would like a cup of coffee. Just wait till I make a cup and then you can do whatever you want,” Glen responded as he disappeared into the kitchen and started making a pot of coffee. Once inside, Glen never stopped talking. “What do want in yours?” “I don’t want coffee,” the man yelled. “You drink this Folgers? I like that, but it’s getting expensive these days. All coffee’s getting expensive. Do you Boulder Weekly

• BOULDER WEEKLY’S ANNUAL ESSAY ISSUE •

remember what you paid for it?” Silence. “I’m going to put a little sugar in mine. You want sugar?” Finally, after what seemed the longest one-sided conversation about coffee ever, Glen filled two cups and headed across the living room toward the angry, desperate man holding the loaded gun. “Stop right there. I’ll do it. Stay back, I’ll kill us both.” Glen never even slowed down, just kept walking toward the guy talking about trying not to spill the cups of coffee. He set one down next to the bottle of whiskey and took a seat in the chair cattycorner to the man. Next came truth. It would be easy and even forgivable in such life and death situations like those that Glen faced so often to tell people what they wanted to hear to get them not to hurt themselves or others, but Glen never did that. He told them the truth. In the instance described above, Glen looked right at that guy holding a gun, desperate as a cornered animal, and told him he knew they were going to auction off his family’s farm and there wasn’t anything in the world that anyone could do to stop it. He went on to relate that he understood the pain because, like that man, he too was a farmer. Glen had grown up on a family farm and still farmed cotton with his brother and nephews in the southwest part of the state. Over the next few minutes, Glen explained that while the man was definitely going to lose his farm, he didn’t have to let them take his life too. He didn’t have to stop fighting for other farmers’ right to stay on the land and he didn’t have to miss out on all the future good times with his wife and children. That’s the point where he brought me into the room and explained that I was a journalist and that even if the man still intended to kill himself, he should at least tell his story to me first, so that it could help other farmers going through the same hard times and maybe, just maybe, cause a politician or two to try and stop the foreclosures and end the crisis. Of course, such stories, unaccompanied by campaign funds, never persuaded politicians to stop anything. Boulder Weekly

But by the time the man had finished telling his family’s story, several hours had passed, he had mostly sobered up and his rage had turned to tears. It seemed a bit of a miracle, really. Not once had Glen faltered from telling the hard truth. Not once had he offered the man false hope. But because he had delivered the truth coupled with true empathy, another life was saved that day. We eventually drove the old farmer to a mental health facility in Western Oklahoma where he agreed to go in-patient for 30 days. I never heard, but I like to think he made it in the end. Not all of them did. After we dropped him off, we drove two and a half hours back to Glen’s house and were there for less than a half hour before the phone rang. Ten minutes later we were driving several hours south to Ardmore, Oklahoma where Glen would make coffee and talk another farm couple out of ending their lives. Thank God for apnea. How many lived because Glen couldn’t sleep? In the years since we were driving from suicide to potential suicide, I have pondered how this experience with Glen Wallace shaped my life. Professionally, it led to my opportunity to write several books. It allowed me regular work in the major news magazines and to become a writer and regular pundit for World Affairs Television, Canada’s version of Meet the Press. But that’s not the important part. The important part of what I learned was personal. The life lessons like don’t waste a moment worrying about something you can’t do anything about right now; or how real and honest empathy is the most powerful tool we have to do good in the world; and finally that truth, no matter how difficult it seems to apply to certain situations, is always the right answer. I’ve still got a lot of work to do on all of these, especially bravery. I still sigh a lot and move slowly when confronted by fearful circumstances. Perhaps Glen is right and being brave is just a matter of faith. I’ll keep plugging away at that one. One thing for sure, that farm suicide hot line changed a lot of lives thanks to Glen Wallace, including mine.

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Boulder Weekly

boulderganic Katy Neusteter

As part of our COP21 coverage from Paris, Boulder Weekly is partnering with the Boulder nonprofit Global Greengrants Fund to tell the stories of environmental youth activists from around the world. usteene Dammay and I are sitting in a Parisian cafe that feels like it’s right out of a Hemingway novel. On the walls, deliberately jumbled rows of gilded frames showcase everything from crinkly snake skins to pencil sketches of famous Europeans. Outside, it’s cold and misty. Every time the door opens, I see Justeene snuggle deeper into her red knit scarf, which appears brand new — bought especially for this trip, her first outside her native Philippines. Indeed, France is a long way from home for the 20-year-old Kalinga-Ifugao woman from the mountainous Cordillera highlands, the bread basket of the Philippines. Justeene and her colleague Julius Caesar Daguitan, who is Kanakaey-Kalinga, are in Paris with other young and indigenous people to demand bold action on climate change. Justeene and Julius are cultural organizers with Dap-ayan ti Kultura iti Kordilyera (The People’s Center for Cordillera Culture), which means they use traditional song, dance, painting and art to deepen indigenous identities and to continue the struggle for land, life and resources. “We indigenous people believe land is life,” says Julius, 28, who on Nov. 25 participated in a roundtable information-sharing session with this year’s winners of the prestigious Equator Prize, given by the United Nations Development Programme to outstanding grassroots environmental and social justice activists. “If you strengthen art, you strengthen the message of your place.” Justeene and Julius’ ancestral homeland is one of the places climate change, and the industries that contribute to it, is hitting the hardest. “When I was a child, we had a spring where we got our water,” Justeene says. “Today we can’t drink from it because it’s so polluted. Too many people have moved to my place for opportunity in the mines. They hear there is gold but when they come, [there aren’t any jobs] so they become urban poor.”

Left: One thousand pairs of shoes, including those of the Pope and Ban Ki Moon, were lined up in rows in Place de la Republique on Sunday Nov. 29. It was a show of protest and solidarity after the French government banned the massive climate march that was supposed to begin in the historic plaza and draw an estimated 200,000 people. Right: Justeene Dammay is one of several youth delegates attending events at COP21.

Filipino youth raise voices at COP21 by Katy Neusteter

The massive gold and copper mines in the Cordillera breed more problems than the population boom overwhelming water, housing and employment. They cause deforestation, stripping Cordillera’s steep hillsides bare and making the rain-soaked mountains vulnerable to landslides and sink holes. In 2009, after a series of consecutive typhoons, a devastating landslide killed hundreds of people and destroyed homes and farms. Mining also consumes massive amounts of fossil fuel-sourced energy, which contributes to climate change. In turn, climate change causes more typhoons, and — ironically — droughts. It’s a particularly vicious cycle for Cordillera’s indigenous peoples, who for generations have relied on consistent weather patterns to farm vegetables and other crops. “My father is a farmer but now he can’t plant any-

more — there is no rain,” Justeene says. “The rainy season should start in June,” Julius says. “One year it started in July. Now it starts in August. They don’t know what to plant, when to plant. There’s also a new species of giant earthworm — we don’t know where it came from — that is infesting our rice steps and making them collapse.” Mining activity is not new to the Cordillera. For more than 100 years, companies such as Manila-based Benguet Corporation have exploited the area’s vast mineral deposits. In addition to bringing empty promises of positive development, they have contributed to a culture of racism, started during Spanish colonization, against indigenous peoples. Justeene and Julius say many indigenous youth are now ashamed to See COP21 Page 24

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Integrative Vascular Biology Laboratory Department of Integrative Physiology University of Colorado at Boulder 24 December 3, 2015

Katy Neusteter

identify with their communities, speak their native languages and to celebrate their traditions. Justeene and Julius have traveled all the way to Paris to tell the world that indigenous youth demand action be taken to stop the industries that are plundering their lands and devastating their cultures. They are part of a delegation of grassroots activists from Kenya, Ecuador, Namibia, Malawi and Zimbabwe, who are already working in their communities to address climate change and its impacts. The group was organized by Global Greengrants Fund, the BoulderAn estimated 5,000 people linked hands along city blocks based international in Paris on Nov. 29. The human chain replaced the climate nonprofit where I march and started at a metro stop near the Bataclan theater, where one of the terrorist attacks last month took work. place. Over the past ten months, as part of our #YouthOnClimate project, Global reserved for civil society groups to Greengrants and our partner 350.org learning how her youth peers are have provided more than $475,000 in mobilizing to defend land and resourcsmall grants to youth leaders like es. The array of activity and opportuJusteene to raise awareness about clinity is dizzying. mate change and mobilize action in But then I ask what Justeene, a their communities. We also produced young indigenous cultural organizer a video series about the positive from the Filipino highlands, wants out of this experience in Paris. She smiles at change these impressive young people me warmly and openly and says: are making possible in their commu“I want to know what others are nities. Together, we are in Paris to doing. I want to collaborate. I want to show the world that critically important climate solutions are coming from develop my skills as a performer and a leader. I want a better future for the young people, women and indigenous next generation.” peoples who work at the most grassAnd I see hope. roots level. Katy Neusteter is the director of comThe UN process and the associated lingo is all new to Justeene. I pitch munications for Global Greengrants her a softball: “What do you think so Fund. Global Greengrants envisions a world in which all people live with digfar?” nity and in harmony with the environShe gazes down, shyly, already ment. As the leading environmental fund overwhelmed by the technical jargon and complexity of the negotiations and that supports grassroots action on a global scale, we create opportunities for you to caucuses. And who wouldn’t be? The invest in local leaders working to next two weeks will be a mad jumble strengthen their communities and create of activity: from observing the official an environmentally sustainable future. negotiations to meeting with other www.greengrants.org indigenous people in the space Boulder Weekly

BIKE COMMUTERS RISK HIGHER EXPOSURE TO POLLUTANTS, STUDY FINDS

A recent report from researchers at Colorado State University (CSU) could mean bad news for bicycle commuters. The first installment of the Fort Collins Commuter Study suggests that bike commuters have higher rates of exposure to air pollution, not only inhaling more pollutants than car commuters but also breathing pollutants of a different variety. The inquiry, which is the first in a set of a compreWikimedia Commons hensive analyses on commuting, studied 45 commuters through GPS tracking and air pollutant measurements as they took turns biking and driving between work and home in the city of Fort Collins. Car commuters were found to have higher exposure to carbon monoxide, as well as other gaseous pollutants, whereas bike commuters measured higher exposure to pollutants such as “black carbon,” a compound formed by car engines. According to a CSU press release, the study was motivated out of a desire to provide better information to commuters and let people make their own decisions about how to get to and from work. “We wanted to ask practical questions that would empower people to make choices to reduce their own exposure,” said John Volckens, an associate professor mechanical engineering at CSU, in a press release. Additionally, researchers found that taking a different route can sometimes help bike commuters reduce their exposure, but that the longer time spent on the road can often offset some of those gains. “Our results can be put in a larger context of what others have already observed,” said Volckens in the CSU press release. “That choosing different commute routes can have a significant effect on one’s exposure to pollution – yet sometimes, those choices are limited.” — Grant Stringer

eco-briefs

BY BOULDER WEEKLY STAFF

future. With the ruling Judge Hill established that the state has a “mandatory duty” to “preserve, protect and enhance the air quality for the current and future generations,” siding with the youth petitioners’ argument that Washington law failed to adequately protect the environment at

current rates of pollutant emissions. “This ruling means that what the Department of Ecology does going forward in its rulemaking has to protect us, the kids of Washington,” said 13-year-old petitioner Gabriel Mandell, in a press release from Our Children’s Trust, who sponsored the lawsuit. “Now they can’t decide to

December

protect short-term economic fears… because we have a constitutional and public trust rights to a stable climate!” Under Judge Hill’s ruling, the Washington Department of Ecology will be held accountable to implement adequate regulations under the Clean Air Rule to ensure that atmospheric pollutants are kept to a healthy minimum. Similar cases are underway in Colorado, as well as in several states across the U.S., as plaintiffs seek to establish constitutional mandates for state protection of citizen’s access to healthy climates. — Grant Stringer

Events

LANDMARK COURT CASE ESTABLISHES CONSTITUTIONAL OBLIGATION TO PROTECT NATURAL RESOURCES

Environmentalists have come away with a major victory in Washington State with Wikimedia Commons a county court ruling that has established the protection of natural resources as a constitutional right of Washington citizens. The ruling from King County Superior Court Judge Hollis R. Hill has ended a class-action petition from eight Washington youths who requested that the Washington Department of Ecology write a constitutional rule protecting the atmosphere for the Boulder Weekly

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Boulder Weekly

ADVENTURE

Eric Larsen

Top: Ryan Waters pulls his sled across floating fragments of ice. Left: Ryan Waters swimming through open water during his 480-mile trek to the North Pole with Eric Larsen in 2014.

THE LAST GREAT ADVENTURE

New documentary shows explorers Eric Larsen and Ryan Waters making what could be the last full expedition to the North Pole

BY CAITLIN ROCKETT Boulder Weekly

hen it comes to exploration, humans are obsessed with being first — just look at the past century: Robert Peary planted the American flag at the North Pole in 1909 after scores of others died trying; Roald Amundsen became the first person to reach the South Pole in 1911 (Robert Scott, who was racing Amundsen, starved to death after discovering Amundsen had beaten him to the pole by 33 days); Edmund Hilary raced Charles Evans and Tom Bourdillon to the peak of Mount Everest in 1953 (both Evans and Bourdillon turned back); Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth in 1961, essentially strapped into a tin can mounted on a three-stage rocket; the team of Apollo 11 faced unimaginable risks to land on the moon in 1969. We will do anything — risk everything — to be first. Boulder resident and polar adventurer Eric Larsen has had his share of firsts. He was the first person to complete expeditions to the North Pole, South Pole and Mount Everest in a 365-day period. He was also part of a team that accomplished the first summer expedition to the North Pole. In 2012, Larsen attempted to be the first person to reach the South Pole by bike, but dangerous conditions forced him to turn around after 175 miles. (Daniel P. Burton became the first person to bike to the southernmost point on Earth in 2014.) But for Larsen’s most recent journey to the North Pole in the spring of 2014 (his third trip there), the focus was quite different. “What does it mean to be last?” Larsen asks. “We are so hyper-focused on see LAST ADVENTURE Page 28

December 3 , 2015 27

WHAT

Eric Larsen

ADVENTURE

ARE YOU

DOING TONIGHT? Pictured: The Sink Photo by Susan France

Eric Larsen and Ryan Waters attempted to set the speed record for a full, unsupported Arctic expedition while simultaneously capturing footage for a documentary that will premier on Animal Planet on Dec. 9. LAST ADVENTURE from Page 27

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this idea of being first, but then what does it mean when these iconic adventures cease to exist?” The Wisconsin native is seated at his desk at SMAK, the public relations and marketing company he runs with his wife Maria in Boulder. It’s just a few hours before the sneak preview of a two-hour, Animal Planet-produced documentary about Larsen’s latest trek to the North Pole with mountaineer Ryan Waters. Melting: Last Race to the Pole uses footage captured by Larsen and Waters as they make the 480-mile journey from Canada’s northern Ellesmere Island to the geographic North Pole. Pulling all of their rations and gear behind them in 320-pound sleds, the explorers witness global warming first hand as the Arctic Ocean melts beneath their skis, leaving vast expanses of thinning ice and open water to traverse. For Larsen, whose life’s work is built around trekking to the coldest regions of Earth, telling the story of the rapidly melting polar ice cap has been a top priority since his last expedition to the North Pole in 2006. “That’s the funny thing about the Arctic Ocean — nobody knows about that adventure. Yet Everest… hundreds of people climb that every year. What happens when no one can?” he asks. “There would be a maelstrom of media around that.” But Larsen knows the Arctic doesn’t elicit the same passion as the peak of a mountain or the edge of a canyon. There’s no summit to reach, no aweinspiring landscape as a reward for all the hard work. The Arctic is a frozen sea situated at the apex of the little blue dot we call Earth. It is, as Larsen puts it, “big, vast nothingness.” And yet the polar ice cap, in all its nothingness, is perhaps the single most important moderator of world climate.

As the Arctic Ocean and surrounding ice-covered areas like Greenland warm, more fresh water enters the ocean, changing the salt content. Even small variations in salinity can have dramatic effects on ocean currents, which in turn have dramatic effects on weather conditions, temperature extremes, global climate patterns, gas cycling and nutrient systems that support marine life. Ice sheets in general, no matter their location, are critical to the stability of Earth’s climate. The physical presence of ice reflects heat back into space, a process known scientifically as albedo. “In any environmental condition, when you pull on one thing, there are a lot of other things that happen down the line,” Larsen says. “If the ice is gone, our climate is messed up big time.” If the ice is gone, so are the playgrounds where Larsen has made his career as an adventurer. As such, he calls his desire to save these icy tundras “selfish,” but it’s clear that Larsen’s life is devoted to creating deeper connections between people and the environment, and being a professional adventurer was just a logical way to keep telling “compelling stories for as long as possible.” Larsen studied biology and environmental studies then spent time teaching, but he watched students come and go and wondered how to create a connection between the subject matter and the real world. A job as a dog musher in the Canadian Arctic eventually gave Larsen the opportunity to design a curriculum to go along with his sledding expeditions. Larsen says the expeditions gave him an “easy platform” to talk about larger issues, like global warming, while people were actually out in the world experiencing it. “That said,” Larsen says with a grin, Boulder Weekly

ADVENTURE Eric Larsen

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While on their 480-mile trek to the North Pole, Ryan Waters (pictured) and Eric Larsen had to traverse pressure ice, which is formed from the collision of ice sheets. Larsen says that warming Arctic temperatures have created more ridges like this.

“I love the adventure stuff. I love the gear est date the support and logistics comand equipment, just like any other nerd.” pany would land a helicopter to pick And just like any true adventurer, them up. Larsen says he thinks this may Larsen couldn’t help but submit to the signal the end of full expeditions like desire to push himself; in addition to the one he and Waters took. filming their trek, Larsen and Waters “I don’t foresee any other possible also attempted to break the speed way of getting up there because the record for a full, unsupported Arctic window is shrinking,” he says. “There’s expedition from Ellesmere Island to the a Russian company that creates a tempole. They would have to complete the porary ice base about 60 miles from trip in 51 days. the North Pole. Filming added an Tourists can go and ski extra burden to an the last degree [of latiON THE BILL: Melting: already grueling journey, tude] to the North Last Race to the Pole. 9 p.m. ET/7 p.m. MT, and Larsen admits — Pole. That window of Wednesday, Dec. 9 on and the documentary operations, they used Animal Planet. to go through the shows — that the two beginning of May in explorers argued about filming. Waters had 2010, then it was April frostbite on both outer thighs, and food 26, and now it’s April 21. The writing began to run dangerously low, forcing is on the wall for these adventures. Right now, another full expedition to the two to cut many rations in half the North Pole is highly unlikely. toward the end of the journey. But they continued to film, and what These shorter trips will keep happening for a while but I don’t know how they capture is an environment that is much longer.” quickly fading. Ice that was once easily And while Larsen may call his skiable at any time of day was often too desire to save these frozen places selfish, thin during the afternoon. Difficult-tocross pressure ridges (created by colliding he says adventurers like him have a pans of ice) were more numerous. responsibility to protect the places in “For the average person looking, it’s which they play. His reasoning leads hard to distinguish because the Arctic one to question: Do we all not have a has looked like that throughout history responsibility to protect the Earth on — there’s open water, there’s cracks, which we live? there’s pressure ridges,” he says. “What Larsen’s simple answer is yes. we saw more this year was fractured “It’s easy to talk about these things, and broken up ice. To me, on a more but we have to remind ourselves that qualitative first-hand experience, that is we need to start moving. On our North a symptom of thinner ice that’s not as Pole trip, there’s always stress. You’re strong. It breaks up more frequently, it making decisions, and no mater what becomes rougher.” we decide, it’s always crappy,” he says. Larsen says they also noticed ice “With climate, we don’t know if this drift was greater and more affected by will work or that will work, but at some winds, carrying them southeast and point we just gotta go. We gotta start away from the pole. moving forward. We need to remind All of this adds up to the end of the ourselves that there can be another exploration season coming earlier and solution that comes up from these first earlier. Larsen and Waters had to reach steps, but if we don’t take the first steps the pole by May 4, as that was the latnothing will happen.” Boulder Weekly

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Boulder Weekly

knowing nature

CU professor looks into the interconnectedness of culture and nature

by adam perry

nvironmental history conferences have often frustrated University of Colorado history professor Phoebe Young. She grew dissatisfied with “listening to people who had really interesting things to say but examined material nature as if culture didn’t really matter.” That frustration led to Rendering Nature: Animals, Bodies, Places, Politics. Young edited the book along with longtime friend Marguerite Shaffer, an American studies professor at Miami University of Ohio. In the collection Scaffer, Young and 10 other writers shed light on historical instances when nature overlapped with how people relate to the physical world. The essays cover a variety of subject matter throughout myriad time periods. For instance, one essay finds Thomas G. Andrews detailing the fascinating life of an American slave who — due to covert fishing, farming and trading — was able to find freedom by navigating his way alone from Georgia to Philadelphia. In another unforgettable piece, Connie Y. Chiang delineates the story of Asian Americans who, while stuck in internment camps during World War II, made significant scientific and agricultural contributions benefiting the very nation treating them with fear and hatred. Young also produced the book’s final piece, on how the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon “failed to capitalize on connecting the environmental challenges that we face and the kind of social inequalities that were at the heart of that movement.”

see RENDERING NATURE Page 32

Boulder Weekly

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Recently, Young talked with me “wonder of the world” when unveiled. over coffee about the “Anthropocene” Today, it is a curiously cultural, histori— humanity’s ongoing profound effect cal and artistic relic, one that Herron on the Earth — and Rendering Nature’s wrote embodies “a particular historical portraits of natural and cultural landmoment of how we see nature, but scapes. I was immediately surprised at more importantly … how our renderthe professor’s enthusiastic response to ings of nature structure how we see the question of whether Rendering ourselves.” Nature is an activist attempt to affect a In its early days, the panorama — society at a crossroads. originally intended as a massive trophy “Yeah, I think more and more,” she case of stuffed animals — was frequentsaid. “I think originally we conceived ed by the middle class and served as “a [Rendering Nature] pleasant reminder as talking to other Courtesy of Phoebe Young of America’s prescholars out of industrial world.” frustration with As the panorama our disciplinary has physically and fields, but then we culturally aged, it decided that was has become sometoo narrow. We thing closer to weren’t just trying pop art, and it to convince the piqued the curiosAmerican studies ity of scholars people or the enviinterested in its ronmental historiprofound, and ans who aren’t mostly accidental, going to change juxtaposition of their minds, so we nature and culture. really pitched peoIn hindsight, ple who may not what’s perhaps know about this most striking [subject].” about the Young said she 120-year-old panbelieves that disorama is that it cussion of our did not include Phoebe Young, a history professor at CU planet’s danger, in Boulder, believes nature and culture are human beings, the face of at least inextricably tied. although as many partly human-creas 20 million peoated warming, cannot be adequately ple lived in North America before discussed without connecting it to European settlers arrived. socioeconomics and the complex and As a middle-class white person livimportant relationship between nature ing in an affluent — and only ostensibly and culture. progressive — mountain town, it’s hard She went on to explain what is not to feel responsible for many of the unfortunately not obvious to many who negative ways in which nature and culwrite about environmental issues: “If we ture have overlapped. Young told me are going to be of any value in this kind that her life as a professor and scholar is crucial in her efforts to stay inspired and of public discussion around [social] forward thinking — and not so guilty equity and sort of environmental crisis, — in the face of our society’s detrimenwe have to think about these things tal treatment of not just the Earth but together.” also the people who inhabited our At first, the essays in Rendering nation before it was industrialized. Nature can seem disparate — in both “I feel like at least I’m in a profesthe subject matter and the eras they sion where I get to engage with smart touch upon — but Young believed they and interesting people,” she said. “[In all point to necessary environmental the] environmental history class that I action, “even if individually they may teach, an overwhelming majority are not seem to.” environmental studies majors. These are One of the most fascinating essays kids from strong science backgrounds is John Herron’s “Stuffed: Nature and [who] want to make change. They take Science on Display,” an in-depth history of the “Panorama,” a large multistory culture into account and don’t believe in diorama featuring plants and more than sort of blank-slateism or wilderness as pristine and un-peopled. To be able to 120 stuffed animals of North America. communicate these perspectives to It was assembled for the 1891 World’s them is rewarding, and I feel like some Fair in Chicago and was considered a

of my burden of feeling that way is lifted through doing my job. So yeah, I feel a little guilty in Boulder, but I love living here.” It’s easy to glean from Rendering Nature’s essays that humans are most successful as a species when our goal is survival and not power or even simply entertainment. The essay “Beasts of the Southern Wild” discusses how slave owners and overseers were “the most ferocious beasts” in the old American South. In particular, it reveals how a human who is focused solely on survival — an escaped slave — can resourcefully utilize, but not exploit, his or her surroundings to transcend a terrible situation. Today we must similarly utilize, but not further exploit, our surroundings to survive global climate change. While in nature it seems like the more powerful a species gets the better chance it has of survival, with humans the more powerful we become — building, consuming and wasting on a mind-boggling scale — the worse our chance of survival has become as we threaten to destroy our only home. But Young feels that environmental activism is “more complicated” than the oftused slogan, “Think Global, Act Local”; she believes a better moral might be, “Act Locally, But Engage Politically.” “It sounds more academic,” Young said, “but the thinking part is just one piece of the puzzle — in order to solve these kinds of really complex problems we have to engage properly. A lot of environmental histories like to break it down just to the material facts — ‘We only survive just because of our biology.’ Our argument would be that, no, you need culture to survive as well. Once we start thinking of ourselves as interconnected with a community of beings then, really, I think it can offer a perspective change.” To some, Rendering Nature might sound unapproachable outside the academic audience, but its educational essays are all written with personalities and intentions that are accessible, enjoyable and even motivational. “We are historians to study the past,” Young explained. “We want to be able to sort of point out that we have to pay attention to the interconnectedness of different places on the globe and different communities within the nation, and that you know these relationships between humans and nature have been constructed, and they’ll have to be reconstructed.” Reconstruction no doubt begins with realization, and a book like Rendering Nature is a great start. Boulder Weekly

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34 December 3, 2015

Boulder Weekly

overtones ’Tis the seasons

Boulder Chamber Orchestra explores seasons North and South by Peter Alexander

ON THE BILL: The Seasons by Boulder Chamber Orchestra. 7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 4, First United Methodist Church, 1421 Spruce St., Boulder. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 5, Broomfield Auditorium, 3 Community Park Road, Broomfield. Pre-concert discussion 30 minutes before each performance. For information: 303-583-1278, boulderchamberorchestra.com/calendar/

he next performance of the the harmonic progressions were conlying dance character.” Boulder Chamber Orchestra ventional, but some of the melodic The Vivaldi Seasons have a personal (BCO) will transport listenturns would have been shocking.” meaning for Carrettin. “My father was ers to 18th-century Venice The two sets of seasons, one from born and raised in Venice,” he explains. and 20th-century Buenos the northern hemisphere and one from “I’ve experienced all four seasons there, Aires, and several points in between. the southern, offer many possible comand I’ve never spent time anywhere that The program will feature two of binations. In this case only two seasons has such distinct seasons as Venice. My Vivaldi’s Baroque-era Four Seasons and from each set will be performed: visceral experiences there definitely equivalent works from Astor Piazzolla’s Autumn and Winter from Vivaldi on the impact the way I interpret the music of tango-inflected Four Seasons of Buenos first half of the program, and after Vivaldi.” Carrettin is known for his Aires, as well as music depicting a Keith Bobo eclectic approach to the music of late-night stroll in Madrid and the the past. He has been known to hustle and bustle of a Metro stop in perform Baroque music on both Mexico City. Baroque violin and electric violin. Also on the concert, to be preIn this case he had considered persented at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 4 in forming Vivaldi with his Baroque Boulder and Dec. 5 in Broomfield, violin and bow, and Piazzolla with will be Introduction, Aria and Presto his electric violin, but he decided by Italian Baroque composer against it because using a different Benedetto Marcello. The violin kind of instrument than the soloist for Vivaldi and Piazzolla will orchestra could disrupt the unity be Zachary Carrettin, director of the of sound. Instead, he will use a Boulder Bach Festival. standard concert violin for both “We wanted to have some variworks. ety,” says Bahman Saless, director of In addition to the seasons invokthe BCO. “This one will be fun!” ing Venice and Buenos Aires, Saless The Vivaldi and Piazzolla have The Boulder Chamber Orchestra will transport and the BCO will make a couple of often been performed together, first listeners to Venice, Buenos Aires and more places around the world. other stops around the world. in an acclaimed 1998 recording by Boccherini’s Night Music from the Gidon Kremer (Eight Seasons, intermission the opposite seasons — Streets of Madrid originated as one of Nonesuch) and in numerous live perbut representing the same months in the composer’s more than 100 string formances since then, including one in the opposite hemisphere — Spring and quintets. It comprises seven movements 2014 by Boulder’s Pro Musica Colorado Summer from Piazzolla. that describe a church bell calling the Chamber Orchestra and violinist Lina A common quality of both scores is faithful, a military drum call, street Bahn. the incorporation of dance music. “Both dancers and the retreat of the night “It makes a lot of sense [to program pieces are heavily influenced by dance,” watch. them together],” Carrettin says. Carrettin says. “In Piazzolla it’s not just “There’s serenading and group folk “Piazzolla is both contemporary and tango, but other dances and other forms dancing in the street — kind of like familiar, so the harmonic language is from jazz to klezmer. And in Baroque downtown Boulder,” Saless says, chucknot shocking, but some of the effects music there is almost always an underling. “[The piece] has a folk-dance flaare theatrical. Similarly, with Vivaldi

vor, and lots of guitar or strumming sounds, which are reminiscent of folk music.” A stop on the other side of the Atlantic will be the Chabacano metro stop in Mexico City. Like the Boccherini, Metro Chabacano by Javier Álvarez was originally a chamber work that has been filled out for full string orchestra. “It’s about a well-known metro station in Mexico City,” Saless says. “You hear a train, and you expect to hear a very predictable perpetual motion, but he mixes that with crazy odd rhythms. In the background you hear Latino rhythms, which are obviously very dance-like and uneven. “It’s a tough piece to play, but very cool.” So many different musical cultures coming together in one concert offers opportunities for the musicians to expand their style of expression. “We have access to a plethora of world musics now,” Carrettin says. “We can embrace so many different notions of sound and timbre and expression. “I think this would have been thrilling to a composer like Vivaldi. The great composers have always embraced music that they found appealing.” This thought brings Carrettin to his own appreciation of the current program: “What is most thrilling about [working] with the Boulder Chamber Orchestra is how we can look at all of these influences and put together a performance that is surprising and dramatic and, when appropriate, profound.”

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DECEMBER EVENTS free admission • live music

FREE LIVE HOLIDAY CONCERT with Kenny Lee Young 10th Annual Boulder Holiday Gift Festival Sunday December 13 • 11am – 5pm Boulder YMCA, 2850 Mapleton Ave

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For more info visit coloradoevents.net

36 December 3, 2015

Boulder Weekly

arts & culture This fish is foul

ON THE BILL: A Tuna Christmas. Miners Alley Playhouse, 1224 Washington Ave., Golden, 303-935-3044. Through December 20. Tickets $12-$23 at minersalley.com.

Texas-sized miss for Miners by Gary Zeidner

s the renowned inventor Charles F. but also a withering satire of same.” In truth, A Tuna Kettering said, “One fails forward toward Christmas forgets the “affectionate” part altogether success.” Louis C.K. expressed a similar while heaping on the scorn, derision and ridicule in sentiment in more modern parlance when Texas-sized portions. he opined, “Whenever you leave behind Despite playwrights Ed Howard, Joe Sears and failure you’re doing good. If you think everything Jaston Williams’ assertions to the contrary, A Tuna you’ve done is great, you’re Christmas has no love for its Cody Schuyler Photography probably dumb.” down-home subjects or their For the past 26 years, the foibles. It paints each of its Miners Alley Playhouse has nearly two dozen characters — been a jewel of the Front all of which are played by two Range theater scene. Its sucactors (Seth Maisel and cesses far outweighed its failChristian Mast) — with the ures under the stewardship of same broad brush. Everyone, founder Rick Bernstein. Since and I mean everyone, in Tuna, taking over in 2014, Miners’ Texas, is either a racist, a new executive team, Len moron, a slut, a drunk, a gun Matheo, Lisa DeCaro, Brenda nut, a bitch, an asshole or some Worley Billings and Jim combination of those traits. Billings, have continued the tradition of nearly every Miners Lesson 2 — Loud does Alley play exceeding expectanot equal funny tions. The small size of the Of course, just like in baseMiners Alley theater makes it a ball, you can’t hit a home run wonderfully intimate setting for every time you step up to the shows like 2004’s world preplate. But even when you miere of I Never Promised You a ground out to first or line one Rose Garden. Presumably in an right into the third baseman’s effort to make the dialogue in A Tuna Christmas only features two actors playing all the characters, but it probably glove, it’s not a true failure if A Tuna Christmas as funny as could have used a few more. you learn from the experience. possible, both Maisel and Mast It is in that spirit that I offer deliver most of their lines at up some lessons that may be gleaned — by Miners top volume. When they’re not yelling at one another, Alley, other theater companies, playwrights, actors and they’re often screaming in distress or disgust. In the people in general — from the rare strikeout that is A confines of the Miners Alley theater, the nearly ceaseTuna Christmas. less aural assault becomes monotonous and, frankly, uncomfortable.

Lesson 1 — Know thyself

A Tuna Christmas, which is part of a collection of plays that includes Greater Tuna; Red, White and Tuna and Tuna Does Vegas, purports to be “an affectionate comment on small-town Southern life and attitudes

Boulder Weekly

Lesson 3 — Fidelity is overrated All four of the Tuna plays originally featured two actors playing every one of the many characters. Most theater companies honor this tradition by stag-

ing their productions in the same manner. However, there is no actual requirement to do so. Perhaps if director Robert Kramer had gone rogue and broadened his cast by a member or two, the portrayals might have been more nuanced and the humor more effective?

Lesson 4 — Presidents are not necessarily the best cultural bellwethers Sears and Williams, with Howard directing, presented a command performance of A Tuna Christmas for then-President George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara. As president, I imagine Bush the First could have commanded the performance of just about any play by just about any theater troupe. The Texastransplant chose Tuna. No wonder he was only a onetermer.

Lesson 5 — End the War on Thanksgiving Depending on whom you talk to, people either laugh or gripe about the Christmas creep. Every year, driven entirely by corporate America’s unquenchable thirst for profits, businesses kick off the “Christmas season” earlier and earlier. According to Target and other ads on my television, Christmas now starts the day after Halloween. I’m all for capitalism, but to take a page from both The Simpsons and the rabid “reporters” at Fox News, won’t somebody please think of Thanksgiving?! Unlike Valentine’s Day, Talk Like a Pirate Day and a few others I could mention, Thanksgiving is a legitimate, first-tier holiday. If we continue to allow Christmas to commence before people even start thinking about shopping for turkeys, cranberry sauce or overpriced plane tickets to visit family they don’t even like, Thanksgiving will go the way of Arbor Day and wind up on the Island of Misfit Holidays. Which is to say that it’s decidedly more difficult to get in the spirit of a play like A Tuna Christmas in the middle of November.

December 3, 2015 37

THURS, MARCH 13 with • 8CASEY PM COLLINS, ERIK DEUTSCH, L

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Boulder Weekly

Courtesy of The Dairy

MIX A CAPPELLA. 6 P.M. FRIDAY, DEC. 4, THE DAIRY CENTER FOR THE ARTS, 2590 WALNUT ST., BOULDER, 303-447-9772.

SEE FULL EVENT LISTINGS ONLINE. To have an event considered for the calendar, send information to calendar@ boulderweekly.com. Please be sure to include address, date, time and phone number associated with each event. The deadline for consideration is Thursday at noon the week prior to publication. Boulder Weekly does not guarantee the publication of any event.

Thursday, December 3 Music Alex Culbreth. 8 p.m. Jamestown Mercantile Cafe, 108 Main St., Jamestown, 303-442-5847. Alive On Arrival. 7:30 p.m. Nissi’s, 2675 Northpark Drive, Lafayette, 303-665-2757. Boulder Swing Collective. 9 p.m. Waterloo, 809 Main St., Louisville, 303-993-2094. Complete Unknowns. 7 p.m. Oskar Blues Brewery, 303 Main St., Lyons, 303-823-6685. Danny Shafer. 7 p.m. Por Wine House, 836 1/2 Main St., Louisville, 970-259-3555.

Support

Brave, Bold, and Beautiful

Sway

David Potter. 6 p.m. Cafe Aion, 1235 Pennsylvania Ave., Boulder, 303-993-8131. George Nelson Trio. 9 p.m. License No. 1, 2115 13th St., Boulder, 303-442-4344. Hippo Temple. 10 p.m. Conor O’Neill’s, 1922 13th St., Boulder, 303-449-1922. Jazz Ram. 7 p.m. Gravity Brewing, 1150 Pine St., Unit B, Louisville, 303-544-0746. Moonlight Breakdown. 6:30 p.m. St Julien Hotel & Spa, 900 Walnut St., Boulder, 720-406-9696. see EVENTS Page 40

Jam

6 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 3, University of Colorado Memorial Center, Glenn Miller Ballroom, 1669 Euclid Ave., Boulder, 303-443-0400.

Gipsy Moon

Jayme Stone

Join Movement to End Sexual Assault (MESA) in a night of celebrating survivors with Brave, Bold, and Beautiful. The event is a fundraiser to garner awarness of the very real problem in our society and support MESA’s commitment to ending sexual assault. Bestselling author Rosalind Wiseman will be guest speaking. Wiseman has written multiple books about children, teens and parenting and is an expert in social justice and ethical leadership. The night will also feature talks from other speakers, music from Cloud 9 String Quartet and awards for community leaders.

8:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 3, Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder, 303-447-0095. If you’re looking for Courtesy of Gipsy Moon a night of spirited music, head down to the Fox Theatre for Gipsy Moon’s Second Annual Holiday Extravaganza. The four-piece band features mandolin, guitar, banjo, bass and cello. Their combination of string instruments creates a haunting, complex soup of music that is as memorable as it is danceable. Hailing from Nederland, Gipsy Moon takes inspiration from nature around them. And that rootsy, down-home sound is apparent in their music. They’ll also be joined by Scott Messermith, The Holiday Horn & Rhythm Section, Taarka and The Sweet Lillies. Stop by and listen to some homegrown tunes.

7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 5, Naropa Performing Arts Center, 2130 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, 303444-0202.

Boulder Weekly

Jayme Stone is an acclaimed banjoist who has spent his career exploring the complexities of his instrument. With a blend of folk, jazz and chamber music, Stone has traveled around the world and uses myriad cultures to create his music. Several countries inspired Stone’s music, from South America, to Africa, to Europe, to Asia. Stone will be performing songs off his last album The Other Side of the Air, which serves as a travelogue of imaginary places and landscapes. Let the banjo take you on a journey around the world.

Vanessa Heins

December 3, 2015 39

events

EVENTS from Page 39

arts

Open Jam: Jam Night. 10 p.m. Pioneer Inn, 15 E. First St., Nederland, 303-258-7733. Open Mic Hosted by Silent Bear. 7:30 p.m. The Guitar Cellar, 1209 13th St., Boulder, 303-4442101. Riley Ann and Rachel Ann. 8 p.m. The Laughing Goat Coffeehouse, 1709 Pearl St., Boulder, 303440-4628. Sandra Jean MacDougall. 8 p.m. Samples World Bistro, 370 Main St., Longmont, 303-327-9318. The Sunset Series: DJ Royal Swan and Friends. 5 p.m. Shine Restaurant & Gathering Place, 2027 13th St., Boulder, 303-449-0120.

WE OFFER Large Menu Selection & Daily Specials Daily Drink Specials 28 Taps & Large Selection of Craft Beers 16 Large Screen TVs 8 Billiard Tables Dart Boards Video Games KARAOKE DJ ON THURSDAY NIGHTS DEC. 3

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DJ Baby Boy (from KS 107.5) 9pm-1:30am

380 Main St. Longmont, CO 303-772-3839 longmontrestaurants.co 40 December 3, 2015

Tyler Grant. 6 p.m. Oskar Blues Home Made Liquids and Solids, 1555 S. Hover Road, Longmont, 303485-9400. Events All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records. 4:30 p.m. The Boedecker Theater, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-440-7826. Grandma. 2:30 p.m. The Boedecker Theater, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-440-7826. Watchers of the Sky. 7 p.m. The Boedecker Theater, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-440-7826. Friday, December 4 Music Ain’t No Folkin Around with Paul Sullivan. 7 p.m. Cannon Mine Coffee, 210 S. Public Road, Lafayette, 303-665-0625. Bonnie and The Clydes. 8:30 p.m. Oskar Blues Home Made Liquids and Solids, 1555 S. Hover Road, Longmont, 303-485-9400.

Fired: Glass, Iron, and Ceramics. Arvada Center, 6901 Wadsworth Blvd., Arvada, 720-898-7200. Through Dec. 20.

Elizabeth Morrisette

Photography by Glenn Randall. Community Art Program Gallery, NCAR, 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, 303-497-1174. Through Jan. 30.

Good Penmanship — Elizabeth Morrisette. Firehouse Art Center, 667, Fourth Ave., Longmont, 303-651-2787. Through Jan. 3.

Revolt 1680/2180: Virgil Ortiz. Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Ave. Parkway, Denver, 720-865-5000. Through Jan. 10.

Showing Off. Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Ave. Parkway, Denver, Elizabeth Morrisette explores handwriting in her exhibit Good 720-865-5000. Through Jan. 3. Penmanship at the Firehouse Super Indian: Fritz Art Center. Holiday Art Market. Scholder, 1967-1980. Foothills Art Center, 809 Denver Art Museum, 100 15th St., Golden, 303-279W. 14th Ave. Parkway, Denver, 720-865-5000. 3922. Through Dec. 31. Through Jan. 17. Photo Exhibition by John Birchak. Paramita Susan Wick: Wild Women Never Get the Naropa Gallery, 3285 30th St., Boulder, 928-978Blues. Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, 2799. Through Dec. 12. 1750 13th St., Boulder, 303-443-2122. Through Jan. 3. Pretty/Dirty. Museum of Contemporary Art, 1485 Delgany St., Denver, 303-298-7554. Uncommon Clay: Functional to Fantastic. Through Jan. 31. Muse Gallery, 356 Main St., Longmont, 303678-7869. Through Dec. 23 Oil Paintings by Theresa Beckemeyer. Community Art Program Gallery, NCAR, 1850 Table Wyeth: Andrew and Jamie in the Studio. Mesa Drive, Boulder, 303-497-1174. Through Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Ave. Parkway, Jan. 30. Denver, 720-865-5000. Through Feb. 7. Gunther Gerzso: A Mexican Master. Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Ave. Parkway, Denver, 720865-5000. Through Jan. 3.

Boulder Chamber Orchestra Presents The Seasons. 7:30 p.m. First United Methodist Church of Boulder, 1421 Spruce St., Boulder, 303-442-3770. Brazilian Collaborative. 6:30 p.m. St Julien Hotel & Spa, 900 Walnut St., Boulder, 720-406-9696. Brian Rezac. 5 p.m. Pearl Street Pub, 1108 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-777-6768. Finnders & Youngberg. 7:30 p.m. Harmony Music House, 2525 Broadway St., Boulder, 303-444-7444. First Friday Jam. 6 p.m. Left Hand Brewing Company, 1265 Boston Ave., Longmont, 303-772-0258. Gasoline Lollipops. 9 p.m. Oskar Blues Brewery, 303 Main St., Lyons, 303-823-6685. The Global Soul Experience. 10 p.m. Pioneer Inn, 15 E. First St., Nederland, 303-258-7733. Groov-A-Licious. 10 p.m. Waterloo, 809 Main St., Louisville, 303-993-2094. Holiday Festival 2015. 7:30 p.m. Macky Auditorium, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1595 Pleasant St., Boulder, 303-492-8423. Jeff Finlin. 7:30 p.m. Oskar Blues CyclHOPS, 600 S. Airport Road, Longmont, 303-776-BIKE. Jeff Lambert. 6 p.m. Upslope Brewing Company (Lee Hill), 1501 Lee Hill Road, Suite 20, Boulder, 508-873-9185. John Brown’s Body and Juno What?! 9 p.m. Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder, 303-447-0095. Kevin Lufkin and Bergen Christansen. 6 p.m. Espresso Vino by Brewing Market, 2770 Dagny Way, Lafayette, 720-890-3993.

Spafford. 10 p.m. The Lazy Dog, 1346 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-440-3355.

Goodnight Mommy. 10:30 p.m. The Boedecker Theater, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-440-7826.

Strangebyrds. 8 p.m. Liquid Mechanics Brewing Company, 297 U.S. 287, Lafayette, 720-550-7813.

Grandma. 2:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. The Boedecker Theater, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-440-7826.

The Sweet Lillies. 9 p.m. Gold Hill Inn, 401 Main St., Boulder, 303-443-6461.

Jewelry and Fine Art Show and Sale. 6 p.m. Studio 108, 4949 Broadway, Suite 108, Boulder, 303-518-7112.

Tin Brothers. 7 p.m. Skeye Brewing, 900 S. Hover St., Unit D, Longmont, 303-774-7698. Whitherward. 6 p.m. Jamestown Mercantile Cafe, 108 Main St., Jamestown, 303-442-5847. Events All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records. 4:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. The Boedecker Theater, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-440-7826.

see EVENTS Page 42

theater Nicholas Renaud

A Christmas Carol. Denver Performing Arts Complex, 1345 Champa St., Denver, 720-8654239. Through Dec. 27. A Tuna Christmas. Miners Alley Playhouse, 1224 Washington Ave., Golden, 303-935-3044. Through Dec. 20.

Liebermonster. 10 p.m. Conor O’Neill’s, 1922 13th St., Boulder, 303-449-1922.

The Addams Family. BDT Stage, 5501 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, 303-449-6000. Through Feb. 27.

The Mojo Medicine Show. 6 p.m. Grossen Bart Brewery, 1025 Delaware Ave., Longmont, 214-7709847.

Cult Following. Denver Performing Arts Complex, 1345 Champa St., Denver, 720-865-4239. Through Feb. 23.

Nice Work Jazz Combo With Heidi Schmidt. 7 p.m. Caffe Sole, 637R S. Broadway St., Boulder, 303-499-2985.

Murder for Two. Denver Performing Arts Complex, 1345 Champa St., Denver, 720-865-4239. Through Feb. 21.

Randall Dubis. 6 p.m. Sun Rose Cafe, 379 Main St., Longmont, 303-651-3533.

The SantaLand Diaries. Denver Performing Arts Complex, 1345 Champa St., Denver, 720865-4239. Through Dec. 27.

Sammy Dee Morton Band. 8:30 p.m. The Roost, 526 Main St., Longmont, 303-827-3380.

NoBo Arts District First Friday at Settembre Cellars. 6 p.m. Settembre Cellars, 1501 Lee Hill Road, Suite 16, Boulder, 303-532-1892.

If you love David Sedaris and Christmas, then head to the DCPA for The SantaLand Diaries.

Boulder Weekly

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December 3, 2015 41

events EVENTS from Page 40

A gathering place for great food, drinks & entertainment Buy Tickets: www.nissis.com

OUR EXTENSIVE RENOVATIONS ARE COMPLETE AND WE’RE READY TO CELEBRATE.

Parade of Lights. 6 p.m. Downtown Louisville. SmithKlein Gallery Presents New Works. 2 p.m. Smithklein Gallery, 1116 Pearl St., Boulder, 303444-7200. Saturday, December 5 Music

Monday, Dec. 7

Bonnie and the Clydes. 8 p.m. Jamestown Mercantile Cafe, 108 Main St., Jamestown, 303442-5847.

Featuring

A.O.A. ALIVE ON ARRIVAL “Dance / R&B”

Saturday December 5

THE LONG RUN “A Tribute to The Eagles”

Sun & Mon December 6 & 7

SKANSON & HANSEN HOLIDAY SHOW “Virtuoso Guitar”

Sun

December 13

HAZEL MILLER’S HOLIDAY GROOVE “Dance/R&B”

Tuesday

December 15

A NIGHT OF ACOUSTIC ROCK & BLUES Featuring

BOULDER BLUES MAFIA, THE SEERS, NORTH BOULDER UNDERGROUND FREE ADMISSION

Wednesday December 16

Boulder Weekly presents

THE RETURN OF...

THE PEDESTRIANS “80s Rock”

Thursday December 17

MOTIVE VOCAL BAND “Acapella Pop & Rock”

Friday December 18

GIRLS ON TOP! “Dance/R&B”

Saturday December 19

SOUL SCHOOL

“Dance Music from Yesterday & Today”

Sunday December 20

COLCANNON

“Traditional Celtic Christmas”

Friday December 31

Boulder Weekly presents

NEW YEAR’S EVE Featuring

THE CORPORATION First Seating: 6:30-9:30pm Dinner & Show Second Seating: 10:30pm-12:30am Ring in The New Year Show

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Alan Hafer — Descendants of Wounded Knee. 7:30 p.m. Boulder Book Store, 1107 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-447-2074.

The Aristocats. 7:30 p.m. Cannon Mine Coffee, 210 S. Public Road, Lafayette, 303-665-0625.

Nissi’s Gift Cards available @ nissis.com

Thursday December 3

Thursday, Dec. 3

Surrealist Poet Laura Cesarco Eglin. 6 p.m. Innisfree Poetry Bookstore & Cafe, 1203 13th St., Suite A, Boulder, 303-495-3303.

Beauty Of My Land. 10 p.m. The Speakeasy, 301 Main St., Longmont, 720-684-4728.

ANNUAL SMALL BUSINESS HOLIDAY PARTY NIGHT

Courtesy of Boulder Book Store

Antonio Lopez. 10 a.m. The Stone Cup, 442 High St., Lyons, 303-823-2345.

Give the Gift of a Great Night Out!

Upcoming Events & Entertainment

words

Opening Reception for Sunrise from the Summit Exhibit and Book Signing at NCAR. 5 p.m. NCAR Gallery, 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, 303-4971000.

Brad Murphey and Sam Parks. 7 p.m. Longs Peak Pub, 600 Longs Peak Ave., Longmont, 303-6517886. Bruce And The Heartbeats. 6 p.m. Thai Shi House, 3033 28th St., Boulder, 303-444-3133. The CBDs. 7 p.m. Odd13 Brewing, 301 E Simpson St., Lafayette, 303-997-4164. Cold River City with Lula Granji and 10th Mountain Division. 9 p.m. Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder, 303-447-0095.

“So, You’re a Poet” Open Poetry Reading. 8 p.m. The Laughing Goat, 1709 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-440-4628. Tuesday, Dec. 8 Innisfree Weekly Open Poetry Reading. 7 p.m. Innisfree Poetry Bookstore & Cafe, 1203 13th St., Suite A, Boulder, 303-495-3303. Carrie Visintainer — Wild Mama . 7:30 p.m. Boulder Book Store, 1107 Pearl St., Boulder, 303447-2074. Wednesday, Dec. 9 Edward Hamlin — Night in Erg Chebbi and Other Stories. 7:30 p.m. Boulder Book Store, 1107 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-447-2074.

Alan Hafer brings his new book Descendants of Wounded Knee to the Boulder Book Store on Dec. 3.

Danny Scafer. 8 p.m. The Roost, 526 Main St., Longmont, 303-827-3380. Dave Tamkin Band. 10 p.m. Conor O’Neill’s, 1922 13th St., Boulder, 303-449-1922. Fishstick Medicine Show. 8 p.m. Samples World Bistro, 370 Main St., Longmont, 303-327-9318. The Gathering. 7 p.m. eTown Hall, 1535 Spruce St., Boulder, 303-443-8696. Holiday Festival 2015. 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Macky Auditorium, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1595 Pleasant St., Boulder, 303-492-8423.

Six Year Anniversary Party! 2 p.m. Asher Brewing Company, 4699 Nautilus Court, Boulder, 303-5301381.

Boulder Friends of Jazz Jam Session. 1 p.m. Boulder Elks Lodge, 3975 28th St., Boulder, 303442-5003.

Spafford. 10 p.m. The Lazy Dog, 1346 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-440-3355.

Bruce Lish & George Stone Jazz. 5 p.m. Gold Hill Inn, 401 Main St., Boulder, 303-443-6461.

Ultralofi. 8 p.m. Liquid Mechanics Brewing Company, 297 U.S. 287, Lafayette, 720-550-7813.

Charles Kethcam and Matthew Shubin Present the Music of Gurdjieff. 7 p.m. eTown Hall, 1535 Spruce St., Boulder, 303-443-8696.

Events

Intergalactic Radio. 9 p.m. The Dark Horse, 2922 Baseline Road, Boulder, 303-442-8162.

All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records. 4 p.m. The Boedecker Theater, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-440-7826.

Kerry Pastine and The Crime Scene. 8:30 p.m. Oskar Blues Home Made Liquids and Solids, 1555 S. Hover Road, Longmont, 303-485-9400.

Best of NYICFF: Kid Flix Mix. 12:30 p.m. The Boedecker Theater, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303440-7826.

Kickin’ Rocks. 7 p.m. Skeye Brewing, 900 S. Hover St., Unit D, Longmont, 303-774-7698.

Colorado Horse Rescue Holiday Open House. 10 a.m. Colorado Horse Rescue, 10386 N. 65th St., Longmont, 720-494-1414.

Lap Dawgs. 5 p.m. Left Hand Brewing Company, 1265 Boston Ave., Longmont, 303-772-0258. Lightly Toasted. 9 p.m. Oskar Blues Brewery, 303 Main St., Lyons, 303-823-6685. The Long Run. 7:30 p.m. Nissi’s, 2675 Northpark Drive, Lafayette, 303-665-2757. Many Mountains. 7:30 p.m. Oskar Blues CyclHOPS, 600 S. Airport Road, Longmont, 303-776-BIKE. Merry and Bright: A Night of Music. 6 p.m. Seventh-day Adventist Church, 345 Mapleton Ave., Boulder, 303-442-1522. Michael Hornbuckle Band. 8 p.m. Boulder Distillery, 2500 47th St., Unit 10, Boulder, 303-444-6121. New Family Dog. 10 p.m. Pioneer Inn, 15 E. First St., Nederland, 303-258-7733. Opa! A Night of Soulful Sounds From Athens to Jerusalem. 7:30 p.m. Congregation Nevei Kodesh, 1925 Glenwood Drive, Boulder, 303-443-4567. Phillip Mark, The Road West. 8 p.m. The Laughing Goat Coffeehouse, 1709 Pearl St., Boulder, 303440-4628. RADIATE Unified Dance Party. 8:30 p.m. Shine Restaurant & Gathering Place, 2027 13th St., Boulder, 303-449-0120.

Ecstatic Dance. 10 a.m. Free Motion Dance Studio, 2126 Pearl St., Boulder, 720-379-8299. Grandma. 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. The Boedecker Theater, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-440-7826. Lights of December Parade. 6 p.m. Downtown Boulder, 1942 Broadway, Boulder, 303-449-3774. Mark Diamond and Andy Weyl: Jazzed Holiday Tunes Tea. 12 p.m. Hotel Boulderado, 2115 13th St., Boulder, 303-442-4344. St. Nick on the Bricks. 11 a.m. Visitor Information Center, Boulder, 303-449-3774. Sunday, December 6 Music Acoustic Blend Christmas Concert. 7 p.m. St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, 3700 Baseline Road, Boulder, 303-494-8094. Acoustic Jam. 3 p.m. Conor O’Neill’s Traditional Irish Pub, 1922 13th St., Boulder, 303-449-1922. Arthur Lee Land. 3 p.m. Oskar Blues Tasty Weasel Tap Room, 1800 Pike Road, Unit B, Longmont, 303776-1914. Austin Tuley. 4:30 p.m. Left Hand Brewing Company, 1265 Boston Ave., Longmont, 303-772-0258.

Darral Gleason Band. 7:30 p.m. Nissi’s, 2675 Northpark Drive, Lafayette, 303-665-2757. Denny Driscoll. 4 p.m. Grossen Bart Brewery, 1025 Delaware Ave., Longmont, 214-770-9847. Holiday Festival 2015. 4 p.m. Macky Auditorium, University of Colorado, 1595 Pleasant St., Boulder, 303-492-8423. Holiday Mountain Market. 12 p.m. Nederland Community Center, 750 Colorado 72, Nederland, 303-258-9721. Jay Stott. 10 a.m. The Stone Cup, 442 High St., Lyons, 303-823-2345. Lee Johnson. 6 p.m. Oskar Blues Home Made Liquids and Solids, 1555 S. Hover Road, Longmont, 303-485-9400. Logo Ligi West African Drumming/Dance Ensemble. 8 p.m. The Laughing Goat Coffeehouse, 1709 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-440-4628. Mayhem Gulch. 10 p.m. Mountain Sun Pub, 1535 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-546-0886. The Mighty Diamonds & Yellow Wall Dub Squad. 9 p.m. Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder, 303-447-0095. Skanson & Hansen. 7 p.m. Nissi’s, 2675 Northpark Drive, Lafayette, 303-665-2757. Sundays at Vic’s. 12 p.m. Vic’s Espresso & News, 2680 Broadway, Boulder, 303-440-8209. Traditional Irish Session. 7 p.m. Conor O’Neill’s Traditional Irish Pub, 1922 13th St., Boulder, 303449-1922.

see EVENTS Page 44

LAFAYETTE, CO 303.665.2757 42 December 3, 2015

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December 3, 2015 43

events

EVENTS from Page 42

Willy Porter and Dave Tamkin. 7 p.m. Shine Restaurant & Gathering Place, 2027 13th St., Boulder, 303-449-0120.

Gingerbread Gift Gala. 11 a.m. Boulder High School, 1604 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, 720-5612200.

Events

Holiday Trees from the StarHouse Land. 1 p.m. StarHouse Retreat Cabin, 3478 Sunshine Canyon Drive, Boulder, 303-245-8452.

Cinema Program Free Screening Mildred Pierce. 1 p.m. Boulder Library, 1001 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, 303-441-3100. Discover Scuba Diving. 10 a.m. South Boulder Recreation Center, 1360 Gillaspie Drive, Boulder, 303-441-3448. The Flying Dutchman: Zurich. 1 p.m. The Boedecker Theater, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-4407826.

A Small Good Thing. 4:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. The Boedecker Theater, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303440-7826. Monday, December 7 Music Blues Jam with Boa & The Constrictors. 7 p.m. Oskar Blues Home Made Liquids and Solids, 1555 S. Hover Road, Longmont, 303-485-9400.

Skanson & Hansen. 6 p.m. Nissi’s, 2675 Northpark Drive, Lafayette, 303-665-2757.

Chance Trio. 8 p.m. The Laughing Goat Coffeehouse, 1709 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-440-4628.

Witherward. 9:30 p.m. Pearl Street Pub, 1108 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-777-6768.

Gasoline Lollipops. 8:30 p.m. Waterloo, 809 Main St., Louisville, 303-993-2094.

Events

Jim Bradford Band. 6 p.m. Upslope Brewing Company (Flatiron Park), 1898 S. Flatiron Court, Boulder, 508-873-9185.

Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road). 6:30 p.m. The Boedecker Theater, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-440-7826. Tuesday, December 8 Music Bear Grillz with Kicks N’ Licks & Bad Royale. 9 p.m. Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder, 303-4470095.

The Mojo Medicine Show. 8 p.m. 300 Suns Brewing, 335 First Ave., Longmont, 720-442-8292. The Nice Work Jazz Combo. 6:30 p.m. St Julien Hotel & Spa, 900 Walnut St., Boulder, 720-4069696. Open Jam. 8 p.m. The Lazy Dog, 1346 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-440-3355. Open Mic. 9 p.m. Pioneer Inn, 15 E. First St., Nederland, 303-258-7733. Open Mic Night with The Prairie Scholars. 6 p.m. Skeye Brewing, 900 S. Hover St., Unit D, Longmont, 303-774-7698. Events Colorado Gives Day Event. 5 p.m. Illegal Pete’s, 1124 13th St., Boulder, 303-444-3055. December Brown Bag: Building Code Update Part II — An Overview of Key Changes Continued. 12 p.m. Caribou Room, Boulder County Courthouse Annex, 2045 13th St., Boulder, 303441-3930 Holiday Party and Artists’ Reception. 5 p.m. Flair Studio and Gallery, 408 E. Simpson St., Lafayette, 720-289-2190. Run With The Newton Running Lab. 5 p.m. Newton Running Lab & Retail Store, 1222 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-357-2383. Wednesday, December 9 Music Blues Jam. 10 p.m. Pioneer Inn, 15 E. First St., Nederland, 303-258-7733. Chuck McMordie. 8:05 p.m. Cannon Mine Coffee, 210 S. Public Road, Lafayette, 303-665-0625. The Cody Sisters Featuring Jackson Earles. 7 p.m. Rosalee’s Pizzeria, 461 Main St., Longmont, 303-485-5020. Face. 9 p.m. Nissi’s, 2675 Northpark Drive, Lafayette, 303-665-2757. Flash Mountain Flood. 7 p.m. Owsley’s Golden Road, 1301 Broadway St., Boulder, 720-849-8458. Jeff Brinkman. 6:30 p.m. St Julien Hotel & Spa, 900 Walnut St., Boulder, 720-406-9696. Jerry Granelli Performs Tales of A Charlie Brown Christmas. 7 p.m. Macky Auditorium, University of Colorado, 1595 Pleasant St., Boulder, 303-492-8423. Kari Jorgensen. 6 p.m. Espresso Vino by Brewing Market, 2770 Dagny Way, Lafayette, 720-890-3993. Laugh Longmont! 7 p.m. Dickens Opera House, 300 Main St., Longmont, 303-543-1411. The Milk Carton Kids with Julian Lage. 8 p.m. Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St., Boulder, 303-7867030. Paper Moonshine. 8 p.m. The Laughing Goat Coffeehouse, 1709 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-440-4628.

CALL NOW TO BOOK THE BAND FOR A ROCKIN’ PARTY

303-819-8182 www.hindsightclassicrock.com 44 December 3, 2015

Sushi & Sake with The Prairie Scholars. 5 p.m. East Moon Bistro, 2144 Main St., Suite 1, Longmont, 303-684-8383. Events 99 Homes. 4:30 p.m. The Boedecker Theater, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-440-7826. Bikes vs Cars. 7 p.m. The Boedecker Theater, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-440-7826. Boulder High School Flute Ensemble. 3:30 p.m. Boulder Library, 1001 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, 303441-3100. The Flying Dutchman: Zurich. 1 p.m. The Boedecker Theater, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-4407826.

Boulder Weekly

American Life in Poetry: Column 554 by Jim Daniels

“We may never brush our teeth together again” is the axis about which this poem by Jim Daniels turns. Surely we all have moments like this. Jim Daniels’ recent books include Eight Mile High (Michigan State Univ. Press) and Birth Marks (BOA Editions). He lives in Pennsylvania. — Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate

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Brushing Teeth with My Sister after the Wake at my kitchen sink, the bathroom upstairs clogged with family from out of town spending the night after the wake and the after — wake — cold beverages have been consumed and comfort food, leftovers bulging both the fridge and the mini-fridge. In our fifties, both half-asleep half-awake, we face each other. My sister’s smile foams white down her chin at the end of a day on which no one has smiled. We laugh. We may never brush our teeth together again. No mirror down here to see our haggard faces. We rinse, we spit. As we were taught.

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www.ericasodos.com • 720-883-6132 We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2015 by Jim Daniels, “Brushing Teeth with My Sister after the Wake,” from Poet Lore, Vol. 110, no. 1/2 (The Writer’s Center, 2015). Jim Daniels’ recent books include Eight Mile High, Michigan State Univ. Press, and Birth Marks, BOA Editions. Poem reprinted by permission of Jim Daniels and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

Send poetry submissions of 250 words or fewer to poetry@boulderweekly.com.

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December 3, 2015 45

King’s Broth Food Cart located in Whole Foods Market on Pearl Street from 8:30am-4:30pm

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46 December 3, 2015

screen

ike death, taxes and CBS creating another spectacularly unfunny comedy, reboots are an inevitable part of life now. To resist them isn’t merely tilting at windmills, it’s tilting at windmills you then go ahead and buy anyway. Instead, let’s just get writer/director Ryan Coogler to do all the reboots. All of them. I want him on everything from Die Hard 6 to Perfect Strangers: The Movie. Why? Because Creed just delivers a master class in how to stay true to the core of what defines a franchise while invigorating it with new purpose and modernizing it in a meaningful way. To put it another way: Holy crap, a spinoff of the Rocky franchise is shockingly very, very good. Opening in a juvenile detention facility in 1998, Creed’s first scene is a sophisticated recalibration of the franchise’s intent. After his mother dies, Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad) adopts the illegitimate son of her dead husband, Apollo Creed. It is a soft, beautiful rejection of ignorant stereotypical conceits about the bonds of black families and a potent demonstration that there’s more going on here than a couple of boxing matches. When Adonis (Michael B. Jordan) grows up, fighting calls to him through his DNA. He moves to Philadelphia, where he convinces Rocky Balboa (Sylvester The illegitimate son of Apollo Creed, Adonis (Michael B. Jor- Stallone) to train him. dan), convinces Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) to train Actually, he doesn’t him in the latest boxing installment. convince him so much as he guilts him into paying penance for his father’s death. Having outlived everyone he ever loved, Rocky somehow stumbles into purpose. Meanwhile, Adonis stumbles into Bianca (Tessa Thompson), a surprisingly three-dimensional love interest who (gasp) actually has her own career and life independent of men! What follows is the obligatory improbable march towards a championship bout, complete with training montages and unexpected obstacles. But it’s how those montages and obstacles play out. It’s Adonis fist-pumping after leading a pack of inner city kids riding motorbikes. It’s Rocky seeing how desperate this gifted, smart young man is for absent fatherly love. It’s Bianca and Adonis falling for each other in a believable, honest way over legitimately similar personalities and passions. There are only three fights in this “boxing movie.” And they are all absolutely phenomenal, among the best ever filmed in fact. But this is a movie about people. Hell, the best “fight” in the whole movie may be Adonis shadowboxing the father he never met in front of a projector showing Apollo’s first fight with Rocky. This is finally the role that will make Jordan the household name he was always destined to be. It’s also a chance for Stallone to deliver a late-career reminder that he’s more than Expendable. Of all the blows that land in this crowd-pleasing, character-heavy insta-classic, the biggest gut punch comes while Adonis is seated in his corner, when he tells Rocky why he has to continue fighting. Creed is a meditation on fatherlessness, a call-to-arms for black youth who are taught lowered expectations to believe they are powerful, a rousing boxing flick, a quality love story, a tearful ode to families that are made and not born and one of the best damn films of the year. This review first appeared in The Reader of Omaha, Nebraska.

Boulder Weekly

film Preach, Spike. Preach.

No stone goes unturned in ‘Chi-Raq’ by Michael J. Casey

pike Lee is many things; subtle is not one of them. In 1989 — with three movies under his belt — the Brooklyn-based producer/director exploded on to a grand stage with Do the Right Thing. The movie stirred the pot and caused a fair amount of controversy, but what makes Do the Right Thing so prescient is how it touches on the very real and very human emotions attached to racism, violence and hatred. With the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown last summer, Do the Right Thing looks as current as the nightly news. Now Lee is back with Chi-Raq, his most powerful and boisterous movie in years. But Lee has matured greatly — a 58-year-old brings a much different perspective to the table than a 32-year-old does. With Do the Right Thing, Lee was urgent, insistent that we must do something to stop this madness. In Chi-Raq, that urgency is there, but so is the knowledge that these issues run a hell of a lot deeper than he previously thought. To drive this point home, Lee appropriates Aristophanes’ comedic play, Lysistrata — a group of Greek wives withholding sex from their war-hungry husbands in hopes of ending the Peloponnesian War. Lee transports the action to modern-day Chicago where two rival gangs, the Trojans and the Greeks, conduct their battle in the streets while spitting dialogue in verse. Aristophane’s style blends perfectly with Lee’s setting. The film revolves primarily around Chi-Raq’s rapper persona (played by real-life rapper, Nick Cannon) and ChiRaq’s girlfriend, Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris) who convinces the women of both sides to withhold sex from the men until both sides put down their guns and take up peace. Lysistrata and Miss Helen (Angela Bassett) lead the women in a nonviolent revolt, take over Chicago’s National Guard base and rally women across the globe with a simple chant, “No Peace, No Pussy.” Chi-Raq is funny and fun, but it is not a movie to take lightly. As the title alludes, the streets of Chicago’s South Side are as violent as any war zone in Iraq, and Lee has the stats to back it up. He also has a complex and volatile scenario on his hands, and Lee takes every cause imaginable and tosses it in: poverty, substance abuse, lack of education, lack of spirituality, accessibility to firearms, political parties in the pocket of the NRA, and on and on. Lee is utterly fearless in his pursuit and inventive in his way of using the frame to relay information. And Chi-Raq is the work of a director who is fed-up with the problem, but not with finding a solution. It’s a solution worth fighting for and worth sacrificing for. Lee realizes that violence isn’t just another gangbanger gunned down in the streets or just one more coffin in the ground, it’s another empty chair at Christmas time, one more incomplete family picture at Mom’s birthday. The holiday season is here, as is the time for families to come together and fill family rooms with laughter and love. ChiRaq is an important reminder that some of these rooms are forever silent and will always remain tragically empty. Boulder Weekly

THURSDAY DECEMBER 3 7:00 PM

COLORADO SKIES: WEEKLY TOPICS 9:00 PM

LIQUID SKY MUSIC SHOW FRIDAY DECEMBER 4 7:00 PM

BLACK HOLES: THE OTHER SIDE OF INFINITY 9:00 PM

LIQUID SKY MUSIC SHOW 10:30 PM

LIQUID SKY MUSIC SHOW SATURDAY DECEMBER 5 1:00 PM

DOUBLE FEATURE: LIFE OF TREES & PERSEUS AND ANDROMEDA 2:30 PM

DYNAMIC EARTH 11:59 PM

LIQUID SKY MUSIC SHOW SUNDAY DECEMBER 6 12:00 PM

DOUBLE FEATURE: ZULA PATROL AND PERSEUS & ANDROMEDA 3:00 PM

BELLA GAIA: BEAUTIFUL EARTH 4:30 PM

SOLAR SUPERSTORMS: PREMIERE EVENT

BOEDECKER THEATER Independent film & cultural performances in high definition.

GRANDMA

with Lily Tomlin Dec 3 - 2:30 | Dec 4 - 2:30 & 6:30 Dec 5 - 2:00 & 6:00

ALL THINGS MUST PASS:

THE RISE AND FALL OF TOWER RECORDS Dec 3 - 4:30 | Dec 4 - 4:30 & 8:30 Dec 5 - 4:00 & 8:00

WATCHERS OF THE SKY Presented by Menorah Dec 3 - 7:00 talkback with Paul Shankman

GOODNIGHT MOMMY Dec 4 - 10:30

THE FLYING DUTCHMAN: ZURICH with Bryn Terfel | $15 Dec 6 - 1:00 | Dec 9 - 1:00

A SMALL GOOD THING with filmmaker Q&A Dec 6 - 4:30 & 7:00

THE APU TRILOGY

new digital restoration with film history introductions by Dr. Suranjan Ganguly in person

PATHER PANCHALI

(Song of the Little Road) Dec 7 - 6:30

APARAJITO

(The Unvanquished) Dec 14 - 6:30

APUR SANSAR

(The World of Apu) Dec 21 - 6:30

Fiske Planetarium - Regent Drive

(Next to Coors Event Center, main campus CU Boulder)

www. fiske.colorado.edu 303-492-5002

ENJOY HAZEL’S BAR AT THE BOE 26TH & WALNUT STREET - BOULDER

303.440.7826 x 110 WWW.THEDAIRY.ORG December 3, 2015 47

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48 December 3, 2015

Boulder Weekly

cuisine review

Susan France

Johnny’s Cigar Bar

The scene

1801 13th St., Boulder, 303-449-0884

Johnny’s Cigar Bar is a hamlet just off Pearl for musicians, comedians, smokers and drinkers by Matt Cortina

t’s open mic comedy night at Johnny’s Cigar Bar. Have any four words ever simultaneously inspired so much giddy excitement and sheer terror as “open mic comedy night?” Here’s a joke: Is there anything more humorless than a crowd of amateur comedians watching other amateur comedians? The bad ones don’t get laughs because they stink, and the good ones only get chuckles because the comedians in the audience feel threatened. Susan France The jokes that hit hardest on open mic comedy night were the selfaware, anticomedy inside jokes that comedians have with each other about abrupt transitions, hackneyed premises and the failsafe truth that it’s easier to get people to laugh at you than to laugh with you. Of course none of this is an indictment on Johnny’s, which aptly serves a unique and obviously vibrant section of the Boulder arts scene. Johnny’s also hosts live music and open mic musical nights throughout the week. In fact, it’s important to support a place like Johnny’s, which through good and bad performers, small and large crowds, has carved a niche underserved in Boulder County. I started my open mic comedy night earlier in the

evening with a glass of Laphroig 10 year. Johnny’s has a deep selection of single-malt whisky, bourbon, brandy and tequila, as well as a refreshingly cheap array of house cocktails (about $6) that include an old fashioned, variations on Tom Collins, martinis and more. What are abundantly lacking at Johnny’s are viable food options. Of the three menu choices, only the pretzel, spinning individually wrapped in plastic in a rotisserie oven, is on hand, though a sign does suggest there are $1.50 ham and cheddar Hot Pockets available. The menu also says Cosmo’s pizza is delivered (though it wasn’t that night) and barbecue sliders are sometimes available. Maybe that’s all part of the joke. But if the atmosphere is right at Johnny’s then the food shortage can certainly be forgiven. The look of the place is spot-on, with a big, beautiful wooden humidor offering a wall of cigar options welcoming you into the place. The bar is cut like a hockey stick and the chairs in the tabled area are all gold-beaded leather captain’s chairs. In the smoking lounge, there’s a card table, a flat-screen TV and a half dozen black leather recliners. There’s also a general conviviality early in the evening that quite frankly I wished carried into open mic comedy night, but probably speaks to the greater

charm and hospitality of Johnny’s. In fact the funniest joke of the night came from the outgoing bartender who when asked where he was going said, “Yeah, I’m actually leaving for vacation tonight. London.” Then, waiting a beat, dryly said, “No, I’m going to a video game tournament for adults in someJohnnys Cigar Bar bartender one’s basement.” And Lucas Shuttleworth another non-comic who, after drinking quite a few drinks (and repeating quite a few stories), just stepped up to the big grand piano in the corner when the comedy show was running late and played jazz out of nowhere like Vince Guaraldi. You can’t replicate the authenticity of those moves, nor can you disrespect the courage of the comic — of a sole performer in a dark room — even if that courage is often shrouded in dick jokes. As the performers flushed in and out, and some came off stage to congratulations or polite silence, what was clear is that Johnny’s is the home of a scene. It won’t wow you with anything except maybe it’s topdown good humor, and it’s not quite the romantic place where you swirl a snifter of cognac and compare the smoke of your cigar under the one overhead light to the whirl of a long lost lover’s dress. But it is a place to get some fun and unique culture, and that’s good enough for me.

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Colorado Cellars

COLORADO CELLARS RELEASES EXTENSIVE VINTAGE COLLECTION

Supporters and fans of local Colorado wines rejoiced last week when Colorado Cellars Winery announced it is releasing every vintage of their wines in stock for sale to the public. The vintages for sale begin in 1978 and come all the way up to 2009, and varietals include cabernet sauvignon, merlot and port wine. Colorado Cellars, which is the state’s first establishment to make and sell wine from Colorado grapes, fruit and honey, has decanted, rebottled and re-corked the wines to ensure quality. It is for sure an opportunity to taste some rare wines from rare vintages. The wines will be sold on the Colorado Cellars website, coloradocellars. com, and in some retail stores throughout the state.

AN AFTERNOON OF COOKING AND EATING HEALTHY Stop over at the Isabelle Farm in Lafayette on Saturday, Dec. 5 from 2:30-4:30 p.m. and join Shari Leidich, founder of Two Moms in the Raw, for an afternoon of cooking, eating and stories. Leidich founded Two Moms in the Raw after drastically changing her diet when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2004 and found that a simple, clean and healthful diet helped control her symptoms. The company sells healthy snacks and now Leidich is publishing a cookbook. The event at the farm will include a cooking demonstration, cookbook signing, product samples, tastings and giveaways, goodie

Boulder Weekly

bags for the early birds and a question and answer session with Leidich. For more information visit twomomsintheraw.com or isabellefarm.com.

CELEBRATE ASHER’S ANNIVERSARY Celebrate with the fine folks at Asher Brewing Company at their sixth anniversary party on Dec. 5 from 2 p.m. to midnight at their brewery in Gunbarrel. The festivities will include a performance from Lady and the Gentlemen, and Rollin’ Bones will be on the grounds to serve their barbecue all night. Best of all, $30 gets you as many Asher Ales as you can “responsibly consume” during the 10-hour party. Buy your tickets ahead of time at asherbrewing.com, or stop by their tasting room on Nautilus Drive.

UNDERWEAR THAT SMELLS LIKE BACON Well it’s that time of year again: time to rack your brains to find the perfect gift for him or her. You go to countless department stores and specialty shops, browse online for hours and carefully pare down gifts until the perfect present is in your hands, ready to be wrapped and delivered. Or, you could just buy everyone in your family bacon underwear, the world’s first underwear that looks and smells like bacon. According to J&D’s Foods, each pair of Bacon Scented Underwear™ “is hand crafted in the USA to offer the support of briefs, the freedom of boxers and the smell of breakfast cooking in your pants.” The garments feature “state-of-the-art moisture-wicking, scentemission technology stolen from NASA.” You can buy a pair or 100 from baconunderwear.com for $19.99 a pair, and they’re available in both men’s and women’s styles and sizes. What a country we live in.

December 3, 2015 51

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cuisine Brown rush

Pappy Van Winkle returns to Colorado with luster and madness by Matt Cortina

Wikimedia Commons

ew things in the culinary world laying around. are anticipated annually as Eventually the market crushed the much as the release of Pappy Van Winkle dream, and the StitzerVan Winkle. Colorado gets its Weller distillery, which had already share of the esteemed bourbon changed hands many times and which whiskey typically later than the rest of was producing the Old Rip Van Winkle the country, and so November and brand, closed in 1991. Van Winkle III December are prime Pappy-spotting had all these old vintages of his family months in the Centennial State. bourbon and no one wanted them. This year, liquor stores and spirits That is until 1996 when the Beverage Tasting Institute in Chicago, retailers will once again deal with an which gives out ratings to spirits on a ever-growing throng of Pappy hunters, scale of 1-100, got a hold of a bottle of who have been known to follow delivery 20-year Pappy Van Winkle. The trucks, call merchants daily, camp outside Institute gave the 20-year a score of 99, of liquor stores and, most commonly, which was the highest ever for a whisshell out beaucoup bucks for a bottle of key. Bottles began to fly off the shelves, one of the brand’s vintages. The last of the original stocks of Pappy Van Winkle went to market in 2013, but the people as you might imagine, and the Pappy All this hullaballoo has created a still go crazy for the esteemed bourbon. Van Winkle brand skyrocketed to the myth around Pappy Van Winkle, and it’s cult-like popularity it enjoys today. a story whose grandiosity has only grown Rebel Yell and Old Fitzgerald, were sold off, save for In the early 2000s, the Old Rip Van Winkle over the years, adding more pressure on the makers of one: the Old Rip Van Winkle brand. Distillery company partnered with the esteemed the spirit and on those who sell it. In 1972, Julian Van Winkle Jr. resurrected the Sazerac Company and started producing Pappy Van brand and used old, forgotten stocks of barrels to fill The bourbon started humbly. The story goes that Winkle vintages in the Buffalo Trace Distillery. The his Old Rip Van Winkle bottles. Initially, they were before the turn of the 20th century, Van Winkle patriseen as the dregs of other producers, and Van Winkle arch Julian, or Pappy, worked at the W.L. Weller & move allowed Van Winkle to produce enough to meet Jr., just trying to make a buck and keep the brand Sons liquor wholesaler, before eventually buying the future demand, instead of relying on the old stocks, alive, kept producing from old barrels. company with a co-worker a decade or so later. If which were producing only 6,000 bottles a year — a Van Winkle Jr. died in the early ’80s, bequeathing Weller sounds familiar, it’s because you see that brand paltry amount in the global whiskey trade, and a reathe company to his son — you guessed it — Julian of whiskey on store shelves today — we’ll get to that son for its desirability. Van Winkle III. Facing stiff competition from other later. On shelves at secretive, various places this month, producers making spirits that were more in vogue Van Winkle and his partner then bought the the thing is that you won’t be able to find any Pappy than bourbon at the time, like vodka and gin, Van Stitzel distillery in Kentucky, which had supplied Van Winkle culled from the original Stitzer-Weller much of the liquor to the Weller wholesale enterprise. Winkle III resorted to bottling Old Rip Van Winkle stocks. Van Winkle III said the 2013 vintage was the in novelty bottles that acted as gimmicks to persuade Prohibition shut down the operation, and over time see PAPPY Page 54 all the brand names of the company, including Weller, people into drinking the old bourbon his family had

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December 3, 2015 53

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last of the original barrels, and that future 23-year Pappy Van Winkle whiskeys will have been produced and barreled outside of the circumstances that lead to the brand’s initial warm reception. What you will find on shelves are the following Van Winkle brands, in order of price: the Old Rip Van Winkle 10 year, Van Winkle Special Reserve 12 year, the Van Winkle Family Reserve Rye (aged 13 years), Pappy Van Winkle 15 year, Pappy Van Winkle 20 year and Pappy Van Winkle 23 year. Van Winkle III has come out against price gouging, but you see it with such a rare commodity like Pappy Van Winkle. A bottle of the 15-year should cost $150, while a bottle of the 23-year should cost $250. But I’ve seen rogue bottles of some of the lesser brands like the Old Rip Van Winkle 10 year show up for $500 in liquor stores (none in Boulder County, thankfully). It brings up a larger point about paying for what you get when it comes to Pappy. Is it worth shelling out major cash to have your own bottle of a bourbon that’s no longer produced and aged as it was when it gained esteem? (Pappy brands are still rated in the high 90s, but this will only be the second year the 23-year from new stocks is on the market.) More importantly, do you want to rub shoulders with a bunch of hipsters and old men trying to rush into a store when a delivery arrives in order to get a bottle? It’s long been rumored that the W.L. Weller 107, which sells for less than $30, is made from the same recipe

as Pappy Van Winkle. While we can’t prove it, we can say that it’s produced at the Buffalo Trace Distillery, like Pappy is, its mash bill is heavy in wheat like Pappy, they’re both 107 proof, they do taste pretty identical and you’ll remember that Weller was the company out of which Pappy was born way back in the early 1900s. Furthermore, the Sazerac Company dumps a lot of other bourbons at the same time that won’t be as sought after and are more cost effective, namely the fantastic George T. Stagg. But there is something to be said about the allure of Pappy Van Winkle. The joy, maybe, is in the chase. As much was evidenced when 200 bottles were discovered stolen in 2013 from the Buffalo Trace Distillery by an employee who had been siphoning off bottles for several years. If you do decide to go after it this year, here’s some advice: Call every liquor store you’re willing to drive to at a moment’s notice once a day. It’ll annoy them, but if you want it, then you have to call. You might find that some liquor stores, like Davidsons in Highlands Ranch, have special programs in place to distribute Pappy and limit the madness. Davidsons is giving priority to customers who have accrued a minimum number of purchases over the last 12 months. Those customers will then enter a lottery and winners will have the first opportunity to buy this year’s batch. Or, you can just head down to a place like West End Tavern, order up a flight of Pappy, and skip the lines and lotteries entirely. Boulder Weekly

drink Exploring Burgundy’s Côte d’Or with seven wines by David White

hen my brother asked me to teach him and some friends about “serious” Burgundy, I was worried. How could I possibly walk them through the Côte d’Or without bankrupting the family? The first step? Explaining Burgundy’s classification system. About 800 years ago, Cistercian monks in the region began observing different sites and the quality of the resulting wines. An informal, threetier classification of vineyards emerged over time. The French government formalized that system in 1936. The first classification level is “village,” a designation that’s only granted to Burgundy’s top communes. About 37 percent of Burgundy’s production is classified here. If a wine is adorned with a village name — e.g., Gevrey Chambertin — it’s produced entirely from grapes grown in that village. The next level is “Premier Cru.” Almost 600 vineyards in Burgundy have this status, and most are in the Côte d’Or. Premier cru wines aren’t necessarily from a single vineyard, though. So wines from these sites always feature the village name prominently — and the vineyard name if the grapes come from a single site. Together, these vineyards account Wikimedia Commons for about 10 percent of Burgundy’s production. The top 32 vineyards — the “Grand Crus” — produce Burgundy’s most storied wines. Twenty-four of these sites are in the Côte de Nuits, all of which are dedicated to Pinot Noir. Eight of these sites are in the Côte de Beaune, seven of which are dedicated to Chardonnay. In the hands of a skilled winemaker, the grapes from these sites Choosing serious Burgundy wines that don’t break the bank is a fun exercise. are able to translate both time and place. These wines are always expensive — together, the Grand Cru vineyards account for less than 1.5 percent of Burgundy’s production — but the experiences they offer can be spiritual. Wines from outside these classified areas but within Burgundy’s boundaries — and wines blended from different classified areas — are generally labeled as “Bourgogne.” (There are many confusing exceptions to this broad generalization.) The second step? Helping my brother and his friends distinguish between the Côte de Nuits and the Côte de Beaune. Pinot Noir fares excellently in both. But broadly speaking, wines from the Côte de Nuits are richer, more structured, and more complex than their Côte de Beaune counterparts. Finally, I wanted to stress the importance of skilled winemaking. Sure, it’d be difficult to make a bad Chardonnay from a Grand Cru like Montrachet or a bad Pinot Noir from a Grand Cru like Romanée-Conti. But great producers can make excellent wines from Burgundy’s least impressive sites. With these three goals, I selected seven wines. To start, two whites: a young, basic Bourgogne from Dominique Lafon and a 10-year-old Grand Cru from Louis Jadot’s holdings in Bienvenues-BâtardMontrachet. Then, four young reds: two village wines from the Côte de Nuits and two Premier Cru wines from the Côte de Beaune. From the Côte de Nuits, I selected a Gevrey Chambertin from Marc Roy and a Chambolle-Musigny from Bruno Clair. From the Côte de Beaune, I selected Savigny-lès-Beaune Premier Cru from Simon Bize and a Volnay Premier Cru from Pousse d’Or. To finish? A 20-year-old, Grand Cru red from Méo-Camuzet’s Clos de Vougeot holdings. David White is the founder and editor of Terroirist.com, one of the world’s most popular wine blogs. His columns are housed at GrapeCollective.com. Boulder Weekly

December 3, 2015 55

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60 December 3, 2015

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ARIES

MARCH 21-APRIL 19:

astrology

but also changed lanes and jockeyed for position. Can you guess the results? The car that weaved in and out of the traffic flow arrived just slightly ahead of the other three. Apply this lesson to your activities in the coming week, please. There will be virtually no advantage to indulging in frenetic, erratic, breakneck exertion. Be steady and smooth and straightforward.

“Charm is a way of getting the answer ‘yes’ without having asked any clear question,” wrote French Go to RealAstrology.com to check out author Albert Camus. I Rob Brezsny’s EXPANDED WEEKLY AUDIO have rarely seen you better HOROSCOPES and DAILY TEXT MESSAGE poised than you are now to HOROSCOPES. The audio horoscopes embody and capitalize on are also available by phone at 1-877this definition of “charm,” 873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700. Aries. That’s good news, right? Well, mostly. But there are two caveats. First, wield your mojo as responsibly as you can. Infuse your SCORPIO bewitching allure with integrity. Second, be precise about OCT. 23-NOV. 21: what it is you want to achieve — even if you don’t come You will generate lucky anomalies and helpful flukes right out and tell everyone what it is. Resist the temptation if you use shortcuts, flee from boredom, and work to throw your charm around haphazardly. smarter rather than harder. On the other hand, you’ll drum up wearisome weirdness and fruitless flukes if TAURUS you meander all over the place, lose yourself in far-off APRIL 20-MAY 20: fantasies, and act as if you have all the time in the I suspect that in the coming days you will have an uncanny world. Be brisk and concise, Scorpio. Avoid loafing power to make at least one of your resurrection fantasies and vacillating. Associate with bubbly activators who come true. Here are some of the possibilities. 1. If you’re make you laugh and loosen your iron grip. It’s a favorbrave enough to change your mind and shed some pride, you able time to polish off a lot of practical details with a could retrieve an expired dream from limbo. 2. By stirring up light touch. a bit more chutzpah that you usually have at your disposal, you might be able to revive and even restore a forsaken SAGITTARIUS promise. 3. Through an act of grace, it’s possible you will NOV. 22-DEC. 21: reanimate an ideal that was damaged or abandoned. “Like all explorers, we are drawn to discover what’s out there without knowing yet if we have the courage to GEMINI face it.” Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön said that, and MAY 21-JUNE 20: now I’m telling you. According to my divinations, a new To the other eleven signs of the zodiac, the Way of the frontier is calling to you. An unprecedented question Gemini sometimes seems rife with paradox and contradichas awakened. The urge to leave your familiar circle tion. Many non-Geminis would feel paralyzed if they had is increasingly tempting. I don’t know if you should to live in the midst of so much hubbub. But when you are you surrender to this brewing fascination. I don’t know at your best, you thrive in the web of riddles. In fact, your if you will be able to gather the resources you would willingness to abide there is often what generates your sperequire to carry out your quest. What do you think? cial magic. Your breakthroughs are made possible by your Will you be able to summon the necessary audacity? high tolerance for uncertainty. How many times have I seen Maybe the better inquiry is this: Do you vow to use a Gemini who has been lost in indecision but then suddenly all your soulful ingenuity to summon the necessary erupts with a burst of crackling insights? This is the kind of audacity? subtle miracle I expect to happen soon.

CANCER

JUNE 21-JULY 22:

In September of 1715, a band of Jacobite rebels gathered for a guerrilla attack on Edinburgh Castle in Scotland. Their plan was to scale the walls with rope ladders, aided by a double agent who was disguised as a castle sentry. But the scheme failed before it began. The rope ladders turned out to be too short to serve their intended purpose. The rebels retreated in disarray. Please make sure you’re not like them in the coming weeks, Cancerian. If you want to engage in a strenuous action, an innovative experiment, or a bold stroke, be meticulous in your preparations. Don’t scrimp on your props, accouterments, and resources.

LEO

JULY 23-AUG. 22:

If you give children the option of choosing between food that’s mushy and food that’s crunchy, a majority will choose the crunchy stuff. It’s more exciting to their mouths, a more lively texture for their teeth and tongues to play with. This has nothing to do with nutritional value, of course. Soggy oatmeal may foster a kid’s well being better than crispy potato chips. Let’s apply this lesson to the way you feed your inner child in the coming weeks. Metaphorically speaking, I suggest you serve that precious part of you the kind of sustenance that’s both crunchy and healthy. In other words, make sure that what’s wholesome is also fun, and vice versa.

VIRGO

AUG. 23-SEPT. 22:

Your mascot is a famous white oak in Athens, Georgia. It’s called the Tree That Owns Itself. According to legend, it belongs to no person or institution, but only to itself. The earth in which it’s planted and the land around it are also its sole possession. With this icon as your inspiration, I invite you to enhance and celebrate your sovereignty during the next seven months. What actions will enable you to own yourself more thoroughly? How can you boost your autonomy and become, more than ever before, the boss of you? It’s prime time to expedite this effort.

LIBRA

SEPT. 23-OCT. 22:

Police in Los Angeles conducted an experiment on a tenmile span of freeway. Drivers in three unmarked cars raced along as fast as they could while remaining in the same lane. The driver of the fourth car not only moved at top speed,

Boulder Weekly

CAPRICORN

DEC. 22-JAN. 19:

“Once I witnessed a windstorm so severe that two 100-year-old trees were uprooted on the spot,” Mary Ruefle wrote in her book Madness, Rack, and Honey. “The next day, walking among the wreckage, I found the friable nests of birds, completely intact and unharmed on the ground.” I think that’s a paradox you’d be wise to keep in mind, Capricorn. In the coming weeks, what’s most delicate and vulnerable about you will have more staying power than what’s massive and fixed. Trust your grace and tenderness more than your fierceness and forcefulness. They will make you as smart as you need to be.

AQUARIUS

JAN. 20-FEB. 18:

Aztec king Montezuma II quenched his daily thirst with one specific beverage. He rarely drank anything else. It was ground cocoa beans mixed with chili peppers, water, vanilla, and annatto. Spiced chocolate? You could call it that. The frothy brew was often served to him in golden goblets, each of which he used once and then hurled from his royal balcony into the lake below. He regarded this elixir as an aphrodisiac, and liked to quaff a few flagons before heading off to his harem. I bring this up, Aquarius, because the coming weeks will be one of those exceptional times when you have a poetic license to be almost Montezuma-like. What’s your personal equivalent of his primal chocolate, golden goblets, and harem?

PISCES

FEB. 19-MARCH 20:

“Unfortunately, I’m pretty lucky,” my friend Rico said to me recently. He meant that his relentless good fortune constantly threatens to undermine his ambition. How can he be motivated to try harder and grow smarter and get stronger if life is always showering him with blessings? He almost wishes he could suffer more so that he would have more angst to push against. I hope you won’t fall under the spell of that twisted logic in the coming weeks, Pisces. This is a phase of your cycle when you’re likely to be the beneficiary of an extra-strong flow of help and serendipity. Please say this affirmation as often as necessary: “Fortunately, I’m pretty lucky.”

December 3, 2015 61

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UNBELIEVABLE HOME PRICES! The Denver Post and Daily Camera ran an article last month proclaiming that the average price of a four-bedroom house in Boulder had reached an average of $1 million. The findings were based off a Coldwell Banker report, and the statistic went viral and everyone had a laugh. But this week, the Camera reported findings from another study, this time by Re/Max of Boulder. Their findings? That the average price of a four-bedroom home in Boulder is not $1 million. That’d be ridiculous! The average price of a four-bedroom home in Boulder is only $722,853! Not to be outdone, another realty company swooped in on Wednesday, releasing a report that the average price of a four-bedroom home in Boulder is now only $699,999 and it includes gym membership, access to recreation and a secluded lot far away from the Hill. In response, the owners of the 55 percent of Boulder households that make less than $75,000 annually ran to their local banks or credit unions, making wild claims about a once-in-a-lifetime purchase opportunity, only to realize that they still needed to somehow double their income in order to afford the average four-bedroom home in Boulder. In response, throngs of below-average Boulderites took the streets east of Broadway and began to lower housing prices the only way we low-income saps know how. Public Enemy on our thrift store boom boxes and a good old fashioned knife fight.

ALL THE STUFF THE MEDIA WISHES IT COULD SAY ABOUT DONALD F@#$!ING TRUMP AND THOSE OTHER REPUBLICAN ‘CANDIDATES’ No, Donald Trump is not mistaken. He is actually a lying fascist who wants to line people up and register them based on their religion and ethnicity. He’s an intellectual lightweight narcissist whose greatest contribution to date is to expose the fact that nearly a third of all hard right Republicans (the people who support him) are actually also racist fascists. His lies about Muslims in New Jersey celebrating on 9/11 as the towers came down are responsible for the current wave of violence against Muslims. His lies about migrants who cross the southern border undocumented are responsible for an increase in racism and violence aimed at Latinos. His lies concerning the manner in which he has sold his name to unscrupulous real estate developers — that’s to Boulder Weekly

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(IN CASE YOU MISSED IT) An irreverent and not always accurate view of the world

say, other unscrupulous real estate developers — who have used it to dupe innocent victims out of millions of dollars are worthy of prison, as are all the other stuff mentioned above. And his lies about his wife being smart because she chose him are… well,

lies. And as a side note: Every Republican candidate who has used the abortion issue and Planned Parenthood to insight the radical fundamentalist Christian right in order to get their financial support and votes — I’m talk-

ing to you Carly, Ted, Marco and Ben — you are responsible for activating all the crazies out there who have and are going to continue to do violence against Planned Parenthood. It’s irresponsible to use your TV pulpit to scream for action against Planned Parenthood when you know good and well that there are people with guns and bombs just waiting for such a call. Inciting murder is simply murder. You are not only idiots as candidates, you are murderers. Sincerely, The mainstream media

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EEDBETWEENTHELINES

by Leland Rucker

Public consumption takes a giant step in Alaska

n Nov. 20, Alaska’s Marijuana Control tures needed to put a question on the 2015 ballot that a half years ago, I knew little about the subject and Board voted to allow consumption of would have allowed social use by adults in designated was determined to find out and report as much as I cannabis at licensed retail dispensaries. areas of bars and other sanctioned businesses. could. Cannabis has been a positive part of my life, Alaska was the fourth state to legalize They later pulled that proposal and are working and I began questioning the federal government’s cannabis, and if signed into law, it would with the city to come up with a workable solution. policies beginning in the 1970s. The more I studied, become the first to allow consumption outside of resi- Tvert says that talks continue and that they are comthe more I found out about the Drug War, the dential homes and private property. mitted to working with the city and the business com- inequality in the way police and courts use mariThe vote was close (3-2), and it needs the signamunity to adopt a reasonable law that allows adults to juana possession against black Americans and ture of Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, but if it holds, the consume marijuana in specified places. other minorities and the lies that have fed this law would go in effect early next year. insanity for almost a century. And it would really up the ante for other Leland Rucker I am proud to live in a state where legal states, Colorado included, to figure voters, by a convincing majority, supout ways to provide places for people, port the notion that cannabis, in and especially tourists, to use cannabis anyof itself, isn’t really the problem, but where other than their own or friends’ that prohibition is. Not everyone who homes. voted for legalization is a cannabis Earlier, the same board, which is writuser, but even Coloradans who don’t ing regulations for the enactment of used common sense instead of fear to Measure 2, which legalized cannabis in motivate their vote. And thanks to Alaska, had suggested banning clubs of our lawmakers, almost all of whom any kind. That drew protests from those were against Amendment 64, for working to allow other places for citizens coming together to implement the and tourists to be able to consume. law. It’s not perfect, but cannabis has (Nothing like coming to a place where now become part of the fabric of our cannabis is legal, but there’s nowhere to state, and life goes on. use it.) So the proposed regs would allow Special thanks to Joel Dyer, Stewart cannabis to be used in dispensaries, subSallo and Jeff Dodge, who gave me the ject to community approval, along with autonomy to develop the column when caps on THC levels in concentrates and a I approached them after Gov. John rule allowing outside investors to fund Hickenlooper signed Amendment 64 Club Ned in Nederland is still the only sanctioned public place to use marijuana in cannabis businesses. into law in December of 2012. Boulder County. Public consumption has been a tricky Writing Weed Between the Lines issue here in Colorado. Amendment 64 has allowed me to meet some truly doesn’t explicitly disallow all public consumption, but Let’s hope so. It’s a problem that won’t go away, amazing, visionary people. My sincere thanks to all so far, except for Colorado Springs and Nederland, and something the legislature should take up in its those who have shared their successes, failures and private clubs have not been permitted. The only sanc- 2016 session. ambitions with me. You are the heroes of this revolutioned operation in Boulder County is Club Ned in This will be my final column in this space. I am tion, and I’m hoping this change will give me even Nederland. No other state that has legalized has been not leaving, however. I will be taking a position as more opportunity to concentrate on the people who able to come up with a solution, either. senior editor for a monthly magazine debuting in are making something I thought impossible just a Earlier this year, Mason Tvert and Brian Vicente, Denver/Boulder in April. Sensi will, like Weed few years ago into a reality. You can hear Leland discuss his most recent column both authors of Amendment 64, started the Between the Lines, be chronicling the new normal as and Colorado cannabis issues each Thursday morning on Campaign for Limited Social Use. The group got legalization takes hold in Colorado. KGNU. http://news.kgnu.org/weed more than twice the number of Denver voter signaWhen I started this column more than two and

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66 December 3, 2015

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Dear Dan: I’m a straight female in my mid 20s. I’ve been dating a wonderful guy for two years — but I recently found something that has put me on edge. Before we met, he was in a relationship with a terrible, alcoholic and mentally unstable woman. They got pregnant early in the relationship and stayed together for about five years. We met a year after they broke up. I felt like I’d come to terms with the ugliness of his past, with his trying to stay in a bad relationship for the sake of his child and the rest of it. But recently, thanks to the vastness of the internet, I came across a suggestive photo of © LaRae Lobdell my boyfriend with his ex’s sister. I asked him about it, and he admitted to sleeping with her while he was with his ex. He says it was during a particularly bad period, he was very drunk, she made the first move, etc., but I’m just so grossed out. Cheating is one thing, but fucking your girlfriend’s sister? And it’s not like this was a 19-yearold’s mistake; he was near 30 and the father of a child. He also fudged a little about whether it was just one time or a few times. I feel like now I’m questioning his integrity. This is something that I wouldn’t have thought him capable of doing. What do I do? — All Twisted Up Dear ATU: What do you do? You ask yourself if you believe your boyfriend when he says fucking his thengirlfriend’s sister was a mistake, ATU, one he deeply regrets, and one he never intends to repeat. If you can’t be romantically involved with someone capable of doing such a terrible sisterfucking thing, the question is a rhetorical one. You’ll have to end the relationship regardless of the answer. But if you could stay with someone capable of doing such a terrible sister-fucking

SAVAGE by Dan Savage

thing, and if you believe your boyfriend when he says it was a mistake, one he regrets, and won’t happen again, then you stay in the relationship. And when your find yourself feeling squicked out by the knowledge that your boyfriend fucked around on his previous girlfriend with her own sister, you remind yourself that good and decent people sometimes do shitty, indecent, sister-fucking-ish things — and then you pause to consider all the shitty and/or indecent things you’ve done in your life, ATU, some, most, or all of which your boyfriend presumably remains blissfully unaware of. It’s too bad that suggestive/incriminating photo is rattling around out there in the vastness of the internet, ATU, but I’m curious about how exactly you “came across” it in the first place. If you went looking for dirt — if you were snooping — you found it. Congrats. I’m not against snooping in all instances. People often find out shit they had both a right and an urgent need to know: the BF/GF/ NBF (Nonbinary friend)/fiancé/spouse is cheating in a way that puts you at risk, they’re running up ruinous debts, they’re hiding a secret second family, they’re attending Donald Trump rallies, etc. But just as often, we find out shit we didn’t need to know — something in the BF/ GF/NBF’s past, something they regret, something they’ll never do again (do you even have a sister?) — and can never unknow. You learned that your boyfriend did

Love

something pretty fucked up. Whether you decide to stay or go, ATU, remember that you snoop at your own risk — sorry, remember that you explore “the vastness of the internet” at your own risk. Dear Dan: I’m a 37-year-old straight male in a relationship with a slightly older woman. I have a GGG girlfriend, and I am completely GGG — until we talk about having a MMF threesome. We have great sex and have experimented together. We tried playing with a couple to give her the “two-dick experience” she wanted, but the other man was of “average” size and she was not into it. I’m of average stature, and she made such a fuss of having someone extra large join in that it threw my hang-up about my size into overdrive. It’s paralyzed me sexually. I’m afraid she’ll leave me or run off looking to fulfill her need on her own. — Average Nerdy Guy Shunning Threesomes Dear ANGST: If leaving you is the only way this woman can ever experience an above-average cock again, ANGST, then she might leave you. Depending on how important sitting on an above-average cock now and then is to her, your insecurities may create an incentive for her to leave you or cheat on you. But if she can have you and all the good times and the great GGG sex you two have together — if she can continue to enjoy your cock and the things it and you can do for her along with the occasional ride on an aboveaverage cock — then you’ve created a massive incentive for her to stay. Dear Dan: How bad is chlamydia?

My gynecologist left me a voice mail, and I am absolutely terrified. A quick Google search told me that it can cause infertility if left untreated — what it didn’t tell me is how long when left untreated before it causes infertility? I told my boyfriend of 10 months, and he seems very sane about it. But I am terrified that he’ll leave me. HELP! — Seriously Terrified Damsel Dear STD: Some time has passed between your letter arriving and my response appearing in print — so here’s hoping you called your gynecologist back, STD, and got the download and the treatment you needed. Quickly: Chlamydia is a common sexually transmitted infection (STI), men and women are equally at risk, it can be contracted through vaginal, anal or oral intercourse. Your Google search was accurate: Left untreated, chlamydia can cause infertility in women. But you’re not going to leave it untreated, right? Fortunately, chlamydia is easily cured. Unfortunately, most people who have chlamydia aren’t aware they’re infected, as most infected people have no symptoms. That’s why it’s extremely important for all sexually active people — adults and adolescents — to get regular STI screenings. Is your reproductive system already harmed? You’ll have to discuss that with your gynecologist, STD, who is in a far better position than I am to have a look inside you. As for your boyfriend: He needs to get tested and treated too, and if his last STI screening was more than a year ago, it’s possible he infected you and not the other way around. If your boyfriend leaves you over this — if he blames you for something he may be responsible for — then he’s not someone you want in your life or in your twat. Send questions to mail@savagelove.net and follow @fakedansavage on Twitter.

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