Boulder Weekly 5.7.2020 issue by Boulder Weekly

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HELP WANTED news:

Socialization is a critical skill preschoolers and special ed students learn in school. How are they coping with distance learning? by Matt Cortina

news:

Senior living facilities work to contain COVID-19 as Colorado moves to ‘safer-at-home’ by Angela K. Evans and Matt Cortina

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analysis:

A warning from the grave by Paul Danish

news:

People of color may face increased discrimination with public heath facial covering orders by Angela K. Evans

adventure:

Is the urban hiking movement the answer to safer-at-home travel restrictions? by Angela K. Evans

buzz:

Alain Johannes heals with ‘Hum’ by Caitlin Rockett

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The Anderson Files: Good and bad COVID-19 news Guest Column: There is something rotten in the Republic of Boulder — and it smells all the way to Denmark Letters: Signed, sealed, delivered... your views What to do when there’s nothing to do: by Boulder Weekly staff Astrology: by Rob Brezsny Words: ‘Recovering’ by Burt Rashbaum Film: The long lost ‘Stranger’ resurfaces via the internet Savage Love: Amazed and confused Food/Drink: Food news and what to try this week in Boulder County Beer: American Craft Beer Week arrives when we need it most Cannabis Corner: Good news: We’re number 49!

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Publisher, Fran Zankowski Circulation Manager, Cal Winn EDITORIAL Editor, Matt Cortina Senior Editor, Angela K. Evans Arts and Culture Editor, Caitlin Rockett Special Editions Editor, Michael J. Casey Adventure Editor, Emma Athena Contributing Writers, Peter Alexander, Dave Anderson, Will Brendza, Rob Brezsny, Paul Danish, Sarah Haas, Jim Hightower, Dave Kirby, John Lehndorff, Rico Moore, Amanda Moutinho, Leland Rucker, Dan Savage, Josh Schlossberg, Alan Sculley, Ryan Syrek, Christi Turner, Betsy Welch, Tom Winter, Gary Zeidner SALES AND MARKETING Retail Sales Manager, Allen Carmichael Account Executives, Matthew Fischer, Sami Wainscott Market Development Manager, Kellie Robinson Advertising Coordinator, Corey Basciano Bookkeeper, Regina Campanella Mrs. Boulder Weekly, Mari Nevar PRODUCTION Art Director, Susan France Senior Graphic Designer, Mark Goodman Graphic Designer, Daisy Bauer CIRCULATION TEAM Dave Hastie, Dan Hill, George LaRoe, Jeffrey Lohrius, Elizabeth Ouslie, Rick Slama Founder/CEO, Stewart Sallo Editor-at-Large, Joel Dyer

May 7, 2020 Volume XXVII, Number 38 As Boulder County's only independently owned newspaper, Boulder Weekly is dedicated to illuminating truth, advancing justice and protecting the First Amendment through ethical, no-holds-barred journalism and thought-provoking opinion writing. Free every Thursday since 1993, the Weekly also offers the county's most comprehensive arts and entertainment coverage. Read the print version, or visit boulderweekly.com. Boulder Weekly does not accept unsolicited editorial submissions. If you're interested in writing for the paper, please send queries to: editorial@ boulderweekly.com. Any materials sent to Boulder Weekly become the property of the newspaper. 690 South Lashley Lane, Boulder, CO, 80305 p 303.494.5511 f 303.494.2585 editorial@boulderweekly.com www.boulderweekly.com Boulder Weekly is published every Thursday. No portion may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. © 2020 Boulder Weekly, Inc., all rights reserved.

Good and bad COVID-19 news by Dave Anderson 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.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

hese days, people are searching the internet for good news. Journalists are searching for silver linings when writing about the COVID19 pandemic. After all, depression and panic attacks aren’t good for our mental or physical health. Unfortunately, it is tempting to I

deny the grim seriousness of our situation, ignore the advice of health experts and be seduced by conmen whether in the business or political worlds. So we have to pay attention to bad news as well. So here is some good news. While the United States is experiencing Great Depression levels of MAY 7, 2020

unemployment, European countries with more substantial safety nets, have avoided huge layoffs. Washington Post reporter Michael Birnbaum reports that, “The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate across the European Union rose by 0.1 percentage point in March, to 6.6%.” Why is that? Birnbaum explains: “The philosophy in Europe is that the financial blow of the pansee THE ANDERSON FILES Page 6

THE ANDERSON FILES from Page 5

demic can be softened if workers are 90% of Democrats. able to keep paying their bills and if Back in businesses do not have to hire and February, a study of train an entirely new set of employSanders’ Medicare ees as the crisis abates. Many for All single-payer European governments have impleplan conducted by mented a subsidy program, pioresearchers at Yale neered by Germany in the last global University, the recession, under which they pay up University of Florida to 87% of salaries for workers sent and the University home but kept on payroll.” of Maryland found Many U.S. progressives pointed that a transition to to the European model as a solution that system would to our country’s gigantic unemploysave an estimated ment. “Congress must cover the pay- $450 billion each checks of every U.S. worker,” year, with the averSenator Bernie Sanders said. age American famiOn April 18, Senators Sanders, ly seeing about Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia), Doug $2,400 in annual Jones (D-Alabama) and Richard savings. Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) The research, unveiled a proposal to establish the which was published Paycheck Security Act, a program to in the medical journal The Lancet, cover the wages and benefits of also found that Medicare for All employees of affected businesses and would prevent about 68,000 unnecnonprofits until the economic and essary deaths per year. public health crisis is resolved. The Now, Sen. Sanders and Rep. ideological mix of the sponsors indi- Jayapal have introduced the Health cates that a unified Democratic Care Emergency Guarantee Act that response to both crises is emerging. would empower Medicare to cover On April 10, Rep. Pramila all health care costs for the uninJayapal (D-Washington), co-chair of sured and all out-of-pocket expensthe Congressional Progressive Caucus, introduced similar legislation that a majority in the House. She said, “Mass unemployment is a Americans support Medicare for All. policy choice. We can and should choose differently.” That’s 69% of all voters and 90% of More than 100 economists called on House Majority Democrats. Leader Nancy Pelosi to support Jayapal’s bill. In a new report, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that 12.7 million of es for those with insurance for the the people who have lost their jobs duration of the coronavirus crisis. since early March have lost their If passed, the bill would take employer-based health insurance. effect immediately and remain in This is a particularly terrifying expe- place until the Secretary of Health rience right now. According to Time, and Human Services certifies to the cost of COVID-19 treatment Congress that a Food and Drug can run as high as $35,000. Administration-approved COVIDBefore the COVID-19 pandem- 19 vaccine is widely available to the ic impacted our politics, support for U.S. public. Medicare for All was becoming Time editor-at-large Anand increasingly popular in the Giridharadas cheered this developDemocratic presidential primaries. ment in a tweet: “Give people a taste Now a new poll shows that a major- of Medicare for All during this ity of Americans support Medicare emergency while continuing to for All. That’s 69% of all voters and advocate for the real thing.”

A new poll shows

MAY 7, 2020

A national coalition of progressive organizations is encouraging people to put pressure on lawmakers to reject any future COVID-19 relief measure that doesn’t provide “real relief ” for working Americans. They are pushing lawmakers to sign “The Peoples Agenda Pledge.” The agenda is grounded in four pillars: “Keep people on payrolls: Stop mass layoffs, and preserve employment relaof tionships for all businesses, including small businesses. Ensure federal dollars go to workers and small businesses, not enriching CEOs and Wall Street. “Provide financial relief: Expand aid for the most vulnerable in the COVID-19 epidemic, including direct cash assistance, increased food aid, debt relief and eviction protections. “Protect public health: Full health coverage for all COVID-19 care and protections for all frontline workers. “Defend elections: Enact a voteby-mail requirement for 2020 federal elections while maintaining access to in-person voting for those who do not have access to mail voting.” Now here’s the bad news. Actually you know the bad news. Trump says, “Let them drink bleach.” Mitchell McConnell controls the Senate and says he doesn’t want to I

send federal aid to the states and the cities. Well, this is vicious blackmail. States and cities are predicting a $500 billion shortfall, and soon it is likely that public safety agencies, schools and other vital services will start being disemboweled. Recent polls show a large bipartisan majority supports the continuation of shelter-in-place policies until public health officials say it’s safe to end them. Nevertheless, Sara Jaffee reports in In These Times that “a small army of right-wing think tanks and conservative organizations is cynically invoking the plight of the downtrodden to make the case for swiftly reopening the economy and sending workers into deadly conditions.” Some of the most vocal groups — like the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — have promoted the ugliest measures against working people and unions. This is ghoulish class warfare. The corporate right is afraid of a “people’s bail-out.” They are afraid that maybe ordinary people will realize that they can use the government to make a better society. They are willing to kill thousands to stop that from happening. This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

There is something rotten in the Republic of Boulder — and it smells all the way to Denmark by Phillip Doe

fter 25 years of acclaimed atmospheric research at the University of Colorado, Dr. Detlev Helmig was summarily fired in April. The firing was delivered by a video call that took less than 30 minutes. In less than an hour after he was first notified that the university was dissatisfied with his efforts to help Colorado citizens better understand their long-standing air quality problems, Professor Helmig’s name had been completely expunged, including his phone number, email address and university profile, as well as any mention of the years of scientific contribution he had made to the university and atmospheric science. A person on Dr. Helmig’s staff, with 16 years of university service, was just as unceremoniously shown the door the same day. Apparently the leadership under new university President Mark Kennedy is equipped with no negotiating tools other than a hammer. Apparently, so primitively equipped is

his team that a solution allowing Dr. Helmig to continue his essential air quality work for Colorado communities while maintaining his university research position was just too complicated for them to consider. The almost instantaneous gloating of oil industry flacks in industry publications is unseemly, at best, and gives rise to Watergate-like questions of who knew what when. Remember it wasn’t so long ago CU was apologizing for its indefensibly cozy relationship with the oil industry at the university’s Leeds School of Business. According to the university’s spokesperson, Melanie Marquez Parra, Dr. Helmig was fired because the university didn’t like the way he kept his books. There is no suggestion that his roughly 200 peer-reviewed articles are not valued scientific contributions, only that the university didn’t like being associated directly with his independent efforts to help local communities understand their air quality problems.

Council’s accessibility issue

vided for City Council meetings, the quality is often nonsensical. Take for example a portion of the April 7 meeting. At 12:27 the speaker says, “We need to amend the oil and gas, uh moratorium...[cuts off partially]”. The caption at that point reads, “BABY CRIB MARTIANS SO MOVED TO THEIR SECOND.” In contrast, the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education has been able to provide fairly clear captions. Their meeting, held at the same time as City Council’s meeting on April 28, had captions available the very next morning. If the school district is able to provide this level of access, why can the City not rise to the challenge? One email response I received suggested it was due to lack of manpower and furloughs. Should those that work on accessibility not be a top priority for our city? Please join me in

Boulder City Council’s recent special meeting, in which they voted on a city-wide mask mandate, left out 8.6% of the population — those who are deaf and hard of hearing. Five days and three emails after the last City Council meeting, the April 28 video recording still lacks captions. I believe now more than ever, our city needs to pay attention to accessibility. As audio is the only way to access Council meetings at this time, captions and transcripts should be of upmost importance. Furthermore, as there are times when video audio is not ideal, this issue goes beyond the hard of hearing. With no way for the public to comment on audio quality during the broadcast, there must be a way to ensure what was said can be clearly understood when reviewed later. Even when captions have been proBOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

This is indeed odd, since engineering faculty at CSU have set up a corporation, Ajax Analytics, to do oilrelated, air-quality research. It has received millions in funds for atmospheric research, some of it from the oil industry. Things get curiouser and curiouser since Ajax Analytics has also retained the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck (BHFS) on occasion. As many know, a former partner at the firm, David Bernhardt, is now the Secretary of Interior and has been working sleeplessly to open up even more public land to the failing fossil fuel industry. In 2019, BHFS was the second largest lobbying firm in the United States. Bernhardt reportedly received about $5 million in lobbying fees from fossil fuel companies while natural resources division chief at BHFS. According to Open Secrets, the company received roughly $40 million in lobbying fees in 2019. Neither the university nor the industry is complaining of the work the CSU faculty at Ajax Analytics is doing on oil and gas air quality issues. Dr. Helmig’s lightning-quick firing has the smell of authoritarianism we might expect of the Balsonaro government in Brazil or the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland. Some might even make associations with the

Trumpian merry-go-round in Washington where firings seem to occur on nothing more substantial than a whim. No matter the comparison, Dr. Helmig’s firing is not the action of a public university where we might wish to send our children to be educated and learn the values of intellectual freedom and open dialogue. Clearly President Kennedy and his immediate staff are unfamiliar with the university’s mission statement: to “contribute to the greater good of this community” is its pledge. That is exactly what Dr. Helmig has been doing at the request of and with the funding of Colorado communities. Perhaps the wrong person was fired? A full-scale, independent investigation is surely warranted. Even more importantly, Dr. Helmig’s rights as a respected citizen of our community need to be defended, fiercely. It is essential that the public rise to his defense, that it demand answers, for this is a basic human rights issue. Since we are not yet a Banana Republic, it doesn’t get any more basic. Phillip Doe is a former environmental compliance officer and head of the Reclamation Law Administration for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.

advocating for greater accessibility and transparency in Boulder City Council meetings. Shelby Bates/via internet

presentations repeatedly to discern inconsistencies. Think critically, not politically. Mr. Trump claims that the New York Times has “All the news that’s not fit to print.” Perhaps he would be correct if truth and accuracy were not issues. Having watched Trump’s daily press conferences since mid-March, I discovered that his words and actions matched consistently with the Times reporting. I challenge you to set aside political assumptions and look for the truth. Ask hard questions and allow time to answer them. Seek and find what is honest and life affirming. Be bold and creative. Be a critical thinker. Our survival is at stake. Vote with confidence in November for the person who best reflects the truth because you have spent the time to discover it for yourself. Rosalind Moulton/via internet

Now’s the Time

I’ve never been an activist, a leader or a reader. It took a pandemic to wake me up. If you share even one of my shortcomings, then this message is for you. We have the time now. Time to listen. Time to reflect. Time to discern. Time to challenge our assumptions, so that this November we can vote for the presidential candidate that’s best suited for the office. Why do nearly 49% of Americans believe that President Trump is doing a good job? Let’s examine what might be behind our beliefs and driving our decision making. One could listen to any single speech by President Trump and believe it to be true. But try listening to his MAY 7, 2020

Class is in… the home

ids, particularly those who are under 6 or are neurodiverse, learn critical socialization skills in school. But with local school districts switching to online classes for the remainder of the school year, specialized education institutions like preschools and special ed centers are following suit, creating a dilemma: How does one teach social skills without being allowed to be social? Amy Cavanaugh Chally, director at Mt. View Preschool in South Boulder, says teaching social skills is the main focus at the school, and it can’t be replicated at home. “The academia for little kids, that will catch up. That is not a concern at all,” Chally says. “It’s about learning how to work in a community situation. How to work in groups. How to share, how to make friends, how to approach a friend group. It’s all social-emotional learning that’s happening here, and it just can’t be recreated at home with

Socialization is a critical skill preschoolers and special ed students learn in school. A physical school. So how are educators at these institutions coping during social distancing?

by Matt Cortina

MAY 7, 2020

PRESCHOOLS

your family. It has to be introducAND SPECIAL ED institutions are ing [kids] to new groups of friends trying to figure out and forming your own communities how to provide and forming your own groups outquality education during the panside of your family.” demic. Even as social distancing requirements relax in the coming year, Chally says Mt. View will have to limit class sizes to 10 students, and make sure classes are separated into different rooms. The long-term financial impacts for the nonprofit preschool are large and unknown — its furloughed most of its staff — but the ramifications for getting kids back into school, any school, could be substantial, given the likelihood of limiting class sizes at all preschools. “The major concern is what’s going to happen in the fall when they can only take half as many kids? Where are all the kids going to go?” Chally says, adding that state regulators “haven’t had an answer on that yet.” Chally says it would betray Mt. View’s mission to raise tuition to make up for the smaller class sizes, but that she’s concerned other families might face that burden and some schools might have to disenroll kids. At the Temple Grandin School (TGS) in north Boulder, which serves a small neurodiverse student body (those with autism, Asperger’s and other developmental disorders), executive director Jen Wilger is concerned about making sure kids get the kind of individuI

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alized education and socialization their families signed up for. As part of TGS’s socio-academic program, for instance, students work on a research project about something that interests them, while teachers assess how much the student grows during the process. That core program has been difficult as the school has transitioned to remote learning, Wilger says. “They’ve got a very structured set of procedures they’re doing to improve a skill or develop a new skill,” she says. “With that program in particular, it’s more about the process not so much the product, being able to have teachers monitor work on a daily basis. We’re doing it virtually but it’s tricky, especially with younger middle schools students. Following directions given online, we have to do a lot of explaining and screen-sharing because they don’t keep that in their heads.” And in TGS’s “Perspectives” program, building social skills through natural interactions is the key focus, but it’s been made impossible by the switch to remote learning. Wilger likens the project to a group “science fair but a little higher intellectual level,” wherein students dive into a STEM-related project in a group, and teachers who could monitor social interaction have real-time feedback on how one student is working with his or her peers. “The bottom has gone out of that,” Wilger says. “Our kids were grooving on it, they love thinking about big problems and talking about ideas. The content is exciting to them enough to the point they can overcome the challenges of working in a group. That piece is missing right now.” But the benefits of socialization in schools like Mt. View and TGS extend beyond school walls — the connections they make there lead to friendships, which extends social learning. it is particularly critical for BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

neurodiverse kids, Wilger says, who may have had difficulty making such connections in public school. “The thing that’s hard for our kids right now is they’ve struggled so much along their educational journey and eventually have found their way to [TGS], where they feel settled, they’ve found their tribe, they’re part of a fun community and they’re just drinking in that experience. To have that cut off has been the hardest part.” TGS is helping foster those friendships by providing activities for families to keep their kids engaged, and by facilitating Minecraft and Dungeons and Dragons games to keep students engaged with one another “We’re building in ways for them to connect,” Wilger says. That’s one thing Firefly Autism, which serves the Front Range, is embracing, despite the challenges posed by remote engagement. When stay-at-home orders were first announced in Colorado, Firefly “immediately converted all of our programs to telehealth,” says Jesse Ogas, vice president at Firefly. Ogas says the new arrangements have worked, mostly, because Firefly is based on a one-to-one instruction model that individualizes lessons for each student — “When you’ve met a person with autism, you’ve met a single person with autism. Not one is alike.” The biggest difference, outside of the technological interface, is the structure of those lessons — instead of a six-hour in-person program, now students have about two hours of remote instruction. But the new normal has its benefits, Ogas says. “For some of our students it’s been a very difficult transition,” he says, “but there has also been some really amazing things happen since this. One of the most important things I think is we have seen a level of family engagement that

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EDUCATION from Page 9

we’ve not seen before.” Maintaining any level of structure and normalcy is paramount for Firefly’s patrons, Ogas says, not only because it keeps their social and academic development on track but because moments of turmoil, like this pandemic, are particularly tough on neurodiverse people. “For us as neurotypical individuals, the pandemic has been scary, frustrating, daunting, because it’s the unknown. But for a child on the spectrum it magnifies for them because some of our kids aren’t necessarily verbal. For them to try to express the fears, the anxieties, the unknowns... to them it’s very difficult. You see that in acting out, you see it in self-injurious behavior or behavior that hurts others in the household, or they break things,” Ogas says, adding that that’s not been the norm and that Firefly staff will administer in-home work, following health guidelines, if necessary. But there are a few silver linings in all of this. Ogas says the switch to telehealth services has helped start the conversation with insurance companies and Medicaid to allow for such services to be cov10

If there’s any group of organizations built to handle a post-COVID-19 world, it’s schools, where staff are already trained in first aid and universal health precautions.

ered. And, he says, it’s been a good time to grow the numbers of both staff and students. “While many organizations have had furloughs and layoffs, we’re being inundated by families looking for services. We’re being inundated by professionals from the field approaching us,” he says. Wilger says the connections staff and students have forged at TGS are helping the switch to remote learning succeed, so much so that the school may incorporate it into future offerings. “It’s been so successful that it’s caused us to wonder, are there other kids for whom this would work that we’re not currently serving?” she says. “The key thing we’re continuMAY 7, 2020

ing to provide is really the depth of our relationships. Our teachers really know these kids and can anticipate what their challenges will be. And so the comfort level of making that connection was already there before we started the online [programming]. They’re able to continue that. The support is felt in a real way.” TGS has also been able to secure guest speakers within the neurodiverse world to chat with students over Zoom that they normally wouldn’t be able to secure because they were too busy in the pre-pandemic world. Temple Grandin has spoken to students herself, and on the schedule are Chris Bonello of Autistic Not I

Weird, who will speak about perfectionism and creativity, and Michael McReary, a young comedian on the autism spectrum. Ultimately, though, educators can’t replace the benefits of in-person teaching and socialization. And it’s important, Chally at Mt. View says, for these specialized schools to open so the rest of the economy can too. “We need centers to be open and we’ve been told by public health if you don’t have a place for kids to go then it’s going to be impossible for us to open the economy,” Chally says. “We have just as many concerns and questions as they do. I think some people might think it’s irresponsible for childcare centers to open but there are people who need it.” Chally adds that if there’s any group of organizations built to handle a post-COVID-19 world, it’s schools, where staff are already trained in first aid and universal health precautions. “This is part of our industry,” she says. “Kids get sick, and we try all the time to prevent the spread of illness. We are kind of familiar with these kinds of issues.” BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Senior living facilities work to contain COVID-19 as Colorado moves to ‘safer-at-home’ by Angela K. Evans and Matt Cortina

s the state of Colorado begins to loosen stay-at-home restrictions, one place they’ll remain is in senior living facilities across the state. There will still be no congregating, no in-person dining and mandatory health screenings for essential visitors and residents alike. All facilities must have a prevention and response plan filed with the state. COVID-19 is having an outsize impact on assisted and other senior living facilities across the country. More than 19,600 residents of long-term care facilities have died of COVID-19, according to the New York Times. And the numbers are similarly extensive in Colorado, where more than 1,200 senior home residents have tested positive for COVID-19, with 340 confirmed deaths — roughly one-third of the total number of COVID-19-related deaths in the state. In a press statement, Mark Parkinson, president and CEO of the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL), said, “Our pro-

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

fession has been sounding the alarm for weeks and weeks, but we have largely been forgotten by the public health sector. If we are not made a top priority, this situation will get worse with the most vulnerable in our society being lost.” Parkinson called on states and the federal government to provide priority testing to senior living facility residents and staff members, and to provide more funding to help the industry respond to challenges posed by COVID-19. “Without access to more testing, nursing homes and assisted living communities are at a severe disadvantage in protecting our residents,” Parkinson stated. “Long-term care facilities, especially ones with COVID-19 cases, need to be able to alert all residents and staff due to the fact that many individuals are not exhibiting symptoms.” As more long-term care facilities have gained access to testing, more tests are coming back positive from residents and staff members who were asymptomic, unknowingly spreading the disease in the relatively isolated communities. Funding would also help long-term care facilities purchase and secure personal protective equipment (PPE). The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recently announced it would ship PPE to more than 15,000 long-term care facilities around the U.S., though it likely won’t be enough to meet the need. see SENIORS Page 12

MAY 7, 2020

SENIORS from Page 11

There are 86 confirmed cases in Boulder County long-term care facilities, with 23 confirmed deaths as of May 1, according to outbreak data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment (CDPHE). That’s roughly half of the 44 confirmed deaths in the County. There are dozens more non-lab-confirmed probable cases at these facilities as well. Frasier, a senior living community in South Boulder, has had relatively few cases, with its first confirmed case on March 25. Since then, there have been a total of three confirmed cases in the community of more than 500 residents and only two probable cases as of May 4. When it comes to the staff, the numbers are similar: two confirmed, four probable (more than the official state count as of May 1). Frasier’s CEO and President, Tim Johnson, says the nonprofit organization was able to stave off more widespread infection by acting fast. As part of a consortium of 19 other similar communities throughout the country, Johnson has been talking with other CEOs on a weekly basis, and facilities with early outbreaks in New York and New Orleans are in Frasier’s network. This allowed Frasier to benefit from other communities’ experiences and implement protections before the disease had really started spreading in Colorado. “On a daily basis we’re interacting with fellow colleagues who are truly on the frontline of this and we’re able to get in there ahead of anything that has occurred here at Frasier,” Johnson says. “We ended up being pretty proactive, I think from what we can see now looking back, pretty early in this process.” Also, being a nonprofit has benefited Frasier, Johnson says, allowing him to make quick, on-theground decisions, rather than wait for direction from corporate leadership someplace else. Those decisions included cancelling group activities, dining room service and even in-person staff meetings by mid-March, while everyone interacting with residents have been required to wear masks from the very beginning. Residents are strongly encouraged to wear masks as well. Starting March 16, all independent living residents have been selfquarantining. To keep residents connected and properly informed, Frasier is putting out daily communication through videos, printed flyers and weekly calls from management. Johnson says each week he personally checks in with 25 residents, as does all of senior leadership. Although Johnson says the facility has plenty of PPE, including masks and isolation gowns, testing is still a problem. In terms of testing, Frasier asks

the state every week for more, but “they’ve been opposed to any blanket testing,” Johnson says. “We are constantly told that it is not appropriate at this point in time.” Johnson says that in the midst of all this, Frasier is beginning to plan for the future, how operations might differ in the coming weeks. For example, the dining room will only open to about 50% capacity to account for social distancing and the buffet may never come back as a sanitary precaution. Despite how different the future might look, Johnson is confident the changes will all be

residents,” Lee wrote in an email to Boulder Weekly. “We also then began suspending communal dining programs and activities as prevention efforts for the safety and protection of the residents.” At The Bridge, residents live in private units, with communal areas like a dining hall and recreation center. Staff handles housekeeping, laundry and unit maintenance. Century Park manages assisted living facilities in 19 states across the country, and as the appearance of COVID-19 in senior living facilities is widespread, The Bridge at Longmont isn’t the only one of its facilities to have confirmed cases. In Utah, Century Park’s High Cove Assisted Living Center has seven confirmed COVID19-related deaths. None of the other six facilities Century Park operates in Colorado has reported cases. “Since the beginning of this pandemic crisis, The Bridge at Longmont, along with every Century Park community, has been working closely with local health departments, local medical professionals and has been following all CDC guidelines,” Lee wrote. “Our mission as a company through this crisis is to communicate, with transparency, all that we are doing to keep residents and staff safe from this virus entering our buildings and containing it if it does.” CDPHE has offered guidance to long-term living facility providers on how to treat COVID19 in their communities. It says that communication is critical and that “rumors can spread like wildfire and incorrect information can do a lot of damage.” In the event a resident exhibits symptoms of COVID-19, facilities are instructed to place the person in a private room, contact their health professional, notify the local public health department and begin contact tracing by finding out who that person may have been in contact with in the last 30 days. In senior living facilities health officials might know where to look first, given close quarters and communal spaces. And that’s the problem. Especially considering older adults are at higher risk of developing serious complications from COVID-19, according to the CDC. Which is why long-term care facilities are keeping stricter policies for the forseeable future. “The tendency is for people to drop their guard,” Johnson from Frasier says. “They hear what the governor has done to relax the restrictions on the rest of the state. But senior living communities are a vulnerable population and those restrictions have not been lifted yet.”

“It’s a crazy thing that happens in

pandemics. There are new advances in health care, there are new ways of learning how to do things.” — Tim Johnson, CEO/President of Frasier

for the better. “It’s a crazy thing that happens in pandemics,” Johnson says. “There are new advances in health care, there are new ways of learning how to do things, we’re seeing it in our [different] technologies, we’re connecting differently, and in some respects, better as a result of that. And I don’t think we’re going to lose those ideas. We’ll embrace those in our programming as we move forward.” But that doesn’t mean any of the restrictions Frasier has put in place will be lifted anytime soon. “I’m pleased to report, we’ve had no new cases, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to get one next week,” Johnson says. At the higher end of the spectrum (locally), The Bridge at Longmont, operated by Century Park Associates, has had 22 cases of COVID-19 in residents and staff, with 7 deaths, according to state data. On March 13, Century Park announced it had no confirmed cases of COVID-19, though The Bridge began putting in safety protocols that day, according to Century Park COO Esmerelda Lee. Those measures included administering screening for residents, visitors and associates before entry to the communities, restricting visitation and providing a testing site to staff members “should they want to be tested.” Two weeks later, on March 28, The Bridge started to “enforce and [make] available masks for all our direct care staff to use while caring for our MAY 7, 2020

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

By the numbers

s of May 1, Boulder County has 8 facilities with confirmed COVID-19 outbreaks, including health care, skilled nursing, independent living and assisted living facilities, according to data published by the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment. An outbreak is defined as 2 or more confirmed COVID-19 cases in a facility and is considered over 28 days after the last case was confirmed. Below is a list of cases, probable cases that aren’t lab-confirmed and deaths at each facility that includes both residents and staff. (There have been no instances of death among staff at any of these facilities.)

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MAY 7, 2020

Nasty surprises and how to deal with them:

A warning from the grave

By Paul Danish

tephen Schneider died on July 19, 2010 of a pulmonary embolism on a flight from Stockholm to London. He was 65, one of the best-known climatologists in the world, and one of the leading voices urging international action against global warming. I first met him at the start of his career, when he was a brash, young scientist at NCAR. The year was 1976, and he had just published his first book, The Genesis Strategy, which gained him international recognition. I’d interviewed him when the book came out for a piece in the Boulder Town & Country Review (of blessed memory), a weekly paper that occupied the niche now filled by Boulder Weekly. A year or two later I was at a party at his house where I got to talk to him about his latest projects. He said he was working on a second book, and he gave me a draft of the outline for it and a draft of the first chapter. By then I was no longer working for Town & Country, so I set them aside. A few weeks ago I was cleaning out a storage locker at an undisclosed location in North Boulder (aka The Crypt) when they turned up in a box of old story ideas. 14

MAY 7, 2020

Both were dated June 1977 and labeled “First Draft.” Reading them was like opening a time capsule. They provided an intellectual portrait of Schneider at a time in his life when his worldview was developing, and of the world in which he was developing it. A lot of the specific problems in that world have since been overtaken by events and replaced by others. His views on climate change and how to deal with it were still in the process of jelling. But the papers also contained some advice on how to deal with what today we call “black swan” events like the coronavirus pandemic; Schneider called them “nasty surprises.” His prescription for surviving them is as timely today as it was 43 years ago. Schneider argued that the way to deal with the nasty surprises would be to adopt what he called an “Exodus strategy,” named after the strategy the Egyptian Pharaoh adopted at the urging of Joseph for dealing with crop failures: Stockpile some of the agricultural surpluses produced during the years with good harvests into storage for use during years with poor ones. Schneider proposed stockpiles of food and strategic materials. However the Exodus strategy went beyond that. Here are the main points: • Have a reserve. • Hedge your bets. • Avoid over-dependence on any particular resource or supplier. • Set up systems for early detection of impending nasty surprises. • Ascertain the real costs of catastrophes. I

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

One of Schneider’s main worries was that the technologies that the country and world were coming to depend on for national and civilizational survival ... were becoming so complex that the investment in time and effort necessary to understand them was beyond the means of most ordinary people.

• Buy time. (This is not the time to choose; too many uncertainties). • The developing world can’t be allowed the luxury of learning from its own nasty surprises. • Determine whether a particular nasty surprise comes with irreversible or reversible consequences. This is critical for choosing the strategy for dealing with it. Schneider was thinking about nasty surprises in the context of climate change and its likely consequences — famines, floods, droughts, hurricanes — not global pandemics that are not specifically climate-related. But his strategies for dealing with nasty surprises speak to lessons that should be learned from the disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Have a reserve? Hey, those agricultural surpluses the U.S. spent so much time ridding itself of in the past look more like a feature, not a bug in the face, of a sudden shutdown of the economy and empty supermarket shelves. Avoid over-reliance on any particular supplier? Like China maybe, which currently supplies the U.S. with a breath-taking list of critical goods and materials that we used to make for ourselves, including, but not limited to medical supplies. Ascertain the real cost of catastrophes? Like the cost in lives and treasure of letting an epidemic run its course versus the cost in lives and treasure of shutting down the economy in order to combat it. Denying the developing world the luxury of learning from its own nasty surprises? That may seem condescending today, but the truth is China (which is a fully developed country but often acts unlike one) was given that luxury in how it handled the coronavirus. BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Determine whether a particular nasty surprise comes with irreversible or reversible consequences? Schneider attached particular importance to this point. He maintained that societies (human, animal and plant) have both resilience and stability. A nasty surprise with reversible consequences can be dealt with by a stable society; it can either ride out the surprise and maintain its form, “or at least will return to its original form after a perturbation (like a bad winter or a dry year).” A nasty surprise with irreversible consequences or consequences particularly difficult to reverse “suggests that the society or ecosystem may shift to new equilibrium forms, not necessarily the same ones as before but equilibria which may be more appropriate to the times, and the transition from old to new could involve less disruption than the long march back to stability for stable, but not resilient, eco-systems.” Or put another way, when does “the new normal” become “the new normal?”: When transition to the new normal involves less disruption than a return to the old normal. Given the number of people talking about how a national quarantine put in place to deal with a national emergency will define “the new normal” it’s useful to have a definition of when normality transitions occur. But Schneider’s concerns extended beyond creating an Exodus strategy for dealing with the consequences of black swan events. One of his main worries was that the technologies that the country and the world were coming to depend on for national and civilizational survival, and the management infrastructure necessary to operate and maintain them, were becoming so complex that the investment in time and effort I

necessary to understand them was beyond the means of most ordinary people. And that, Schneider said, raises “a very tough question: Is growing complexity governable by democracy?; and its derivative question: Can democracy survive growing technology?” And, “Should there really be a right, not guaranteed in anyone’s constitution, to live in an intelligible world?” And should we consider limiting the introduction of some technologies “solely for the possibility that this increased level of complexity would provide an increasingly unbearable burden on the time of our citizens just to keep up with these issues that are shaping their lives and those of their children?” It’s not clear what technologies Schneider was thinking of in 1977. I think they may have been artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. Then again, 1977 was the year Apple introduced the Apple II and the personal computer revolution took off. The predecessors to today’s internet were just coming into existence at the time — the term “internet” was coined in 1974 — and Schneider was certainly prescient enough to have seen the disruptive potential that could be caused by a communications network with the potential to give everyone on the planet with something to say — educated, ignorant, sane and insane — access to a global audience. Had he lived it would be interesting to know what he made of today’s web and the social media it spawned. As a climate scientist writing in 1977, Schneider argued that there was huge uncertainty about how human activity was changing the climate, but little question that human MAY 7, 2020

activity was having an escalating impact on it. He worried about whether the impact of atmospheric pollution and its effect on the climate could lead to “a food/climate famine catastrophe.” The problem, he said, was that the pollution was coming from technologies and practices whose purpose was to drive the economic growth needed to improve the lives of “the more than 4 billion people that live on Earth, an Earth which still clings to its high population growth rate of about 2% per year, about 80 million new mouths to feed each year resulting in a doubling time for human population of 35 years.” (Today’s world population is 7.7 billion and is still growing by about 80 million a year, but the population growth rate has dropped to about 1%; which means the time needed for the population to double is about 70 years, not 35. In other words we’ve bought time, but the clock is still running.) Schneider declared himself a “Neo-neo-Malthusian”: “[I]n this case, I am not merely joining those arguing that population will grow ‘geometrically’ while food supply grows ‘arithmetically,’ but rather, in this case, there is a Malthusian analogy I call a ‘neotwist’: Insults to both our physical and social environments are growing very rapidly whereas our understanding of the implications of such growth is unable to keep up with the potential impacts of these insults. ... We are insulting the environment ‘geometrically,’ but understanding it only ‘arithmetically.’” Under these circumstances, nasty surprises will become commonplace, he said. And so it came to pass. I

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

What we don’t talk about when we talk about masks People of color may face increased discrimination with public health orders

by Angela K. Evans

hen the CDC urged everyone to wear cloth face masks when out in public to slow the spread of the coronavirus at the beginning of April, people of color around the country expressed hesita-

a mask, when she got out of the long checkout line to ask an employee a question about an item she couldn’t find. She says the man was abrupt and rude to her, brushing off her question and telling her she had to go back to the tion. end of the line. “I thought I could use one of my old bandan“He never once intended to help me,” nas as a mask. But then my voice of self-protecRobinson says. “I did not want to cause a scene, so tion reminded me that I, a black man, cannot walk I finally went on my own and found [someone into a store with a bandanna covering the greater else].” part of my face if I also expect to walk out of that In the County’s announcement of the store,” Aaron Thomas, from Columbus, Ohio, “Public Health Facial Covering Order,” schedwrote in an opinion piece for the Boston Globe. uled to take effect on May 9, Boulder County “For me, the fear of being mistaken for an armed Public Health Executive Director Jeff Zayach robber or assailant is greater than the fear of conacknowledged “reports of discrimination associtracting COVID-19.” ated with mask wearing,” but appealed to a pubNow jurisdictions lic sense of solidarity across Colorado are manas the virus does not dating public facial coverdiscriminate. “There ings from Aspen and is simply no place for Summit County to discrimination. We Denver, Fort Collins and can and will solve of course both the City of this problem togethBoulder and Boulder er,” he said. County. And local groups, The order requires like the NAACP Boulder everyone above the — Madelyn Strong Woodley, County branch, are conage of 12 to wear face cerned that the mandates coverings anywhere NAACP Boulder County memwill only add to discrimioutside the home ber nation and negative where maintaining impressions about people of color. six feet of separation is difficult. “The fact that we’re required to wear masks “We did think long and hard about a mask now just amplifies it and adds to racism,” says requirement because of the discrimination issues Madelyn Strong Woodley, a lifetime member of the that we had heard [in national media] as well as NAACP Boulder County who lives in Longmont. mandating something that not everyone has access “Discrimination happened before the pandemic, it’s to,” says Chana Goussetis with Boulder County. going to happen after the pandemic if we get “But we decided to go ahead not because cloth through it, [but] particularly adding the requireface masks are the panacea solution, but they are ment of a mask for African Americans is going to one tool in the toolbox to help prevent droplets present issues that ordinarily wouldn’t be.” moving from one person to the next. We decided She says that it just adds to the perception that it was important for us to do everything we that some people already have about black peocan to help people stay safe.” ple and face coverings. “In their minds, you’re The City of Boulder adopted a similar policy able to hide and not be identified thus giving on April 30 that mandates everyone wear “nonyou more freedom in their minds to steal, which medical face coverings” both inside and outside they already think we do anyway,” she says. businesses where services are provided. The hope “It’s that look of distrust, a suspiciousness, the is to prevent the spread of the coronavirus from ‘I don’t know what you’re here for,’” adds the mask wearer to others, says Boulder Mayor Woodley’s sister Glenda Strong Robinson, a Sam Weaver, even if it means people must adjust board member of the NAACP, who has lived in their perspective. Longmont for more than 40 years. Recently, “Culturally and socially we’re all going to have Robinson says, she was at Home Depot, wearing to get used to seeing masks on each other and that

“Discrimination happened before the pandemic, it’s going to happen after the pandemic.”

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

MAY 7, 2020

is something that regardless of race or ethnicity we have not had to deal with a lot before,” he says. “It’s a cultural shift for us and that includes perceptions of people of color with masks on being somehow more threatening than if they don’t have a mask on. I believe that’s something that all of us have to adapt to. To the extent that it’s a real problem we need to speak about it and address it frankly.” Both the City and County mandates come with enforcement provisions, which for the County includes a $5,000 fine and up to a year in jail. Although, Goussetis says the point of the order is education not punishment. “That’s not the purpose. The purpose is for people to be aware and take action to protect themselves and others around them,” she says. Still, Robinson and Woodley question how law enforcement agencies will interact with communities of color with regard to the new facial covering mandates. “It’s like the police situation when you’re out in public and you’re an African American male: ‘I don’t want to die today. I don’t want to get confronted. I don’t want to get beat up. I don’t want to have a confrontation with you,’” Robinson says. “Of course, I’m an older black woman, so that won’t necessarily happen. But depending on how I responded to that man [at Home Depot] we could’ve had a showdown right then and there.” The NAACP Boulder County branch launched an online survey on May 5 seeking to collect data on discrimination and microaggression incidents related to the coronavirus in Boulder County. The survey asks participants how comfortable they are wearing a mask in public and if they were wearing one when they experienced discrimination, among other details. “Boulder County residents may have had to endure an incident in a store where another patron or an employee was distrustful or harassed them,” says Susan Pfretzschner, communications chair for NAACP Boulder County. “We’re trying to document that. We have a good idea that it’s happening, but we don’t have the data.” Still, Robinson and Woodley say that they are wearing face coverings when going out in public, despite the very real possibility it will lead to some sort of discrimination incident. “You deal with it. It’s going to happen,” Woodley says. “What else can we do?” I

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF DARCY KITCHING

Out your front door

The urban hiking movement may have an answer to safer-at-home recreation travel restrictions

by Angela K. Evans

eeling the dirt under our feet and breathing in fresh air away from traffic while taking in mountain views is a way of life for many

(although certainly not all) Coloradans, especially those in Boulder County. But when Governor Jared Polis announced his new “safer-at-home” policy at the end of April, it came with stricter limits on traveling for recreational purposes, encouraging residents to stay within 10 miles from home, preferably within their own communities. 18

“We’re not supposed to be going to mountain communities. We’re not supposed to be driving to Rocky Mountain National Park. We’re not even supposed to be really going up into the foothills,” says urban hiking and walking enthusiast Darcy Kitching from Boulder. But, she says, “You can take all of that delight and joy and curiosity and wonder that you bring to going someplace new, right into your own neighborhood. Treat your neighborhood like a great hike.” Urban hiking is a growing movement within outdoor recreation circles, thanks in large part to athletes like Liz Thomas, who has become an advocate of the sport in recent years. Thomas is known for breaking the unsupported women’s speed record on the Appalachian Trail in 2011, as well as completing the Triple Crown of Hiking, adding the Pacific Coast Trail and the Continental Divide Trail to the AT and logging more than 20,000 miles across U.S. trails. She’s also traversed cities like Los Angeles, Seattle, New York and Denver, where in 2017 she hiked 88 miles over eight days to visit more than 60 breweries. As Thomas told the Guardian, completing her first urban hike in Los Angeles in 2013 changed her view of hiking. “It sparked something in me in how I thought about being active, how I thought about the urban landscape, and how I thought about how people interact with nature and their bodies,” she said. But what makes an urban hike different from a MAY 7, 2020

DARCY KITCHING walk around your neighbor(below left with Amy hood? Lewin) encourages us to live life at three According to urban hikmiles an hour — the ing pioneer Bob Inman in average walking pace. his book Finding Los Angeles by Foot it’s “about finding what is notable, historical, quizzical and beautiful ... while walking. It is about learning and using pedestrian-ways where a car may not go.” It’s applying the adventurous and curious spirit of hiking in unfamiliar wilderness to streets, sidewalks, alleyways, multi-use paths and even dirt trails within your city. “An urban hike tends to be something that is less familiar to you,” Kitching says. In her new guidebook on the subject, The Best Urban Hikes: Boulder, commissioned by the Colorado Mountain Club, Kitching details 22 urban hikes through Boulder, Longmont, Niwot, Lafayette, Louisville and Superior, highlighting the 265 miles of trails between city and county open space systems. Kitching grew up in Colorado and has hiked most her life, but with a background in urban planning, she’s also an “urban explorer,” someone who loves traveling, enthralled by the concept of place that defines most of our lives. “In Colorado we all want to spend our weekends going up to the mountains and I did that too,” she says. “But we are all lucky to live anywhere in Colorado. So right now, I think [it’s about] learning to appreciate the views that you have at home.” Along with the directive from the state, Boulder County has also encouraged people to avoid long travel for recreation throughout the coronavirus pandemic. Still, open space agencies along the BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Front Range are reporting that increased visitation has led to trail and natural resource damage as people often step or hike off trail to try to stay six feet apart from others. Additionally, trailheads and neighborhood access points have become overwhelmingly congested as people flock to open space areas. Vivienne Jannatpour with Boulder County Parks and Open Space says regional trails, like the ones Kitching explores in her guidebook, are often a better option than overcrowded and popular open space hiking destinations. Not only are these trails wider, allowing for appropriate spacing between groups without damaging habitat, but they also have multiple access points, which helps decrease congestion at trailhead parking lots. “Part of what we’ve been trying to get across when we say try to stay at home as much as possible is that there’s nature in neighborhoods, there’s little neighborhood trails,” Jannatpour says. “You can go for a hike without going to crowded places,” Kitching adds. “The spirit of urban hiking is doing something different. If you’re always going up to Chautauqua and you feel like that’s the hike that makes you feel fit, well get the same distance somewhere else. We can all do that right now: Turn a different direction — go east instead of west, go north instead of south — see something new.” Her book offers a range of urban hikes from two to 10 miles, although Kitching says many of the routes can serve as a starting point to much longer adventures. The St. Vrain Greenway for example is a great place for an urban hike, a paved path along the river with plenty to BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

explore in Longmont. But it also takes you all the way out to Weld County. Not included in the guidebook, however, is Kitching’s Walk 360 Slow Marathon, a 26-mile loop around Boulder that links a variety of different historical landmarks and places of interest in hopes of connecting people more tangibly with their city. She developed the route as the head of the Boulder Chapter of Walk2Connect, a national grassroots nonprofit cooperative that advocates for connection-based walking programs in places from Kodiak, Alaska to Miami, Florida. It was founded

by Denver resident Jonathon Stalls in 2012, after he walked more than 3,000 miles from Delaware to California in search of discovering a respite from the busyness of the world around him. Stalls’ journey spawned a philosophy Kitching, and the larger Walk2Connect movement, calls “life at three miles an hour.” It’s about slowing down all of life — changing the way we work, think and interact with each other — to mimic the average walking pace. It’s about appreciating what’s in front I

MAY 7, 2020

‘THE BEST

of us at every turn, being URBAN HIKES: awed by the beauty all BOULDER’ explores the 256 around us, which we often miles of urban overlook, especially in our trails in Boulder modern, fast-paced, preCounty. coronavirus world. “Our society moves very fast and being a car-dominated world, we often kind of find ourselves caught up in this 55-mile an hour mindset,” Kitching says. “Walk2Connect really serves to bring people down to a natural human pace and really slowing down everything so that we can nurture our relationships, so that we can nurture our connection to places.” In a lot of ways, Kitching has been advocating for the very lifestyle the current guidelines for staying close to home demand of us for years. Urban hiking asks us to leave the ego behind and explore the places right outside our front door with the same enthusiasm and wonder that we often bring to our adventures in the backcountry. And it’s a lifestyle Kitching hopes will continue long after the pandemic, and the strict public health orders that come with it, end. “That’s what I hope: we really hold onto this philosophy of slowing down, giving ourselves breaks when we need them, moving our bodies so that we keep our minds and our bodies healthy, and just keeping that mindset of connecting to ourselves, to places and to others at a human pace,” she says. “We don’t want to make light of the pandemic. But if it can help inspire more conscious and conscientious ways of being, I think that’s a net benefit in some way.” I

n late January, the dead came to visit Alain Johannes in his dreams. It certainly wasn’t the first time, but this time the guitarist himself had escaped death — or maybe the two just exchanged glances in passing. Either way, the fear was real; death had made its presence known. At the turn of the new year, Johannes spent two months battling pneumonia and acute bronchitis, struggling to breathe and praying to wake up in the morning. He had a record to write, and so much more to do, for himself and for Natasha. She was one of the people in his dream: Natasha Schneider, his late wife, a virtuosic musician, a keyboardist by training, who escaped the Soviet Union in the late ’70s. The other was his friend Chris Cornell, the Gen Xer whose voice carried a generation on after Kurt Cobain couldn’t anymore. His wife and his friend serenaded Johannes from a distance on a beach, like mermaids, “lamenting and suffering, but also beckoning you and beautiful,” he says. When he awoke, he wrote the lyrics to the first track on his forthcoming album, Hum. The process of writing the record went on in this 20

BY CAITLIN ROCKETT

TOM BROWNOWSKI

alain Somewhere in the dreams Alain Johannes heals with ‘Hum’

meditative way, with one track setting up the path to the next, day after day until the record was recorded and written 12 days later. “Each song came from listening in the silence of the songs before it,” Johannes says from temporary digs in Santiago, Chile, where he was born, but certainly not where he was raised. His mother, Rommi Wells, toured Europe in a ’60s pop trio with her brothers, one of whom was Peter Rock, who helped shepherd rock ‘n’ roll into Chile during the ’50s and ’60s. Johannes and his siblings lived in eight countries during their childhood. He speaks three languages (four if you count some conversational German) as a result and plays dozens of

MAY 7, 2020

instruments. He didn’t know his father, also a famous Chilean singer, until Johannes was nearly 50. His beloved uncle Peter — who gave Johannes his first guitar and taught him a few chords — passed in 2016, a few years after Rommi, who died a few weeks before Johannes’ father, a few years after Schneider passed in 2008. The dead visit Johannes often. Waking or asleep, he feels their presence. I wonder if he believes in an afterlife. “I do in the sense that I don’t need to know what it is, and I don’t even need to be certain,” he says. “[The concept of an afterlife] is an extension of this view I have of existence as being magical. I’ve experienced it from the creative acts where synchronicities are hapBOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

pening, connections with people are happening, special moments where an owl shows up and looks down at me from the top of the roof and starts to talk to me in its way.” Johannes’ existence is magical in the extraordinary sense. By the time he was a teenager his family had set up shop in Hollywood. Johannes went to Fairfax High School, where he formed a band called What is This with Jack Irons, Hillel Slovak and Michael Balzary, who today goes by the name Flea. His three bandmates, along with their friend Anthony Keidis, would go on to form the Red Hot Chili Peppers. (Slovak is also in the afterlife, overdosing on heroin at the age of 26 in 1988.) But it was Schneider who brought the most magic to Johannes’ life, and believe it or not, she came to him first in a dream when he was 22. “In my dream it’s dark,” Johannes says. “I can’t really see, but I’m on a teeter totter and I’m bouncing up and down in a field and there’s this female presence on the other side. I can’t see her face so I said, ‘What’s your name?’ And she said, ‘My name is Natasha and we’re going to meet.’” The next day a friend brought Schneider to Johannes’ home (at the time in Mexico City). She was looking for the right collaborator to cut a record with. Johannes moved in with Schneider two weeks after they met, in 1985 (much to the consternation of his mother). It was the beginning of nearly a quarter of a century of music and travel and otherworldly connection. Theirs was a love that friends speak of with reverence. Matt Cameron, drummer for Soundgarden, called Johannes and Schneider’s musical relationship “telepathic” in a 2018 documentary about Johannes called Unfinished Plan. “It was fascinating to watch those two work.” The pair went on to form the art-rock group Eleven with Jack Irons, turning out lyrically introspective songs that took baroque, prog-rock-esque turns. America, steeped in the sludge of grunge, wasn’t quite ready for what Eleven was offering in the early ’90s, and they only breached the charts with one song, “Reach Out,” from their eponymous debut album. But Eleven’s influence was all over the charts: in the Chili Peppers, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. When Soundgarden disbanded in ’97, Cornell turned to Johannes and Schneider to help write, record and engiBOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

neer his debut solo album, Euphoria Morning. When Josh Homme needed some help with Queens of the Stone Age records, he sought out Johannes and Schneider. The pair toured with QotSA in ’05 and ’06 behind the Lullabies to Paralyze album. Then suddenly Schneider was sick. There were 11 months between her cancer diagnosis and her death in July 2008. More than 20 years of collaboration came to a halt, and the alternative music world mourned. Cornell often dedicated a song from Euphoria Morning to Natasha during live shows. During an interview for Unfinished Plan, Homme has to walk off camera to collect himself when asked about her. Johannes still processes her death on a daily basis. “I think some people think, oh man, this guy doesn’t stop grieving,” Johannes says. “I just don’t want people to forget, especially because they don’t get to know her like I do. Even in JOHANNES the music, it’s not the with his late whole picture, the whole wife Natasha Schneider in story is not there. I want the mid-1980s. people to realize she wasn’t just a good keyboardist or cool. She was, to me, by far the most talented person I’ve ever met or worked with — that’s just the way it is. And so I keep reminding people. Even in the lyrics for the very last song on the [upcoming] record, I tried to be a little bit more direct about what she means to me.” “All that we started / And gave me to tend / All that we started / I’ll see to the end,” he sings in “Finis.” “Sown in your will / Upstream / I will flow / Holding our keep / I’ll run deep / As you would.” Hum, Johannes’ third solo record, isn’t a tribute to his lost friends (though there are elements of that) but a snapshot of his mind as he processed his own brush with death. You can almost feel Johannes getting stronger — healing from his prolonged illness — as the record progresses through the 10 tracks. He leans into the trance-like characteristic of Indian classical music, deepening the meditative quality of the record, inviting the listener to lose themselves momentarily in mystical sounds. For Johannes, it’s a recommitment to the love that will stay with him, that will not die, until he himself finally greets death face to face. “Music is sacred,” he says. “I’ve got to make as much as I can.” I

Alain Johannes’ Heavy Rotation What this musicians’ musician is listening to. n FIONA APPLE — ‘FETCH THE BOLT CUTTERS’

“I listened to it for like a week straight. You don’t understand — I didn’t stop listening to it. Like when I would go walk around I would listen to the record. I think it’s one of the most powerful and important records I’ve ever heard. She’s touching on something … a mode of expression, going through the deepest honesty, and with a sense of humor about it. And there is a wisdom about her now. I can’t even intellectualize it because it’s such a visceral experience from listening to it. It also makes me feel really, really happy and free, and it makes me giggle because it’s so daring. It deserves all the kudos it’s getting.”

n BRAD MEHLDAU — ‘AFTER BACH’

Mehldau recorded four preludes and one fugue from J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, each followed by a piece written by Mehldau and inspired by its Bach companion. “That one has been my go-to at night because I leave music on while I sleep. It’s mellow. Some Bach is kind of jumpy and will wake you up in the middle of the night. That’s why I never fall asleep to classical radio because it starts playing German opera around two in the morning and you’re like, ‘Oh no, I woke up.’”

n AVI AVITAL — ‘BACH: PARTITA NO. 2’

“I’ve been listening to a lot of mandolin players recently. Avi Avital is an Israeli mandolin player on Deutsche Grammophon [a German classical record label]. He’s just amazing.”

n STEVE REICH

The American composer was instrumental in the development of minimal music. His Music for 18 Musicians marked a breakthrough in minimalism. David Bowie cited it as one of his favorite albums.

n “Every once in a while, to get the energy up, I’ll put on a bit of a FEARLESS FLYERS OR VULFPECK OR NAT SMITH. You

know, the very accomplished funky stuff.”

n ON THE BILL: Hum by Alain Johannes will be available on July 31 from Ipecac Records, alainjohannes.com

MAY 7, 2020

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BOULDER COUNTYâ€™S INDEPENDENT VOICE

What to do when there’s ‘nothing’ to do...

VIRTUAL EVENTS BY BOULDER WEEKLY STAFF

If your organization is planning an event of any kind, please email Caitlin at crockett@boulderweekly.com. ogre? Watch the final dress rehearsal at eTown sung in English, fully staged and featuring an ensemble orchestra. One-hour duration. Or watch it sung in the original Spanish with captions and narration 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 7, facebook.com/events/longmontrecorded on ACapella! Twenty-five minute duration. Video available museum-and-cultural-center. from May 8 to June 8. Diva Concert Duo Azure: Soprano Ekaterina Kotcherguina and oin the Longmont Museum’s Curator of History Erik Mason as he pianist Jessica Nilles have long been friends and collaborators, and looks back at the 1918 flu pandemic in Longmont, drawing comthey frequently perform around Colorado. In their parisons, sharing historic photos, and providing ERYN BROOKE OF GYPSY SUN not-so-infinite free time, the duo enjoys going on meaningful perspectives on our current situation. hiking adventures together. For more information, In conversation with Justin Veach, manager of the check out their website duoazure.weebly.com. Stewart Auditorium. This is a free Facebook Live Saturday, May 9 at 7 p.m. program. Visit Longmont Museum’s Facebook page at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 7 and click on videos to watch. VIRTUAL INTIMACY RETREAT. May 8-10, drhazelgraceyates.com/virtual-intimacy-retreat.

LOOKING BACK ON THE 1918 FLU PANDEMIC — WITH LONGMONT MUSEUM CURATOR ERIK MASON.

BARBARA NESBITT ONLINE CONCERT — PRESENTED BY LITTLE TREE HOUSE CONCERTS.

his highly interactive, experiential three-day retreat is intended to reconnect you with your body. Intimacy experts will lead a number of panels, from building intimacy during quarantine to grief rituals, pleasure practices and fusion dance. On Sunday at 12:15 p.m., Boulder’s Conscious Burlesque will lead a 90-minute workshop where you can create a burlesque persona, discover authentic movement, and examine what it means to move through the world as a sexual being. Cost is $49-$199. Tickets and a full schedule atdrhazelgraceyates.com/virtual-intimacy-retreat.

7 p.m. Saturday, May 9. Reservations can be made at info@littletreeacoustic.com, 303-620-6634.

arbara Nesbitt is an award-winning singer-songwriter who has shared the stage with and opened for the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Keller Williams, Lisa Loeb, Nickel Creek, Jerry Garcia Band, Hootie and the Blowfish, Widespread Panic, Bob Weir, Robert Earl Keene, Meredith Brooks and more. Lafayette-based Little Tree House Concerts will host Nesbitt in an online concert as we continue to socially distance. The suggested donation is $12 (and up, on a sliding scale) per person. Advanced reservations are required. Please RSVP early so the hosts can let you know how to connect with the show online.

10 a.m. Wednesday, May 13 (and Wednesdays through December), facebook.com/wowch rensmuseum.org.

BOULDER OPERA COMPANY QUARANTINE EVENTS.

boulderoperacompany.com/quarantine-events.

oulder Opera presents the fairy tale opera Puss in Boots (Gato con Botas) for young audiences with a pre-recorded virtual performance by the original cast, as well as the Diva Concert Duo Azure. Puss In Boots/Gato Con Botas by Montsalvatge: Xavier Montsalvatge’s take on the classic story of an ingenious and quick-witted feline with magical talents is sure to entertain the whole family. Can Puss win the princess’ hand for his master? Will he outwit the evil

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

WOW! CHILDREN’S MUSEUM LITTLEST LEARNERS @ HOME.

ini, director of early childhood education for WoW! Children’s Museum of Lafayette, will share fun at-home activities for children ages 0-3 years and resources for parents and caregivers. If you can’t attend the live event, you can watch the recorded video at a more convenient time. Having a hard time coming up with ideas or ways to expand learning for your 0-3 year old? Reach out to: gini@wowchildrensmuseum.or gini@wowchildrensmuseum.org.

see EVENTS Page 24

MAY 7, 2020

f you’re a fan of alternative rock, you’ve heard Alain Johannes. The multi-instrumentalist has played, produced, mixed and engineered albums by Queens of the Stone Age, Mark Lanegan, Arctic Monkeys, PJ Harvey and Chris Cornell, not to mention his influential work with his art-rock project Eleven with late wife Natasha Schenider. With a forthcoming album out this summer, we checked in with Johannes (feature on page 20), and compiled this playlist of hits and deep cuts from his storied career.

by CAITLIN ROCKETT

HEAVY ROTATION: Alain Johannes

EVENTS from Page 23

“HUM,” BY ALAIN JOHANNES

he first single from Johannes’ forthcoming album sets the meditative tone of the record. “When you stop and listen to silence in nature, the hum is underneath the threshold of hearing,” Johannes said in a statement about the album. “It’s a mysterious and magical sense of something existing, beautiful and alive. It’s a blanket word for the sound of the ether — something that’s always been there, always will be there, and everything comes from it. It’s the common connection to everything.”

“CREOSOTE,” BY DESERT SESSIONS

ohannes has joined in Josh Homme’s (Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures) musical collective, Desert Sessions, twice now, allegedly writing this number with Dean Ween on the front porch of Rancho de la Luna in Joshua Tree within four minutes of meeting each other. A creosote, if you (like us) don’t know, is a dark brown oil distilled from coal tar and used as a wood preservative. You can almost smell it as you listen.

and center. It could easily find a home on Johannes’ forthcoming album.

“WHEN I’M DOWN,” BY CHRIS CORNELL

ohannes and his late wife, Natasha Schneider, were close friends with the late Soundgarden singer, cowriting, producing and performing on Cornell’s first solo record, Euphoria Morning. After Canadian record producer Daniel Lanois pulled out of the project, Cornell asked his friends if they’d be interested. With Johannes and Schneider lending their art-rock sensibilities to the collection, Cornell shunned the Seattle grunge sound in favor of gentler, more eclectic melodies. Schnieder plays the piano that opens this track. After Schneider succumbed to cancer in 2008, Cornell would often dedicate live versions of “When I’m Down” to her, playing a recording of her original piano accompaniment.

“ANTES DE LA NADA,” BY HIFIKLUB, ALAIN JOHANNES

he French quartet Hifiklub boasts collaborations with some 150 artists, including Johannes, who recorded the album Plans Make Gods Laugh with the band in 2014. The album is actually a soundtrack, accompanying a short film of the same name that chronicles Johannes’ epic — and at times deeply tragic — life. Like much of Johannes’ work, these tracks evoke images of the California desert, where Johannes and other notable musicians of the Palm Desert Scene cut their teeth.

“CENTIPEDE,” BY SOUTH CITY PLAYERS (JOSH HOMME, CHRIS GOSS, DAVE GHROL, ALAIN JOHANNES) “ENDLESS EYES,” BY ALAIN JOHANNES ave Grohl formed the Sound City Players

with many of the musicians who appeared in his documentary Sound City about the shuttered Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California. The lineup was an ubersupergroup: Paul McCartney, Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails), Rich Nielson (Cheap Trick) Stevie Nicks, Corey Taylor (Slipknot, Stone Sour) and many more. This track features Homme on vocals and Johannes on guitar, his accomplished fingerpicking front

MAY 7, 2020

he first track off Johannes’ first solo album, Spark (2010). A tribute to Schneider two years after her passing, Spark searches for transcendence in the wake of tragedy — and finds it. The track is both powerful and soft, opening with a driving acoustic guitar riff that mimics the desperation Johannes feels in a world without his soulmate. “We used to joke that we made one big, awesome person,” Johannes told BW in a recent interview.

“HEAVY,” BY ELEVEN

ohannes and Schneider formed the art-rock band Eleven in 1990 with drummer Jack Irons (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam). While the band only had one single breach the charts (“Reach Out”), their influence on other bands of the day was evident. “They made me a better musician,” Josh Homme said in the 2018 documentary Unfinished Plan: The Path of Alain Johannes. This track highlights Eleven’s proclivity for darkly whimsical melodies that often took prog rock-esque turns. Schneider’s organ work is transcendent.

“LITTLE SISTER,” BY QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE

ohannes and Schneider joined Queens of the Stone Age as part of their touring line-up in support of the band’s 2005 album, Lullabies to Paralyze. Johannes contributed performances to the studio recordings, including this track, which was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Performance.

“THE WHEEL,” BY PJ HARVEY

arvey’s album The Hope Six Demolition Project is based on her travels to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington D.C. with photographer/filmmaker Seamus Murphy between 2011 and 2014. Its title is a reference to the Hope IV program in the United States, which was intended to revitalize decrepit public housing complexes across the country. Many people, like Harvey, saw the program as a sophisticated form of gentrification. “The Wheel” talks about the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, with a fairground wheel near the capital Pristina as a reference point. Johannes contributes backing vocals and guitar (and handclaps) to this haunting and defiantly lively track.

BONUS: “LUNA A SOL,” BY ALAIN JOHANNES TRIO (FEATURING MIKE PATTON)

ho doesn’t want to hear Mike Patton sing in Spanish? The Faith No More singer lends his six-octave range to this debut single from Johannes’ Chilean-based trio.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

EXISTENTIAL CINEMA

Home viewing

BY MICHAEL J. CASEY

omfort watching comes in all shapes in sizes. Sometimes it’s a chubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff. Other times it’s Gene Kelly dancing with an umbrella and splashing around in puddles. Diversion, you could call it: A moment of pure cotton candy. It zaps you with sugary sweetness, wipes the blues away and makes you hum a little ditty. But diversions work best in small doses. Like a sugar high, they’re difficult to sustain, and too much will leave you feeling sicker than when you started. You’ve probably watched plenty of comfort movies in the past two months. And they’ve helped with the initial shock of losing your job, losing your friends, maybe even losing a loved one to the dreaded virus. They put a smile on your face while the news put the fear of god into you. They brought sunshine through the screen while cold, wet snow covered freshly bloomed tulips. And for a while, it worked. But the power of comfort films has weakened. Kelly can prance in those puddles all he wants, but the blues are here to stay. The time has come for something else, something that doesn’t divert your emotions but embraces them. You want to empathize with characters who are going through what you’re going through, surviving the struggles you’re surviving, and asking the deep, difficult questions keeping you up at night. You need existential cinema. Lucky for you, foreign and art house films are loaded to the gills with existential ennui. From fears of individual erasure to planetary annihilation, these movies look for meanings behind meaninglessness, the fluidity of right and wrong, and the celebration of the individual. Here are four to get you going, but there’s plenty more out there if you’re hungry.

n ‘HIGH AND LOW’

THOUGH MOST POINT to Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard as the progenitor of existentialism, the movement wouldn’t have made it half as far if not for novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Between each page of prose, you can feel Dostoyevsky wrestling with his desire to be a moral man in a world littered with immoral attractions and addictions. Add highly structured tales of cause and effect, the ever-present element of chance, and it’s no wonder filmmakers have been drawn to his work. King among them: Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, who counted the Russian as one of his primary influences. And few of Kurosawa’s films wear Dostoyevsky on its sleeve like High and Low, an acute criticism between the disparity of the haves, the have nots, the have lesses and the have nothings. It’s like walking in a strange city without a map: You have no idea where you’re headed, what’s

around the next corner, and where the touristy part of the city ends, and the red light district begins. By the time the steel curtain falls, you’ll never look at the world the same again. Streaming on The Criterion Channel and Kanopy.

n ‘THE TRIAL’

BASED ON A NOVEL by Franz Kafka, The Trail is filmmaker Orson Welles at his most Wellesian. Anthony Perkins stars as K, a man accused of a crime he neither committed nor comprehends. K can ask all the questions he wants, but only riddles come back. Welles stacks the deck through the majesty of set design: Doors dwarf K while ceilings close in on him. Hallways offering escape extend into the infinite. And just when he thinks he’s making headway, another government official steps out of nowhere to block him. It’s like K’s trying to run a marathon through a tub of glue. Welles thought it was one of his best, and he might be right. Streaming on Kanopy.

n ‘WINTER LIGHT’

THE SECOND INSTALLMENT in Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s unofficial trilogy (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence) is by far the best. Pastor Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) has misplaced his faith. He’s not sure where, and he’s not sure he wants to find it. Märta (Ingrid Thulin) loves Tomas, but he does not reciprocate. So, she waits and bears his silence and his cruelty. Then Jonas (Max von Sydow) enters and confesses to Tomas — he lives in fear. The atomic bomb will destroy everything, obliterate existence and erase man from the universe. What, then, is the point? Tomas has no response, and it costs him dearly. Sounds bleak, doesn’t it? It is, but the trick of Bergman is that he finds his way from god’s silence to Tomas’s despair to Molly Bloom’s heart going like mad announcing affirmations in triplicate without an ounce of comprise or concession. Streaming on The Criterion Channel and Kanopy.

n ‘FIRST REFORMED’

YOU COULD PICK any movie from Paul Schrader’s oeuvre and find healthy doses of existentialism, but First Reformed might be his most fully formed. Continuing the conversation Bergman started in Winter Light, Schrader tosses in a dash of Travis Bickle — arguably the most Dostoyevskyian character this side of Notes from the Underground — and updates the crisis from atomic to ecology. Streaming on Amazon Prime, Hoopla and Kanopy. see EVENTS Page 26

film film film film

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

MAY 7, 2020

EVENTS from Page 25

PODCASTS

WHO BETTER TO RECOMMEND YOUR NEXT BOOK THAN A LIBRARIAN?

BY CAITLIN ROCKETT

books

THIS WEEK WE EXPLORE A FEW RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE STAFF AT BOULDER PUBLIC LIBRARY. BARBARA RECOMMENDS: ‘LESS,’ BY ANDREW SEAN GREER

“A SWEET, COMICAL READ with a fun, quirky character. Arthur Less bumbles his way around the world, trying to figure out what love is about along the way.” (Editor’s note: Less was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.)

LAURA RECOMMENDS: ‘NIGHT BOAT TO TANGIER,’ BY KEVIN BARRY “THIS IS A SHORT book set in Ireland and Spain, which contains colorful characters, family mental health issues, fairy rings, and a string of bad luck. Two lifelong friends who are waiting and talking, telling stories and reassuring each other of past exploits.”

STEVE RECOMMENDS: ‘THE NICKEL BOYS, ’ BY COLSON WHITEHED “A NOVEL BASED on a real Florida ‘reform school’ that operated for decades in the Jim Crow south, where children were deprived, abused, tortured, raped and murdered by the school staff. The discovery of a potters field of unmarked graves of children on the grounds of the real school was the catalyst for the novel. The Nickel Boys is horrifying, devastating and important.” (Editor’s note: The Nickle Boys was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.)

DILLON RECOMMENDS: ‘LEAH ON THE OFFBEAT,’ BY BECKY ALBERTALLI “FRIENDS, GRADUATING, questioning your own sexuality. Things are not going great for Leah Burke. Her last year of high school is not the perfect senior year that she thought it would be. But just like drumming, she will need to learn how to put her life back on the beat.”

MELISSA RECOMMENDS: ‘LOVE LETTERING ’ BY KATE CLAYBORN “A SWEET BOOK about the signs and symbols we see every day and what we choose to do when we see them. Do we just keep on doing what we were doing? Do we stop and take another look? Meg and the people in her life all have to stop and see the signs and think about what they are looking for in their lives. This was the perfect book to read in March 2020, when we all had the chance to stop, look and think.”

MAY 7, 2020

n BACK TO SCHOOL

n BAD BATCH

THE THINGS THAT happen in high school stick with us, shape us, long after we toss those caps in the air. Who doesn’t remember their high school crush? Their first heartbreak? The classmate who upstaged us no matter how hard we worked? Those were formative years where we were more than children but less than adults. In Back to School, Seth Rudetsky — a musician, Broadway aficionado, and writer who’s done everything from penning the opening number for the Tony awards to crafting dialog for The Rosie O’Donnell Show and several iterations of the Grammys — interviews celebrities about their high school experiences, revealing that even those of us destined for fame cried between classes once in a while. Turns out Allison Janney was deeply into figure skating as a youngster but her height kept her from executing some of the more extravagant jumps — figure skating’s loss was Hollywood’s gain. Rosie O’Donnell’s mother died before the future movie star and talk show host went to high school, so she and her brothers took care of each other — and their father and aging grandmother — buying groceries, cooking meals and getting themselves to and from school. O’Donnell says that she still struggles to keep her kitchen stocked with health foods to this day. Rudetsky’s warm personality and conversational interviewing style comes across as therapeutic for his guests, who often express as much. In between questions about high school, Rudetsky teases out which pop culture mainstays of the day celebrities loved and hated, and gets them to read inscriptions from their yearbooks. Celebrities may not be just like us, but Rudetsky proves that at one point in time they were, siriusxm.com/podcasts

THERE’S LEGITIMATE scientific research that supports the use of stem cells — cells from which all other cells with specialized functions are generated — to treat various illnesses, like cancer and blood-related diseases such as leukemia, lymphoma, neuroblastoma and multiple myeloma. Independent companies around the world are touting the benefits of stem cell therapy for everything from arthritis to anti-aging, and supplying doctors with stem cells for treatments. Sounds great, but there’s a problem: Currently, the only stem cell treatments approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are products that treat certain cancers and disorders of the blood and immune system. You see, stem cell therapy isn’t regulated the way other drugs are. The FDA doesn’t view stem cells as drugs because they’re essentially a part of the human body, moved either from one human to another, or from one part of the same body to another part. But that hasn’t stopped companies like Liveyon from claiming stem cells are the answer to a wide array of health problems. In Bad Batch, host Laura Beil — the journalist behind the endlessly fascinating and terrifying Wondry podcast Dr. Death — calls the legitimacy of the multi-billion dollar stem cell industry into question via the story of John Kosolcharoen, the charismatic CEO of stem cell company Liveyon. Kosolcharoen got into the stem cell industry after both he and his mother experienced life-changing results from stem cell injections. But when a batch of stem cells from Liveyon makes people in two states sick, the finger pointing begins and the race is on to find the source of the problem before more people get sick, wondery.com/shows/bad-batch

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

‘DREAMING HORSE’ BY FRANZ MARC / PUBLIC DOMAIN

LIBRA

BY ROB BREZSNY ARIES

MARCH 21-APRIL 19: According to Aries author and

mythologist Joseph Campbell, “The quest for fire occurred not because anyone knew what the practical uses for fire would be, but because it was fascinating.” He was referring to our early human ancestors, and how they stumbled upon a valuable addition to their culture because they were curious about a powerful phenomenon, not because they knew it would ultimately be so valuable. I invite you to be guided by a similar principle in the coming weeks, Aries. Unforeseen benefits may emerge during your investigation into flows and bursts that captivate your imagination.

TAURUS

APRIL 20-MAY 20: “The future belongs to those who

see possibilities before they become obvious,” says businessperson and entrepreneur John Sculley. You Tauruses aren’t renowned for such foresight. It’s more likely to belong to Aries and Sagittarius people. Your tribe is more likely to specialize in doing the good work that turns others’ bright visions into practical realities. But this Year of the Coronavirus could be an exception to the general rule. In the past three months as well as in the next six months, many of you Bulls have been and will continue to be catching glimpses of interesting possibilities before they become obvious. Give yourself credit for this knack. Be alert for what it reveals.

GEMINI

MAY 21-JUNE 20: For 148 uninterrupted years, American

militias and the American army waged a series of wars against the native peoples who lived on the continent before Europeans came. There were more than 70 conflicts that lasted from 1776 until 1924. If there is any long-term struggle or strife that even mildly resembles that situation in your own personal life, our Global Healing Crisis is a favorable time to call a truce and cultivate peace. Start now! It’s a ripe and propitious time to end hostilities that have gone on too long.

CANCER

JUNE 21-JULY 22: Novelist Marcel Proust was a sensitive, dreamy, emotional, self-protective, creative Cancerian. That may explain why he wasn’t a good soldier. During his service in the French army, he was ranked 73rd in a squad of 74. On the other hand, his majestically intricate seven-volume novel In Search of Lost Time is a masterpiece — one of the 20th century’s most influential literary works. In evaluating his success as a human being, should we emphasize his poor military performance and downplay his literary output? Of course not! Likewise, Cancerian, in the coming weeks I’d like to see you devote vigorous energy to appreciating what you do best and no energy at all to worrying about your inadequacies.

LEO

JULY 23-AUG. 22: “Fortune resists half-hearted prayers,”

wrote the poet Ovid more than 2,000 years ago. I will add that Fortune also resists poorly formulated intentions, feeble vows and sketchy plans — especially now, during an historical turning point when the world is undergoing massive transformations. Luckily, I don’t see those lapses being problems for you in the coming weeks, Leo. According to my analysis, you’re primed to be clear and precise. Your willpower should be working with lucid grace. You’ll have an enhanced ability to assess your assets and make smart plans for how to use them.

VIRGO

AUG. 23-SEPT. 22: Last year the Baltimore Museum of

Art announced it would acquire works exclusively from women artists in 2020. A male art critic complained, “That’s unfair to male artists.” Here’s my reply: Among major permanent art collections in the U.S. and Europe, the work of women makes up 5% of the total. So what the Baltimore Museum did is a righteous attempt to rectify the existing excess. It’s a just and fair way to address an unhealthy imbalance. In accordance with current omens and necessities, Virgo, I encourage you to perform a comparable correction in your personal sphere.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

SEPT. 23-OCT. 22: In the course of my life, I’ve

met many sharp thinkers with advanced degrees from fine universities — who are nonetheless stunted in their emotional intelligence. They may quote Shakespeare and discourse on quantum physics and explain the difference between the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, and yet have less skill in understanding the inner workings of human beings or in creating vibrant intimate relationships. Yet most of these folks are not extreme outliers. I’ve found that virtually all of us are smarter in our heads than we are in our hearts. The good news, Libra, is that our current Global Healing Crisis is an excellent time for you to play catch up. Do what poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti suggests: “Make your mind learn its way around the heart.”

SCORPIO

OCT. 23-NOV. 21: Aphorist Aaron Haspel writes, “The less

you are contradicted, the stupider you become. The more powerful you become, the less you are contradicted.” Let’s discuss how this counsel might be useful to you in the coming weeks. First of all, I suspect you will be countered and challenged more than usual, which will offer you rich opportunities to become smarter. Secondly, I believe you will become more powerful as long as you don’t try to stop or discourage the influences that contradict you. In other words, you’ll grow your personal authority and influence to the degree that you welcome opinions and perspectives that are not identical to yours.

SAGITTARIUS

NOV. 22-DEC. 21: “It’s always too early to quit,” wrote

author Norman Vincent Peale. We should put his words into perspective, though. He preached “the power of positive thinking.” He was relentless in his insistence that we can and should transcend discouragement and disappointment. So we should consider the possibility that he was overly enthusiastic in his implication that we should NEVER give up. What do you think, Sagittarius? I’m guessing this will be an important question for you to consider in the coming weeks. It may be time to reevaluate your previous thoughts on the matter and come up with a fresh perspective. For example, maybe it’s right to give up on one project if it enables you to persevere in another.

CAPRICORN

DEC. 22-JAN. 19: The 16th century mystic nun Saint

Teresa of Avila was renowned for being overcome with rapture during her spiritual devotions. At times she experienced such profound bliss through her union with God that she levitated off the ground. “Any real ecstasy is a sign you are moving in the right direction,” she wrote. I hope that you will be periodically moving in that direction yourself during the coming weeks, Capricorn. Although it may seem odd advice to receive during our Global Healing Crisis, I really believe you should make appointments with euphoria, delight and enchantment.

AQUARIUS

JAN. 20-FEB. 18: Grammy-winning musician and com-

poser Pharrell Williams has expertise in the creative process. “If someone asks me what inspires me,” he testifies, “I always say, ‘That which is missing.’” According to my understanding of the astrological omens, you would benefit from making that your motto in the coming weeks. Our Global Healing Crisis is a favorable time to discover what’s absent or empty or blank about your life, and then learn all you can from exploring it. I think you’ll be glad to be shown what you didn’t consciously realize was lost, omitted or lacking.

PISCES

FEB. 19-MARCH 20: “I am doing my best to not become a

museum of myself,” declares poet Natalie Diaz. I think she means that she wants to avoid defining herself entirely by her past. She is exploring tricks that will help her keep from relying so much on her old accomplishments that she neglects to keep growing. Her goal is to be free of her history, not to be weighed down and limited by it. These would be worthy goals for you to work on in the coming weeks, Pisces. What would your first step be?

Recovering by Burt Rashbaum Recovering I recover like strength sapped from maple trees awaiting syrup like a broken stirrup on a runaway steed its rider upside down being dragged off into a distance unasked for unknown or a ghost unwilling to admit that death has brought the end of breath the sounds of a household cacophony company without my presence. Burt Rashbaum is a recovering COVID-19 patient. This poem is part of an in-progress collection about his experience. His most recent volume of poetry, Of the Carousel, about his experiences as an operator at the Carousel of Happiness in Nederland, was published by The Poet’s Press in 2019. MAY 7, 2020

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

The outsider

A long lost ‘Stranger’ resurfaces via the internet by Michael J. Casey

t was a Saturday in July when Meursault killed the man. The man, an Arab, was lounging on the sundrenched beach when Meursault approached. The Arab pulled a knife, shining sunlight in Meursault’s eyes. Meursault pulled a pistol and fired. The Arab fell to the sand dead. Meursault paused and then pulled the trigger four more times. “It was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.” It’s that pause that cemented Albert Camus’ 1942 novel, L’Étranger, in literary history. The purpose of the pause is the question students are asked when they study the seminal book, and one Camus refuses to answer. Ditto for Italian director Luchino Visconti, whose 1967 film adaptation of the French novel, Lo Straniero, is as faithful to a masterpiece as one could hope. Both titles are commonly translated in the U.S. as The Stranger, but in the U.K., L’Étranger became The Outsider, a more fitting description. Meursault is 28

far from a stranger to this world: French by heritage, Algerian by birth, Meursault lives during the French occupation of 1930s Algeria. It’s hot and sticky, but Meursault doesn’t resent it. The native Algerians are restless under French rule, but Meursault doesn’t hate them. The only thing that might point to Meursault’s racism is his repetitive reference to the unnamed man he killed as “the Arab” and only “the Arab.” Then again, the racial reduction could come courtesy Camus, speaking on behalf of a dismissive ruling class. When Meursault is put on trial, the murder of the Arab plays second fiddle to Meursault’s lack of emotion. That’s the paradox that makes L’Étranger work, and Visconti keeps every last ounce perfectly intact while translating it to the screen. Working with life-long friend and collaborator, Suso Cecchi d’Amico, Visconti adapts Camus’ slim novel with utmost fidelity. For Meursault, Visconti casts Marcello Mastroianni, Italy’s greatest, MAY 7, 2020

and maybe even most charismatic, film star. There’s more than a little subversion at work with Mastroianni as a character as emotionally reserved as Meursault, but it works in Visconti’s favor when Marie enters the picture. She’s played by the enchanting and radiant Anna Karina, an actress every character should fall for. But not Meursault, he’s too inert to notice. “I don’t love you,” he tells her through prison bars, “But I’ll marry you if you want.” If another actor played Meursault, Marie’s attraction and devotion would seem scripted. Not here. It’s a stroke of genius that nothing in Lo Straniero feels scripted, not even Meursault’s final confession. The trial is awash with the colorful movement of hand fans. The scenes of Meursault and Marie swimming in the Mediterranean are refreshing. And Meursault’s climatic Saturday on the beach feels so sweltering you want to open the window. Cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno constantly uses the zoom lens to narrow the movie’s gaze. Shots start wide and close in on faces the way choice has limited Meursault’s options. Camus hated the term existentialist, but if he’d lived long enough to see Visconti’s adaptation of his work, he might have agreed that nothing seems more existential than a zoom lens I

plunging in on a character’s face. Camus died in 1957 in a car wreck. He was 46. At his widow’s insistence, L’Étranger was to be adapted as faithfully as possible. Visconti did, and when the movie hit American shores in 1968, it was reviewed favorably but evaporated quickly. Never transfered to VHS, DVD or Blu-ray, Lo Straniero vanished into copyright limbo, further complicated by the popularity of Camus’ novel. And though a few prints of the film still circulate and play art house theaters and festivals, the chances of a 4K restoration of this long lost work seems nil. Enter rarefilmm.com — the cave of forgotten films — a collection of hardto-find movies, many of which are either plagued by complicated copyright issues or were owned by entities long since expired. The digital quality of Lo Straniero uploaded on rarefilmm.com is less than stellar, but any option is better than no option, especially when it comes to a movie this good. Lo Straniero is phenomenal top to bottom. From Mastroianni and Karina’s fully realized characters to Camus’ dialogue, from Visconti’s blocking of courtroom scenes to Rotunno’s constantly searching camera. And from oppressive heat to existential ennui, rarefilmm.com gives moviegoers a chance to experience a long lost classic. BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

sure in a misguided effort to spare your husband’s feelings — then you need to get emphatic. Sometimes it’s not enough Dear Dan: I’ve been with the same to tell, LOADS, sometimes amazing man a dozen years. We’ve had you have to yell. our ups and our downs, same as any You’re obviously GGG — you’re other couple, but these days life is better good, giving and game — but your partthan it ever has been for us. Except in ner has taken you for granted and been the bedroom. A few years ago he started almost unbelievably inconsiderate. having fantasies about sucking dick. Because even if he needs to think about Specifically, he wanted to suck a small sucking dick to get off, LOADS, he one because his is very big and he want- doesn’t need to verbalize that fantasy ed to “service” a guy who’s less hung each and every time you fuck. Even if than he is. Which is fine except it’s now you were into it, which you’re not, it would the only thing that gets him off. We selget tedious. And it wasn’t dom have sex since now ROMAN ROBINSON just selfish of him to ignore because his obsession with how you felt, LOADS, it sucking off a guy with a was shortsighted. Because small dick makes me feel women who are willing to unattractive and to be honlet their husbands talk est I don’t share the fantaabout wanting to suck a sy. I even let him suck a dick — much less suck a dude off in front of me once dick — aren’t exactly easy and I didn’t enjoy it at all. to come by. He tells me he still finds I guess what I’m trying me attractive but when to say, LOADS, is that your we’re having sex the talk partner really blew it. If he always goes to how he hadn’t allowed this obseswants to take “warm and sion to completely domisalty loads” down his throat. I’ve told him nate your sex life — if he’d made some I’m not into it but he enjoys talking about small effort to control himself — you it so much he can’t help himself. I thought might’ve been willing to let him act on his by allowing him to live out his fantasy fantasy more than once. But as things would help him “get over it,” so to speak, stand now, it’s hard to see how you come but that didn’t happen. So now we just back from this, LOADS, because even if don’t have sex except once every few your husband can manage to STFU months. I’m not sure how to make him about warm and salty loads long enough see that it’s just not my thing and to get to fuck you, you’re going to know he’s the focus back on just the two of us. thinking about warm and salty loads. So —Loves Obsesses About Dick the most plausible solution here — Sucking assuming that you want to stay with this guy — would be for him to go suck little Dear LOADS: If you can look at your dicks (once circumstances allow) while partner and think, “Things are better than you get some decent sex elsewhere ever!” despite the dismal state of your (ditto). sex life, LOADS, I hate to think what life Finally, a lot of vanilla people think — with him used to be like. erroneously — that acting on kink will There’s not an easy fix here. If you’ve somehow get it out of a kinky person’s already told your partner the “warm and system. That’s not the way kinks work. salty load” talk is a turn-off and made it Kinks are hard-wired and kinky people clear it’s the reason your sex life has wanna act on their kinks again and again pretty much collapsed and nevertheless for the exact same reason vanilla people he persists with the “warm and salty load” wanna do vanilla things again and again: talk, well, then your partner is telling you because it turns them on. he would would rather not have sex than have sex without talking about warm and Dear Dan: This isn’t a sexy question, salty loads. but you are wise and I am confused. I Now I’m assuming that you actually have been friends with a woman for told him how you feel, LOADS, in clear about 16 years. She’s very funny, creand unambiguous terms and that you ative, loves to have a good time. She’s said what you needed to say emphaticalalso intense, not very bright, and my famly. And by “emphatically,” LOADS, I ily and friends do not like her around. mean, “repeatedly and at the top of your Now that we’re grown we do not see lungs.” If not — if you’re doing that thing each other often, but I’ve been glad to women are socialized to do, i.e., if you’re maintain a friendship with her and get downplaying the severity of your displeatogether now and again. Enter: my wed-

BY DAN SAVAGE

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

ding. At the reception she made a fool of herself (and me) by going on some strange, racist rant. The racist thing really surprised and disappointed me and when I asked her about it she shrugged it off like, “Oh, just add that to the list of dumb things I do when I’m drunk.” Other things she’d done when she’s drunk: two DUIs, waking up in jail with an assault charge, having sex with strangers, etc. It’s been about seven months since my wedding and I’ve basically been ignoring her while trying to decide what to do. I love my friend, but I do not want her hurting anyone else on my watch. Do I call her up and end it? See her once a year when no ones around? Ignore her until she dies? —Loyal To A Fault Dear LTAF: Tell your racist friend to give you a call after she gets sober and confront her about her racism then — you know, when she’s actually capable of remembering the conversation, reflecting on what you had to say, and perhaps changing for the better. If she can’t get both sober and better, LTAF, make sure she isn’t registered to vote and then ignore her until she dies. Dear Dan: I’m a young white woman, and my last boyfriend, a black man, left me two weeks ago. Ever since, I have been masturbating only while thinking about black guys. My question is: Do I have a “thing” for black guys now? I’ve accepted that our relationship is over, but it was really intense. I feel disgusting after I masturbate, because it feels gross and not respectful toward my ex somehow. What do you think? —Desperately Horny For Black Men Dear DHFBM: Masturbate about whatever the fuck turns you on, DHFBM, and if you’re worried someone would find your masturbatory fantasies disrespectful… don’t tell that person about your masturbatory fantasies. I suppose it’s possible you have a “thing” for black guys now. (What’s that thing they say? Actually, let’s not say it.) Unless you are treating black guys as objects and not people, or you fetishize blackness in a way that makes black sex partners feel degraded (in unsexy, nonconsensual ways) or used (in ways they don’t wish to be used), don’t waste your time worrying about your fantasies. Worry about your actions. On this week’s Savage Lovecast, yes it is possible to be both horny and depressed. Also, hear the tale of intrepid mountain climbers, and what they can do in their harnesses. Send emails to mail@savagelove.net, follow Dan on Twitter @FakeDanSavage and visit ITMFA.org. MAY 7, 2020

Adam Sloat Broker/Owner

Your Boulder Real Estate Expert and Music Guy

Q&A WITH MYSELF, THE “MUSIC GUY” Question: Hey Adam, why do you use the slogan, ‘Your Realtor and Music Guy,’ that’s a little schlocky, isn’t it?

Answer: It’s just a slogan, chill out, but it brings up the talking points of my previous life in the music & entertainment business. I had quite a unique international career and developed major negotiating and contracting skills. I was also known as one of the few good guys in a business full of knuckleheads and villains.

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BOULDER WEEKLY

BOULDER WEEKLY STAFF

SWEET POTATO PIE VEGAN ICE CREAM. Prices vary. Glacier Home Made Ice Cream & Gelato, 3133 28th St. and 4760 Baseline Road, Boulder, glaciericecream.com

TRY THIS WEEK:

Sweet Potato Pie Vegan Ice Cream @ Glacier

AT LEAST WE HAVE ice cream. We still can

have ice cream, right? We’ll check with Fauci, but in the meantime, you ought to take advantage of the weather and make a Glacier run. Gelato, ice cream and sorbet abound, but we opted for Glacier’s vegan line of ice creams, made with a coconut milk base. The sweet potato pie variety is a pan-seasonal mouth party that is loaded with autumnal flavors like the titular root veggie, pumpkin and baking spices, but has the creamy, cool qualities that befit it for a spring day. The best part about it is the texture — dense and chewy at first before dissipating into airy goodness.

1 n Drink this: Upslope Brewing Company India Pale Ale UPSLOPE WAS THE first brewery in the state to stick its IPA in a can (second in the nation by its estimates), and the West Coast version is clean and bold with hints of toffee hiding between flavors of snappy and sticky pine. It’s got a lovely hue of deep copper, and a whole lot of bitterness throughout to keep things lively.

BOULDER WEEKLY

MAY 7, 2020

n Gettin’ Tiki With It LEFT HAND BREWING IS releasing Gettin’ Tiki With It, a piña colada wheat ale on nitro, via a virtual tiki party at 4:30 p.m. on May 8. The brewers will be on hand to talk about the beer. The ale is inspired by the classic summertime cocktail, and it’s fruit-forward with heavy hits of pineapple and coconut. Get the beer in Left Hand’s tasting room before the event. Or after, whatever. Life’s a party. For more info, go to lefthandbrewing.com.

Beer in the time of COVID

American Craft Beer Week arrives when we need it most

by Michael J. Casey

ast month the Brewers Association — the Boulder-based trade organization representing small and independent breweries — announced they had laid off 23% of their staff “to maintain the long-term viability of the Brewers Association.” It said in an April 27 press release, “The Brewers Association’s fortune mirrors that of our craft beer community.” The Colorado Brewers Guild isn’t doing much better: Westword reports the CBG has cut its staff by half, leaving only executive director Shawnee Adelson. Continuing a familiar theme, the CBG announced the postponement of the 24th annual Colorado Brewers Rendezvous (scheduled to take place in Salida this July) to a tentative October date, and the BA has canceled this year’s Homebrew Convention. This doesn’t bode well for cohesion in the industry moving forward. The BA is wrapping up its virtual Craft Brewers Conference and should be getting ready for the Great American Beer Festival in September. As of this writing, GABF is still going forward, Sept. 24-26, but seems unlikely given the current state of the coronavirus pandemic. Even if a vaccine were discovered, being able to produce and distribute it en masse will take time. It also takes a lot of time to plan and produce these festivals, which is why

Germany pulled the plug on this year’s Oktoberfest — the largest beer festival in the world. Cholera and war have canceled Oktoberfest before. Should GABF last another hundred years, a 2020 COVID19 cancellation is just one for the history books. That’s a big if: 58% of the BA’s 2019 revenue came from events (CBC, SAVOR, GABF), and 2020’s looking to lay a goose egg. Lester Jones also has a lance he’d like to put in. The chief economist for the National Beer Wholesalers Association estimates that brewers will lose $8 billion if the on-premise shutdown continues into June. That’s billion with a B — eight of ’em. As Hunter S. Thompson wrote: Kill the body and the head will die. Boulder County ends its stay-athome order on May 8, and the day when bars, breweries, brewpubs and taprooms are allowed open draws closer. But, with

MAY 7, 2020

WIBBY BREWING (below) is one of a dozen Boulder County breweries offering to-go sales.

social distancing measures in place and facial coverings required, it’s going to be damn hard to sit around and knock back a few. Public beer drinking in 2020 is already dead; we’re just waiting for the corpse to stiffen. What good news is there to find in all of this? “We have plenty of beer,” Ryan Wibby of Wibby Brewing says. That’s a start. And American Craft Beer Week (May 11-17) is a good follow-up. Sponsored by the BA and CraftBeer. com (a website published by the BA), American Craft Beer Week is the annual celebration of small and indie U.S. breweries, and this year they’re looping in a pledge component. Go to craftbeer.com/news/americancraft-beer-week/commit-to-give, punch in your name and the name of a buddy you’d like to treat, pick a local brewery offering to-go beer and decide how much you like your friend: A beer, a crowler (32 oz.), a growler (64 oz.), a six-pack, a 12-pack or a pony keg. Wibby Brewing is one of a dozen Boulder County breweries listed on craftbeer.com you can pledge to, as is Crystal Springs Brewing Company, which just released their Classic American Pilsner. Made with six-row barley, corn, Crystal hops and German lager yeast, Crystal Spring’s C.A.P. arrives just in time to dig the lawnmower out of the garage.

Ska Street Brewstillery ON MARCH 16, at 11 a.m., Ska Street Brewstillery opened its doors to the hungry and thirsty masses of Boulder, Colorado. Roughly one hour and 11 minutes later, the doors were ordered closed, and Ska Street’s been quiet ever since. They’re back and ready for curbside pickup. Hours are Wednesday through Friday, 3-7 p.m., and Saturday, noon-7 p.m. The menu is loaded with smoked offerings and should be paired with Ska’s Rye Ale, a collaboration between Ska Street and Hazel’s Beverage World. It’s dynamite.

Colorado Strong Pale Ale

LEFT HAND BREWING Company and the Colorado Brewers Guild are partnering to brew and release Colorado Strong Pale Ale. Made with all Colorado ingredients, 20% of sales from Colorado Strong will go to support Colorado craft breweries and suppliers. The beer will be available starting May 10, more information at coloradostrongbeer.org.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

PHOTO BY CHRIS WHEELER

COURTESY WATERLOO

‘Just got to stay positive and look forward’

Boulder County restaurateurs share thoughts on the future

by Matt Cortina

ell, the time line keeps shifting for restauAMELIE HEBERT AT LOUISVILLE’S rants to reopen in Colorado amid coronavi- WATERLOO rus-related safety measures. As restau“I personally think if we want restaurants to surrants continue to lose revenue, despite vive, we have to open at 100% and leave it up to our switching to takeout/delivery platforms, and guests to decide if they feel comfortas restaurant employees continue to COURTESY WATERLOO able to dine out,” Hebert says. “We stay home without a paycheck, Gov. are taking all necessary precautions Jared Polis’ projection of mid-May to to provide a safe environment. We reopen restaurants now looks an know these times are uncertain, but awful lot like June. Let’s hope not we will continue to do our part in longer. making sure our staff is healthy and As Phil Dumontet, cofounder of we are following all guidelines Boulder’s Whole Sol, says, “It will be Waterloo has switched to a picka ‘more open’ versus a ‘reopen,’ we up/delivery platform and has been think. We hope to see progress in able to stay afloat thus far, buoyed terms of restaurants being ‘more by the ability to sell prepared cockopen’ in the next 45-60 days, with tail kits, wine and beer. social distancing and special precauHebert is hopeful for a full recovtions in place.” ery soon. This is a tough time to own a “My hope is to open at 100% restaurant. Some have boarded up with full staff, ready to have a busy remainder of the windows, while others pivot to permanent new models. summer. The goal is to be able to continue to be a It’s an even tougher time to launch a restaurant, as staple watering hole in the community and to provide Scratch Kitchen did recently. We checked in with a fun, safe atmosphere for our loyal guests,” she says. some Boulder County establishments to see how they’ve adapted to the change, and maybe more importantly, how they’re expecting the restaurant busi- ERIC PATZKE AT BOULDER’S THE HUNGRY TOAD ness will change in the future. “As everyone knows, this is a very challenging

time,” Patzke says. “I think many of us in the industry are hanging by a thread right now. Some more than others for sure.” The Hungry Toad has been offering curbside pickup since March 17 (St. Patrick’s Day, usually the bar and grill’s busiest day of the year), but Patzke says he’s concerned that there hasn’t been enough governmental support for restaurants. “Governor Polis has done a fantastic job staying connected with all of us, but I do think some restaurants may not make it,” he says. “It’s a shame restaurants never got the support they needed through a stimulus package, but we need to look forward and stay positive.” Patzke says The Hungry Toad is considering a reservation-only model and increased spacing between tables to accommodate social distancing when reopening is allowed, as well as timed seatings “which is very British, so it’ll be on point with our brand,” he says.

NICK BUSEY AT NEDERLAND’S BUSEY BREWS

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MAY 7, 2020

which it visits a different community to, cheese and toilet paper, in order to each day to drop-off orders — Magnolia get more people into its customer Mondays and Taggerts Tuesdays, for base. instance. It’s the first time food delivery has PHIL DUMONTET AT been offered in some of these commuBOULDER’S WHOLE SOL nities, Busey says, and the feedback Whole Sol, an organic juice bar that has been “tremendous.” also offers clean-eating and flavor-forTo accommodate COURTESY OF WHOLE SOL ward bowls, has social distancing probrought in a wider tocols, Busey Brews is audience to offset the rearranging tables and impacts of locals not building dividers to coming into the resensure safety. Still, taurant. Busey says he’s hopIn addition to its ing to get some more local delivery and takerelief from the state or out offerings, federal government. Dumontet says Whole Sol is shipping a speMAZHAR ALI AT cially curated “immuniLOUISVILLE’S ty pack” of 12 organic juices, cold-pressed in TAJ MAHAL 3 Boulder, across the country. The proAND BOULDER’S JAIPUR gram has been a success, and Ali says the forecasts are similar for Dumontet says Whole Sol will start shipboth Taj Mahal III and Jaipur, although ping out protein bites and chia pudding. the latter’s downtown Boulder location, which has historically been advantaBRICE YOUNG AT LOUISVILLE’S geous, could present some challenges. “We are unsure of the summer seaPRECISION POURS son,” he says. “The atmosphere that “I have literally posted my personal Boulder summer usually brings has number all over the place to encourage changed.” people to call ahead and do curbside,” Ali says business at both restausays Young. Curbside pickup is a chalrants — which have switched to carrylenge he first underestimated — reducout only — will “remain somewhat the ing staff hours 50% means fewer peosame … even after reopening is ple to fill those orders, which come in allowed,” citing fear in the community of sporadically even as 40-60% of the COVID-19 still looming. He says both customer base has been lost. restaurants might have to cease offerPrecision Pours has switched from ing their coveted buffets as a result. primarily selling “pretty rosettas and tulips in your coffee for pretty Instagram posts,” to “more extraordiMICHAEL JOSEPH OF BOULDER’S SCRATCH KITCHEN nary coffee beans for at-home brewing and breads for at-home sandwiches Scratch Kitchen is in a unique posiand toasts.” tion. It launched in Boulder during a And on the charge that more people pandemic, but it also was always going and more agencies need to do better to to have a delivery and takeout-only consupport restaurants, Young puts it well: cept. That means Scratch Kitchen “Small businesses need your support hasn’t had to pivot its business model, now more than ever. Please consider but the team has had to make adjustspending your money on to-go orders ments, Joseph says, like heightened from restaurants and cafes that you employee screening, procuring personal already know don’t do well in a regular protective equipment — which Joseph economy. Support people who weren’t says “is not a trivial cost” — and buildfortunate enough to receive grant money ing software to handle curbside pickups. from the local government (like us) or Throw in the challenge of marketing federal authorities. For all the good the a new business during this chaotic time, community has done through this panand it’s clear the launch hasn’t been demic, there are also a lot of not-soeasy. good decisions about money and the “We are in a different situation here, economy, and I hope the big boys conand it’s important that we figure out how tinue to give back their stimuli in order to to successfully market in a COVID strengthen the future economy. Trust the world,” Joseph says. mom and pops locations unless you Scratch Kitchen has added more want a bunch of corporate crap for the offerings to its menu of items to picknext generation of Americans.” up, including organic eggs, milk, gelaI

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Good news: We’re number 49! By Paul Danish

he good news is that the ACLU is out with its latest study of racial disparities in marijuana arrests, and Colorado ranks 49th lowest in the nation for racial disparities. The bad news is that blacks were still 1.5 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession in the state. Nationally, black people are 3.64 times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession, notwithstanding comparable usage rates, the ACLU report said. The states where inhaling while black was most risky were Montana, where blacks were 9.6 times more likely than whites to be popped for possession, and Kentucky, where the ratio of black-to-white marijuana arrests was 9.36-to-1. The ACLU also found that the five Colorado counties with the largest racial disparities in arrest rates were Jefferson (3.75-to-1) and Douglas (3.74-to-1), with Larimer, El Paso and Arapahoe not far behind. Arrests for pot possession made up 25% of all drug arrests in Colorado. • • • • You have to admire their spunk and creativity. When the coronavirus lockdown came down, Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana suspended their signature-gathering drive to put a medical marijuana legalization initiative on the state ballot this November.

But now the group says it will resurrect the effort “as soon as it is safe to do so” and with “those in the field taking safety precautions to uphold social distancing measures and public health.” According to Marijuana Moment, the effort will involve masked volunteers who will sit at tables and provide disposable pens to petition signers. The initiative will PUBLIC DOMAIN need 130,000 signatures to get on the ballot. The backers haven’t announced how many they have in hand. • • • • Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s investment firm, held its annual meeting Monday, May 4, and Buffett — aka The Oracle of Omaha, because that’s where Berkshire Hathaway is located — worked a couple of marijuana quips into his shtick, which has become legendary. According to Dan Caplinger at The Motley Fool, this year Buffett reflected about what the 3.9 million Americans living in 1790 might have predicted the U.S. economy of 2020 would be like. Even the most optimistic couldn’t have imagined the America of today, he said, even if they had “been drinking heavily and even had a little pot.” Buffett also updated his perennial parable about his neighbor “Mr. Market,” who constantly invests by playing the markets’ day-to-day stock price fluctuations. This year the Oracle of Omaha described Mr. Market as “sort of a manic depres-

sive” who drinks and “maybe smokes a little pot.” Whether the original Oracle — the Oracle of Delphi — drank and smoked a little pot is unknown. But about 15 years ago archeologists discovered evidence that the priestesses were high on glue. It turns out that the priestesses (there were several) who produced the prophesies supplicants sought (and paid for) would go down to a chamber under the temple of Apollo at Delphi called the “adyton” and inhale sweet-smelling vapors while reflecting on the questions put to them. They would then emerge and produce an answer that sounded a lot like they were speaking in tongues. A priest would then translate the response into a more intelligible and poetic form, which provided the client with 1) what he wanted to hear and 2) what he needed to hear, while 3) giving the Oracle some plausible deniability if the prophesy went awry. What the archeologists discovered was that the priestesses were probably inhaling naturally occurring ethylene, which is found in glue like rubber cement. It can cause glue sniffers to go euphoric, but it can also cause them to have a violent reaction that includes delirium and thrashing around. The Roman historian and biographer Plutarch reported the priestesses sometimes had such symptoms after a long day in the adyton. If all this seems kinda weird, it is worth recalling that the Delphic Oracle was one of the most successful consulting groups in history; it was an industry leader in the prophecy business for 600 or 700 years. The Oracle of Omaha — whose investment in airline stocks went from a mile high to a bad trip faster than a New York sneeze — has a ways to go. He might want to try a little pot before placing his next bets. It’s healthier than glue.

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