Boulder Weekly 7.23.2020

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July

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news:

Why was the gay/trans panic defense, recently banned by state law, ever even a thing?

by Angela K. Evans

Boulder, Colorado

17

news:

Conflicts emerge between local teachers and administrators as districts plan to reopen schools in the fall

by Matt Cortina

boulderganic:

18

buzz:

20

Bank of the West and Doconomy partner to offer first-of-its-kind carbon tracking checking account

by Angela K. Evans

Dominic Lalli of Big Gigantic uses his COVIDcation to finish a 10-year-old jazz project

by Dave Kirby

virtual events:

22

film:

28

BMoCA Virtual Studio Tours, Lucius performs songs from ‘The Bromley House,’ and more to do when there’s ‘nothing’ to do...

by Boulder Weekly Staff

Between attraction and repulsion in ‘Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful’

by Michael J. Casey

departments 6 6 8 15

24 25 26 27 29 31

Danish Plan: A cautionary tale for Operation Warp Speed Guest Column: Addressing racism is a mental health priority Letters: Signed, sealed, delivered... your views People: Louisville nonprofit engages local community groups to help others around the world Heavy Rotation: Figueroa, Lewis Del Mar and more Home Viewing: ‘The Breaking Point’ on TCM Words: ‘Remind Me’ by Diane Bergstrom Astrology: by Rob Brezsny Savage Love: Committed Food/Drink: Food news and what to try this week in Boulder County 33 Beer: What to do when there’s ‘nothing’ to do? Homebrew!

35 Feast: Beets aplenty at Boulder County Farmers Market 37 Cannabis Corner: Listening to music without headphones. Or ears.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Eatery & Marketplace

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JULY 23, 2020

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Publisher, Fran Zankowski Editor, Matt Cortina Circulation Manager, Cal Winn EDITORIAL 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, Alan Sculley, Ryan Syrek, Christi Turner, Betsy Welch, Tom Winter, Gary Zeidner SALES AND MARKETING Market Development Manager, Kellie Robinson Account Executives, Matthew Fischer, Sami Wainscott Advertising Coordinator, Corey Basciano 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 BUSINESS OFFICE Bookkeeper, Regina Campanella Founder/CEO, Stewart Sallo Editor-at-Large, Joel Dyer

July 23, 2020 Volume XXVII, Number 49 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.

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

REMEMBERING JOHN LEWIS

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ep. John Lewis was an iconic figure in the Civil Rights Movement — a son of sharecroppers who survived a brutal beating at the hands of police officers during a 1965 march in Selma, Alabama. Lewis died of pancreatic cancer on July 18. To honor his legacy, we’re revisiting a few quotes Lewis gave during an interview with Boulder Weekly in 2011.

When asked about the next civil rights battle in America: “I think the next real effort must be for all of us to come together, to work together as citizens, as a family, as the American family, to build a greater sense of community, to help people that have been left out or left behind. It doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, Latino, Asian American or Native American. A lot of people talk about a post-racial society with the election of President Obama. People ask me all the time is it a fulfillment of Dr. King’s dream, and I say no, it’s just a I

major down payment. We still have lots of work to do.”

When asked about how far civil rights has come since the 1960s: “We’ve come such a great distance. We’ve made so much progress. When I hear people say nothing has changed, I feel like saying, ‘Come and walk in my shoes. I will show you change.’ It was a different world, a different America. But we still have people who can’t get health care, cannot get enough to eat. People without shelter; there are too many homeless people in this country. People cannot find work, so we have to create jobs, and a sense of security, so our children can get the best possible education.”

When asked about the reality of a “post-racial” society: “The scars and stains of racism are still deeply embedded in American society. It’s important for us to educate and sensitize all our young people, they should watch the story of the freedom riders, watch Eyes On The Prize, read the literature of the civil rights movement.”

Read more at boulderweekly.com.

JULY 23, 2020

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Addressing racism is a mental health priority

by Vincent Atchity, Mental Health Colorado “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” — James Baldwin

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n July, Americans celebrate the birth of independence. It’s the month of the national holiday when we gather and celebrate our freedom from tyrannical government. But in a country where Black, Indigenous and people of color are less likely to have access to mental health services and more likely to have lower quality care; in a country where Black, Indigenous and people of color experience discrimination and systematic alienation from life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; in a country where we have not all been treated equally — many do not experience the freedom that has been our country’s principle source of pride.

Addressing racism is a mental health priority. For far too long, we have ignored the mental health effects of violence and systemic racism on members of our society. The systemic inequities that permeate all our lives prevent any of us from achieving healthier minds. Ignoring these inequities is a disease that destroys lives, causes the privileged to remain underdeveloped as humans and threatens the vitality of the nation.

When we say that we aspire to achieve healthier minds across the lifespan for all Coloradans, we mean that we must achieve a state and a nation that isn’t like this anymore. If we’re going to have healthier minds across the lifespan for all Coloradans, we need to build a state and a nation where Black people and all people of color don’t have to fear the police, their armed white neighbors or that they and their descendants will be trapped forever in a system of injustice.

If we’re going to have healthier minds across the lifespan for all Coloradans, we all need to call out and correct the thinking, the manners of speech and the behaviors that derail us from our mission. If we’re going to achieve healthier minds across the lifes6

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pan for all Coloradans, we all need to learn to be better, braver people than we have ever been before.

We need a second American Revolution. We can choose to number ourselves among the revolutionaries who — with each utterance, decision and action — join forces to free ourselves from the mind-stunting, strength-sapping twin tyrannies of proud, vaunting ignorance and smug satisfaction with the status quo. Or we can fail to rise to the challenge of this revolution and remain part of the problem, as enemies of freedom, science and humanity. There are no innocent bystanders when it comes to the health of the mind.

Given our heartfelt understanding that Black Lives Matter, Mental Health Colorado supported a number of bills this legislative session to address or correct for disparities that have been disproportionately harmful to Colorado’s Black communities and other communities of color throughout the state’s history. There is so much more corrective work to do. We are weighted down with laws and failures in law-making that perpetuate the most disgraceful shortcomings in our still aspirational civilization.

Mental Health Colorado is following mental health advocate Bebe Moore Campbell’s lead in honoring July as Black, Indigenous and People of Color Mental Health Month. When we have ensured that all Black, Indigenous and people of color are free at last from systematic discrimination and oppression, when all receive the support and resources needed to truly thrive, then we will be strong and will truly have cause to celebrate.

Until then, we can celebrate that we have set our sights on the worthiest goal and that we are determined to achieve it before the sun sets on another generation.

Vincent Atchity is the president and CEO of Mental Health Colorado.

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

JULY 23, 2020

The Cutter incident: A cautionary tale for Operation Warp Speed

By Paul Danish

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he Trump administration is calling its push for a coronavirus vaccine “Operation Warp Speed.” If you don’t find the name cringe-worthy, you’re not old enough to remember the Cutter incident.

I am.

Back in the 1950s, the disease that terrified the country was polio, aka poliomyelitis, aka infantile paralysis.

The disease could kill you, but its real terror lay in its ability to leave its victims paralyzed, often permanently.

While it frequently struck children (thus the name infantile paralysis) its most famous victim was President Franklin Roosevelt, who even after years of therapy could barely walk.

So when it was announced in April 1955 that a polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk had been proved effective in tests on two million school children, the country was overjoyed — and the government did everything it could to have the Salk vaccine produced at, uh, warp speed.

It did this by giving several pharmaceutical companies licenses to make the vaccine, one of which went to Cutter Laboratories, of Berkeley, California. The company, which had been founded in 1897 by Edward Ahern Cutter, was not a fly-by-night operation. Its products had included I

an anthrax vaccine and hog cholera vaccine. During World War II, it produced penicillin.

The Salk polio vaccine was a dead virus vaccine. It has since been displaced by the Sabin vaccine, which uses attenuated live virus and can be given orally. But in the spring of 1955, the Salk vaccine was the best medicine had to offer.

So companies like Cutter Labs were producing and shipping it as fast as they could. Here’s how Wikipedia succinctly describes what happened.

Although I was not yet 13 at the time, the description squares with my memories.

Some 120,000 doses of Cutter’s vaccine contained live, unattenuated polio virus.

Of the children who received the vaccine, 40,000 developed abortive poliomyelitis (a form of the disease that doesn’t involve the central nervous system), 56 developed paralytic poliomyelitis, and of these five died. A further 113 people contracted paralytic polio from the inoculated kids. Five of them died too.

Heads rolled in the federal government. Oveta Culp Hobby, secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (today the Health and Human Services Department) resigned. So did Dr. see DANISH PLAN Page 7

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William H. Sebrell Jr., the director of the National Institute of Health (NIH).

A Congressional inquiry in June 1955, two months after the incident concluded that Cutter’s production methods were sound, but that the NIH’s Laboratory of Biologics Control hadn’t exercised proper scrutiny and oversight. The lab had received advanced warnings of problems, and one staff physician, Dr. Bernice Eddy had reported to her superiors that some inoculated monkeys had become paralyzed. She even sent them pictures. Sebrell swept the warnings aside.

Lawsuits ensued, of course. A jury found Cutter not negligent, but liable for breach of implied warranty, and awarded damages. Subsequent cases brought against Cutter and three other companies that had problems completely inactivating the virus were settled out of court.

The lesson here for Operation Warp Speed is that a rush to get a vaccine out the door can have fatal consequences. And in the case of the coronavirus vaccines under development, the risks are inherently larger than with Cutter’s Salk vaccine. That’s because the coronavirus vaccines are going to be shipped without a couple of years worth of human testing. A protracted testing period doesn’t just provide information about the safety and effectiveness of a vaccine. It also provides the vaccine producers and government regulators with time to develop robust product safety proceBOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

dures. Can that be done at warp speed? Maybe, but warp speed seems to be an open invitation to a new Cutter Labs incident.

The feds should forget about warp speed and avoid cutting corners, especially when it comes to vaccine production.

And especially since there is some evidence that an existing vaccine, the Sabin oral polio vaccine, may be effective against coronavirus. Dr. Robert Gallo, codiscoverer of the HIV virus as the cause of AIDS, recently authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal stating he and a colleague believed the Sabin vaccine is “known to be a potent stimulus of the innate immune system” and that an innate-immunity vaccine like Sabin “can provide nonspecific protection against a range of viruses and become effective in hours, not weeks.”

“We propose OPV (Oral Polio Vaccine) because of its availability, simplicity (a tablet), very low cost and decades long safety record... Billions of people have received OPV, including nearly everyone in the U.S. between 1962 and 2000,” he wrote.

“Stimulating the innate immune system with OPV looks like a free and safe option for saving lives while we wait for an effective COVID-19 vaccine,” he concluded.

If the feds want to chase a vaccine option at warp speeds, this is the one they should be pursuing.

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

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7

Trump can’t afford to lose in November

On Trumpism

John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and President Trump’s national security advisor from 2018 to 2019, writes, in his recently released book, The Room Where It Happened, “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my White House tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations.”

It is important to ask, once more, why Donald Trump desperately wants not to lose on Nov. 3. He’s already proven he can win the presidency, and if that doesn’t happen again, he could declare victory was stolen from him; he’s already setting the stage for such a claim. Such bluster could comfort his bruised ego, but it would not reverse the defeat and its consequences for him.

Becoming a private citizen would leave Trump without protection against criminal investigations, indictments, convictions and punishments. Legal proceedings against him could expose how little money he really has, and could result in government seizure of his financial assets. Furthermore, he may have good reason to fear for his and family members’ lives, as powerful actors with whom he’s connived will Clean, Safe and Small wish not to be exposed by official Enhanced showroom cleaning and an intimate shopping inquiry.

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JULY 23, 2020

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The current occupant of the White House has directed his administration to do whatever it can to erase the Obama legacy. From disbanding agencies, undoing environmental regulations, defunding organizations, and fighting to end the Affordable Care Act, one would be hard-pressed to find any good that President Obama did, by his account.

He’s even gone so far as not scheduling the hanging of President Obama’s official portrait. What a petty thing.

Trump’s animosity toward Obama is unprecedented, according to numerous news outlets. The only thing that Trump’s actually done is take credit for 10 years’ growth of the economy, six of which Obama was responsible for after the Great Recession, brought to us care of another under/unqualified president, George W. Bush.

Now with the unbelievable failure of Trump and “only the best people” handling the COVID-19 crisis, having tried to defund the CDC and firing, or not hiring, top officials that left the CDC in 2018, this administration is requiring all reports of cases, hospitalizations and deaths be reported to the White House, not the CDC. If that doesn’t scare the dickens out of you, I don’t know what will, short of his reelection. Taking a page from the autocrats’ playbook, do any of you readers actually believe that the liar–in-chief will actually announce the real numbers? The easiest way to have the problem go away is to just say the numbers are decreasing. What third party is there to refute the claim?

Aside from trying to blame the Obama administration for the pandemic, this White House is actually and actively trying to discredit one of the foremost epidemiologists in the world, Dr. Anthony Fauci. His crime?

He actually knows more about the virus than our “very, very, large brained” president. I thought that COVID-19 was a bad disease. Reading the support that Trump still has with his base shows me that Trumpism is much, much worse. Hopefully we will have a vaccine on Nov. 3, and the disease is fully eradicated on Jan. 20 of next year.

In the meantime, wear a mask and vote (by mail)!

Craig S. Chisesi/Rifle BOULDER WEEKLY

On local power

Xcel is required to provide undergrounding of electrical wires to reduce maintenance to all urban Colorado customers exclusive of franchise status.

Undergrounding is a capital improvement like a coal plant. It costs about $1 million/year and is passed on to the ratepayer.

However, Xcel discontinued undergrounding service to Boulder in 2010 when we broke franchise to purchase our own independent utility. We were denied a $10 million service we paid for. Yet recently at four listening sessions on the potential of a settlement with Xcel, City representatives presented the return of the undergrounding as negotiating capital. $1520 million per year is profit Xcel realizes from our region. If Boulder took in this money, it would have come to a $150-$200 million credit over the past 10 years. To separate the system, we spent about $26 million so far, most paid for by the right-of-way occupancy tax, and some was paid by taxing ourselves for the long-term gains we would realize from ownership.

Bob Dylan pretty well explained in 1965 what Xcel did to Boulder in the last 10 years: “Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you and then he kneels / He crosses himself and then he clicks his high heels /And without further notice, he asks you how it feels / And he says, ‘Here is your throat back, thanks for the loan’ / And you know something is happening but you don’t know what it is / Do you, Mr. Jones?”

In the lyrics, “Mr. Jones” represents a reporter that is observing activities of the counter culture of the ’60s. Back then the perspective was that he was outside looking in. Fast forward to 2020.

“We are all in this together.” Now Mr. Jones is included. The new media is the network of interdependent humanity. It’s the renaissance you see every day in the long line at the big grocery store and the short line at the local one, the shuttering of Starbucks and the thriving of the small coffee shop, the closing of three restaurants under one ownership, offset by the persistence of the single-ownership small restaurant. The silence of the office, school and football stadium and the bustling of the home front.

CU now must ride on its online academic excellence and attractiveness to professors world-wide instead of BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

resort to dining and housing amenities.

Downsizing its physical population and consequently existing physical space is inconsistent with building a new campus on a floodplain. The jobs/ housing imbalance is replaced with live/work and home office adaptations, the commute is gone, time returns and housing for service workers is reduced.

Telecommunication advances replace asphalt maintenance and jet fuel.

Health care becomes more essential than meat production. Bars are shut since alcohol inhibition is found more life-threatening than the fun it generates. Firearms, police and nuclear war dollars are repurposed to supply basic human needs. Seeking icons to worship at the cinema, sports event or podium are replaced with icons of individual integrity. Election time and expense is futile since we have to rule ourselves anyway. The virus balances the right to live with the quality of life while directing attention to reduce climate change and war.

We know something is happening and now we know what it is. It’s the systematic deconstruction and restructuring of the sheer scale of the human footprint. Automation and robotics replace human labor.

Universal Basic Income will replace stimulus checks and unemployment. The elegance of wealth redistribution liberates the passion of the human psyche to music, arts and creativity from that of self-medication, disease and the mundane.

Life was predictable before the pandemic. Likewise, the use of energy was thought about little and depended upon much. Yet now the mechanism, costs and sourcing of energy delivery is shrouded in nondisclosure agreements in a settlement with a company that has a proven track record of failing to live up to even it’s obligation to deliver on the paid service of undergrounding.

The City on the other hand, has a track record that exceeded its climate goal from 50 MW renewables generation up to 60 MW by 2020.

So, at this pandemic pause, reset energy sourcing to that of long-term benefit, and abandon that based on short-term gain. Reinvent fire, as Amory Lovins said, and dig conduit for it underground, the same undergrounding the ratepayers paid for once.

Boulder Power and Light. No lawsuits.

Just local service. And now, breathe.

Lynn Segal/Boulder I

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JULY 23, 2020

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Only the 11th state

Why was the gay/trans panic defense, recently banned by state law, ever even a thing?

by Angela K. Evans

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s protesters called for racial justice outside of the Capitol in early June, one chant stood out in particular to Rep. Breanna Titone (D-Arvada). “Black trans lives matter,” she heard over and over again. And it’s one she could not ignore.

As the first trans person elected to public office in Colorado, and only one of four elected trans officials across the country, Titone knew she couldn’t give up on the Gay or Transgender Panic Defense bill, which died in committee after a whole host of bills were killed swiftly in light of the coronavirus shutdowns and COVID relief legislation that needed to be passed. It was a legislative priority for Democrats at the beginning of the year, and one that drew widespread support from both sides of the aisle. So, Titone wrote a letter to party leadership and started a Change.org petition to garner attention and support for the cause.

“I wanted this bill to go through because it aligned with what was going on outside the building,” Titone says. “If we’re going to start making meaningful change to support black lives, we need to work on supporting trans black lives. And this is part of that.”

On June 13, Gov. Jared Polis signed SB-221, making 10

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JULY 23, 2020

Colorado only the 11th state in the U.S. to ban the use of gay or transgender panic defense in criminal court. The new law prohibits the knowledge or discovery of a victim’s gender identity or sexual orientation from justifying violence in criminal cases.

Gay and transgender panic defense is a tactic that materializes in a variety of ways, used as part of self-defense, temporary insanity or diminished capacity, and heat of passion or provocation arguments in an attempt to rationalize a violent reaction.

But it’s not a defense in and of itself.

“It’s not a formal defense that you enter that has been codified by law,” says Scott Skinner-Thompson, a law professor who focuses on LGBTQ issues at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“It comes in sort of at the edges and often it’s not a complete defense, but maybe it’s a mitigating factor that defendants try to get courts to consider when [trying to reduce] a sentence or conviction.”

It’s been used to excuse homophobic and transphobic violence across the country, essentially arguing that the discovery of a victim’s sexual or gender identity is a defensible reason to commit acts of violence or murder. A defendant may claim that a man came onto him, which provoked him to react, as was raised I

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

in the Matthew Shephard case by one of the killers. (It didn’t work.) Or, as in the 2008 death of Angie Zapata from Greeley, a defendant may claim that the discovery rendered them temporarily insane, unable to distinguish right from wrong. (Also, unsuccessful.)

“Gay panic is really just a type of defense that appeals to the bias or prejudice of jurors,” says Amanda Gall, who helped write the legislation as the sexual assault resource prosecutor for the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council policy team.

“That’s really what [defense attorneys] are trying to do.

[They’re] trying to say, ‘Care less about this victim, jurors, because they’re LGBTQ or because you’re afraid of them.’”

According to the American Bar Association, the defense was first used in the 1954 Florida killing of William T. Simpson, a gay man whose killers used the provocation defense, saying they shot Simpson to resist his advances.

It was used again in a California case in 1967, according to Carsten Andresen, assistant professor of Criminal Justice at St. Edward’s University, in Austin. He told the Criminal podcast in December 2019, that in this case a man tried to use the defense to justify beating a teenager who was urinating in an alley, saying that the boy was making a pass at him. “It was unsuccessful when he used it,” Andresen told Criminal, “but people have been trying to use it ever since.”

Andresen first became interested in researching the use of the defense because of three different Austin murder cases that used it. The most recent of which involved the 2015 death of Daniel Spencer, who was killed by his neighbor who claimed Spencer tried to kiss him before he stabbed him to death in self-defense. The case drew national attention when attorneys used the panic defense to help reduce the killer’s charge and sentence — from manslaughter with a mandatory prison sentence of two to 20 years down to negligent homicide and six months jail time with 10 years of probation.

“It’s rooted in antiquated and prejudicial notions about and fear of sexual and gender minorities that really don’t have a place in our society,” Skinner-Thompson says.

The defense is of a time where society stereotyped gay and trans people as hyper-aggressive and predatory, mentally ill, or even as criminals given former sodomy laws.

“It’s all the ways the courts were articulating that: You could be fearful of a criminal, because they’re engaging in a criminal act. You could be fearful of somebody with personality disorder or mental illness, because they’re theoretically dangerous,” Gall says. “That’s the way the argument would play out in court.”

But the American Medical Association debunked the idea that homosexuality and gender fluidity are mental illnesses in the 1970s, and sodomy laws were deemed unconstitutional nationwide in 2003. Yet gay/trans panic defenses are still being used.

“There are few, if any, instances where a defendant can claim that the revelation of someone’s race, religion or identification provoked them to violence,” says Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty, who also helped draft the new law. “Where here, before this law was passed, gay and trans panic defenses draw upon stigmas about LGBTQ people’s sexuality and gender just to justify horrific violent acts.”

Widespread use of gay/trans panic defenses is difficult to track, largely due to the fact that there isn’t a national dataBOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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base of criminal trial court decisions, says D’Arcy Kemnitz, executive director of the National LGBT Bar Association and Foundation, which has been working on anti-gay and trans panic defense legislation since 2004.

“Our practitioners who are on the front lines in criminal trial courts, see it used all the time, but there is no one database in any jurisdiction, not to mention nationally, where these are being counted,” she says.

“So, we don’t have good data. We simply don’t have a criminal justice system that is good at keeping data of how bad the criminal justice system is.”

According to a 2016 study out of UCLA’s Williams Institute, the defense has appeared in court opinions in about half of states since the 1960s.

Although ultimately unsuccessful, Zapata’s murder is the most famous example of the defense used in Colorado. Her killer, Andre Andrade, said discovering Zapata was transgender prompted him into a fit of rage resulting in him beating her to death with a fire extinguisher.

The jury in that case not only didn’t buy the trans panic defense and found him guilty of first-degree murder, but it also found Andrade guilty of a hate crime, the first in the country involving a transgender victim.

Andrade is now serving a life sentence at Sterling Correctional Facility.

In other recent cases, however, the defense has been successful, Gall says. She knows of at least two different cases that ended in acquittals due to a gay panic defense.

“And in Colorado, when you are acquitted, the case can be sealed,” she says. “So, we are not able to even acknowledge the existence of those cases.”

Still, Gall acknowledges that the defense has been rarely used in Colorado, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t necessary to pass legislation to ban it.

“We want to see justice for victims, and that includes victims of biased-motivated crimes,” she says. “And we recognized that this defense was still on the books and legal within Colorado. And it just didn’t seem right.”

Colorado follows California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Washington in banning gay/trans panic defenses.

The first state to address it was California in 2006. The law required juries be instructed not to allow personal bias against a

REBECCA KRIESNER

ABOVE (LEFT TO RIGHT): Rep. Breanna Titone, Rep. Leslie Herod and Rep. Matt Soper celebrating the passage of SB-221, which prevents defendants from claiming that a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity is to blame for the defendant’s violent reaction, including murder.

see PANIC Page 12

JULY 23, 2020

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PANIC from Page 11

victim to affect their decision, named after a transgender teenager, Gwen Araujo — who was killed by four East Bay men, at least one of whom claimed that Araujo provoked her own murder by throwing his own sexual identity into crisis. In 2014, the state outright banned gay and trans panic defenses following the 2008 death of California eighth-grader Larry King, who was killed by a classmate after asking him to be his valentine. The jury in that case, although tasked by the judge not to allow prejudice based on sexual identity to affect their decision, deadlocked and the judge declared a mistrial.

Eventually the boy pleaded guilty and is now serving a 21-year jail sentence. (King’s story is also detailed on the Criminal podcast.)

Earlier this year, the state of Washington passed a law named after Nikki Kuhnhausen, a transgender teen who was killed in 2019. The man charged with her murder has pled not guilty and is awaiting trial. Whether or not his defense attorneys were planning on using a trans panic defense is unknown. Regardless, the new law now prohibits it.

“There’s no victory in getting a bill passed after someone else has lost their life,” Kemnitz says.

Kemnitz first heard about the use of the panic defense at a conference on the subject hosted by Fulton County (which includes Atlanta) District Attorney Paul Howard in 2005. It was inspired by the murder of one of Howard’s own assistant district attorneys, Ahmed Dabarran, whose killer was acquitted in 2003 because he claimed he was acting in self-defense, stuck in a sexual encounter with Dabarran. Howard told the Criminal podcast the evidence against the killer was so strong, there was no way he figured the panic defense would work.

Until it did. Georgia still hasn’t passed legislation to ban such defenses.

A federal law banning the defense was first introduced in 2018, and again in 2019. It remains in committee in both the House and the Senate, although Kemnitz isn’t holding out hope it will pass or be signed into law under the current administration, given its record on rolling back transgender protections.

“Should a change in the White House occur, we are certain we’ll see things moving on a federal level after the November presidential election,” Kemnitz says. “But until then, I think you can count on not a lot moving for any LGBT protection on a federal level.”

Colorado’s law, however, goes above and beyond any of the previous laws passed in other states, Gall says. It bans the use of it when it comes to self-defense, temporary insanity and heat of passion or provocation, but it also creates a protective hearing that requires attorneys to vet any sort of reference to sexual orientation or gender identity of either the defendant or the victim in front of the judge before that information can ever make it to a jury.

“We banned this defense, like whack-a-mole, sort of everywhere that we had ever seen it come 12

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up in any fashion,” Gall says.

The bill was first introduced this year as House Bill 1307 by Rep. Leslie Herod, and it was initially met with opposition from the Criminal Defense Bar. “There’s a constitutional right for the accused to present a defense. And as a general matter, the Defense Bar opposes limiting of that constitutional right to present a defense,” says Tristan Gorman, legislative policy coordinator for the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar (CCDA). “Our position is quite simply that that is an issue for the jury to decide whether the defense should prevail at trial or not, and that we should not be issuing blanket legislation without knowing individualized facts and circumstances of the case, and taking that out of the hands of a jury to decide at trial.”

After working with legislators and prosecutors, CCDA came to take a neutral position on the legislation.

“Particularly at this moment when we’re really taking a hard look at our criminal justice system and its pervasiveness, an argument can be raised to [question] why are we taking away defenses?”

Skinner-Thompson says. “From a social justice standpoint, defenses seem like a good thing to keep people out of jail. But I think this particular defense is really problematic because it enshrines and legitimizes homophobia. And I think the answer to dealing with these larger embedded structural inequalities, including racism, is not to allow homophobic defense to continue, but to continue to reduce and limit the size of our carceral state.”

Limiting defenses was a point of contention for the CCDA, but so too was the fact that it would have prohibited the defendant from introducing any evidence of sexual orientation or gender, including that of the accused.

“I can tell you as a very butch lesbian, who is often mistaken for a man, that there are fact patterns that hadn’t really been considered, particularly where it hadn’t been thought of that the defendant might be a member of the LGBTQ community,” Gorman says. “And if I were a defendant in a case like that, to not be able to educate the jury about either my sexual orientation or gender identity or expression could be problematic, especially if I’m facing a very straight, very cisgender jury who doesn’t have the information they need to understand the way things played out.”

When testifying before the state legislature in support of the bill, Dougherty cited a 1994 Colorado Court of Appeals case, where the defendant appealed his conviction of first-degree murder, his lawyer arguing that rumors that the victim was bisexual makes it “probative and relevant that he may have attempted a homosexual rape of my client.”

“The very idea that there’s a rumor that the victim is bisexual should be heard by the jury highlights why we need this law in Colorado,” Dougherty says. “And other states should follow our lead.”

What’s more, the Appeals Court only ruled JULY 23, 2020

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against the defendant because his attorneys weren’t able to prove whether the rumors were true.

“In other words, the victim’s sexual orientation would likely have been admissible if it had been confirmed,” Doughterty says. “Under Senate Bill 221, this defense would be precluded even if the defense demonstrated that the victim was LGBTQ.” When the bill was tabled by Democratic party leadership in late May, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle came to its defense. And on June 8, Titone reintroduced it, co-sponsored by Rep. Matt Soper (R-Delta), as well as senators Jack Tate (R-Centennial) and Dominick Moreno (D-Commerce City). It passed nearly unanimously, with a single vote against it.

“When we have bipartisan support, it really shows that we’re doing things to change the law that is just for the good of everyone,” Titone says.

“It was not a hard sell,” Gall adds. “Because nobody believes folks should have their character assassinated in court, the courts are for facts and law, they’re not for bias and prejudice.”

While this is an important step, SkinnerThompson says, the law is largely symbolic and shouldn’t distract us from other issues impacting the LGBTQ community. As a society we still have a long way to go to stop homophobia and transphobia, he says.

“A disproportionate number of black trans women are subject to crimes. And too frequently those crimes don’t go investigated,” SkinnerThompson says. He also cites other forms of violence against the queer community including disproportionate rates of homelessness and unemployment, as well as over-policing of the trans community by the state.

The day Boulder Weekly spoke with SkinnerThompson, news broke of the Trump administration’s proposed reversal of an Obama-era rule that required federally funded homeless shelters to house individuals according to their gender identity, for example. The leaked memo from the Department of Housing and Urban Development included instructions on how to spot transgender women, such as looking for an Adam’s apple.

And in May, Jayne Thompson, a 33-year-old white transgender woman, was shot to death after police were called due to her exhibiting “odd behavior” in Mesa County on the Western Slope.

Charges won’t be filed against the officer who shot Thompson, who was misgendered in media and law enforcement reports, according to Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Tony McCade, a black transgender man, was killed by police in Florida the same month.

“So this gets back to my point about symbolism rather than material change,“ SkinnerThompson says. “I do think this change (banning the gay/trans panic defense) is important, but it’s really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of actually materially changing the lives for many of the most marginalized in the LGBTQ community.”

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

B

art Wear is in the construction business. He helps school groups, churches, businesses and other organizations turn shipping containers into classrooms, clinics, dental offices and other critical pieces of infrastructure for communities in need around the world.

But Wear, cofounder of Louisville’s Homes of Living Hope (HOLH), which helps foster these connections, doesn’t care how long it takes to SUSAN FRANCE finish projects.

“I never put a big emphasis on the time,” Wear says.

In fact, Wear says, the longer the better, sometimes. It’s an opportunity to engage more people in the process.

“A lot of times we’ll get these high schools and someone’s dad will say, ‘I’ve got a construction company, I’ll send over three guys and we can finish this in a couple days,’” Wear says. “I say, ‘Why don’t you send one guy over here and we’ll finish this is in a couple months, because the process is the point.’”

That process looks like this: an organization decides they want to outfit a container with resources with a community in need somewhere on the planet. HOLH provides a shipping container for the group to work on, encouraging participants to get as many people in the community involved, from putting up drywall to donating equipment or funding to putting in plumbing or electricity. Plans are designed, materials are sourced, work is done, and when the project is finished,

Building community

Louisville nonprofit engages local community groups to help others around the world

by Matt Cortina

BART WEAR, CO-FOUNDER of Louisville’s Homes of Living Hope, at a project site in Lafayette.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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JULY 23, 2020

HOLH ships the container.

That’s the formula the founders of HOLH settled on when the group launched in 2006. Co-founder Scott Kalevik had returned from a trip to Liberia, eager to help out the communities he met there. Together with Wear and Jack Heimbichner, the three grew the idea into a nonprofit that now serves communities around the world, and whose offerings represent more than just a material donation.

“Over time we changed our message from building facilities to connecting communities,” Wear says.

HOLH has helped students and volunteers at Louisville’s Monarch High School outfit and send a medical clinic to Mexico City. It’s helped those at Niwot High School turn a container into a school for kids in Uganda. Wear says HOLH has helped bring 20 critical structures to communities in need, but it’s the connection that’s fostered between two groups of people, often on opposite sides of the globe, that has the longest lasting impact.

“I get it takes money to do things; everybody asks for money,” Wear says of other charitable endeavors, “but we really believe that people being willing to give their time and their talent is worth far more than we can ever pay for. And then it creates a long-lasting connection.”

And the more people that can be involved in the process of creation, the better, Wear says.

“We try to engage 1,000 people in a project,” he says. “That’s not just construction but it’s soliciting goods to put in the containers and maybe helping raise funds or talking to civic groups or helping pay for shipping.”

Wear says it costs about $3,000 for the shipping container itself and another $3,000 (on average) to outfit it. The cost of shipping the container can range from $0 (a safe house in Lakewood) to $13,000 — the cost to send a container to Uganda.

Just like the effort and supplies it takes to build out the containers, funding comes from myriad sources — Wear says there have been projects where the largest donation was a couple hundred bucks.

“It’s not about a few doing a lot,” Wear says, “It’s about a lot doing a little.”

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Conflicts emerge between local teachers and administrators as districts plan to reopen schools in fall

by Matt Cortina

F

ace shields, gloves and masks for teachers.

Physically distanced classrooms. In-school instruction two days a week. Hand-washing stations, limited bus transportation, sanitizing high-touch surfaces, restricted visitors.

Priority enrollment in child care for kids of educators. A delayed start to the school year.

Those are but some of the guidelines laid out on July 21 by Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) officials in their plan to reopen school Aug. 24. The plan has yet to be approved by the school board.

In the St. Vrain Valley School District (SVVSD), a different plan has emerged: full-time, in-person instruction is slated to return for students from preschool to sixth grade, and ninth graders, with a hybrid online/in-person model for those in seventh to eighth and 10-12 grades.

The disparity exists because statewide guidance, released this week, allows school districts to determine their own reopening plans, so long as they meet a few benchmarks on class sizes and social distancing.

But the leeway given to districts to determine their own plans has also drawn the concern of the state’s teachers. In a petition signed by 13,457 Colorado educators sent to Jared Polis, the Colorado Education Association (CEA), the state teachers’ union, laid out a list of prerequisites for returning to school: that employee voices and safety must drive decision-making; that districts must provide adequate safety equipment; that the reopening process is transparent; and that equity for students, staff and families is ensured.

“Until these four demands can be met, we should not have in-person learning,” said CEA President Amie Baca-Oehlert in a news conference with union members on July 21. “We have seen already Denver Public Schools has decided to start schooling in a remote learning environment because they feel conditions can’t be met.”

BVSD Superintendent Rob Anderson laid out the district’s reopening plan at a special, virtual board meeting on July 21. The hope is to start school in “phase three” of five, with the aforementioned safety protocols school officials developed in concert with local and state health officials over “hundreds, if not thousands and thousands of hours” of planning, Anderson said. He cautioned, however, that a surge in cases or other COVID19-related developments could push the district BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

back into a more restrictive reopening scenario.

And, the administration has to win approval of the school board, and ultimately its teachers.

Anderson was noncommittal when asked by a board member if Boulder Valley Education Association (BVEA), the local chapter of CEA, is on-board with the reopening.

“Our commitment is to try to get there. I don’t think we want to be in the position where the majority of our staff don’t feel comfortable,” he said. “I think there is a lot of justified fear. ... I am committed to working with BVEA and all our employees to try to understand, based on the plan today, what else do we need to do, and for those that are at high risk, how do we get those folks exemptions?”

So far, 90 BVSD teachers have been given exemptions for in-class instruction, with 100 more applications filed. Anderson said there may be a “tipping point” where too many teachers in high-risk health categories file exemptions, limiting the ability to offer in-person instruction and implement this phase of the school reopening.

Part of the equation, too, is how many students sign up for online learning through the Boulder Universal program, which might lessen the number of teachers needed for in-person instruction in the short-term.

But CEA members noted that the state already has a shortage of educators (and funding) to begin with, and with state guidance to group students into small cohorts in order to limit the potential spread of the virus, thus increasing the number of teachers needed, there may not be enough educators to safely open schools.

“It’s an impossibility at this point when we’re looking to open buildings in two to three weeks to come up with the number of qualified, certified educators to make a cohort happen at the state level,” said John Robinson, a teacher in the Poudre School District who spoke at the CEA press conference.

Nearly 10,000 CEA members shared their concerns between July 13-17 in a survey circulated by the union. The results indicate widespread hesitation among teachers to reopen classrooms.

More than half of respondents said they want the school year to open 100% remotely, and fewer than one out of five said they believe their districts can keep them safe. Critically, nearly 80% of respondents said they would be willing to refuse to return to work over safety concerns.

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Parcelling out the 1,030 BVEA responses, twothirds of teachers would prefer to teach remotely this year, and more than 90% feel “a great deal” or “some” anxiety about returning to work this year.

Both administrators and teachers agree in-person learning produces the best outcomes, but there is disagreement about the benefits of in-person instruction after all the necessary safety protocols are put in place.

“In-person learning is much more effective and there are so many more benefits than if we go fully online even with the challenges I know we’re going to have to overcome,” Anderson said.

But for those who work with younger students or those with developmental issues, the challenges may outweigh the benefits. Lisa Larsen, a Boulder paraeducator, who works with students with special needs, said the very nature of the job would make enforcing the safety protocols a near impossibility.

“We’re right next to the student,” Larsen said at the CEA virtual event. “We can’t ... practice physical distancing because by the very nature of our position, we need to be right there. We help with behaviors, we help with tracking on a page, there are some special ed students that require breaks and walking around. Right there, the physical distancing is not a possibility. Also in the special ed community, we’re working with the kids who have the most significant challenges, and they are not able to wear masks. They may not be able to let us wear masks — I have students that regularly pull the glasses off my face because they don’t like something that’s different.”

Added Justina Carter, a teacher in Pueblo, “In an elementary school we tie shoes and zip zippers.

We button their buttons. We comfort students when they need it. We show them how to hold scissors. We show them how to find letters on a keyboard so they can log onto a program. There is so much contact with our little ones.”

The SVVSD school board will meet after press time on July 22 to further discuss how COVID-19 will affect its reopening plans. The BVSD board will meet again with administrators and health officials in two weeks to finalize plans.

“I still think that there is a ways to go to make sure teachers know and understand the supports that we’re providing, and we still need to continue to listen and make sure they feel safe,” Anderson said.

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Enabling a sustainable lifestyle

Bank of the West and Doconomy partner to offer first-of-its-kind carbon tracking checking account

by Angela K. Evans

W

e don’t have a jacket,” Mathias Wikström’s boss told him several years ago at his previous job at the Finnish Bank of Åland, headquartered in the middle of the Baltic Sea. At first, he was obviously confused, but the comment was inspired by a Patagonia ad imploring customers, “Don’t buy this jacket,” in hopes of reducing consumerism and its subsequent environmental impact. His boss’ message was simple: She wanted a way to engage the bank’s clients in the climate crisis and she wanted Wikström to help.

The result was the Åland Index, a cloudbased software that tracks the carbon dioxide emission of every financial transaction, now available in the U.S. through Bank of the West’s new 1% for the Planet checking account.

The account includes a carbon tracker on debit card expenses using technology from Sweden-based Doconomy, founded by Wikström.

Doconomy, using the Åland Index, offers an automated breakdown of spending by analyzing the carbon footprint of 50 different industries (from restaurants to health care to entertainment and transportation), taking the average carbon emissions for an industry and dividing it by the money spent within the industry.

“In short, what we’ve done is we’ve graded the industry on CO2 impact. And then we connected that score card to the credit card transactions, depending on volume spent with that line of business,” Wikström says.

A consumer might spend $22.99 18

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on groceries, for example, but that’s equal to a carbon footprint of 2 pounds of CO2.

“This allows our customers to track the carbon impact of their purchases, right along with the dollar cost of their purchases, right on the app,” says Ben Stuart, chief marketing officer at Bank of the West.

Bank of the West — and its parent company BNP Paribas — developed a sustainability vision after the Paris

Climate Agreement. The new checking account is part of that plan.

The company is actively working to combat the climate crisis by restricting its investment and financing of fossil fuel and extractive projects, as well as palm oil, tobacco and other environmentally degrading industries.

“Banks have $10 trillion worth of assets deposited into them, which can either be used to finance things that are beneficial to the planet or detrimental to the planet,” Stuart says.

“But consumers are going to need the tools and the education to know what questions to ask of their financial institutions. And we think that the 1% for the Planet account is a great I

first step in educating consumers on the role that banks play in climate change.”

The new checking account also allows clients to understand the climate crisis on an individual level, taking sustainable investing and finances out of the upper end of the market and the realm of green bonds, social bonds and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) mutual funds.

“I think consumers have gotten to the point where they feel incredibly comfortable picking up their yogurt and turning it over and seeing whether or not it’s made with organic dairy. I think people are very comfortable to turn over their shampoo bottle and see whether or not it’s tested on animals,” Stuart says. “And we want to get to the same place with people’s finances, where they have the tools and they have the desire to figure out how it is made.

How is this financial product made? How did you make my checking account? How did you make my loan? How are you servicing me with the same degree of transparency and the same degree of inquiry [that I apply to] other household items?”

The checking account comes with a biodegradable debit card that can be thrown into a household compost bin (after the magnetic stripe and chip are removed), and a promise from Bank of the West to donate 1% of its annual net profits from the checking accounts to environmental organizations. Donations will be funneled through 1% for the Planet, a global movement founded

by Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

CHRIS BENNETT @CHRISBENNETTPHOTO

ULTIMATELY, we need the large-scale

systemic shifts across both financial institutions and government policy. But the way that we get there is by having people be more aware of where these large footprints come from.

—Mario Molina, executive director, Protect Our Winters

and Craig Mathews of Blue Ribbon Flies that encourages companies and individuals to help protect the natural resources they so often benefit from.

The Bank of the West program’s first recipient will be Protect Our Winters (POW), an environmental advocacy nonprofit founded by professional snowboarder Jeremey Jones and headquartered in Boulder.

“Ultimately, we need the large-scale systemic shifts across both financial institutions and government policy,” says Mario Molina, executive director at POW. “But the way that we get there is by having people be more aware of the issue and more aware of where these large footprints come from. We see [the new checking account] as an educational tool to raise further awareness on the issue and how we can track emissions back to the main problem.”

Molina says POW expects to receive about $100,000 through its partnership with Bank of the West in the first year, and those funds will go toward supporting the organization’s BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Stop the Money Pipeline divestment campaign, as well as the distribution of a recent research report — Motivating Lifestyle Driven Advocacy — across the outdoor industry.

Stuart from Bank of the West only expects the environmental checking account program to grow, resulting in increased donations over the lifetime of each account. The bank is also looking at expanding the idea to other accounts in its portfolio, enabling the company to donate to other partner organizations like Conservation Alliance, Nature Bridge and the Sustainable Ocean Alliance, among others.

Although Bank of the West has exclusive licensing for the Doconomy technology in the U.S. for the next year, Wikström says there are plans to expand the program to other financial institutions after that.

Plus, the carbon tracker for personal finances is only part of Doconomy’s vision to enable a sustainable lifestyle for everyone. The company is also working on a carbon emissions limit for credit cards, which would freeze spending when a per capita cap on emissions is reached, much I

like how a standard credit limit works.

“If we use what’s already in place to illustrate environmental impact, rather than financial impact, we can come a long way,” Wikström says. “We don’t have any bank implementing it yet, but the technology is in place.”

And Doconomy just released its 2030 Calculator in conjunction with the U.N. Climate Secretary. It’s an automated system to measure the carbon footprint of individual products and brands free of charge, which could be used in carbon labeling products. Doconomy’s eventual goal is to aggregate all of the information it collects into an open source database dubbed the Global Carbon Files so that everyone — from institutions to consumers — can have access to the information to better understand lifestyle choices comparatively across industries and products.

Currently, Doconomy is operating in six countries around the world, but interest in the technology is rapidly increasing, as awareness of the climate crisis continues to grow.

“The climate crisis challenge is greater than any one bank can address on its own,” Wikström says. “I definitely think [the carbon tracker] is something that should be default, really, because how can you make an informed decision if you’re going to have the financial impact, but not the environmental impact at hand when making your choice?”

JULY 23, 2020

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19

KEVIN HAHN

Dom Lalli’s loose ends

While Big Gigantic remains on COVIDcation, Dominic Lalli finally finishes a straight-up jazz project recorded 10 years ago. He chats with BW about keeping busy, speaking in prose and staying close to his festival fans

by Dave Kirby 20

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’m keeping… pretty busy these days,” Dom Lalli says, anticipating the question of what a performing artist is doing while the Nasty Little Germ continues to pinball its way through everybody’s life and keep most performers mostly at home, mostly not performing.

“Not anything I’m getting paid to do or anything like that, just stuff for later.”

When the world comes back.

“Man, I just… I’m in disbelief still. It just sucks.”

At the very least it’s been an opportunity, perhaps unwelcome in its abruptness, for all of us to rummage through the closet, rifle through the JULY 23, 2020

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stuff and tie up some danON THE BILL: Dominic Lalli’s gling threads. For Lalli, Bluebird Quintet, ‘A that meant the free time to Blind Man’s Blue,’ finally mix down and available now across streaming services. release A Blind Man’s Blue, a quintet jazz album he cut with Eric Gunnison (piano), Bijoux Barbosa (bass), Rudy Royston (drums) and Greg Gisbert (trumpet) 10 years ago. Lalli’s roots (and education) are solidly in jazz, so the exercise was more than simply unearthing and releasing some pre-BG genre tease. This is exactly who Lalli was, and is.

“So kind of at the same time I was starting Big G and getting that going, I was working on BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

this record,” Lalli says. “And I didn’t quite finish it; the tracks got mixed a little bit and we all took a mix home with us, and that’s kind of where it stood.

“And then everything started happening with Big G, and I just wanted to focus all my energy on it. And I knew that there’d be another time to put this record out, so I didn’t feel like there was a rush to do it.

“I spent every ounce of energy the last 10 years on Big Gigantic, like every waking minute. And lo and behold, this pandemic hit, our tour got canceled (we had just put out a new album), and the first thing I thought was, I gotta finish this and put [A Blind Man’s Blue] out.”

Balanced between Lalli originals, a few extending back to his grad school days, and a handful of covers (like George Gershwin’s “Love Walked In,” Miles Davis’ “Joshua”), the album features Lalli’s quintet ranging from lithe, thoughtful ballads, to propulsive, gnarled melodic workouts to plaster-peeling blowfests.

There’s an unavoidable tinge of regret listening to these cuts; this is clearly a performance outfit at work, no chamber-jazz arch or pretense here. This is music that begs for a room and an audience.

Lalli’s sax work in particular, although generously featured in Big G’s genre-flattening electronic safaris, reveals itself in full bloom in this work. Chops aplenty, but the real joy is Lalli’s fierce dedication to melody and speaking in prose, rather than simply in riffs or gestures or modal shades. “Bluebird” and “Emerald Isles” especially benefit from this. Lalli learned the lesson well that every sax player is schooled in, and some forget, that jazz is fundamentally rooted in song, and if this album doesn’t explicitly resonate as a tribute to the golden years of jazz, his compositions reflect a player who still adheres to its essentials.

“Y’know, I love songwriting,” Lalli says. “Like, more than I love improvising. I mean, I love both a lot, but I feel like songwriting is really my thing. With this stuff, and even with the Big G stuff, I really want to take a journey, kind of build a story. Destinations. Kind of like, you’re on a journey and you get to a place. The song’s about being somewhere, and getting to somewhere else.”

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Worthy of note are his fellow players — Eric Gunnison, the longtime Denver-based pianist, provides predictably stout and damn-near perfect harmonic flooring, including some velvety Rhodes work, and saves up for a few blistering solos of his own. Trumpeter Gisbert likewise provides a sleek and engaged foil for Lalli’s sax, and the rhythm section of Royston and Barbosa frames the proceedings with measured, sometimes aggressive, sturdiness.

Ten years ago is long enough — our warped sense of time and tenuous grasp of Things That Happened Before The Pandemic make it seem like a quarter century ago, or another lifetime, or some halfremembered parallel world that pitilessly expelled us without warning. Did Lalli feel that distance as he was mixing and mastering this album?

“No, no. It feels very much like me, always. All my same stuff, all my same licks. It’s part of me, it’s part of my lineage, it’s something that I hold very close to me.

Even times earlier than that, when I was in New York, and even when I was in Arizona doing my undergrad. Oddly enough, all those times seem very close. Even though some of them were a long time ago.”

Released on July 10, the album is getting some play on Spotify, a vinyl release is on its way, and Lalli says that another jazz project may be in its infancy as well... but he maintains that Big G is still a thing, their annual Rowdytown blowout gig at Red Rocks is on the books for 2021, and Lalli seems unconcerned that the festival machine has had to hit a yearlong pause button.

“For Big Gigantic, yeah, that’s been our culture, the whole festival world, and obviously it’s treated us so great. But that culture and those people, that’s deep.

Those kids, when all this subsides, those kids are there, and we hear from them all the time. They hit us up: ‘Hey, we miss you guys’. I’ve been doing some DJ sets, doing stuff at home, and we’re still working on ways to bring shows to our fans.

“In all reality, people are listening more to us now. Our numbers are up.

That’s why I’m currently planning for next year. New songs, new album, everything.

Just getting everything ready for when all this is over.”

I

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

VIRTUAL EVENTS

HEART TO ART

If your organization is planning an event of any kind, please email Caitlin at crockett@boulderweekly.com.

Robert Sher-Machherndl in conversation with Cleo Parker Robinson. 6:15 p.m. Wednesday, July 29 via Zoom, lemonspongecake.org/heart-to-art.

Join Viennese-born, Boulder-based choreographer Robert Sher-Machherndl, of Lemon Sponge Cake Contemporary Ballet, and Cleo Parker Robinson for a lively conversation regarding Sher-Machherndl’s upcoming company commissioned work, BLACK ANGELS. This commission began just before COVID-19 hit, and is now being successfully rehearsed outside and on a virtual platform. Enjoy this insightful event with the opportunity for audience members to participate, ask questions and interact.

BMOCA VIRTUAL STUDIO TOUR.

Noon. Thursday, July 23, via Instagram, bmoca.org.

Take a tour of Heather D. Schulte’s studio. Born and raised in Nebraska, Schulte received a BFA with honors from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in photography in 2003.

After moving six times in 10 years, and welcoming three children to the world, she and her family settled in Boulder in 2018. Her work has since been featured in exhibitions at RedLine Contemporary Arts Center, and Loveland Museum, among others. She currently works out of her home studio in Boulder. To access the Virtual Studio Tours live, log into your Instagram account, then navigate to BMoCA’s profile and click on the circular icon with BMoCA’s logo.

LUCIUS COURTESY MOM+POP

COURTESY LEMON SPONGE CAKE

BY BOULDER WEEKLY STAFF

COURTESY BMOCA

LUCIUS PERFORMING SONGS FROM ‘THE BROMLEY HOUSE’

— with special guest Jim James. 7 p.m. Thursday, July 23, bit.ly/LuciusBoulder3. Debuting new music on July 30,bit.ly/LuciusBoulder4.

Catch the last two of four live-streamed shows by indie pop band Lucius on July 23 and 30 to promote small businesses facing financial hardship. A portion of ticket sales will go toward Boulder Theater and Fox Theatre’s staff fund when you purchase tickets through links listed above. Each stream will be available for 72 hours following the performance, for those who aren’t able to attend the live show.

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

MEGAN BURTT

LONGMONT MUSEUM VIRTUAL SUMMER CONCERT:

SUMMER MOVING PROJECT:

Livestream hosted by Colorado Conservatory of Dance. 6:30 p.m.

Saturday, July 25, ccdance.org/SMP. Be sure to grab a bag of popcorn, turn the lights down low, and tune into Colorado Conservatory of Dance’s (CCD) YouTube production of Summer Moving Project. See incredible new works by world-renowned choreographers Dominic Walsh, Alex Ketley, Garrett Ammon and Sarah Hillmer. Also on the bill are world premieres by CCD faculty: Michael Hinton, Page Jenkins, Kerry Healy, Morgan Sicklick, Sophie Robinson and more. This one-of-a-kind performance gives audience members the chance to witness the emergence of the next generation of great American dancers. Tickets are on sale now for $19.95 per household. The link will be emailed two hours prior to the performance time.

Megan Burtt. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 23 via Facebook Live, longmontmuseum.org.

Live from Stewart Auditorium, singer/songwriter Megan Burtt will enchant audiences during this livestream with her take on folk and Americana. Raised in the Rocky Mountains, Megan now splits her time between Brooklyn, Denver and the road. Megan is currently in the studio working on her third full-length solo record. This concert is free. Visit Longmont Museum’s Facebook page at 7:30 p.m. on the night of the show and click on “videos” to join. Learn more at longmontmuseum.org or call 303-651-8374.

ANDERSON & ROE COURTESY LISA-MARIE MAZZUCCONA

EVENT OF NOTE:

Piano Duo Anderson & Roe. 5 p.m.

Wednesday, July 29 via Zoom, boulderphil.org.

Go behind the scenes with the Boulder Philharmonic’s favorite piano duo, Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe. The virtual event will begin with a “musical mixology” lesson from Anderson and Roe as they detail the creation of original, music-inspired specialty craft cocktails. Conductor Michael Butterman will lead a chat after the show to discover the inspiration behind the pair’s electrifying music videos, song choice and composition. You may choose to add a delightful assortment of hors d’oeuvres and a cocktail mixer delivered to your home. Tickets: $30. Delivered hors d’oeuvres: $20. Zoom login information will be shared with ticket purchasers.

COURTESY HAZEL MILLER

VAIL DANCE FESTIVAL:

Digital edition. July 31-Aug. 7 via Vail Dance Festival’s YouTube and Facebook channels, vaildance.org.

This special online series of events will feature unique performances from the past 10 years of the Vail Dance Festival, including debuts and revivals that have only been seen in Vail, a world premiere choreographed

by Bobbi Jene Smith made in, and for, the virtual space, plus a range of educational programming including Passing Balanchine On with Heather Watts and Damian Woetzel, and Conversations On Dance with Rebecca King Ferraro and Michael Sean Breeden. The festival will be available for a limited time on the Vail Dance Festival’s YouTube and Facebook channels.

BANDS ABOVE THE BRICKS:

Hazel Miller. 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 29 via YouTube and Facebook, bandsonthebricks.com.

Hazel Miller has been a sought-after performer in Colorado for the past 25 years. Blues, jazz, pop and gospel are all a part of Miller’s repertoire. Catch Miller from the comfort of your own home with this virtual event from Downtown Boulder, live from Pearl Street Mall. Direct links to the livestream will be available at bandsonthebricks.com by 6:50 p.m. on the day of the show. Questions? Contact events@downtownboulder.org.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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see EVENTS Page 24

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EVENTS from Page 23

WE’VE GOT ISSUES

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Email Cover Letter and Resume to: Publisher Boulder Weekly franzan@boulderweekly.com

Brazilian-born producer Amon Tobin often assumes a nom de plume for new projects: hip-hop-meets-drum-and-bass as Cujo, heavy bass as Two Fingers, punked out electronic as Only Child Tyrant, and a master of cutting, splicing, repurposing and modulating under his given name. His newest alter ego, Figueroa, presents Tobin’s electronic vision of psychedelic folk. Tobin spent 10 years, on and off, working on the material that makes up the debut Figueroa album, The World As We Know It, during periods of isolation in the woods of Northern California. The sweeping Spanish guitar of lead single “Weather Girl” is a testament to Tobin’s mastery of sound design: He created the sounds of traditional instrumentation in the studio. In a hushed voice, Tobin wonders: “Do you ever feel like something’s severed / Something’s wrong?” But the track rollicks along, just as the world does, problems be damned.

HEAVY

BUT NOT YOU...YET

“WEATHER GIRL,” FIGUEROA

by Caitlin Rockett

“SOMETIMES HE’S IN MY DREAMS,” MARY LATTIMORE

While harpist Mary Lattimore has added silvery flourishes to albums by indie wunderkinds like Kurt Vile, Thurston Moore and Sharon Van Etton, her solo work is capable of capturing emotions without a word. For the lead single off Lattimore’s upcoming album, Silver Ladders, shoegaze guitarist Neil Halstead (Slowdive) grounds Lattimore’s ethereal harp with warm loops to create the sensation of seeing someone in a dream — sad and beautiful at once. As Lattimore’s harp leads you gently toward the end of the song, you can feel yourself waking up, the dream fading away, the sensation of it just on the edge of memory.

“DO YOU NEED ME,” LEWIS DEL MAR

The electro-acoustic indie pop of Lewis Del Mar comes from two people, guitarist Danny Miller and drummer Max Harwood, who met when they were just 9, living in Washington, D.C. They formed Lewis Del Mar (both their fathers are named Lewis) in 2013 after relocating to Rockaway Beach, New York (the Del Mar part), and soon found widespread acclaim for their 2016 self-titled debut. Their upcoming new record, August, sees a continuation of the duo’s propensity for sun-kissed, folk-tinged melodies with Latin-inspired percussion. “Do You Need Me” is a danceable song about being a questionable person. Harwood laments, “I’m a sucker / I’m a lush and a fiend / Nights I wonder / If that’s all I’ll ever be / All my life.”

“EGYPTIAN BOOGIE,” RICHARD HOUGHTON

Multi-instrumentalist Richard Houghton learned to cut vinyl records to put out his own music. His one-of-a-kind pressings — holographic, vivid colors, splatter designs — are as beautiful and varied as his music. Inspired by genre-blending electronic artists like DJ Shadow and Bonobo, Houghton lays traditional instrumentation over found sounds. “I walk around the house and hit pans and boxes and make drum beats that way,” Houghton said in an interview with YouTube channel Vinyl Rewind. Warm and groovy, Houghton’s guitar on “Egyptian Boogie” — off his new album Sailing Through Rainbows of Sound — is reminiscent of the smooth, clean tones guitarist John Frusiante brought to Red Hot Chili Peppers’ songs like “Scar Tissue” via his single-coil pickup Fender Strat.

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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W

hen Jack Warner previewed The Breaking Point in the summer of 1950, he knew he had a hit on his hands. And with good reason: The director was Michael Curtiz, Warner Bros.’ top man with hits like Casablanca, The Adventures of Robin Hood and Mildred Pierce. The star was John Garfield, a New York method actor with a handful of moody, noir-soaked post-war performances under his belt. The femme fatale was Patricia Neal, an icy hot blond who sent shivers of electricity through every scene. The script was drawn from Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not, and screenwriter Ranald MacDougall somehow managed literary fidelity while improving upon the original. The movie was a classic ready for its close-up.

But when Garfield’s name turned up in Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television, all bets were off. Warner buried the movie and kept it from rerelease. Garfield was essentially blacklisted and put under heavy strain from both the government and a Hollywood establishment trying to make good. The stress was too much, and on May 21, 1952, Garfield’s weakened heart gave out. He was 39.

Garfield was no communist. He was, in his words, “A Democrat by politics, a liberal by inclination, and a loyal citizen of this country by every act of my life.”

It didn’t matter, Garfield’s wife, Roberta Seidman, had been a member of the party years prior (she had hopes of getting workers better working conditions), and everyone knew Garfield was staunchly anti-racist.

That was enough to make people smell pinko back then. And considering The Breaking Point features one of the most even-handed relationships between a black and a white man (Juano Hernández and Garfield respectively), it’s no coincidence that this was the movie Warner buried to appease a center-right public.

Thankfully, nothing ever truly disappears, and on July 25 and 26, TCM will broadcast The Breaking Point as part of the ongoing Noir Alley weekly series — appointment television at its best.

Hemingway was one of the few who did see the movie on its initial run, and loved it, telling anyone who asked that it was the best adaptation of any of his work. Probably because The Breaking Point is an honest depiction of working men and the endless array of traps waiting to trip them up. And probably because Warner Bros.’ previous adaptation of the novel, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, kept the title and the boat and pitched the rest.

Or maybe it was because Hemingway was friends with Neal, who excels here as femme fatale Leona Charles. She’s great, but Phyllis Thaxter, playing Harry’s wife, Lucy, practically steals the show. Her scenes are the best in the movie, and some of the best domestic scenes in cinema history. You don’t often see a husband and wife on equal footing like this, nor do you see it this sexually charged.

The Breaking Point could have been big, but it wasn’t. It was tossed out with the garbage along with Garfield’s corpse. History can be cruel like that. But a good work is a good work, and, on a long enough timeline, the cream will always rise to the top.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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STAY CONNECTED Check us out on Facebook and Twitter for events, local news, and ticket giveaways. facebook.com/boulderweeklymedia twitter.com/boulderweekly

Remind Me

boulderweekly.com

by Diane Bergstrom Darkness always births the light. There is no insanity without surfacing reason. Apathy can give way to conviction and action.

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Diane Bergstrom wears many hats and many masks.

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BOULDER WEEKLY

LIBRA

SEPT. 23-OCT. 22: Your word of power for

BY ROB BREZSNY ARIES

MARCH 21-APRIL 19: “The creation of the world

did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.” Aries playwright Samuel Beckett made that observation, and now I’m passing it on to you as you glide into an extra-creative phase of your astrological cycle. I hope you will regard Beckett’s idea as an open-ended encouragement to improvise and experiment. May it rouse you to brainstorm about novel possibilities. May it inspire you to explore fresh trends you could launch. May it mobilize you to imagine the new worlds you might Big Bang into existence.

TAURUS

APRIL 20-MAY 20: Author Diane Ackerman tells us, “So

often loneliness comes from being out of touch with parts of oneself.” That’s the kind of loneliness I worry you may be susceptible to right now, Taurus. You’re a bit out of touch with aspects of your psyche that are crucial for you to include in your total sense of self. You’ve been neglecting to nurture certain soulful qualities that keep you healthy and wise. Please note: It won’t be useful to try to find those parts of you in other people; you will have to locate them in your own depths. Here’s the good news: The coming weeks will be an excellent time to do just that.

GEMINI

MAY 21-JUNE 20: “Someone ought to do it, but why

should I?” Author and activist Annie Besant identified that sentence as the motto of people who are moral cowards: those who know about an injustice but do nothing to address it. Very few of us have completely avoided that behavior. Most of us, including me, have now and then chosen to serve our need for comfort instead of standing up against corruption or unfairness. But I think it’s more important than usual that you Geminis don’t engage in such moral cowardice now. More depends on your integrity and bravery than you realize.

CANCER

JUNE 21-JULY 22: Born in 1936, Cancerian author

and activist June Jordan was a black bisexual feminist born to Jamaican immigrant parents. When she was growing up, her father beat her and her mother committed suicide. Later, she raised her child alone as a single mother. Despite the challenges she faced, she published 28 books, won numerous awards, and wielded significant influence. How did she do it? She was a highly evolved Cancerian in the sense that she put a priority on treating herself well. “I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect,” she testified. I’d like to make that your keynote for the rest of 2020. Your task is to achieve June Jordanlevels of self-care.

LEO

JULY 23-AUG. 22: “How can I communicate to wild bun-

nies that I am their ally?” asked a Twitter blogger named Ghost Girl. That question is a good place to start my oracle for you. In the coming weeks, I think you’ll be wise to meditate on how to enhance your relationship with all kinds of wild things: animals, people, weather, landscapes, and your own exotic thoughts and fantasies. In my opinion, you will upgrade your intelligence and well-being by increasing your access to influences that don’t necessarily play by conventional rules and that draw their energy from primal sources.

VIRGO

AUG. 23-SEPT. 22: It’s never too late to have a

rebellious adolescence — hopefully bigger and better and smarter than any you’ve had before. And according to my analysis, now would be a favorable time to get started. Is there any stuffy authority you’d be wise to flout? Any dumb and oppressive conventions you would benefit from breaking? Any stale old traditions you’re primed to ignore so you can create some lively new traditions? In my estimation, you will generate good fortune for yourself if you try some benevolent mischief and creative experiments.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

the coming weeks is ubuntu, a Zulu term meaning “I am because we are” or “the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity.” Nobel Prize-winning theologian Archbishop Desmond Tutu writes, “A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished.” I hope that between now and August 25, Libra, you will put ubuntu at the center of everything you do. Make it an intensely practical practice.

SCORPIO

OCT. 23-NOV. 21: “The size of your dreams must always

exceed your current capacity to achieve them,” says Scorpio-born Liberian politician Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

“If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” I trust you’ve arrived at this realization on your own in the past few weeks. And I hope you have audaciously expanded and supercharged your dreams so that they do indeed surpass your current ability to accomplish them. If you have not yet done this daring work, please attend to it now. If you have done it, move on to the next step: making definite plans to acquire the power and resources necessary to achieve your new, improved dreams.

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SAGITTARIUS

NOV. 22-DEC. 21: “The soul should always stand

ajar,” wrote Sagittarian poet Emily Dickinson, “That if the heaven inquire, / He will not be obliged to wait, / Or shy of troubling her.” I’m confident that this will be a fertile meditation for you in the coming weeks. So what does it mean? By “heaven,” I assume Dickinson meant marvelous interventions, sacred revelations and lucky accidents — and maybe also soulful invitations, out-of-the-blue opportunities and supernatural breakthroughs. What do you think, Sagittarius? What can you do to make your soul ajar for phenomena like those?

CAPRICORN

DEC. 22-JAN. 19: “Everything is complicated,” wrote poet

Wallace Stevens. “If that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.” I agree! And therefore, I conclude, you should shed any resentment you might feel for the fact that our world is a crazy tangle of mystifying and interesting stories.

Drop any wish that life will stop being so fascinatingly messy and confusingly intriguing. Instead, why not celebrate the deep riddles? And revel in the intriguing complexity? And give holy thanks for the paradoxical beauty? Everything I just said should prepare you well for the next four weeks.

“The Boulder Mountainbike Alliance ran ads recently in the Boulder Weekly to promote our annual Membership Party and Colorado Gives Day. The campaign was a huge success and BMA raised $34,320 - all going towards improving Boulder County’s trail system! The Boulder Weekly ads led to additional awareness of BMA and played an important part in this extraordinary fundraising campaign. Thanks Boulder Weekly!”

Wendy Sweet President, Board of Directors Boulder Mountainbike Alliance

AQUARIUS

JAN. 20-FEB. 18: You’ll be extra sensitive to stimuli in

the coming weeks. Every little event will touch you more intensely than usual. Every perception will flow into you with an unusually strong potential to move you and influence you. That’s why I think you should be vigilantly self-protective. Erect a psychic shield around yourself. Make sure your boundaries are firm and clear. Affirm your unshakable commitment to deflecting vibes that aren’t of use to you and welcoming vibes that will enhance your well-being.

PISCES

FEB. 19-MARCH 20: Actress Gwyneth Paltrow

founded Goop, a company that markets exotic, expensive health treatments. She claims that far-infrared gemstone therapy and crystal-based sound-healing baths will dissolve your negativity. Allowing bees to sting your scars will supposedly cause the scars to fade. Drinking “sex juice,” a blend of watermelon and alkaline water, will enhance your libido. The “collagen martini,” which is a mix of vodka, vermouth, olive juice and collagen peptides, will smooth your skin’s wrinkles. I’m favorably disposed to you taking strong actions to improve your well-being in the coming weeks, Pisces, but I recommend that you try cheaper, more reliable modalities than those Paltrow recommends. Like what? Ample sleep and good food, for starters, along with fun exercise, time in nature, enjoyable meditation sessions and tender expressions of love.

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These pictures of you

Between attraction and repulsion in ‘Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful’

by Michael J. Casey

H

elmut Newton had a sense of humor.

That might not be your immediate takeaway if you do a Google search for his photographs (after you deactivate all the safe search controls).

But the more you peruse his oeuvre, the more his wit becomes obvious. The more you see the naughty little schoolboy behind the camera.

Take his 1994 photograph, “Roast chicken and Bulgari jewels.” The composition is simple: One roasted chicken, its hips splayed, its cavity open wide. The hands of the model grasp the breast phallically with one hand, wrestling the leg with another. On her wrist and finger, oversized jewelry costing more than most chefs make in a year. Next to her hands and the cooked corpse, a soiled Wusthof Classic Chef Knife. It’s violent and sexual, domestic and opulent all in one photograph.

“Roast chicken and Bulgari jewel” is also one of Newton’s more erotic photographs, and that’s saying something considering the man’s métier was naked women. And they are on full display in Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful.

Directed by Gero von Boehm, The Bad and the Beautiful is your typical documentary hagiography, but with a little sex. Running just under 90 minutes, the first half of Bad and the Beautiful focuses primarily on Newton’s work with von Boehm, peppering Newton’s photographs and contact sheets with a running commentary from former models — Nadja Auermann, Isabella Rossellini, Grace Jones, Charlotte Rampling, etc. The focus here is on Newton’s use of nudes to convey power through eroticism. Some of it was perverted, all of it was provocative, but none of it was intentionally vulgar.

But was it feminist, or was it misogynistic? Most of the interviewees insist Newton’s photography placed women in the role of sexual dominance. His framing and composition gave them power. Critic Susan Sontag focused on the subject and sees misogynistic

ON THE BILL: ‘Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful’ is available at virtual theaters, full list at kinomarquee. com, starting July 24.

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PHOTOS COURTESY HELMUT NEWTON FOUNDATION

adoration. There is love in the photos, but love the way a “master loves his slave” or “an executioner loves his victims.” Auermann concurs but remains on Newton’s side. Art is a mirror reflecting society. If society is sexist and misogynistic, why shouldn’t photography reflect that?

But Newton wasn’t just reflecting the world of high fashion and consumerism; he was drawing on the artistic wonders of Weimar Era German.

Growing up a Jewish boy in a Berlin between world wars, Newton was influenced by German Expressionism and the glorification of the human figure à la Nazi-filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. You can see both in Newton’s photographs, from his black and white portraits riddled with sharp shadows to human forms so taut and tight, Greek gods would envy them. They are works of attraction, and works of repulsion.

The second part of Bad and the Beautiful recounts Newton’s life and marriage in archival interviews filmed before the photographer’s death in 2004. They don’t add as much to the narrative as von Boehm might hope, but they don’t bog the doc down too much either. The draw here is the photographs, and though they are only a few decades old, they still seem like they’re beamed from another time and place.

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TOP: ‘Roast chicken and Bulgari jewels’ MIDDLE: ‘Helmut Newton, Monte Carlo, 1987’ Photo by Alice Springs BOTTOM: ‘David Lynch and Isabella Rossellini, Los Angeles’

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

S outhweSt A cupuncture c ollege B oulder • S Ante F e

BY DAN SAVAGE Dear Dan: Is it terrible to believe you can still have a truly monogamous and loving relationship with one partner after 20 years? Or can we walk into a relationship knowing that within those decades of being together that situations like infidelity or being attracted to another is completely unavoidable? And if we acknowledge that in some cases it’s truly unavoidable, should we mentally prepare ourselves for this possibility during our “monogamous” stage?

Early on in dating?

—Hopelessly Optimistic Person Enquires Dear HOPE: Be prepared.

Knowing what we do about infidelity and how common it is over the course of long-term relationships, HOPE, it’s a good idea to have a conversation early in a relationship about what you will do if and/or when one and/or the other and/or both of you should cheat years or decades later. It’s best for this convo to happen at the tail end of the infatuation stage but before you’ve made any sort of formal commitment — you know, after you’ve had your first fight but still at that stage when the thought of ever wanting to fuck someone else seems ridiculous. Committing at that point to at least trying to work through an infidelity doesn’t guarantee the relationship will survive and it doesn’t obligate you to remain in the relationship. But it ups the chances the relationship will survive an infidelity that it could and perhaps should survive.

Because remember… when it comes to cheating… some types are worse than others. There are differences in degree. If you found out your husband fucked your sister on your wedding night, well, that’s probably not something you’ll be able to forgive. But an instantly regretted one-off on a business trip (remember those?) or prolonged affair after 20 years and two kids and both partners long ago started taking their sexual connection for granted and both allowed it to wither? That’s something you can work past and are likelier to work past if you agreed to at least try to work past it before the kids and the taking for granted and the business trips.

Zooming out for a moment…

The culture encourages us to see cheating as a relationship-extinction-level event — an unforgivable betrayal, something no relationship can survive. Which seems nuts when you pause to consider just how common cheating is. Defining cheating as always unforgivable sets up for failure otherwise good and loving relationships that might be able to survive an infidelity.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Accepting ApplicAtionS For SeptemBer 2020 SeSSionS If instead of telling us that no relationship could ever survive an infidelity, the culture told us that cheating in monogamous or non-monogamous relationships is always serious betrayal — it’s not at all trivial — but it’s something a relationship can survive, HOPE, then more relationships that should survive infidelities would… I hope you’re sitting down… actually wind up surviving infidelities. The truth is, many relationships don’t just survive infidelities but actually wind up thriving in the wake of the disclosure or exposure of an affair because the healing process brings the couple closer together. (This is not a good reason to have an affair, of course, nor is it the reason why anyone has ever had an affair.) Reinforcing the idea that affairs always destroy relationships: Couples who remain together after an affair usually don’t talk openly about the cheating while couples who separate or divorce after an affair can hardly bring themselves to talk about anything else.

Now to quickly answer your first questions…

Yes, it is possible for two people to remain monogamous for 20 years. It can be done — of course it can — but there are lots of people out there who think they’ve done it but are mistaken. Some people think they’ve been in successfully monogamous relationships for 20 years have been cheated on — or they themselves have done something their partners might regard as cheating — and the one-off infidelity or the ongoing affair or the happy endings were never exposed or disclosed.

And your partner is going to find other people attractive — and not in 20 years.

Today, right now, your partner is going to lay eyes on someone else they find attractive, HOPE, just as you will probably lay eyes — but only eyes — on someone else you find attractive. Making a monogamous commitment doesn’t mean you don’t wanna fuck other people, it means you will refrain from fucking other people. If the lie we’re told about love and attraction were true — if being in love with someone left you incapable of finding someone else attractive — we wouldn’t need to make monogamous commitments. We wouldn’t need to promise to not fuck anyone or extract that promise from someone else if being in left rendered us incapable of even noticing how hot your barista is.

Listen to the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at www.savagelovecast.com. This week: Kinsey Institute’s Dr. Justin Lehmiller.

Send questions to mail@savagelove. net, follow Dan on Twitter @ FakeDanSavage and visit ITMFA.org.

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Busaba is currently offering a limited menu for carry-out and dine-in on the patio or in the restaurant (and if you choose to dine-in, rest assured the staff are taking social distancing and sanitization seriously, while still retaining Busaba’s characteristic level of hospitality and friendliness). We stopped in for the Bangkok street fried rice on a recent visit — lightly crisped rice with broccoli, tomato, onion, spices and your choice of protein (we selected pork), at your level of spiciness (we went pretty darn spicy).

The dish is perfectly balanced with subtle sour and sweet notes, and the thin-sliced pork is well-browned and tender. When Busaba says hot, it means hot (we do not recommend selecting “Thai hot” unless you know what you’re doing), but the combination of the endorphin rush from the spice and the downright irresistible flavor of the dish all but guarantees an empty plate.

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n Drink this: It’s National Tequila Day SUSAN FRANCE

It’s not like we need to tell you to go to the Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant for all things tequila, but July 24 is National Tequila Day, and the Rio will be offering 50% off pours of tequila all day long. Though it has over 60 different types in its collection, José Cuervo is the Rio’s bread and butter — the regional chain claims to be the largest on-site purveyor of José in the U.S. and whips up about one million margs a year. They’re legendary, but you knew that already. Not up to going out but still want to celebrate? No problem, grab a bottle of tequila, triple sec and a couple of limes and follow along: 3 parts tequila, 2 parts triple sec, and 1 part fresh-squeezed lime juice. Throw it all in a blender, a couple of frozen strawberries if you’re feeling fancy, and add ice to your liking. Rim the glass with salt, and you’ll be sailing away in no time.

BOULDER WEEKLY

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n Colorado wine industry gets recognition amid pandemic The 170 wineries that make up Colorado’s wine industry are adapting to these unprecedented times by offering curbside pickup, wine gift boxes and now even some wine country tours. One thing that’ll help boost the state’s wine profile is the recent recognition from Wine Enthusiast, which awarded seven Colorado wines a 90-plus point rating. The esteemed wines include two 2019 vintages from Aspen Peak Cellars (viognier and dry rose), two 2017 vintages from Winery at Holy Cross Abbey (merlot and merlot reserve) and others from Sutcliffe Vineyards (2016 cab Franc), Infinite Monkey Theorem (2018 syrah) and Snowy Peaks Winery (2017 malbec).

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

What to do when there’s ‘nothing’ to do? Homebrew!

by Ray Ricky Rivera

Y

ou’ve been sheltering in place, locked down from the rest of the world, and your thumbs are sore from scrolling through endless Facebook rants. Cabin fever is starting to set in. What to do? You could do what millions of Americans have been doing for decades: Make beer at home. What better time than now to pick up a new hobby?

Homebrewing can be as simple as dissolving extract into a pot of boiling water on your stovetop and pitching yeast. Or you can easily go down the rabbit hole of brewing equipment and assemble a pro-grade nano brewery in your garage that’ll have your neighbor secretly questioning if you’re a reallife Breaking Bad Walter White. Sky’s the limit, really — if you have the space — and you’ll be turning water into delicious suds in no time, using puns for beer names like “Locked Down Lager” or “Pandemic Pale.” Fun, gratifying and legal.

I’ve been homebrewing for six years, and find it to be both stimulating and therapeutic. When I’m homebrewing alone in my garage, I zone out, and it becomes this relaxing “me time.” As a member of a local homebrew club, I’ve got a network of support at my disposal — not just a group to ask brewing questions and get feedback on why my mango-guava Belgian saison missed the mark, but actual friends who genuinely care about my

well-being and want to know what I’m up to in life. There’s something about the hobby of homebrewing that goes beyond just making beer.

The homebrewing community is filled with some of the most generous and kind people I’ve ever met. There’s a special camaraderie between brewers. When a fellow brewer landed in the hospital with COVID-19, I texted him to ask how he was holding up. He replied: “This has been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through. The only thing keeping me positive is the love and support from my family at home and my beer family. You all are amazing. It may not seem like it, but this club has been super helpful with keeping me JESSE JAMES GALARZA in good spirits. I never thought a homebrew club would have such an effect on my life.”

In the age of social media, human connections seem like a fleeting idea. We live in a façade of interaction when a follow on Instagram has become the equivalent of waving hello at a passing neighbor. There’s something to be said about actually seeing people in real life. Sharing a moment and visually seeing someone’s facial expressions in conversation is priceless. That’s why grabbing a round of beers with friends never gets old. So, do yourself a favor and get a starter kit from your local homebrew supply, brew a batch of beer and, when it’s safe to go back out with the crowds, join a homebrew club.

Ray Ricky Rivera (@RayRickyRivera) is the co-founder and president of the SoCal Cerveceros homebrew club. He hosts the weekly online radio show, Beer Bands Business.

An American legacy

H

omebrewing is as American as apple pie and baseball.

Some historians believe pilgrims on The Mayflower landed on Cape Cod not as an intended destination, but as a result of being low on beer. In the early days of colonialism, clean water was hard to come by. Beer was a healthy alternative for hydration as it contained necessary nutrients. An easy remedy was to brew your own.

Production of alcohol at home was outlawed by the federal government in 1919 as a result of the impending era of Prohibition.

Although America went dry for 13 years, homebrewing exploded. When Prohibition was repealed in 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, homebrewing was not included in the ratification of the 21st amendment.

Americans were again allowed to legally produce, sell and consume commercial beer, but homebrewing for private consumption was still illegal. It wasn’t until 1978 when President Jimmy Carter signed H.R. 1337, that homebrewing was again legal at the federal level. In 2011, President Barack Obama became the first known sitting president to homebrew beer inside the White House.

With help from then-White House Chef Sam Kass, three recipes were developed using honey from a beehive on the White House’s South Lawn. The White House Honey Brown, White House Honey Blonde and White House Honey Porter recipes have all been made available online. Need something to do? Be presidential and make some homebrew.

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JULY 23, 2020

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BOULDER WEEKLY

In season: Beets from Cure Organic Farm

by Matt Cortina

F

or the longest time, I couldn’t stand beets.

Now, I wasn’t doing them any favors by derisively, skeptically throwing them into the oven and hoping something magical would happen in there. But with a little effort, even a former beet-hater like me can reap the rewards of the pleasant texture, irresistible sweetness and “earthy” flavor I once panned so vociferously to anyone who would listen.

It helps to start with local, farm-fresh beets, which I picked up by the bushel from Cure Organic Farm in Boulder.

Early in their harvesting season, the beets come in a variety of sizes, but they’re jampacked with flavor and all those good nutrients that make eating beets worth the effort.

The key, for me at least, is pairing beets with fat — a dollop of goat cheese on a roasted beet has become a pretty common preparation for a reason.

But you can get serious fat into the beet during the cooking, too. After a few attempts at roasting beets in basically a pouch of olive oil and butter, I moved the operation to the stove top, took away the butter and added herbs and garlic for a beet that even the most beet-phobic could love.

Place the fat-poached beet atop Cure’s punchy, spicy salad mix and drizzle with olive oil, lemon juice and/or a dash of balsamic vinegar — the acid amplifies the beets’ candy sweetness. And don’t forget about the beet greens that come attached to Cure’s fresh-plucked crop. Cut and blanch for two minutes in boiling water, then sauté with bacon, garlic and olive oil. Finish with a drizzle of vinegar to bring it all to life.

POACH, DON’T ROAST, YOUR BEETS

Throw beets in the oven for an hour or two, depending on the size, and you’ll get the job done.

However, if you don’t want to heat up the house, try a stovetop beet preparation: Not only will it keep the house cool, but it also yields tastier results.

You can poach beets in a variety of liquids — wine or water with vinegar will produce a slightly tangy, tender beet. But poaching in fat yields buttery, rich beets that you can throw onto a salad, slide into a sandwich or eat without accompaniment.

Like roasting, poaching will tenderize the skin for easy removal, but peeling beforehand allows more flavor to concentrate into the beet — although I only have anecdotal evidence to prove that. Peel beets and slice into thick portions, place them in a pot and barely cover with olive oil. Throw in a few smashed garlic cloves and fronds of rosemary or whatever herbs you have on hand. Simmer at a very light bubble until the beets are tender, about an hour. Bonus: grill or saute the beets for two minutes per side to caramelize.

Boulder County Farmers Market expands offerings

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

BCFM is currently operating curbside pickup. In Longmont, folks can order food online beginning Tuesdays at 8 a.m. through Thursdays at noon, with pickup between 9 a.m and 2 p.m. on Sundays. In Lafayette, you can sign up for a pre-selected box of goods from up to eight local farms — order from Sunday to Tuesday with pickup on Thursdays.

If you access the Union Station market in Denver, you can sign up for a “chef box” — hand-selected produce accompanied by a virtual chef demo. July’s box courtesy Matt Vawter of Mercantile Dining & Provision; August’s from Jen Janinski of Crafted Concepts and September’s from Sheila Lucero of Jax Fish House.

Last, celebrate Colorado Proud Month and National Farmers Market Week (Aug. 2-8) by supporting the slate of unique offerings from local food businesses. BCFM is highlighting local businesses like Oliko Ginger Beer, Green Belly Foods and Spark I

AN

FR AN

CE

T

hough open-air markets and farm stands have an edge over cloistered, covered grocery stores during the pandemic, the Boulder County Farmers Markets (BCFM) has not been immune to COVID-19’s impacts.

After a delayed start to the season, BCFM began to offer reserved slots so folks can peruse some of its markets, in addition to a new model of online ordering and curbside pickup of goods from local farmers, ranchers and food makers.

As the growing season moves into a period of abundance, BCFM is pivoting again to offer more ways to engage with local food.

First, the Boulder Wednesday market is back — it kicked off on July 15, and will continue through Oct. 7, 4-8 p.m. Reservations can be made to access the market, though they’re not required. And while there won’t be a beer garden this year, limited seating in the open-air food court has been approved.

For Longmont and Lafayette market-goers,

SU S

JULY 23, 2020

+ Honey by creating boxes that contain up to 10 local packaged foods based around a theme (such as a Celebration of Latin Community and Flavors, Hearty Colorado Breakfast and Ultimate Colorado Snack Box).

To access or learn more about any of these offerings, visit bcfm.org.

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Listening to music without headphones. Or ears.

by Paul Danish

W

hat if you could listen to music without headphones, or ears for that matter?

Elon Musk is working on an app for that.

Tesla and SpaceX aren’t Musk’s only companies. He also owns a small start-up called Neuralink that is working on a brain-computer interface.

connected to flexible, thread-like wires that will be implanted into it by a “sewing machine-like” neurosurgical robot.

The process of having the chip implanted will be similar to Lasik laser eye surgery in terms of invasiveness, Musk says.

In the past Musk has hinted that Neuralink’s chip will be able to cure depression and addiction MARTIN420/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS by “retraining” parts of the brain responsible for these afflictions, The Independent wrote.

Work on the chip has advanced to the animal testing stage. Human trials were originally slated for this year, but no details have been made public yet.

That may be about to change, however, since more information is due to be released at an Aug. 28 briefing.

This has got to be one of the coolest, and most terrifying, technologies ever contemplated.

Cure addiction, huh? Or maybe take it up to a whole new level.

“Listening” to music that’s directly piped into your brain is cool. Even more cool would be if the system could teach you to play music or to sing with perfect pitch.

According to a story in the UK paper The And why stop with music? If you could listen Independent, one of its first uses, Musk says, will to music directly pumped into your noggin, be to allow users to stream music directly into maybe you could get a geometry lesson the their brains. same way? And maybe it could be directly wired He also said the chip implant his company is into your wet-ware without you having to study developing “could help control hormone levels the subject. and use them to our advantage (enhanced abiliEuclid once told a king that “there is no royal ties and reasoning, anxiety relief, etc.)” road to geometry.” Maybe there’s about to be one.

The chip Neuralink is developing will be And if the system can cure addiction by directly placed on the surface of the brain and “retraining” parts of your brain, what else can it

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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JULY 23, 2020

“cure” with retraining? Can it erase bad memories? How about memories the government would prefer you just didn’t have? And could they be replaced with memories the government would prefer you did have? That sort of thing used to be called “brain-washing” but no one outside of science fiction thought it could be done with a machine. Up until now.

It goes without saying that if this system even remotely lives up to its promise, it will pose an existential threat to the drug business.

The system would allow you to experience every known psychedelic high, and probably a lot no one has ever thought of, without having to take any drugs. And the computer pumping all this sort of experience into you would probably be no bigger than a smartphone. In fact it might be your smartphone.

Will the system eventually be able to rewrite your personality? Could you try different personalities on like suits of clothes? Could a court order you to rewrite part of your personality as part of a plea-deal? Could you edit the content of your character. For good or ill? For fun and profit?

And so on.

Will society accept technology this powerful?

Will it, indeed. Chances are people will no more be able to keep their hands off of it than Adam and Eve could keep their hands off the apple.

Once the technology becomes available it will be as common as the cell phone.

Neuralink says learning to use the device will be “like learning to touch type or play the piano.”

Maybe Neuralink will develop a program that will teach you how to use the Neuralink system. No manual needed.

Musk is into disruptive technologies. This time he may be outdoing himself.

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