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news:

The controversy surrounding CU South, explained by Angela K. Evans

feature:

people:

When death becomes an aggregate abstraction, the truth either matters, or it doesn’t by Dave Kirby

Blackbelly/Santo owners found out their daughter had a rare genetic disease the week COVID-19 closed their restaurants. Now, they need your help. by Matt Cortina

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buzz:

A fund for artists helps all Boulder build resilience during crisis by Caitlin Rockett

events:

What do to when there’s ‘nothing’ to do by Boulder Weekly Staff

beer:

feast:

What shape will breweries take in a post-COVID world? by Michael J. Casey

Frasca’s Bobby Stuckey and Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson deliver a love letter in ‘Friuli Food and Wine’ by Matt Cortina

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18 Boulderganic: How to save the economy and climate together 26 Film: Two sisters and a town full of secrets in ‘Blow the Man Down’ 27 Savage Love: Desperate for answers 28 Astrology: by Rob Brezsny 29 Words: ‘A Real Estate’ by Jethro McLellan 30 Food/Drink: Food news and what to try this week in Boulder County 36 Cannabis Corner: The hypnotic allure of Rocky Mountain high BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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Publisher, Fran Zankowski Circulation Manager, Cal Winn EDITORIAL Editor, Matt Cortina Senior Editor, Angela K. Evans Arts and Culture Editor, Caitlin Rockett Special Editions Editor, Michael J. Casey Adventure Editor, Emma Athena Contributing Writers, Peter Alexander, Dave Anderson, Will Brendza, Rob Brezsny, Paul Danish, Sarah Haas, Jim Hightower, Dave Kirby, John Lehndorff, Rico Moore, Amanda Moutinho, Leland Rucker, Dan Savage, Josh Schlossberg, Alan Sculley, Ryan Syrek, Christi Turner, Betsy Welch, Tom Winter, Gary Zeidner SALES AND MARKETING Account Executives, Matthew Fischer, Sami Wainscott Market Development Manager, Kellie Robinson Advertising Coordinator, Corey Basciano Bookkeeper, Regina Campanella Mrs. Boulder Weekly, Mari Nevar PRODUCTION Art Director, Susan France Senior Graphic Designer, Mark Goodman Graphic Designer, Daisy Bauer CIRCULATION TEAM Dave Hastie, Dan Hill, George LaRoe, Jeffrey Lohrius, Elizabeth Ouslie, Rick Slama Founder/CEO, Stewart Sallo Editor-at-Large, Joel Dyer Cover, Will Betke-Brunswick May 14, 2020 Volume XXVII, Number 39 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

Tooting our own horn

oulder Weekly took home 24 awards from the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2020 Top of the Rockies Excellence in Journalism Awards, announced May 1. (Technically they were mailed and there was no celebratory gathering at the Denver Press Club this year due to obvious reasons.) Here’s a list of all the first place honors. The entire editorial staff won in the Special Section category for their work putting together “Vote Guide 2019.” Caitlin Rockett won in the A&E and Food: Critcism category for her features of Shara Nova, A.A. Bondy and Cursive. Joel Dyer took home first place for his “Windows, Walls and Invisible Lines” portraits of life in sanctuary series in both the Feature Photography and Politics: I

Enterprise Reporting categories. Emma Athena won for her exploration of Boulder’s residential co-ops, “Welcome home,” in the Best Solutions Journalism category and in Sports: Enterprise Reporting for “Out from below” about an 1,800-foot long-line rescue. Matt Cortina took home top honors in the Legal: Enterprise Reporting category for “Reckoning with force” about use of force policies in different law enforcement agencies spurred by an incident at the Boulder County Jail. Giselle Cesin was awarded the top prize for her story about how the entertainment business glamorizes drug lords and leaves victims behind, “In the name of ratings” in the A&E and Food: Enterprise category. Angela K. Evans won in the Science and Technology: General Reporting category for “Lost in the wake” about a CU researcher’s discoveries about wind farm engineering.

MAY 14, 2020

The Grim Reaper and the Charmin squeeze By Paul Danish

he Idea Fairy and I were kicking back — banana nut bread is the gift that keeps on giving — when there was a knock at the door. It was the Grim Reaper and a giant test tube with legs. “Yikes!” screeched i-Fairy and flitted out the back door. I refused to panic. “Does this mean my number is up?” I said grimly. “No, it means I want to borrow a roll of toilet paper,” Reap said grimly. “Over my dead body,” I snapped grimly. “I had to fight my way through the walking dead in the toilet paper aisle at King Soopers to get a four-pack.” “Don’t press your luck, buster,” Reap retorted, running a boney finger along the blade of his scythe. I realized the time for light banter was past. “OK,” I said grimly. “Come in and take a load off, and pour yourself a restorative.” “You look like death warmed over,” I added grimly. “Thanks for the compliment,” he replied grimly. “But we can only stay a few minutes. We may have a gig in Washington — Trump and Pence aren’t wearing masks — and we have to catch an over-crowded plane to The Swamp.” “I hear the miasma is lovely at this time of year,” I said grimly. “But you look like you’re working too hard. Why don’t you take a few weeks off? You need a holiday, so to speak.” “Well I tried that last February,” Reap said grimly. “I signed up for a cruise on a ship called the Diamond Princess. Everything was great for a

couple of weeks, but then people started coming down with a virus. By the time it was over it was just another busy month at the office for me.” “BTW, you didn’t introduce your friend,” I said grimly, casting a wary glance at the test tube. “That’s Corona,” Reap said grimly. “She’s my new intern. We met on the cruise after she blew her cork one night.” I looked over Corona more closely. Her cork had the word “Corona” printed on it in shocking pink, along with a skull and crossbones. She was wearing a tube top with a picture of a freezer wrapped in chains and the letters “CDC” painted on it. Below the freezer were the words “Free the smallpox quintillion.” Suddenly, a cold, icy hand of fear gripped me. The only thing more frightening than an active virus is an activist virus. Reap’s discreet death rattle snapped me out of it. “The reason we stopped by was that Corona wants to make you an offer,” he said grimly. “Which I can’t refuse, of course,” I said grimly. “Of course,” Corona chimed in grimly. “Here’s the deal,” she said grimly. “I need a flack. And you’re just the guy for the job.” “In other words,” I said grimly, “you want me to be a spokesman for the virus.” “Exactly,” she said grimly. “But why does the virus need a spokesman?” I asked grimly. “Coronaviruses are getting all the

The only thing more frightening than an active virus is an activist virus.

see DANISH PLAN Page 7

MAY 14, 2020

A letter to Joe Neguse

I am writing to state my extreme disappointment and disgust with the Congressional Democrats, particularly its leadership, for doing little to help ordinary Americans and small businesses. The so-called CARES acts have been a boon for billionaires, millionaires, large corporations, banks and other top-of-the-pile economic players. The leadership, especially Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer among others are letting the Republicans run the show in both chambers. There have been few meaningful efforts to meet the needs of the people who are suffering most, including gig workers, immigrants, essential workers, health workers, renters, mortgage holders, student debtors, utility customers, small business owners, the selfemployed, those not covered by health insurance, states and local governments, colleges and universities, our Post Office and many other people and institutions that need help in this crisis. The $1,200 one-time payment and (up to) the minuscule unemployment compensation is a joke. $4.5 trillion goes to the tiny few at the top of the pile while bare crumbs trickle down to the majority at the bottom. If the Democrats think people will support them in the election with this kind of Democratic response to the COVID crisis, they better think again. Trump is terrible, the Republicans are terrible, but ordinary folks, youth and many who have I

found voting to make little difference in their lives will have little incentive to show up for a Democratic Party that offers little to nothing to them. They watched as the most popular politician in America was once again rooked out of the presidential nomination in favor of a long-time neoliberal, warmongering racist, sexist, elitist Wall Street, Big Pharma consort who now is losing his mental acuity. Beyond miserably pathetic. We’ll have Trump for four more years if the Democrats don’t do something bold and ground-shaking for the People. I am proud of Alexandria OcasioCortez for her vote against the corrupt and pathetic CARES 3.5 bill in the House (Pelosi should be ashamed). I wish you had done the same. I want you to support progressive bills offered by Reps Jayapal, Omar, Senator Sanders and other true progressives whose proposals will make a difference. Right now, I and millions of others see little reason to get excited about the Democratic field this election year unless the Democrats do something meaningful. That definitely has not happened. Democratic Party inaction does not bode well for November, the Electoral College and Congress. Please become a visible and forceful leader for progressive change. Don’t just go along to get along. I’d like to know what you will do to help the Democrats change course before it’s too late. Ken Bonetti/Boulder see LETTERS Page 7

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

DANISH PLAN from Page 6

publicity they can handle already. Their story is sucking all the oxygen out of the room, so to speak.” “Yeah, but it’s all bad publicity,” Reap said grimly. “Corona has had her fill of it and is ready to blow her cork again.” “Uh, why don’t you just sue the New York Times and CNN for libel, like Trump did,” I said grimly. “Libel suits take forever,” Corona replied grimly, “thousands of lifetimes in virus years. And then there’s always that pesky ‘truth is a defense’ thing. When you’re a virus, the system is always rigged against you.” I had to admit she had a point. “Well why don’t you put out a press release pointing to pandemic positives,” I said grimly. “Like less traffic, more parking, more job openings, lower monthly rates at nursing homes, and so on.” “It has possibilities,” Reap said grimly. “But it could be a hard sell.” Suddenly I had an idea. “Maybe you could convince people to take COVID cruises,” I said grimly. “Most of the people who take cruises are geezers like me. You could open with a shot of a cruise ship sailLETTERS from Page 6

Deadline quickly approaching

Thanks to leadership from Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) and the hard work of Western Landowners Alliance members and others on the 2018 Farm Bill, western landowners, ranchers and producers who manage their land in a way that complements and conserves wildlife and wildlife habitat now qualify for benefits from USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). But landowners must apply quickly — the deadline is May 15, 2020. This win-win allows landowners the ability to protect grasslands, rangelands and pastures, while maintaining their land as working lands. CRP is an opportunity for agricultural producers to contract with USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) so agricultural land is used for conservation benefits, such as improving pasture cover to benefit pollinators or other wildlife. Specifically, new provisions in the program recognize lands of ecological significance, including lands that BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

ing into the setting sun. The voiceover would say, ‘You always wanted it to end with you sailing off into a sunset. Now’s your chance! Why die in the ICU with a freaking ventilator tube crammed down your gullet when you can go out in style? Fifty percent off regular rates, since it’s a one-way trip! Free burial at sea included!’” That has possibilities,” Corona said grimly. “Got any other ideas? “Yeah,” I said grimly. “Why don’t you infect the White House press corps? It would be wildly popular with anyone who ever had to deal with a bunch of snarky twits and bullies in high school, which is practically everyone. Trump could have them quarantined in an appropriate place — like Terra del Fuego or Cheyenne Mountain or Dick Cheney’s Undisclosed Location Ranch. That should stop all the anti-virus hysteria. And after they get out the survivors will have completely forgotten about the coronavirus because they have the attention span of a rhinovirus.” This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.

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MAY 14, 2020

The controversy surrounding CU South explained South Boulder Creek flood mitigation still years away

by Angela K. Evans

round 7 p.m. on the evening of Sept. 12, 2013, Marki LeCompte left her mother’s apartment at the Frasier retirement community, driving the block and a half home through water up to the running boards on her Subaru. By the time she went back to her mom’s the next morning at 8 a.m., “The west half of the Frasier retirement community looked like a war zone,” she says, mud reaching up to LaCompte’s shins. Although her own house was protected from flooding by a sump pump, LeCompte says the flooding was incredibly traumatic for her mother and others at Frasier, many of whom lost most of their personal effects and family heirlooms. At 93, her mother moved in with her, despite the fact that LeCompte’s house was not wheelchair accessible. After the flood, LeCompte says her mom’s health deteriorated fast as she slipped into dementia. She passed away in 2015. Most of the residents in southeast Boulder have similar memories. The flood water came quickly, as it flowed over the top of U.S. 36 and into their streets and houses. People were stranded as egress roads were blocked and emergency crews couldn’t get in to help. “Our neighborhood got hit really hard,” says Frasier Meadows resident Laura Tyler. “In 2013, we saw water rising within minutes from street level all the way to people’s front doors and many people got a lot of flooding. …We’re lucky we didn’t lose anyone.” Since the flood, however, there have been competing visions within South Boulder about how the City should approach flood mitigation of South Boulder Creek in hopes of providing protection to homes in southeast Boulder before the next big flood comes. It’s been a complicated process, involving a wide variety of stakeholders with competing priorities, and one that has caused much 8

ANGELA K. EVANS

frustration over the years. After several flood studies, the City has determined the best place for a flood mitigation project is on a mixture of open space land, managed by Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP), and property owned by the University of Colorado (known as CU South) just west of U.S. 36. Some residents, those of South Boulder Creek Action Group, including Tyler, have been pushing for collaboration between CU and the City in hopes of getting flood mitigation as quickly as possible. Their mantra: “Just do something,” as Karla Rikansrud, vice president for philanthropy and social responsibility at Frasier retirement community, says. Others, mainly those from Save South Boulder, including LaCompte, say they’re also concerned about flood mitigation, but are wary of the impacts the City’s proposed plan will have on open space land and endangered species that live there, as well as CU’s plans to develop the property that could alter the neighborhood significantly. For years various parties have gone back and forth about potential design concepts that would impact the area differently and have differing levels of flood protection for the 3,500 people who live in the South Boulder MAY 14, 2020

Creek floodplain. Major decisions were set to be made this spring, before the current pandemic pushed back the timeline to early summer. In late February 2020, during a study session on the subject, Boulder City Council directed City staff to proceed with a design concept that will include a floodwall, earthen dam and detention area on a mixture of CU and open space property to protect downstream residents in the event of a 100-year flood. (Staff ’s analysis also explored 200and 500-year options.) The plan requires the City to annex CU’s property, since it will be using some of it for flood mitigation, although what the University plans to build on the property is yet to be determined. At an April 20 meeting, the Water Resources Advisory Board (WRAB) approved the 100-year option in a 3-2 vote, despite pushback from Save South Boulder. The Planning Board discussed CU’s annexation and flood mitigation at its meeting on May 7, although it did not take any formal action on the project. Now, the Open Space Board of Trustees (OSBT) is set to discuss the issue at its June 3 virtual meeting and provide recommendations before the City Council officially votes on a design concept after a public hearing I

in June. What follows is a brief history of the property as well as an explanation of some of the competing priorities and challenges currently facing the project. FROM GRAVEL PIT TO CU PROPERTY The 308-acre property now known as CU South was formerly a mined gravel pit last operated by the Flatiron Companies. Over the course of about a decade, millions of cubic yards of sand and gravel were removed from the site, lowering the area significantly. In order to protect the gravel operation from flooding, a temporary mile-long berm, which still exists today, was constructed. Although there has been some contention about whether or not the land should have been purchased by the City as open space instead, CU bought the property from Flatiron Companies in 1996 for $16.4 million. As part of that purchase, a floodplain study revealed that much of the property was in the South Boulder Creek floodplain, as were hundreds of homes in neighborhoods to the north, such as Keeywadin and Frasier Meadows. But it wasn’t always so, says Rikansrud. “This is [Fraiser’s] 60th anniversary and when we were built it was just meadows,” she says. But as the City built Foothills Parkway and reworked the intersection at Table Mesa, it put the community in the floodplain, and Frasier even got a letter from the City encouraging the organization to get flood insurance. All of it was just an “unintended consequence as a result of the city growing,” Rikansrud says. In 2003, the City began working on the current flood mitigation project, recognizing that a major flooding event could push water up and over U.S. 36 and into the neighborhoods on the other side like it last did in 1969. Then came the 2013 flood, confirming the predictions of earlier flood studies, and making the

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

COURTESY CITY OF BOULDER

immediate need for flood protection at South Boulder Creek apparent. And while the neighborhoods to the southeast flooded, the gravel pit at CU South remained dry. In 2015, the City Council approved a threephase plan, the first of which is stormwater detention at U.S. 36 on CU’s property and the subject of controversy surrounding CU South. (The next two phases — detention projects near Manhattan Middle School, Flatirons Parkway and Baseline Road, and at the Flatirons Golf Course — have yet to be started.) Since then, the City has been working through different design concepts trying to find one that provides adequate flood mitigation but also meets the needs of the neighborhood, the landowner, CU, open space charter requirements and Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT). Along the way, design concepts have been discarded for a variety of reasons, including a lack of approval from CU and City Council, as well as one that had to be tabled since it wouldn’t get CDOT approval, says Joe Taddeucci, director of utilities for the City of Boulder and the project manager for South Boulder Creek flood mitigation. The situation with CDOT has caused many to be skeptical of staff ’s analysis and predictions about the upcoming permitting process, which will begin after a final design is chosen. Regardless, at the study session in February 2020, staff presented three options for consideration, providing 100, 200 and 500-year protection. City Council will choose a concept to proceed with on June 16. THE ‘BEST’ OF MEDIOCRE OPTIONS In the proposed design concept, the City would build an earthen dam BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

parallel to Table Mesa Drive across CU South property and a floodwall to the east of that on open space land, abutting CDOT’s right of way along U.S. 36. Earth behind the dam would be excavated in order to create a detention pond in the event that South Boulder Creek floods, and outlet tunnels would be buried below the highway in order to allow the detention pond to drain. (See map.) According to City staff analysis of the current options, designing flood mitigation around a 100-year flood will produce the smallest project footprint, have the least environmental impact on surrounding open space land and wetland habitat, and will cost significantly less than the other options, mainly due to the need to fill in other areas of the property for CU development the bigger the detention project gets. In order to build the 500-year option, which the 2018 City Council originally approved, the detention area would need to be larger, which would require more of CU’s property behind the dam. CU is expecting 129 acres of land out of the floodplain to eventually develop (see annexation section below). And both options require the City to fill in parts of the old gravel pit in order to give the I

University enough land to develop out of the floodplain. Although the estimated cost for building the flood mitigation infrastructure isn’t that much more for the 500-year option compared to the 100-year option ($41 million compared to $47 million), the amount of fill it would require pushes the price up exponentially ($66 million compared to $96 million). All of which led Council to ultimately direct staff to move forward with this plan, despite not being ideal for many. “The 100-year option that we’ve picked is the best of a bunch of mediocre choices I would say,” says Boulder Mayor Sam Weaver. Previously, Weaver had been in support of a project that would protect the area from a 500-year flood, but he says the costs as well as the environmental impacts ultimately convinced him the 100-year option was the best path forward. Plus, he says, the 500-year option doesn’t equal five times the protection as the 100year: “It’s about 80% give or take.” The terms are based on statistical probability, explains Tadeucci, where the 100-year flood has about a 1% chance of happening each year, and a 500-year flood has about a 0.2% MAY 14, 2020

chance. Throughout the City of Boulder, he adds, building flood mitigation for a 100-year flood is the “gold standard.” “Nowhere in the city have we done 500-year flood mitigation,” says Rachel Friend, a Boulder City Council member who was part of the South Boulder Creek Action Group before being elected in 2019. Friend also previously advocated for 500year protection but has since gotten on board with the 100-year option. “It’s working within the realities and what’s viable to protect health and safety,” she says. Likewise, South Boulder Creek Action Group and Frasier retirement community have both endorsed the 100-year option as the best way to move the project forward. “We’re big supporters of cooperation and collaboration,” Tyler says. “There’s a solution available. The science all adds up. All it requires is the City of Boulder to cooperate with you to get it done and CU throughout the years has come forward as a very willing partner.” It also has the support of CU, which is funded by taxpayer dollars and, according to the proposal, would be gifting the City 80 acres for flood mitigation, at an estimated cost of $18 million. “This is a very generous offer. I know that a lot of people just want the University to give the whole thing to the City, make it open space, make it flood mitigation and just go away,” says Frances Draper, senior strategic advisor of government and community engagement. “But according to the [Colorado] constitution we have to serve the state as a whole.” Critics of the project, however, decry City Council’s backstepping, urging the City to prioritize 500-year see CU SOUTH Page 10

Endangered Species

CU SOUTH from Page 9

flood protection, open space preservation and recreational value over CU’s stated needs for development as the landowner. “The reason why this is so complex and this is so difficult to deal with in terms of the flood protection is that CU said we will give you this much property, you can have this much property and it’s right here. And so, all these engineers have been trying to horn the flood mitigation infrastructure into this space that wasn’t designed for that,” says Harlin Savage, a resident of Tantra Park Circle and co-chair of Save South Boulder. “What the City Council has done is kind of just conceded that CU owns this land so they can’t really push back too much and they’re just trying to get flood mitigation for Frasier Meadows as soon as possible.” COMPETING WITH A MOUSE When it comes to the environment, the 100-year option is expected to impact 4.8 acres of open space wetlands along U.S. 36, less than both the 200- and 500-year option. There will also be some temporary environmental impacts on OSMP land to complete construction. All of this means that in order to proceed, the OSBT will have to approve a disposal of open space land, according to the City’s charter. It also will make recommendations on the project as a whole for City Council. At its September 2019 meeting, OSBT expressed concerns about disrupting underground water flows that nourish nearby wetlands. The board asked for engineering plans and modelling analyses in wet, dry and flood years of this flow so that whatever is built can mimic it in perpetuity. The wetland habitat of South Boulder Creek has been a designated state natural area since 2000 for its ecosystem — a combination of riparian, tall grass prairie and wetlands, the last of which is described by the state as “among the best preserved and most ecologically significant in the Boulder Valley.” It’s also critical habitat for the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse and Ute-ladies’tresses orchids, both federally listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (see sidebar.) All three options for flood miti10

gation will impact at least a portion of this critical habitat. “We’re talking about building a major structure that interrupts the groundwater, which basically eliminates their habitat,” says Raymond Bridge, conservation chair of Boulder County Audubon Society, which is critical of the City’s current plan. “We just don’t have a lot of land for the Preble’s jumping mouse and the Ute-ladies’-tresses. And there is no way you can replace those wetlands.” At its September meeting, OSBT also asked for a side-by-side analysis and comparison of the current proposal and an upstream option that wouldn’t require a floodwall on OSMP land built down to bedrock, allowing the groundwater to continue to flow. “The biggest motivation for looking at detention of flood waters upstream of the current location is that if that detention is large enough in volume, if it can withstand enough of the flood waters, then at the extreme case, you might not need to build a flood wall along Route 36 or if it were, it would be much, much smaller,” says Gordon McCurry, a hydrologist who has studied the South Boulder Creek for decades. (He’s also a member of WRAB and voted against the 100-year option at the board’s most recent meeting. However, he spoke to Boulder Weekly as a concerned citizen.) Upstream options could also cause flood waters to pour into different areas of CU’s property, impeding on the 129 acres of land CU wants to eventually build. McCurry also suggests building detention west of Highway 93 to minimize the flood water that would eventually make it to CU South. There’s the possibility that upstream options would be more expensive, technically impossible or have increased environmental impacts and would therefore be unfeasible, McCurry admits. But they could also work better than the current proposal, and advocates with Save South Boulder say the City at least needs to look into it before committing to a plan that would damage some of the wetland ecosystem that is now a part of open space. “The most important thing is that we consider the entire South Boulder Creek floodplain and all that properMAY 14, 2020

A biological assessment, with potentially more requirements, will be necessary on any flood mitigation project at South Boulder Creek since it’s “likely to jeopardize the existence of listed species or destroy or adversely modify designated critical habitat,” according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Plus, “If somebody doesn’t like the Fish and Wildlife Service opinion, there would be potential for a federal Endangered Species Act lawsuit,” adds environmental lawyer Mike Chiropolos.

Ute-ladies’-tresses orchid

hese rare wildflowers were listed as a threatened species in 1992 under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). The tall spiral flowers are known to bloom in the summer and are easy to spot as they can stretch anywhere from 7 inches to 2 feet tall, reaching above the dense vegetation of wetland and riparian habitats where they grow. The orchids lay dormant for most of the year, sometimes for years, making it difficult to get accurate counts of how many there actually are, according to a 2005 range-wide status review of the species for USFWS. Some people point to the fact that the flowers survived the 2013 flood of South Boulder Creek as reason to believe they will adapt to any changes brought on by the flood mitigation project. However, its scientific name, Spiranthes diluvialis, means “flower of the flood,” and the species actually benefits from periodic disturbances such as fire and flooding to prevent habitat from becoming too woody or shaded and keep competing vegetation to a minimum. Habitat loss and degradation are the main barriers to conservation, princi-

ty in there to the west of Highway 36 as the site for planning a flood mitigation design, and that should be done first,” LeCompte says. “And then after that is all worked out and it’s all approved and all the permits all the way up... then we go and maybe we talk about annexation, but in the meantime we can’t talk about any kind of annexation or buildup or anything with CU, and the best possible solution is to get CU to move someplace else.” (See sidebar). On the other hand, there are many other folks, as well as City staff, who say upstream options have been discussed for years and the current I

USFWS

pally “hydrologic alteration” according to Colorado State University’s “Rare Plant Guide.” Additionally, it’s difficult to transplant and reestablish these flowers.

Preble’s meadow jumping mouse

ith a dark stripe of fur running down its back, this small mammal measures about 9 inches in length, 60% of which is its tail, which it uses to communicate by making drumming noises, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. Its large hind feet are adapted to jump up to four feet to avoid danger, giving the mouse its name. It’s also a threatened species under the ESA. The mouse hibernates most of the year, burrowing in nests from September through May. When active, the mouse is largely nocturnal and can be very difficult to observe. The Preble’s meadow jumping mouse is found in wetlands with dense shrubs and grasses along creeks and rivers spanning just 11 counties in Wyoming and Colorado. According to the USFWS, 411 miles of streamside habitat in Colorado is considered critical habitat for the mouse, offering federal protections to the wetlands surrounding South Boulder Creek. proposal is the solution that will allow flood mitigation to proceed the quickest. “There’s no other alternative out there that’s less damaging to open space property and to the environment,” Taddeucci says. He does acknowledge that exploring this topic further is the main reason behind the upcoming OSBT meeting in June and “if we miss something, we’d certainly reconsider that,” he says. An open space disposal will almost certainly also be a topic of discussion at that meeting. According see CU SOUTH Page 11

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

CU SOUTH from Page 10

to the City charter, a disposal must be approved by at least three of five members of the OSBT after a public hearing and before the City Council can vote on it. If approved by City Council, a waiting period will ensue time for signature gathering to force a city-wide vote on the disposal. All of which could add to the already long timeline of getting flood protection for residents. Furthering the timeline is the number of permits any project will need to secure, including those from USFWS, the Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, CDOT, the state Division of Water Resources, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the City of Boulder and Boulder County. “It’s very hard to compete with a Preble’s jumping mouse, which is adorable by the way,” Tyler from South Boulder Creek Action Group says. “I would like to posit that human life also has value.” CONCESSIONS AND CONTROVERSY The process of annexation for CU South is a bit unconventional for the City, as “We almost never do blind annexations; we usually have a site plan,” Mayor Weaver says. But it’s hard to say exactly what CU will build out there, seeing as the University is still in the middle of its state-wide master planning process that involves the entire university system, as required by law every 10 years. Once the master planning process is complete and approved by the regents as well as the state legislature, (which won’t happen until 2021 at the earliest if not 2022) CU’s Draper says, then CU can start working on specific plans for the land in South Boulder. “We’re not a very fast-moving organization,” Draper admits. Which is why CU is working with the City to get the property annexed now: The process of annexation will transfer the 80 acres the City of Boulder needs for flood mitigation, allowing those plans to move forward before CU’s master planning process is complete. Regardless of what is eventually planned, Draper says the University will abide by the Guiding Principles of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan, which CU and the City agreed to in 2017. This includes flood mitigation as well as leaving some land for trails, garden and restoration, along with playing fields for intramural sports that BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

could potentially be shared with the community. According to the annexation proposal, potential development of the property includes faculty, graduate student and non-first-year student housing, as well as some “small-scale academic space” on 129 acres. Draper says the University has agreed to adhere to the City’s height limits for future development and won’t be building large stadiums or research facilities — “concessions that normally the University doesn’t have to agree to,” he says, given it’s a state entity. CU does still have some hesitations about the current plan being considered, mainly that the earthen dam will wall off the property from Table Mesa only allowing for one road in and out (the current one would be elevated up and over the dam), making it less than desirable to build housing. The City and CU are still talking about other access roads, however, mainly another main entrance off Highway 93 on the south end of the property and other “lesser” entrances from nearby neighborhoods. “We can continue to commit to put housing there, if the City will commit that there’ll be multiple entrances,” Draper says. Weaver says his hope is that through the annexation process the guiding principles that commit the university to prioritizing housing will be written into the annexation document and become legally binding. “If we get the right guiding principles into the annexation agreement, then what goes in the future is going to be kind of shaped already in a way by that agreement,” he says. Still, critics of the project are skeptical of CU’s development plans, which could drastically increase traffic in the area, impact its recreational value and change the neighborhood. “This not simply CU and the City of Boulder duking it out. It’s going to have an enormous impact on the residents of Boulder,” Savage of Save South Boulder says. “And then I’m not sure people will understand that until they’re out there building it and then it will be too late.” THE NEXT STEPS All of this is sure to be discussed, in much more detail, at the upcoming public hearings both in front of the I

NORTH CAMPUS?

ritics of development at CU South have been advocating for a potential land swap between CU and the City, exchanging 130 acres in North Boulder for CU South, so that flood mitigation can occur anywhere on the property and the entire 308 acres can become open space. Currently the land is part of a planning reserve parcel northeast of Jay Road and U.S. 36. “I’ve been out to the planning reserve hundreds of times and it’s caked mud ... It’s about as rundown biologically as you could get,” says environmental lawyer Mike Chiropolos. “It’s high and dry, which makes it appropriate for building but not a real great habitat.” (Although there are some prairie dog colonies, which bring their own community debates.) Chiropolos has spent his career working with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and advocates that the City applies those same principles while considering open space and critical habitat land for flood mitigation near CU South. “The heart of NEPA is look before you leap. And that starts with cumulative impacts and alternative location analysis. So, you make intelligent, informed decisions by saying, ‘What are our options?’” Draper says the City recently brought the idea to CU, but in order for it to be feasible the City would have to do an urban services study to annex the property before any deal could be made for CU South, a process that could add years to the timeline and push flood mitigation at CU South back even further. Plus, it would add traffic and congestion through the heart of Boulder and likely cause just as much if not more community objections, she says. “I think that the same pushback that we’re getting in South Boulder would just be moved to North Boulder where nobody’s going to want development there either,” Friend adds. “That’s going to keep people [in South Boulder] in harm’s way for a longer period of time.” At this time, the City is no longer considering this option.

OSBT on June 3 and City Council on June 16. Prior to both of those, City staff is holding a community information virtual meeting on May 20 to discuss the flood design analysis of the different options as well as the annexation process. “I think we’ve landed at a reasonable and actionable compromise with this,” councilmember Friend says. “Most of the work has already been done. It’s just a matter of political will at that point.” What’s unusual about this specific project, Taddeucci says, is the level of scrutiny the public has brought to each step of the process. Having worked on public utility projects with the City since 2005, all projects with land use implications and environmental impacts tend to draw a lot of public comment, he says. But what is different this time around, “is the degree to which the comments are detailed and aimed at specific things that people perceive may be a problem or won’t work in the design or the MAY 14, 2020

permitting.” Still, he’s confident that there is a way to both create a flood mitigation plan that protects residents, with minimal environmental impacts to open space, as well as an annexation agreement that meets the desires of CU. And, according to Draper, CU is ready to make an annexation deal and move to the bigger projects of permitting and designing flood mitigation. Regardless of what option is ultimately chosen by City Council on June 16, securing flood protection is still at least a couple of years away, if not even longer. And that’s concerning to all parties involved, as climate change continues to threaten Boulder with more extreme and unpredictable weather events, including floods. “I’m hopeful that we will continue moving this along at a good clip,” Friend says, “because it’s not hyperbole to say that lives are in significant harm’s way and we know it and we need to act.” I

Weaponizing statistics

When death becomes an aggregate abstraction, the truth either matters, or it doesn’t

by Dave Kirby COURTESY OF DAVE KIRBY

MAY 14, 2020

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

hen one man dies, it’s a tragedy; when 100,000 men die, it’s a statistic.”

This quote is variously attributed to Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler or Napoleon Bonaparte. It bears more than a little relevance these days. We live in a time when we are besieged by statistics. Number of infections, number of hospitalizations, number of ventilators or masks. Number of unemployed. Number of recovered. Number of deaths. Number of deaths. Unaccustomed as we, and most of the rest of the world, are to grasping the scope and context of a global pandemic, we can extend ourselves and our need for understanding not much further than numbers, as the culprit is essentially invisible, thrives and moves according to its own whim and flourishes remorselessly, as life itself is wont to do. The numbers are the virus’ footprints in the snow, and to a large extent, all we can do is follow its tracks, estimate its path, anticipate its exhaustion, coax it somehow into a no-exit cul de sac and prod it toward its own extinction. In February, my elderly father passed away in Marin County, California. A few weeks after his 98th birthday, he took a fall at home while his wife was at work, and his daytime caregiver, responding to California law, called an ambulance over my father’s fruitless objections. He wasn’t hurt, not too badly anyway except for a slightly bruised arm, but they took him in, checked him over, kept him for a few days and then released him to a rehab center. They wanted to see him gain some strength in his legs, in the hopes he could avert, or at least significantly delay, another fall. While at the rehab center, he caught what was described as a fast-moving respiratory virus, was quickly transferred back to a hospital ICU, and was gone in a day. Acute respiratory distress. It was Feb. 9. He was 98 years old, a relatively healthy 98 at BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

that; seldom sick, a little wobbly and inconsistently in command of his emotions and his memory, but to my own recollection, never seriously ill. Gave up smoking in 1952, drinking in 1955. A passionate golfer, until he had to give it up in his early 80s due to creeping immobility of his shoulders. He was a World War II veteran, a flight instructor (he taught the baseball great Ted Williams how to fly) and, by the time he left the military in late 1945, he was a captain in the Marines, at age 24. Doddering and feeble he was not. He was indifferent to the term “the Greatest Generation,” shrugged it off as a meaningless media creation, but he was one of its number. He couldn’t operate a home computer. He didn’t know who Mick Jagger was. An imperfect but decent and erudite man, full of humor and insight, a devourer of history, and a Roosevelt Democrat to his core. When

IT DOESN’T MATTER how

started digging into the numbers, prompted by a need to understand and potentially thwart the virus via its pathology and tracked infectiousness. Because so few people were being tested for the virus, but deaths were being recorded anyway as a matter of course, public health statisticians and researchers came to the realization that more people were dying from this thing, or dying from its proximate complications, than were originally recorded. In the aggregate, we know about how many people die every day, from disease or misadventure or lifestyle neglect or influenza or old age. Medicare, Social Security, insurance carriers access these numbers all the time. Hospitals supply themselves based on these numbers. Pharma companies determine much of their product to manufacture. It’s actuarial science. A blanket set of numbers that, more or less, provides a statistical fabric across which our collective mortality is tallied. Grim predictability. Some people spend their entire professional lives studying these things. And not just here, but in other countries ravaged by this spiky little ball, there were far more people dying than actuarial tables, appended by test-verified COVID-19 mortality, could explain. A lot more. The inescapable conclusion was that far more people were getting this thing, and far more were dying from it, than “official” tallies could narrate. Dying alone or dying in fear of (or lacking the means to access) hospitals. Dying because they couldn’t get tested, and thus treated. The mortality figures climbed. At this writing, in the United States, it’s about 83,000. The official number. The real number is higher — everyone who has been tracking this event and knows anything about actuarial science and epidemiology now knows this. Across the world, the statistics bear this undercount out. For the month between March 24 and April 24, the New York Times reported that the U.K.’s death count was more than 14,000 higher than normal plus confirmed COVID-19 mortalities. In France, from mid-March to mid-April, the difference was more than 6,000. In New York City alone, the difference in the period March 11 to

many caskets there are. It only matters who’s counting them. Now, go get that haircut. they killed John Kennedy, he wept on and off for three weeks. By early March, the term “coronavirus” had ingrained itself into the news cycle, into our daily conversation, into our heads. Names and epidemiological terms we were unaccustomed to became commonplace. “Distance” became a verb. “Flattening the curve” sounded like a call to arms from a Richard Simmons video, but it had to do with the ICU. By early April, locked down in front of our televisions and laptop screens, working from home or not working at all, we settled into the routine of watching the rolling toll that the virus exacted on the population, on the economy, on living itself. All of it in numbers. And then something happened. Health officials I

MAY 14, 2020

see STATISTICS Page 14

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STATISTICS from Page 13

May 4 was over 4,000 But this is an election year. At the top of the ticket, we have an incumbent whose primary campaign platform was to plant his flag atop the “greatest economy in the history of the world,” now fending off criticism of inaction, executive dithering, cheap finger-pointing and unpersuasive magical thinking, in the face of a lifeand-death, slowly fused health crisis. Plenty has been and will be written on President Trump’s behavior and performance during this event, and the point is not to litigate it here. But faced with the rising tally of dead Americans, a seemingly nonnegotiable fact inherent in its cruelly binary nature (there is the living, and the no longer living), a cornered chief executive seeking re-election may be making the non-negotiable… negotiable. Axios reported recently that the death counts are the subject of ongoing internal conversation among Trump’s inner circle, who appear to be reinforcing Trump’s view, predictably based on little or no substantial evidence, that they are overstated. It’s hard to imagine this concern fading away, with the prospect of COVID19 fatality statistics blaring across presidential election campaign ads. What will we start hearing? Blue state governors are padding the numbers to make Trump look bad? Deep state public health officials, embarrassed by shaky modelling early in the crisis, are now running up the score to validate their earlier predictions of mass mortality? How can you trust these obviously politically motiI

vated statisticians? There’s... an agenda at work here. The perverse twist is that while a president running for re-election and trying desperately to inoculate himself from the fallout of this thing, to whatever degree the voters hold him accountable, is trying to deflate the statistics coming from suddenly politically motivated institutions like Johns Hopkins or the World Health Organization or the CDC or state health agencies, the real number is probably higher than reported, since many of the virus’ victims are in the ground, unautopsied, cremated or otherwise untested and unavailable for examination. All we’re left with is the numbers. Such was the case with the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. Historians are certain the death count, here and especially abroad, was likely much higher than the staggering numbers tossed around these days. Actuarial science, in the absence of computers and centralized data collection, was barely in its infancy at the time. A high school friend with whom I reconnected recently through social media — a practicing, published and highly regarded physician in Massachusetts — has been posting about the progress of this pandemic. He was the first, to my eyes, to identify the benefit of anti-coagulants for certain severely ill COVID-19 patients. He follows and posts frequently on clinical studies. He was an early skeptic of hydroxychloroquine when Trump’s supporters in the media were still trumpeting it as our redeeming elixir. He also tested posiBOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

tive for antibodies, though never felt sick. His wife and his son both tested negative. I asked him about my father, especially after hearing the news that the earliest probable fatality from COVID-19 in California was February 6. In northern California... where my father lived. I have no idea how many medical or rehab personnel came in contact with him. Likely a couple of dozen, or more. “Better than even chance that was COVID, IMHO,” he replied. According to KQED, Dr. Scott Morrow, the health officer for San Mateo County, wrote in an email in the last week of April, “I told my colleagues in mid-January that it was likely spreading under our noses.” My father’s wife has since tested positive for antibodies, and she was sick with body aches and a raging cough for much of January, only being tested well after the fact. And a week or so after the exchange with my physician friend, I learned that my half-brother had flown out to California from New York City to visit my father less than two weeks before his death. He was sick in early April, although never tested. His toddler son was tested and confirmed positive for antibodies. All have since recovered. Did my father get it from the rehab center? From his wife? Did his son bring it from New York? Did he infect my father, or vice versa? Did my half-brother get it on a plane, or from his mother? Or his since deceased father? Or his son? We don’t know, and we won’t. The statistics will say that my stepmother and half-brother recovered from it. But thus far, they won’t reflect that my father died from it. In the mid-1990s, I had the opportunity to interview James Burke, the renowned science historian and BBC correspondent, who wrote and hosted the original Connections television series (1978) that aired on public TV here in the States. Burke was on a speaking tour, to promote a book or his followup series... I can’t remember which, if not both. In our chat, and in the speech he gave at Denver’s Paramount Theatre, he talked expansively and energetically about the coming information revolution. The advent of the internet, where, quite literally, every person on BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Earth would have access to the sum total of the human experience. History, literature, science, art, philosophy, religion. Everything that could be rendered digitally would be available to everybody. It would be a global transformation of incalculable proportion. The world, the entirety of humanity, would become smarter, healthier, more productive. Presumably, more prosperous. Everybody could know everything. It kind of worked out like that, and kind of didn’t, of course. After his speech, during his Q&A, I raised my hand. All this sounds terrific, but at some point you’re relying on centralized control — technology, administration... content. What if Goebbels had the internet, free to craft his party’s version of history. Stalin? Mao? How do you keep content unbiased, factual, dispassionate, unmoored from institutional selfinterest? From a distance, the question seems quaint and naïve. Burke brushed it aside. “I have faith,” he said, “in the crusade of the ‘hacker.’ The guy who will sniff out disinformation and fix it, obscure it, inoculate us from it. There have always been these people.” Burke’s faith in the benign inevitability of truth was persuasive at the time, but as we have come to see almost three decades later, sadly overoptimistic. Hackers are at least as much malign as benign. Facts on a digitally rendered screen are every bit as fungible as they were before the internet, and only as reliable as the perceived credibility of their source. When you’re dealing with the abstraction of mortality figures, who prints them — or who fiddles with them — matters. A lie can travel around the world in the time it takes the truth to pull up its pants. Mark Twain is credited for that remark, but it could have been Goebbels. Tell a lie three times, and it becomes the truth. Hitler said that. It doesn’t matter how many caskets there are. It only matters who’s counting them. Now, go get that haircut. My father’s late March memorial service, which was to be attended by family members from two countries and at least seven states, was canceled, likely not to be rescheduled. He’s a statistic now. Or not. Does it matter? I

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‘Hard to imagine it’s going to get worse’

The week the coronavirus shut down their restaurants, Blackbelly’s Hosea and Lauren Feder Rosenberg found out their 2-year-old daughter had a rare genetic disorder. Now, they need your help.

by Matt Cortina

hen Sophie Feder Rosenberg was supposed to start walking, at around 18 months old, she didn’t want to. It seemed like she was in pain. So her parents, Blackbelly/ Santo owner and chef Hosea Rosenberg and Lauren Feder Rosenberg, took her to the children’s hospital. After months of tests and examinations, the diagnosis came back: juvenile arthritis. “We started treating that with medications and physical therapy and a special brace,” Lauren says. “Just shy of her second birthday, she was walking all by herself without pain. Everything seemed to be feeling a lot better.” But there were still some anomalies that first diagnosis didn’t address. Some of Sophie’s bones were underdeveloped, and there was inflammation in her ankles. So a doctor recommended that Sophie undergo whole exome sequencing, the most extensive genetic test available. As they spent months on a waiting list for the genetic test, Sophie continued to get better. She eventually got the test at two and a half years old, and the Rosenbergs waited an excruciating two months until they got the results in March this year. “We felt we had been making so much progress and Sophie was doing so well,” Lauren says. “But hearing she was just passing through phase 1 of a totally different disease, 16

we were stopped in our tracks. It didn’t compute in any way.” The diagnosis was multicentric carpotarsal osteolysis (MCTO), which presents initially as juvenile arthritis. But, in fact, it’s a rare degenerative disorder that prevents bones and joints from developing and may lead to kidney failure. Only 30 people in the world have been diagnosed with it. No cure or treatment exists today. The Rosenbergs got the diagnosis the same week restaurants — their livelihood — shut down due to the coronavirus. “We stayed in our car and cried because we were supposed to be in the restaurant for a meeting and all this other shit was happening in the world, and it didn’t feel real,” Hosea says. “It was very surreal. The way the doctor described it. It didn’t sound like it could be happening. How does the body start eating away at its own bones? It’s been very sad. It’s been very frightening. I go between being OK, and then there’s days where I feel really depressed.” “As a parent you want to look toward the positive and the growth,” Lauren adds. “Little did we know there could be something entirely different presenting [as arthritis]. That was completely devastating and frightening.” With no treatment or cure for MCTO available, the clock is ticking to stave off developments that could mean Sophie (who MAY 14, 2020

SOPHIE FEDER turns 3 at the end of ROSENBERG May) loses the use of her has a rare genetic hands, or becomes condisease and her parents (Hosea and fined to a wheelchair, or Lauren) have startneeds a kidney transed a nonprofit to plant. So the Rosenbergs find a cure. started Sophie’s Neighborhood, a nonprofit that’s starting almost from scratch to raise funding and connect with doctors and researchers to find a cure. The need for action is urgent. “The longer it takes for us to start treating her, the harder it will be to make a difference,” Lauren says, adding that she could live with Sophie’s current limited range of motion MCTO has caused “if we could stop this in its tracks and put a pause on it.” “We don’t want it to be so tragic where she’s in a wheelchair or can’t play a piano,” Hosea adds. “We see this window as closing. ... There’s these dominos that are up and if someone tips one over they start to fall, you want to stop it. The longer they fall, it may be impossible to pick them back up. “We’re fighters,” he says. “We want to preserve what we’re experiencing.” And what are they experiencing? Life with a daughter who has no idea that other children don’t have to wear the casts she has to or visit as many doctors as she does. A sweet kid who doesn’t have to figure out how to make BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

physician’s group in St. Louis, which the Rosenbergs will visit in August, that have seen several MCTO patients — but nothing is guaranteed. One thing that is certain is that with continued doctors visits and hardships along the journey, Hosea and Lauren will have to tell her what’s going on at some point. And, understandably, they don’t know how yet. “It’s hard to say at this stage because she’s so young how to kind of explain it to her,” Lauren says. “We have a few books that are sweet that talk about differences, one book about dogs that are different, some have three legs and some don’t have eyes and how they can still have a great life and they can kind of do anything. There are books about breathing and taking care of yourself through breath. We haven’t had the conversation that she’s going through something not everyone else is. I’m not sure how we’re going to tackle it.” So far, Hosea says, Sophie’s taking it all in stride. “She sees a lot of doctors,” he says. “It’s a normal part of her existence. What makes it funny is kids play all the time, they play pretend and she’s always grabbing me by the hand and saying we’re going to the doctor’s office. It’s bittersweet that that’s her experience.” Through Sophie’s Neighborhood, the Rosenbergs are hopeful that, with the help of the community, they can find a treatment, and quickly. And, they’re determined to see it through. Their world is at stake. “She’s such a special little girl. She’s smart and funny and has a total attitude. She thinks she knows better than you,” Hosea says. “It’s so unfair. It’s hard to imagine it’s going to get worse and that’s exactly why we’re fighting so hard. Any parent would do the same thing we’re doing. She comes before everything else in the whole world. I’d cut off my arms and legs for her.” To learn more about Sophie’s Neighborhood, and find out how you can help, visit sophiesneighborhood.org. On May 30, Sophie’s Neighborhood will hold a silent virtual auction including virtual meet-and-greets with pro athletes, virtual cooking classes with local and Top Chef chefs, jewelry, furniture, gift baskets and more. I

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money through a restaurant during a pandemic or how to stop a rare genetic disorder in its tracks. A kid, joyful and silly and free. “Sophie is amazing,” Hosea says. “I always feel worse about her when she’s not around. When I was playing with her this morning, she kept wanting to give me this little nose nuzzle, and she was being super funny and super cute, climbing on our dog. That not only relaxes me a little bit and makes me not worry, it gives me strength. She’s not a goner. She’s here, and she’s with us.” Hosea and Lauren can also rely on their strong marriage as well — “We’re in love still,” Hosea says, “and we support and trust each other.” And they take some solace in knowing exactly what’s affecting Sophie’s development. “I understand that these things happen. I understand nature isn’t fair, nature doesn’t care,” Hosea says. “But at least we know. That’s the one good part of this, and we know exactly what’s happening, even though there isn’t a cure yet.” And they can take solace in the Boulder community and the network of chefs Hosea is plugged into due to his successful restaurants and his time on Top Chef. After launching Sophie’s Neighborhood, the Rosenbergs received an outpouring of support from all over: local doctors and researchers to provide guidance; renowned chefs, like Top Chef judge Gail Simmons, who has an international reach to get the word out; and even local folks who have been in the Rosenbergs’ position before — Julia Vitarello, a Boulder woman whose daughter is also battling a rare degenerative disorder and who created a nonprofit, Mila’s Miracle Foundation, that led to her daughter getting a treatment that didn’t exist before her efforts. It’s a long road to duplicate that success, but Lauren says they have a path forward. “Basically you need a champion, someone who’s going to take on this specific mutation, study it, build mouse models, tests different theories. All of that requires so much funding,” she says. They were told “we should target $2 million, which is incredibly daunting. So it’s our hope and I feel confident we’re going to find that person or that group that will help us.” There are some leads — there’s a

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MAY 14, 2020

How to save the economy and climate together by Kieran Cooke

he warnings are stark. With the COVID-19 crisis wreaking global havoc and the overheating atmosphere threatening far worse in the long term, especially if governments rely on the same old carbon-intensive ways, both economy and climate will sink or swim together. “There are reasons to fear that we will leap from the COVID-19 frying pan into the climate fire,” says a new report, “Will COVID-19 fiscal recovery packages accelerate or retard progress on Climate Change?” Published by the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at the University of Oxford, U.K., it says now is the time for governments to restructure their economies and act decisively to tackle climate change. “The climate emergency is like the COVID-19 emergency, just in slow motion and much graver,” says the study, written by a team of economic and climate change heavyweights including Joseph Stiglitz, Cameron Hepburn and Nicholas Stern. Economic recovery packages emerging in the coming months will have a significant impact on whether globally agreed climate goals are met, says the report. “The recovery packages can either kill two birds with one stone — setting the global economy on a pathway to net-zero emissions — or lock us into a fossil system from which it will be nearly impossible to escape.” The study’s authors talked to economists, finance officials and central banks around the world. They say that putting policies aimed at tackling climate change at the center of recovery plans makes economic as well as environmental sense. “... Green projects create more jobs, deliver higher short-term returns per dollar spend and lead to increased long term-term cost saving, by comparison 18

with traditional fiscal stimulus,” says the report. “Examples include investclean ment in renewable energy proenergy infrastructure construction is particularly duction, such as wind or solar. As previous research has labor-intensive, creating twice as many jobs per shown, in the short term clean dollar as fossil fuel investments.” energy infrastructure construction is particularly labor-intensive, creating twice as many governments can intervene decisively once the scale of jobs per dollar as fossil fuel an emergency is clear and public support is present.” investments.” Economists and finance experts are calling for the COVID-19 is causing great suffering and considerU.K. to play a decisive role in ensuring that economies able economic hardship around the world. But it has around the world do not return to the old, high-carbon also resulted in cleaner air and waterways, a quieter ways but instead implement green recovery packages. environment and far less commuting to and from work, The U.K. is president and co-host of COP-26, the with people in developed countries doing more work round of U.N. climate talks originally due to take place from home. in November this year but now, due to the pandemic, The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a postponed to early 2021. recent survey that COVID-19 and other factors were The round is seen as a vital part of efforts to prebringing about a fundamental change in the global vent catastrophic climate change. energy market, with the use of climate-changing fossil Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of fuels falling sharply and prices of oil, coal and gas England, now a finance adviser to the British prime minplummeting. The IEA also projected that global emisister for COP-26, says the U.K. has the opportunity to sions of greenhouses gases would fall by 8% in 2020, bring about fundamental changes in order to combat a more than any other year on record. The Oxford report says that with the implementation warming world. “The U.K.’s global leadership in financial services of the right policies, these positive changes can be sustained: by tackling climate change, many economic and provides a unique opportunity to address climate change by transforming the financial system,” he says. other problems will be solved. “To seize it, all financial decisions need to take into Skeptics have often said that public resistance to account the risks from climate change and the opportuchanges in lifestyle will prevent governments from taknities from the transition to a net zero economy.”  ing any substantial action on the climate issue. The This story was originally published by the Climate study begs to differ: News Network. “The (COVID-19) crisis has also demonstrated that

“IN THE SHORT-TERM

MAY 14, 2020

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

HEATHER D. SCHULTE AS PART OF THE CREATIVE NEIGHBORHOODS: COVID-19 WORK PROJECTS, Heather D. Schulte is stitching representations of every confirmed COVID-19 case and death.

A guarantee of sanity

A fund for artists helps all of Boulder build resilience during crisis

by Caitlin Rockett uring the early years of the AIDS epidemic in America, with Ronald Reagan conspicuously devoid of public thoughts on the matter, art began to fill the

silence. There was the “Silence = Death” graphic, its pink triangle a nod to the symbol gays were forced to wear in Nazi concentration camps. The graphic became emblematic of the crisis (both the viral crisis and the manufactured morality crisis that kept conservative leadership from addressing the virus). Then there was David Wojnarowicz, the multi-hyphenate artist and activist whose black-and-white portrait with sutured lips, blood trickling down his chin, gave grave

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

physicality to the concept of deadly silence. Derek Jarman took a life-focused approach. After the filmmaker was diagnosed HIV positive in 1986, he began planting a vibrant garden at his blustery home by the sea in Kent, recording the process — along with stories from his life — for the memoir Modern Nature. The garden lives on today, more than a quarter century after Jarman’s death in 1994. The silence from the top is different today. Trump discusses this virus (though he failed to do so for more than a month when it surfaced), but refuses to address the tens of thousands of confirmed deaths (more than 80,000 at the time of writing) stemming from COVID-19. And I

again, art will fill the deadly silence. Art will also fill the space between us, bridging the physical chasms we’ve created to stop the virus from spreading. That’s the goal of a new fund for Boulderbased artists, The Creative Neighborhoods: COVID-19 Work Projects. With funding from the City of Boulder and nonprofit organization Create Boulder, the fund is designed to support artistic work that reinforces the “social infrastructure” of our community. Mandy Vink, administrator for public art at the City of Boulder’s Office of Arts and Culture, says the idea was based on Works Progress Administration, or WPA, projects of the New Deal era that helped the unemployed get back to work quickly on projects that benefited an entire society drained by the Great Depression. (Boulder High School was a WPA project, as were many of the trails and lodges on Flagstaff Mountain.) With Creative Neighborhoods, the artists create works that engage their neighborhoods — from a distance, of course — whether that MAY 14, 2020

neighborhood is a physical block of houses on a street or a community of people within the broader Boulder population. The fund, which topped out at $40,000, provided $599 to 66 artists, an amount that placed “no additional paperwork, no taxation, no extra burdens” on the artist, Vink says. The scope of the work is varied, from textile projects that document the number of confirmed COVID cases and deaths, to oral histories about how the pandemic has impacted Boulder’s black community, to graphic novels, to geocaching for seed packets. But each project has resilience built into its DNA, the notion that we’re in this together, even if we can’t be together. While the art museums may still be closed, art is always open. Art therapist Cathy Malchiodi wrote for Psychology Today, that for her, the “true purpose of art is one of resilience, not of pathology or mental illness.” “It is why humankind has continually see RESILIENCE Page 20

RESILIENCE from Page 19

returned to art making as one way to reparation and recovery from the inescapable physical, emotional, interpersonal and spiritual challenges of life,” she wrote. “In other words, art expression and the creative process are really manifestations of the drive toward health and well-being, not merely signposts of repression, projection, [or] displacement ... As [French artist] Louise Bourgeois noted, ‘Art is a guarantee of sanity’ — it is a human way of self-actualizing rather than pathologizing the potential of one’s life.”

HEATHER D. SCHULTE — “THE SITUATION REPORT”

Heather Schulte always gets her best ideas at night. Late one night at the start of the pandemic — struggling to sleep after she’d made sure to purchase enough groceries to support her family for the next few weeks and figure out what school was going to look like for her two kids — the fiber and ink artist remembered a “huge roll” of cross-stitch fabric she had tucked away. “I thought, what if I just start stitching the [confirmed COVID19] cases every day,” she says over the phone from her home in South Boulder. “And so it started off really simple.” But it would soon become overwhelming to keep up with the numbers. Schulte began by using U.S.-based data from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) daily “Situation Reports,” making one blue stitch for every confirmed COVID-19 case, and one red stitch for every confirmed COVID-19 death. By March 13 the numbers were climbing so fast she could no longer stitch every case in one day so she switched to stitching an area that represents the cases for that day. She soon realized that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which provide data to WHO, does not report on weekends. On March 21 she began using data from Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, which does account for weekends. By April 9 it became impossible to stitch each death, so those too became a representation by area. Schulte estimates it’s taking her between two and three hours a day to complete stitching the representations of cases and deaths. “It’s been fascinating paying close attention to the way the numbers are reported, whose numbers are reported, when they’re reported, how they’re reported,” she says. “There is political shaping to that: who has access, who doesn’t. Who has testing, who doesn’t... I mean, the numbers aren’t accurate because we don’t 20

WILL BETKE-BRUNSWICK

communities.” See more about “The Situation Report” and Heather Schulte’s other work at heatherdschulte. com. Please contact Schulte if you have red or blue embroidery thread available for donation.

WILL BETKE-BRUNSWICK — A HAND-DRAWN COVID ZINE

Will Betke-Brunswick has long been drawn to the do-it-yourself aspect of zines. “Anybody can make one,” says the transgender and nonbinary artist. “You don’t have to be trained as an artist. There’s a long history of zine culture where people are sharing homemade zines about whatever they want. I sort of come from both that side and from a long appreciation of New Yorker cartoons.” Betke-Brunswick (who prefers to use a mix of masculine and gender neutral pronouns) has used this zine-aesthetic-meetspunchy-one-liner approach to comic creation to document his journeys through the world as a transgender person, forced to prove to the government that he have comprehensive testing.” ON THE BILL: Applications are used to be a woman in order to closed for The Creative Then the numbers became reality. justify not having registered for Neighborhoods: COVID-19 Work Schulte’s uncle started to show symptoms selective military service, and grapFund, but you can learn more and of COVID-19 on April 11 and was taken to a sign on to a waitlist at boulderarts. pling with the health care system to hospital on April 13. She says he died withorg/public-art/creative-neighborget access to birth control. hoods/covid-19-work-projects in 12 hours of admission. “I think that art is my number “It was almost too much to take in and one way of processing whatever I’m understand and comprehend,” she says. feeling,” they say. “Hard things, “And just not to be able to be together with easy things, funny things, sad people, it added a whole other layer onto this thing that I things. That’s been huge for me personally with processwas working on because it was just like a document, ing things, but also wanting to create and share and and now it’s kind of developed into a memorial or a vigil, make more visability for queer people and having it not a way of marking not just numbers but people. always be this sad and dramatic journey, which is not “As the numbers kept getting bigger, it really hit my experience. My experience is much more whimsical home how impactful the situation is,” she says. “So and funny and supported.” many people are experiencing this very same thing, Betke-Brunswick will bring that same aesthetic to an some of whom are experiencing it in a much more diffieight-page zine for the Creative Neighborhoods project, cult way, that don’t have access to so many things that I focusing on the day-to-day realities of living under staydo or whose loved ones are suffering in the hospital for at-home orders, from suiting up in gloves and a mask for who knows how long and they can’t go visit them.” a quick trip to Ideal Market near their home in North Schulte has already recruited stitching help from a Boulder, to anxiety-inducing phone conversations with couple of friends in the neighborhood — keeping disparents about death. tance, wearing masks, using hand sanitizer. Once social “I have a real hope that humor can contribute to resildistancing protocols are lifted, she hopes to invite more ience,” they say. “The little funny moments we’re all expepeople to stitch with her to “fill in the spaces.” riencing within a larger tragedy is a way to connect or pro“In a time when physical touch, even mere proximity, cess. I have a longer book-length project that I’m working is limited to those with whom we live,” she says, “it feels on that’s about my mom having cancer and dying and it’s essential to plan intentional steps to reconnect with our definitely sad, but there’s a lot of humor in that, in the little MAY 14, 2020

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

COURTESY OF KATRINA MILLER

weird moments of going through something sad. I think that’s what makes us resilient, being able to laugh about it.” Betke-Brunswick plans to distribute about 25 copies of his zine to homes in his neighborhood in North Boulder, but you can check out more of their work at willbetkebrunswick.com.

KATRINA MILLER — HOW COVID-19 IS AFFECTING BOULDER’S BLACK COMMUNITY

When Katrina Miller moved to Boulder more than 20 years ago for college and was looking for a black community to connect with, she was directed to the Second Baptist Church. “Boulder is very transient,” says the independent filmmaker who operates under Black Cat Video Productions. “Most of the black people that come to Boulder are here for university or work assignment, so they are just passing through, so if you do want to find people who have been here for a long time you go to the church. [Second Baptist Church] has been around for over 110 years. This is the place where people not only have spiritual services, but barbecues, weddings and graduation parties. This has been the place where everybody gets together to have community and all of a sudden the doors have been shut on that. The thing is, these people who have been here and stayed here, their children have moved away. Elderly people in the black community are very isolated and not technologically savvy, so their quality of life has really deteriorated.” On May 15, Miller will begin production on a short film following the impact of this isolation within Boulder’s black community through 91-year-old Second Baptist Church member Elmira Davis, who, in Miller’s words, “seems as though she is fading without a song to sing to God among her brothers and sisters.” “Elmira is fascinating to me because there are five different choirs between California and Texas she helped start,” Miller says. “That’s what her life has been built on is creating communities. She moved to Boulder in 1962. Boulder was still segregated in some parts at that time, businesses were still segregated: The Sink and Buchanan’s and the Boulder Theater just to name a few. Boulder was very racist at the time, just

like much of the rest of the country. [Second Baptist Church] must have been a very important hub [at the time], a place where everybody could gather to have a sense of community. Having that ripped away today, it makes me sad.” As a black woman living and working in Boulder, Miller details the daily exhaustions of moving through the world as a minority: It’s as simplistic as not being able to find a good hairdresser and as complex as explaining racism to her children. “When you don’t see any other reflections of yourself, you feel on the outskirts of the white community and you end up seeking out other people and it doesn’t matter if the people you find are in Boulder or in Gunbarrel: You’ll get together. That’s the thing about the church: the members live in all areas of Boulder County.” Which makes Miller’s project a bit different from the others in that her “neighborhood” is all of Boulder’s black community. As Miller has made her home in Boulder, she’s searched archives high

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

and low for information about the city and county’s historic black population, finding precious little, she says. So while her film unites a community severed during this pandemic, it also serves a higher purpose as a small rectification, a mere drop in what should be an ocean of black history. “We are the people making history right now,” she says. “I do feel like we are capturing Boulder in a way we’ve never seen before and may never see again. “That elderly community has seen so much, gone through so much,” she says. “To have to go back and retreat to your home after all of that work... it’s heartbreaking. It makes me worry how this is going to go at the end.” Find more information about Katrina Miller and her work at blackatvideoproductions.com.

KEVIN SWEET AND LAURA HYUNJHEE KIM — GEOCACHING WITH CUSTOM SEED PACKETS Kevin Sweet and Laura Hyunjhee MAY 14, 2020

Kim are both working on art-focused PhDs right now, but don’t expect esoteric projects from these two. “A lot of conversations we share revolve around sharing ideas and collaborations that reach beyond just the arts,” Kim says over a Zoom call with Sweet. “We talk about what is high art and what is low art, what is art outside of the gallery? And how can we involve more people.” Together, Sweet and Kim are creating custom seed packets they plan to disperse around their shared neighborhood in Boulder (“the 80302 zip code,” Kim says) for people to find, either by geo-caching or by walking around and looking — like an old-fashioned scavenger hunt. They plan to disperse about 100 packets made with biodegradable beeswax, filled with Sugar Anne snap peas, which don’t require a lot of sun to grow. Much like their PhD work, this project seeks to expand the notion of art. “For us it’s about the experience of being able to share this kind of mutual experience,” Sweet says. “We share this idea of artwork, of what the artist produces, as something that is fundamentally incomplete. It’s incomplete until it is engaged with by the broader public. We’re setting up a circumstance through which other people are going to take it into their homes, into their lives, and they’re going to do with it what they will, what they want to creatively do.” Each packet will come with a small explanation of the project and a link to a website where people can share their experience, including their journey with their new plant. “We’re not trying to distract people from what’s happening, but also part of resilience, I think, is having purpose, having hope, having something to look forward to,” Kim says. “Even if it’s like, OK, tomorrow, what are we going to do for this plant? Are you going to water it? Are you going to dance with it? Are you going to make a song or even write a story? So the seed’s not just a seed but also a metaphor for going forward, for having something to look forward to. I think that’s so important and that’s part of what has driven us to think beyond ourselves being artists but more as instigators to help kind of create that space for families to bonds.” Find more information about Kevin Sweet at kevinjsweet.net/info and more information about Laura Hyunjhee Kim at auraonsale.com I

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

VIRTUAL EVENTS

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

BY BOULDER WEEKLY STAFF

FREE RANGE DAIRY: ZOOMING WITH STORIES ON STAGE.

7 p.m. Thursday, May 14, thedairy.org/events/zooming-with-storieson-stage-2 Stories on Stage creates funny, moving, thought-provoking live stage performances of all types of literature, centered on the shared experience of hearing great stories. In this second virtual iteration, Stories on Stage favorites Erin Rollman and John Jurcheck present a motley series of stories about wild (and not-so-wild) animals, and question what it really means to be human. There will be a chat with the actors after the performance. For registered attendees, your Zoom Webinar invitation is scheduled to arrive in your email from the “Dairy Box Office” on May 14 at 6:15 p.m. Online registration will close at 6 p.m. on May 14, but if you’re still interested in attending, please email office@thedairy.org. Please consider making a donation to help Stories on Stage and The Dairy Arts Center continue to bring you great programming.

experience. The band’s first full-length studio album is set to release in the summer of 2020 and will be available on all major streaming platforms, pioneermother.com.

POPCORN AND WINE WEDNESDAYS WITH BOULDER BALLET: CINDERELLA.

3 p.m. Wednesday, May 20, thedairy.org Grab a snack and settle in for a family friendly production of Cinderella by Boulder Ballet. Donate $5, $10 or $20 to benefit Boulder Ballet and the Dairy Arts Center and receive a virtual ticket with the video link to this pre-recorded fan favorite.

THE ART OF CHEESE’S SEVEN DAY CHEESE CHALLENGE — LIVE, VIRTUAL, INTERACTIVE SESSIONS VIA ZOOM.

Noon, Monday, May 18 (Additional dates: May 19, May 20, May 21, May 22, May 23, and May 24), theartofcheese.com Challenge yourself to learn how to make one cheese per day over the course of one week with an experienced guide to lead you through the process. Don’t worry if you can’t attend the sessions when they begin live streaming at noon: recorded session will be available. You’ll learn: mascarpone, paneer, chevre/fromage blanc, quark, cottage cheese, feta and Italian hard cheese. Once you register, you’ll receive an email with links to the first session, recipes and a list of equipment and ingredients needed (and where to source them). At the end of each day you’ll receive a link to the next day’s session. Cost is $89.

THIRD LAW DANCE: FREE ONLINE CLASSES FOR PEOPLE WITH MOBILITY CHALLENGES.

11:30 a.m. Thursdays through June 30, 3rdlaw.org/dance-techniqueclasses/#parkinsons 3rd Law Dance/Theater is offering free online classes for people with mobility challenges. These classes are for anyone dealing with a chronic illness, Parkinson’s, challenges with aging or for anyone who needs a gentle movement experience with a community. If you are interested but are not familiar with Zoom (the video software), 3rd Law can help. Contact Lisa Johnston: danceforpd@3rdlaw.org, 303-506-3568.

TEEN VIRTUAL VARIETY HOUR.

3:30 p.m. Friday, May 15 (and Fridays through June 26), longmontcolorado.gov/Home/Components/Calendar/Event/37385 Fridays, 3:30-4:30 p.m. on Webex, join teen librarians Claire and David for a fun break from the world. New activities and topics each week: Charades, book discussions, escape rooms and scavenger hunts are all on the menu, ideas for future programs are welcome. For sixth through 12th graders only. Register at the link above to receive an email with more details.

PIONEER MOTHER — LIVESTREAM FROM THE GOLD HILL INN. 7 p.m. Saturday, May 16, facebook.com/events/689679151863528 Hailing from Nederland, Pioneer Mother features poignant songwriting inspired by nomadic living and driven by three-part harmonies for a soulful

MAY 14, 2020

RECIPES FOR CHANGE: ONLINE GALLERY EXHIBIT BY YOUNG WOMEN’S VOICES FOR CLIMATE. May 19-June 15, speak.world/recipes-for-change How can the arts reverse global warming? Where can I get some yummy plant-based recipes? How do I use the arts to act up for climate? Young Women’s Voices for Change (a group of nine Boulder middle and high school women who use arts-based methods for climate action), along with SPEAK (speak.world) co-founders and CU students, created the art exhibition Recipes for Change to raise awareness and act on climate change. These aren’t recipes in the traditional sense, although some do incorporate actual food. All “recipes” share a common goal: to nourish and heal the planet. see EVENTS Page 24

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

ART

One by one the singing birds come back by Caitlin Rockett

rom her birthplace in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to her home in Niwot for the past 25 years, Ana María Hernando has always found inspiration for her art in nature, especially in the mountains. Mountains hold a spiritual place for many cultures across the globe. Growing up in Argentina, Hernando was deeply familiar with the mythologies of the Quechua people of the Peruvian Andes who believed in male (Apus) and female (Ñustas) spirits that resided in the mountains and protected people, plants and animals. Some of her artistic work has revolved around celebrating and amplifying this feminine mountain energy. Hernando is currently in the Alps Maritimes as an artist-in-residence at Château de la Napoule in the south of France, the first woman

to receive the Prix Henry Clews. The biannual award brings distinguished sculptors to the château to live and work for a year, showcasing their creations several times throughout the residency at the château’s museum. Arriving at the château in mid-January, Hernando began a project called ‘Écoutons,’ the French word for “let’s listen.” It began as a “col-

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

laborative performance,” as she calls it, hiking with groups of visitors from the château up San Peyre mountain to listen to the sounds of nature while embroidering – no experience in needle point necessary. But when the pandemic stopped the world in its tracks, there was no way to create art with guests on hikes. And yet nature was louder than ever. Without humanity to compete with, nature seemed to sing from the diaphragm: loud, full, robust. “Last year I read a research paper that found, between 1970 and now, there are onefourth less birds in North America,” Hernando says over a recent phone call from the château. “So thinking about that loss I wanted to record in some ways what we are hearing today and bring it as a gift to the mountain. And then also, as a society, we are so much about the listen to me and not the listening that I wanted this piece (the embroidery) in between us to make it about listening.” Hernando is now asking for people from all over the world to send her recordings of birds, which she will create an embroidery for as part of ‘Écoutons’ — no professional recording equipment necessary. “I don’t want to make it too complicated, so people feel they can do it easily,” she says. “In that I wanted to open the possibility for people to be in that attentive space, listening to the birds, and maybe if we are lucky and the world reopens, I hope we reopen with a little bit of another attitude, maybe that attitude of listening might stay. On the other hand, I feel this is kind of a community performance and I want people to feel part of a piece that will be a gift to mother nature. All of us together make a bigger thing.” To see more of Ana María Hernando’s work visit, anamariahernando.com. Send her an audio clip of birds singing from wherever you are to ana@anamariahernando.com.

MAY 14, 2020

EVENTS from Page 23

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

HOME VIEWING

by Michael J. Casey

lfred Hitchcock may not have invented the moving image, but he defined what it was capable of. The son of a London grocer, Hitchcock’s career began in the silent era, at Germany’s famed UFA studios, before returning to England as a jack-of-all-trades assistant and designer. There he crossed paths with writer/producer/editor Alma Reville, his future wife and closest collaborator, graduated to the director’s chair, made two dozen pictures — including the first British sound film (‘Blackmail’) — and put the British film industry on the map. Then Hollywood called and the Hitchcocks answered, relocating to sunny Southern California where they continued to make movies from 1940 to 1976 — with a dozen or so masterworks along the way. Few filmmakers have created a visual language the way Hitchcock did, and it permeated cinematic storytelling for future generations. And not just for popular set-pieces and inventive murders — though those play a role — but with a deep distrust for things as they seem. For five decades, Hitchcock refined his dominant themes of the wrong man, the cool blond, the controlling mother and the disconnect between exterior appearances and interior desires. His movies center on Freudian psychology and the transmission of guilt; they recoil at the threat of domesticity and relish a macabre sense of humor. They connected with audiences then, and they connect with audiences now, especially on the other side of the camera, where Hitchcock’s influence still

looms large. Take ‘Blow the Man Down’ (reviewed on page 26), a perfect example of how ingrained the Master of Suspense’s influence is. Curious to discover the roots? Below are four of Hitch’s best. Happy viewing.

‘THE 39 STEPS’

Made in England 1935, ‘The 39 Steps’ isn’t the first Hitchcock film constructed around “the wrong man” conceit, but it’s one where he found his touch. Robert Donat stars as the hapless man fingered for murder, Madeleine Carroll plays the whip-smart blond he falls for, and Charles Bennett loads the script with one-liners and clever setpieces. Hitchcock would later refine this simple story into ‘North by Northwest,’ arguably one of the most enjoyable commercial films ever made. Streaming on Amazon Prime, The Criterion Channel and Hoopla.

‘SHADOW OF A DOUBT’

There’s something rotten in smalltown, U.S.A., and Hitchcock chose Santa Rosa, California — one of the most picturesque cities in the nation — to set his tale of a modern-day wolf in sheep’s clothing. Joseph Cotten plays dapper dresser Uncle Charlie, the prodigal son of the family and the favorite uncle of his namesake niece, played by Teresa Wright. Hitchcock called on ‘Our Town’ scribe Thornton Wilder to work on the script, and the result is an allegory of Nazism hiding in plain sight. It’s also charming, enchanting and funny — particularly the scenes between Hume Cronyn and Henry Travers, two crime fiction fans trying to pen the perfect murder. Streaming on DirecTV and Starz Amazon.

‘ROPE’ A full 70 years before ‘1917,’ Hitchcock tried to make a feature film look like it was filmed in one continuous take. It works surprisingly well, given the technological restraints at the time, but it also helps to have a story this good: Brandon (John Dall) and Phillip (Farley Granger) have just killed a man and hidden his body in a trunk. Their dinner guests will arrive any minute, including a former teacher, played by Jimmy Stewart. The guests arrive, and dinner is served. And, as things go, the conversation turns to murder and Nietzschean ideas of superiority. Hitchcock manages to keep everything light and humorous, but not without taking a couple of shots at a callous society actively choosing not to hear what they don’t like. Streaming on DirecTV and Starz Amazon.

‘FRENZY’

Hitchcock’s most graphic film is also his most unsettling. Made in 1972, when the strictures of nudity and violence were loosened significantly compared to the ’40s and ’50s, ‘Frenzy’ is the story of a serial killer (Barry Foster) and the police officer (Alec McCowen) tracking him down. Pay attention to how often the topic of murder comes up at dinner, and you’ll find both hypocrisy and a direct link to ‘Blow the Man Down.’ Hitch was no vegetarian, but he must have taken great delight knowing that in homes across the country, respectable people sat down to dinner, drew knife and fork, and mercilessly hacked away at a corpse. Streaming on DirecTV and Starz Amazon.

film film film film I

MAY 14, 2020

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

books

Local book store news: BOULDER BOOK STORE curbside pickup is available again from noon-4:30 p.m. everyday on orders placed on the website or by phone. Shop online at boulderbookstore.com or call 303-447-2074. Boulder Book Store is still offering mystery bags, now available in three price tiers. Tell the staff what you love to read, pick a price point — $25, $50 or $100 bags — and they’ll pick a selection of on-sale and high-quality used books to ensure you get the most books for your buck. Mystery bags are also available for kids and teens too. And check out the Boulder Book Store care packages:

n Boulder Book Store Care Pack-

age ($50) Consists of: Boulder Book Store T-shirt (put size and whether you prefer a neutral or colored shirt in the comment field when you place your order); Boulder Book Store mug; and two paperbacks in the genre of choice (specify in the comment field when you place your order).

n Boulder Book Store Self-Care Package ($50) Consists of:

luxurious soap or bath product like a bath bomb, lip balm, gourmet chocolate or blank journal; and a book selected to help calm your mind.

n Boulder Book Store Kids Idle Hands Package ($54) Consists of: kid’s coloring book, colored pencils, kid’s jigsaw puzzle, sticker book and activity book.

n Boulder Book Store Adult Idle Hands Package ($50)

Consists of: adult coloring book, colored pencils, crossword puzzle book, origami book and deck of playing cards.

n Boulder Book Store Reach Out Care Package ($45) Con-

sists of: address book, pen(s), assortment of greeting cards (need occasion cards? Humorous? Blank? Postcards? Let the staff know in the notes) and a pack of decorative sticky notes.

Local author new release: n ‘Why Bother? Discover the Desire

for What’s Next’ (Page Two Books, April 21, 2020)

fter Boulder resident Jennifer Louden lost her father, a close friend and a marriage, she found herself spiraling into existential despair. “Why bother?” she found herself thinking. But eventually she wondered what would happen if she actually tried to answer the question. The answers took her on a journey chronicled in her new book, Why Bother? Discover the Desire for What’s Next. The book challenges readers to open their minds, hearts and lives by following where a traditionally apathetic question leads. Louden demonstrates how to care when it feels impossible. She shows why we must prioritize what’s calling us at any time in life, and how tapping into our deepest desires can give us the energy to move forward — even when the world seems in dire straits.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

MUSIC n WORLD BACH COMPETITION 2020 — HOSTED BY BOULDER BACH FESTIVAL.

Applications open now through July 11, boulderbachfestival.org/world-bach-competition THE BOULDER BACH Festival (BBF) has launched an online Solo World Bach Competition, open to musicians in multiple age categories, including high school and university students, professionals, and community musicians — with no upper age limit. All instruments and voice types are encouraged to apply, performing solo Bach: percussion, brass, woodwinds, strings, keyboard instruments, plucked instruments, non-traditional instruments, non-classical instruments, non-Western instruments, acoustic and electric instruments and singers. Transcriptions of J.S. Bach’s works are welcome. No multitracking — all entries must be performed live in the video, with the exception of vocal accompaniment in observance of social distancing. First prize in each of the 12 categories is $500. Applications cost $60, which supports the Boulder Bach Festival (a 501c3 nonprofit), including administrative costs, adjudication, PR, future planning and educational programs. Prizes are underwritten by a generous BBF donor. Visit the website for more information on categories, submissions, rules and prizes: boulderbachfestival.org/worldbach-competition.

n NICK FORSTER’S ‘TEACH ME ONE THING.’

Available on eTown’s YouTube and social media channels and via podcast each Tuesday, etown.org/teach-me-one-thing. ANIMATION BY JOHN GRIGSBY IN A SERIES OF video chats, eTown co-founder and Hot Rize bassist Nick Forster calls on his pals to teach him something new. Guitar great Bill Brisell explains the beauty of the “G” chord; Steve Martin demonstrates how to perfectly shuffle a deck of cards. “The funny thing about teaching, especially if you don’t do it all the time, is that it makes each of us think about what we know and what we’re good at,” Forster said in a statement about the new series. “Most of the time it also reveals things we wish we were better at, and that’s the whole deal with any artist’s journey, always working to get better.” Teach Me One Thing launched on Tuesday, May 12 with Forster chatting with Phish bassist Mike Gordon, to be followed by Steve Martin on May 19 and Billy Strings on May 26. A new episode will be released every Tuesday. Viewers can find Teach Me One Thing by visiting eTown.org, eTown’s YouTube Channel, or by following eTown_Radio on Instagram, and eTownRadio on Facebook and Twitter. The episodes will also be available to listeners via podcast streaming services and the eTown app.

MAY 14, 2020

AMAZON STUDIOS

A slight case of accidental murder

Two sisters and a town full of secrets in ‘Blow the Man Down’

by Michael J. Casey

he rocky, seaside village of Easter Cove, Maine, does not look like the kind of place you’d want to spend a winter. The snow piles up in great heaps, and the wind coming off the water will send an icicle right through your spine. Most of the people here either fish or sell fish, but back in the day, it used to be a rowdy port of harbor, the kind where sailors would drop anchor and run rampant for a lost weekend. You can still drink yourself silly here, most do, and there are other activities to partake in, you just got to know the right person to ask. Easter Cove has a history, and it’s written on the faces of the women who live here. Susie Gallagher (June Squibb) is squat and rumpled, but even at 90 years old, she’s not someone you’d want to cross. She spends most of her time with Doreen (Marceline Hugot) and Gail (Annette O’Toole), and the three of them remember the old days of Easter Cove all too well. Their gender was not treated fairly back then. But somewhere along the way, the younger generation showed up, and women like Enid (Margo Martindale) and Mary Margaret started running things. That was then, this is now, and Mary Margaret died before the curtain even had a chance to rise. Left are her two daughters: Priscilla (Sophie Lowe) and Mary 26

Beth (Morgan Saylor), who will inherit the house, the fishmonger shop and a pile of debt. Enid could step in and help out, but Susie and the others won’t let her — the cost is too high. Surprisingly, they won’t need to. It takes a little time for the nerves to steady, but once they do, Priscilla and Mary Beth prove more than capable of looking out for themselves. Women like Enid aren’t born overnight. And, as the last shot of the movie suggests, neither are women like Susie. Written and directed by Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy, Blow the Man Down is an accomplished debut blending a Hitchcockian macabre sense of humor with a clockwork plot (for more on the works of Alfred Hitchcock, see page 25). The movie opens with a rousing montage of bearded and grizzled fishermen singing the titular sea shanty while hoisting nets, hacking off fish heads and gutting their catch. They function primarily as a chorus, one Cole and Krudy return to whenever the story requires a jolt of jaunty singing. But back to those fish heads: They’re not the only thing slaughtered, gutted and hacked up in this movie. At one point, Priscilla’s skills with a fillet knife come in handy. Mary Beth lacks the knife, but she does have a harpoon. It gets the job done. Both are grisly moments, but Cole and Krudy go for humor rather than horror. MAY 14, 2020

Blow the Man Down premiered at 2019’s Tribeca Film Festival and was promptly acquired by Amazon Studios for distribution. Amazon Studios is one of the few internet platforms that commits to theatrical distribution before streaming to Prime subscribers. But in COVID times, Blow the Man Down skipped the big screen altogether and landed on the service. A pity considering how well the movie is composed and shot. Cinematographer Todd Banhazl uses the unflattering light of winter, while production designer Jasmine Ballou Jones creates interiors well past their expiration date. Both work wonders. There is no gloss to this town, no glamour to these women. The men are harmless bumpkins or creeps waiting to get theirs. When Mary Beth rouses one of them at a bar to bum a cigarette, he awakes from an alcohol-induced fog so thick the simple act of opening his eyes is akin to a Claritin allergy pill commercial where a fuzzy brown film is peeled back to reveal bright blues and greens. He’s got a story in him, though it’s not one Cole and Krudy are interested in exploring. Their focus is on the women of Easter Cove and how extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. There’s a dark underbelly to every American town, some you have to look harder to find. Easter Cove is a little bit more middle-of-the-road: It’s there, and everyone sees it, but most try to ignore it. Ignore it too long, and it’ll get out of hand. Then it’s time for someone to step in and right the ship. For three generations, women have been running the show on Easter Cove. They probably will for three more. For movie reviews and more, listen to Metro Arts on KGNU, Fridays at 3 p.m. (88.5 FM, 1390 AM and online at kgnu.org). BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

need to get him out of your head.

BY DAN SAVAGE

Dear Dan: About a month ago I broke up with Dear Dan: It’s taken a lot to do this my boyfriend after I found but here goes. I am a 38-year-old gay out he was cheating on me. Long before male. I have been dating this guy for one we broke up I freaked out about a rash year and 10 months. It’s been a lot of and looking back I think it was probably work. He cheated on me numerous herpes all along. I found out for sure times, and he lives with me and doesn’t three days ago and I’m honestly thinking work, and I’ve been taking care of him about not telling him. He doesn’t show for seven months now. He always accus- any symptoms and he’s the type of guy es me of cheating or finds something to who will call me a slut if I tell him. He’ll blame me for. What I am angry about blame me for his wrongdoing and just now is how for the past four months he keep going and going. I honestly don’t has been accusing me of playing games know if I should tell him, by conspiring with people ROMAN ROBINSON since he’s asymptomatic. to make him hear voices. If This is going to cause a I look up at the ceiling or huge problem between us. look around he said I am He has a lot of anger communicating with issues and he could use “them.” I keep telling him I this as blackmail. I’m legitido not hear or see anymately scared. thing but he insists that I —Her Ex Reacts am lying. He also says I Personally put a curse on him. One day I got up and he packs Dear HERP: Letting a his bags and said he had former sex partner know enough and walked out. you may have exposed He said I was not being them to an STI — or that loyal. This is a man who has been doing they may have exposed you to an STI coke since the age of 14 and he is now — is the decent, responsible, courteous 43 years old. He does meth and whatev- and kind thing to do. Not just for their er else. He said until I come clean about health and safety, HERP, but for the hearing the voices too and admit I cast health and safety of their future sex partsome sort a spell on him he won’t talk to ners. But people who are unkind, scary me or see me. Mental illness runs in his and violent have no one but themselves family and one sibling already committed to blame when a former sex partner/girlsuicide. He didn’t want professional help friend/boyfriend/enbyfriend is too afraid because, he says, “I am too smart for for their own safety to make that disclosthat.” I’m hurt and angry and want some er. Provided your fears are legitimate, advice. ANY ADVICE. Please. HERP, and you’re not inflating them to —Desperate For Answers avoid an awkward or unpleasant conversation, you don’t owe your ex a call. Dear DFA: I don’t see the problem. A delusional and potentially dangerDear Dan: I’m a bi guy, living alone. ous drug addict with mental health At the start of the year, this new guy issues who refuses to get help packed moved into the house where I live — we his bags and walked out of your life. share communal areas but have private Yahtzee, DFA, you win. It was his presrooms — and he’s a bit of a slacker but ence in your life (and your apartment) holy shit is he hot. I’ve had regular fanthat was the problem and your boyfriend tasies about him. And now with the — your ex-boyfriend — just solved it for quarantine, those fantasies have you. Block his number, change your increased along with the number of locks and pray he forgets your address. times I see him in a day. I’ve been feelYou might wanna seek some profes- ing the urge to ask him if he’s interested sional help yourself. You need to get to in anything but my friends have advised the bottom of why you wasted nearly me to “not shit where I eat.” But due to two years on this asshole. Being alone the quarantine, the only other option I can’t be worse than being with someone have is masturbating and that’s not who cheats on you and then accuses doing the trick. Should I take the plunge you of cheating — to say nothing of and ask him? someone who abuses drugs, hears voic—Household Entirely Lacks es, and makes other irrational/delusional Pleasure accusations. He wasn’t just a danger to himself, DFA, he was a danger to you. Dear HELP: Health authorities have He’s out of your apartment — now you advised us to shit where we eat for the BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

time being. The New York City Health Department recommends masturbation, HELP, because you are and always have been your safest sex partner. But your next safest partner during this pandemic is someone with whom you live. NYC Health has advised us all to “avoid close contact — including sex — with anyone outside your household.” That doesn’t mean everyone inside your household is fair game, of course; some people are quarantining with their parents. But if there was ever a time when you could approach a non-related adult with whom you live to see if they might wanna fuck around, now’s the time. Apologize to the hot slacker in advance for potentially making things awkward and invite him to say no. (“If you’re not interested, please say no and I promise not to bring it up again.”) But if the answer is yes, HELP, send video. Dear Dan: I’m a gay bondage bottom. My boyfriend of four years is 100% vanilla and we solved the “problem” of my need to get tied up — and it’s a real need — by outsourcing it. (Can you tell we’re longtime readers and listeners?) I was seeing two regular FWBs/bondage buddies but that’s obviously on hold right now. (I’ve reached out to both my FWBs to let them both know I’m thinking about them and that I care about them, Dan, like you’ve been urging people to do on your show.) The issue is I still really need to get tied up and my boyfriend is willing but he’s so bad at it that I don’t want to bother. He knows how much I need it and he’s hurt that I’d rather go without than let him put me in bondage that isn’t really bondage because I can easily get out. We used to fight because I wanted him to tie me up and he didn’t want to do it and now we’re fighting because he wants to tie me up and I won’t let him do it. Any advice for a fan? —This Isn’t Exactly Desirable Dear TIED: If people can teach yoga, give concerts and conduct first dates via online streaming services, then one of your bondage buddies can — if they’re into the idea — give your boyfriend a few bondage tutorials online. I’m glad to hear you already reached out to your bondage buddies, TIED, since now you’ll be asking them to do you and your boyfriend a favor. But I imagine it’s a favor they’ll enjoy doing. The Savage Lovecast, every Tuesday. This week, with Marc Maron! savagelovecast.com Send emails to mail@savagelove. net, follow Dan on Twitter @ FakeDanSavage, and visit ITMFA.org. MAY 14, 2020

Adam Sloat Broker/Owner

Your Boulder Real Estate Expert and Music Guy

HELP MY OFFER GET ACCEPTED! Question: Adam, I put in an offer on a property, it was rejected… then another and I was outbid. I’m over it. Any advice?

Answer: Yes, but it takes more time/ space than we have here. There are ways to strengthen your offer and it starts with a real estate agent like myself who calls the listing agent. There’s a LOT to discuss and rapport to establish before the offer is even presented. It’s also not a bad idea to get fully pre-approved for a mortgage (if not an allcash buyer). I’ve helped clients beat better offers by communicating with the listing agent and showing their seller my buyer clients were serious, good people, easy to work with, had a legit mortgage pre-approved, and that I would also do my part for a smooth transaction.

720-466-8212 adam@adamsloat.com www.westwaterrealty.com I

But from what I can tell, this curious problem has been diminishing for you in 2020 — and will continue to do so. I expect that in the coming weeks, you will welcome and harness your good luck with brisk artistry.

BY ROB BREZSNY

LIBRA

ARIES

MARCH 21-APRIL 19: During a pandemic, is

it possible to spread the news about your talents and offerings? Yes! That’s why I suggest you make sure that everyone who should know about you does indeed know about you. To mobilize your efforts and stimulate your imagination, I came up with colorful titles for you to use to describe yourself on your résumé or in promotional materials or during conversations with potential helpers. 1) Fire-Maker 2) Seed-Sower 3) Brisk Instigator 4) Hope Fiend 5) Gap Leaper 6) Fertility Aficionado 7) Gleam Finder 8) Launch Catalyst 9) Chief Improviser 10) Change Artist.

TAURUS

APRIL 20-MAY 20: Of all the signs, Tauruses are among

the least likely to be egomaniacs. Most of you aren’t inclined to indulge in fits of braggadocio or outbreaks of narcissism. (I just heard one of my favorite virtuoso Taurus singers say she wasn’t a very good singer!) That’s why one of my secret agendas is to tell you how gorgeous you are, to nudge you to cultivate the confidence and pride you deserve to have. Are you ready to leap to a higher octave of self-love? I think so. In the coming weeks, please use Taurus artist Salvador Dali’s boast as your motto: “There comes a moment in every person’s life when they realize they adore me.”

MAY 21-JUNE 20: When I was young, I had a fun-filled

fling with a smart Gemini woman who years later became a highly praised author and the authorized biographer of a Nobel Prize-winning writer. Do I regret our break-up? Am I sorry I never got to enjoy her remarkable success up close? No. As amazing as she was and is, we wouldn’t have been right for each other long-term. I am content with the brief magic we created together, and have always kept her in my fond thoughts with gratitude and the wish for her to thrive. Now I invite you to do something comparable to what I just did, Gemini: Make peace with your past. Send blessings to the people who helped make you who you are. Celebrate what has actually happened in your life, and graduate forever from what might have happened but didn’t.

CANCER

JUNE 21-JULY 22: “You have two ways to live your life,

from memory or from inspiration,” writes teacher Joe Vitale. Many of you Cancerians favor memory over inspiration to provide their primary motivation. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, although it can be a problem if you become so obsessed with memory that you distract yourself from creating new developments in your life story. But in accordance with astrological potentials and the exigencies of our Global Healing Crisis, I urge you, in the coming weeks, to mobilize yourself through a balance of memory and inspiration. I suspect you’ll be getting rich opportunities to both rework the past and dream up a future full of interesting novelty. In fact, those two imperatives will serve each other well.

LEO

JULY 23-AUG. 22: Author Anne Lamott has some crucial

advice for you to heed in the coming weeks. “Even when we’re most sure that love can’t conquer all,” she says, “it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds.” I hope you’ll wield this truth as your secret magic in the coming weeks, Leo. Regard love not just as a sweet emotion that makes you feel good, but as a superpower that can accomplish practical miracles.

VIRGO

AUG. 23-SEPT. 22: Theologian St. Catherine of

Siena observed, “To a brave person, good and bad luck are like her left and right hand. She uses both.” The funny thing is, Virgo, that in the past you have sometimes been more adept and proactive in using your bad luck, and less skillful at capitalizing on your good luck.

MAY 14, 2020

except what people have to say about me,” says actor Sarah Jessica Parker. I think that’s an excellent strategy for you to adopt in the coming weeks. On the one hand, the whole world will be exceptionally interesting, and your ability to learn valuable lessons and acquire useful information will be at peak. On the other hand, one of the keys to getting the most out of the wealth of catalytic influences will be to cultivate nonchalance about people’s opinions of you.

SCORPIO

OCT. 23-NOV. 21: On the kids’ TV show Sesame

Street, there’s a muppet character named Count von Count. He’s a friendly vampire who loves to count things. He is 6,523,730 years old and his favorite number is 34,969 — the square root of 187. The Count was “born” on November 13, 1972, when he made his first appearance on the show, which means he’s a Scorpio. I propose we make him your patron saint for the next four weeks. It’s an excellent time to transform any threatening qualities you might seem to have into harmless and cordial forms of expression. It’s also a favorable phase for you to count your blessings and make plans that will contribute to your longevity.

SAGITTARIUS

NOV. 22-DEC. 21: “No one ever found wisdom without

GEMINI

SEPT. 23-OCT. 22: “I’m curious about everything,

also being a fool,” writes novelist Erica Jong. “Until you’re ready to look foolish, you’ll never have the possibility of being great,” says singer Cher. “He dares to be a fool, and that is the first step in the direction of wisdom,” declared art critic James Huneker. “Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced,” observed philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. According to my analysis of astrological omens, you’re primed to prove these theories, Sagittarius. Congratulations!

CAPRICORN

DEC. 22-JAN. 19: “Few people have a treasure,”

writes Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro. She’s speaking metaphorically, of course — not referring to a strongbox full of gold and jewels. But I’m happy to inform you that if you don’t have a treasure, the coming months will be a favorable time to find or create it. So I’m putting you on a High Alert for Treasure. I urge you to be receptive to and hungry for it. And if you are one of those rare lucky ones who already has a treasure, I’m happy to say that you now have the power and motivation to appreciate it even more and learn how to make even better use of it. Whether you do or don’t yet have the treasure, heed these further words from Alice Munro: “You must hang onto it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you.”

AQUARIUS

JAN. 20-FEB. 18: At this moment, there are 50 trillion

cells in your body, and each of them is a sentient being in its own right. They act together as a community, consecrating you with their astonishing collaboration. It’s like magic! Here’s an amazing fact: Just as you communicate with dogs and cats and other animals, you can engage in dialogs with your cells. The coming weeks will be a ripe time to explore this phenomenon. Is there anything you’d like to say to the tiny creatures living in your stomach or lungs? Any information you’d love to receive from your heart or your sex organs? If you have trouble believing this is a real possibility, imagine and pretend. And have fun!

PISCES

FEB. 19-MARCH 20: “A myriad of modest delights consti-

tute happiness,” wrote poet Charles Baudelaire. I think that definition will serve you well in the coming weeks, Pisces. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, there won’t be spectacular breakthroughs barging into your life; I expect no sublime epiphanies or radiant transformations. On the other hand, there’ll be a steady stream of small marvels if you’re receptive to such a possibility. Here’s key advice: Don’t miss the small wonders because you’re expecting and wishing for bigger splashes.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

‘FOREST SCENE (PATH FROM MAS JOLIE TO CHÂTEAU NOIR)’ BY PAUL CÉZANNE COURTESY GOOGLE ART PROJECT

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by Jethro McClellan I live in a borough called Beauty, at the end of a street called Strife, and I walk through a glade called Gladness down a long lonely lane called Life.

Born in Boston, Jethro McClellan spent a few of his early years in Taos. In 1981, he relocated to Boulder and began creative writing; in 1991, via both Naropa and Penny Lane, he became part of the Boulder poetry scene. In 2018, he took one or two tentative steps toward being a real poet. Boulder Weekly accepts poetry and flash fiction submissions of 450 words/35 lines or fewer and accompanied by a one-sentence bio of the author. Send to: poetry@boulderweekly.com

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

MAY 14, 2020

BOULDER WEEKLY STAFF

COSTILLAS, $14.95. Efrain’s, 1630 63rd St., Boulder, and 101 E. Cleveland St., Lafayette, efrainsrestaurant.com

TRY THIS WEEK:

Costillas @ Efrain’s

WITH A CRISPY, charred bark, the deeply savory, tender, fall-

apart St. Louis ribs in Efrain’s costillas plate are pure satisfaction. They’re smothered in a very spicy pork green chile and served alongside crispy country potatoes, refried beans and cheese. Fork it all onto a crispy, fajita-length flour tortilla for a handheld treat. We wish we could enjoy the plate in Efrain’s homey Boulder digs or in its open Lafayette dining room, alongside a house margarita, but getting the whole kit and caboodle to-go isn’t so bad.

n Drink this: Primitive Beer’s So Last Season

n Boulder Food Rescue delivers

PRIMITIVE BEER’S BOTTLE-conditioned offerings are a thing of beauty, and So Last Season is no exception. It’s a 2-year-old, spontaneously fermented beer, refermented on an absurd amount of Montmorency cherries for six months — which dye the beer a deep magenta and tinge the head pink. The nose sparkles, and the mouth explodes with flavors of sweet cherry pie, chewy marzipan, and just enough farmhouse funk underneath to keep things interesting. And with plenty of tight carbonation and tart acidity, So Last Season is simultaneously rustic and refined. It’s only 5.6% ABV — the perfect amount for a couple of glasses paired alongside fruit tarts and banana fritters.

BOULDER FOOD RESCUE (BFR), the local nonprofit that takes wouldbe-wasted food from grocery stores and other food establishments and delivers it to those in need, is now bringing good food to those who live in affordable housing. BFR is picking up from grocery stores and taking surplus from the local school district food hand-outs and dropping off at 20 affordable housing sites, through no-contact deliveries. The need is great, and likely to continue — about 1,600 people receive food at no cost. “We were dropping off food to a resident with kids when we were stopped by another resident asking about the food. We are taking some food for her and her family tomorrow. We drop off on the porch. No contact,” says Wendi Calder, a BFR grocery program coordinator.

MAY 14, 2020

BOULDER WEEKLY

So you want to open a brewery

What shape will breweries take in a post-COVID world?

by Michael J. Casey

t happens all the time: You’ve made the umpteenth batch of homebrew, and it tastes pretty good. Your friends are encouraging, and your spouse wants your hobby out of the house. You’ve pored through Zymurgy and The New Brewer, gleaning tips from the legends about what to do and what to avoid. You’ve dialed in the recipes and worked up a business plan. The time has finally come, you’re going to go pro — and then a global pandemic hits and commerce as we know comes to a grinding halt. Still want to open a brewery? Breweries that have yet to open still have flexibility. Breweries that opened in the past year (six in Boulder County) do not. Their business models were most likely based on trends in the marketplace à la 2015-2019, a unique moment in brewing history punctuated by prolific growth. Brewers Association chief economist Bart Watson calls this period the “at the brewery era,” a nationwide explosion of taproom-focused breweries. 2019 was the first year the BA added the taproom segment and collected data (see sidebar). We’ll have to wait for the May/June issue of The New Brewer to see which breweries are classified Micro and which are classified Taproom, but you’ve probably spent the majority of 2019 drinking in taprooms. The segment

saw growth of 26% in 2019, as opposed to a 6% growth in Micros, 7% growth for Brewpubs and 1% growth for Regionals. Simply put, craft drinkers in 2019 imbibed on-site. For 2020, they’ll be doing it at home. Not to belabor a point, but the brewery era is dead. Though the coronavirus pandemic may be novel, shifts in beer consumption are not. When Boulder Brewing sold the state’s first case of craft beer to the Gold Hill Inn on July 4, 1980, it did so in bottles. Taprooms weren’t around, brewpubs weren’t a thing, and distribution in stores was still to come. Jump ahead to the 1990s, and brewpubs were all the rage: Oasis, Oskar Blues and Walnut — all sold food and brew side by side. Jump forward another decade, and the brewpub is still around, but production breweries in industrial spaces were cranking: Avery, Left Hand and Twisted Pine. When Upslope

A FINKEL & GARF

taproom employee fulfills online orders.

opened in 2008, it did so with two beers, in cans, out the back door. Less than 10 years later, attention turned to the front door, and taproom breweries attracted promiscuous drinkers with extensive tap offerings and a rotating schedule of food trucks. The shape and look of a brewery reflect the era in which it was conceived. You’ve probably noticed similarities between many taprooms around the county. And not just in décor, but also in the styles available and the breadth of options. And if you were thinking of opening a brewery three months ago, 26% growth looked pretty promising. Not to mention visions of a small room packed with people clamoring for the beer you made. From today’s vantage, those taprooms are going to be awful empty while 12-packs of Dale’s Pale Ale and Left Hand Nitro Milk Stout fly off the grocery store shelves. What will the breweries of tomorrow look like? Impossible to predict, though, it seems fair to expect most will have some sort of brewery-to-home delivery component. As well as a kitchen of some kind in place of food trucks — you can only promise your customers health, safety and proper sterilization if you can control every aspect of their experience. The only thing we can know is the same thing Lagunitas Brewery founder Tony Magee knew five years ago: “The future will not be like the past.”

What’s in a name?

he Brewers Association divides its memberships into four segments: Regionals, which produce more than 15,000 barrels of beer a year (Left Hand, Oskar Blues, Upslope); Brewpubs, which offer a full-service kitchen along with on-site brewing (12Degree, Mountain Sun, Pumphouse); Micros, which produce fewer than 15,000 barrels a year and sell 75% or more of it off-site; and Taprooms, which sell 25% or more of its beer on-site and does not operate substantial food service. Anecdotally, taprooms’ and brewpubs’ annual production ranges anywhere between 200 to 2,000 barrels a year.

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MAY 14, 2020

PHOTOS BY WILLIAM HEREFORD, REPRINTED FROM ‘FRIULI FOOD AND WINE’

‘Friuli Food and Wine.’ $50. Releases July 7, available for preorder at frascafoodandwine. com/book.

Dear Friuli. Love, Frasca Bobby Stuckey and Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson deliver a love letter in ‘Friuli Food and Wine’

by Matt Cortina

n the U.S., they’re Bobby Stuckey and Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson, owners of Frasca, Tavernetta, Pizzeria Locale and the Scarpetta wine label. In Friuli, just outside Venice, on the border of Austria and Slovenia, they’re Booby and Lucciano. “He thinks he’s gotten my name down pat,” Stuckey, laughing, says of Michele Boem, the former head of tourism in Friuli. “I’ll say, ‘Bobby,’ and he’ll say, ‘Right, Booby.’” They’re cool with it. It’s the kind of individual touch they immediately fell in love with upon visiting Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG) for the first time some two decades ago. It’s a region steeped in cultural history and culinary individuality — a key port for Hungarian and Austrian empires, and touching both the Adriatic Sea and the Alps, FVG is a confluence of various food traditions across time, geography and politics. And yet, Friulano food is distinctly Italian — “the best Italian food I never knew existed,” MackinnonPatterson says in their forthcoming book, Friuli Food and Wine. It’s a veritable love letter to FVG, its hospitality, wine and cuisine, which they wrote with Meredith Erickson (who wrote the fantastic Alpine Cooking and cowrote the Joe Beef cookbooks). MAY 14, 2020

The book reads, in part, like a guide book to FVG, as the region is relatively undiscovered by American tourists, despite being just a 10 minute drive from the Venice airport. As Boem joked to them once: “2 million Americans go to Venice, 30 come to Friuli, 20 are your staff and guests.” Unsurprising for last year’s James Beard Award winners for Outstanding Service (at Frasca), it’s the incomparable hospitality Stuckey and MackinnonPatterson have experienced in FVG that makes the region exceptional and which they’ve tried to import into their restaurants in the U.S. In Friuli Food and Wine, Stuckey tells a story of their host Josko Sirk at the inn La Subida catching up to them on a motorcycle at the end of their Alpine bike ride — even though he had to host a wedding that day — to saber a bottle of sparkling wine for the group, as in a Rick Steves fever dream. “I try to put myself in that,” Stuckey says. “I couldn’t imagine in my busy day on a Saturday if I had a buyout at Frasca and some friends from Friuli were visiting, and they were going to ride up to Ward that I would get on a scooter, go up there, saber some bubI

BOULDER WEEKLY

TIRAMISU SOUFFLÉS WITH MASCARPONE ANGLAISE

bles, give them a hug and scurry back to own local ingredients to plug into recipes work. I think that’s pretty unique. That from Friuli Food and Wine. One of the sums up authentic hospitality.” book’s major feats is that unlike other The book dives deep into what cookbooks from the world’s greatest resmakes food and wine from FVG unique. taurants, the recipes are all reasonable Stuckey outlines how different producers for a home kitchen, and if you want to use a variety of different winemaking add in ingredients sourced from Friuli, be methods — from cutting their guest. edge modern to certifiEnter Boulder. ably ancient — to culti“We are very vate a variety of grapes, unique in Boulder. We some you’ve heard of, have so many great many you haven’t. The Friulano products here recipes include Frasca now,” Stuckey says. staples like the incredi“Carlin [Karr, wine ble frico caldo — a director at Frasca], it’s cheesy hash brown of been maybe eight sorts — as well as years since she came authentic, time-tested to work; she says when FVG dishes like buckshe was getting ready wheat blecs (triangular she was trying to buy pasta) with chicken Friulano wine in San braised with rosemary, Francisco and couldn’t cipolle al aceto (vinefind it. She could go to gar-glazed onions), LACHLAN MACKINNON-PATTERSON any wine shop in venison with pear onion Boulder and there’s and zuf (an Italian porridge), fish stew, hard-to-find Friulano wine. If you go into pljukanci con ricci di mare (pasta with Cured, they have [Friulano] vinegar sea urchin sauce), and poppyseed and there. There’s enough wine shop owncurrant biscotti. In addition to extensive ers that have gotten to fall in love with tastings at FVG food establishments, Friuli.” Mackinnon-Patteron spent time in the The hope is you will too, but you’ll Alps buying local ingredients and testing also learn a lot from Friuli Food and out recipes for the book with the home Wine — it’s written in a way that’s both cook in mind. accessible and informative, as if you’re Now, there’s also mention in Friuli talking to an engineer about bridge-buildFood and Wine of things you just can’t ing or watching an episode of This Old replicate one-for-one, like La Subida’s House. Stuckey, Mackinnon-Patterson simple egg dish — made from eggs and Erickson respect the reader and gathered nearby, cooked in a well-worn translate their love for them and of FVG cast-iron pan and sprinkled with housefaithfully in their stories, asides and recimade vinegar. But the idea is to use your pes. It’s hospitality in a book. BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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MAY 14, 2020

‘A great challenge for hospitality’

he release of Fruili Food and Wine was originally accompanied by a book dinner at Frasca. However, the coronavirus canceled that event, and effectively shut down Frasca, which temporarily boarded up its windows a few weeks ago. But in response, Stuckey has become a leader in pushing for funds to keep the restaurant industry nationwide afloat. It’s a new muscle he’s had to stress, and it’s kept him busy. “Nine years ago I didn’t know much about public policy and I didn’t know how much our industry meant to the U.S.,” Stuckey says. “My fulltime job for the last eight weeks has been helping start the Independent Restaurant Coalition (IRC), which is startling that we’ve gotten this far without.” IRC has sent a letter to Congress asking for a stabilization fund for restaurants, which employ 11 million people in the U.S., with another 10 million jobs tied up in ancillary industries from farming to trucking to design companies. Collectively, the restaurant industry is one of the country’s biggest employers, but because it lacked collective representation, other industries that employ far fewer people, got federal support. Stuckey says 30-50% of restaurants are in danger of closing because of the shutdown. “I didn’t understand the magnitude of that eight BOBBY STUCKEY weeks ago,” he says. “On [Capitol] Hill, both sides of the aisle did not understand this so it caught everyone off guard. When you pull us out of the ecosystem, stuff caves in, and it’s caving in more and more.” Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans don’t work for restaurants, as they can’t employ people when their doors are shuttered, and can’t employ enough even if they switched to takeout/delivery models. That said, Frasca recently launched an “At Home With” series of takeaway dinners that add in tele-calls with Stuckey, winemakers and Frasca staff. But to-go dinners are not a viable long-term solution, Stuckey says. “The optic of to-go feels good. It lets you not worry about what’s going on,” he says. “We started weekly pickups, but at the end of the day we’re going to use 10 employees to do all those packages for two days, but really that means there’s another 215 employees not working. So if you look at it at the macro level, no, to-go is not going to help

things. It’ll keep a couple people afloat, but it FRICO CROCCANTE is could drive others out of business quicker — crispy, cheesy and when you do a pivot, did you have your numbers fun; learn how to right for it in a time that capital needs to be promake it in ‘Friuli tected? You can put yourself in a tough situaFood and Wine.’ tion.” Stuckey is an optimist though, and of course he views the future challenges the coronavirus will present — how to socially distance in a restaurant, how to calm fears — through the lens of hospitality. “This is a great challenge for hospitality people, because hospitality is taking care of other people, and this should give us a great opportunity when they might be skeptical or stressed out,” Stuckey says. “I think there’s a huge need for hospitality now more than ever; it’s just going to look different.”

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MAY 14, 2020

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The hypnotic allure of the Rocky Mountain High By Paul Danish

ou are getting sleepy… “Let your eyes follow the watch as it slowly swings from side to side… “Now you are getting more sleepy… “Now listen closely to the instructions I am about to give you… “At exactly 4:20 p.m. next Monday you will put out a press release announcing you have changed your mind and now favor the immediate legalization of marijuana in Ohio… “I will now count backwards from 10, and when I reach zero you will wake up and have completely forgotten this conversation… “Ten, nine, eight…” On May 9, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis held a Reddit Ask Me Anything session, during which someone from Ohio asked if he could “convince my governor here in Ohio to allow recreational marijuana.” “Sure,” Gov. Jared replied, “at the next national Governors’ meeting I will hypnotize him and plant the suggestion deep in his psyche.” Gov. Jared is something of a political magician, but this trick might be easier said than done. The name of Ohio’s Republican governor is Mike DeWine. DeWine, get it? Getting him to think of himself as Gov. DePot, DeWeed, or DeKind might be beyond even Gov. Jared’s conjuring skills. Maybe he could start out by practicing on Iowa’s Sen. Grassley. • • • • There’s been a growing body of evidence that pot use can reduce opioid use among chronic pain patients. Now a review of nine studies by a group of graduate students at the University of Arizona’s College of Public Health suggests the effect can be pretty dramatic — a 64-75% reduction in opiod dosage

when the opiod was used in combination with medical marijuana. “This review found a much higher reduction in opioid dosage, reduced emergency room visits and hospital admissions for chronic non-cancer pain” by medical marijuana users taking opioids, compared to opioid users who didn’t also use pot.

It also found there was a “complete stoppage of opioid use for chronic non-cancer pain by 32-59.3%” of medical marijuana users, depending on the study, compared to patients who didn’t use medical marijuana. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the researchers also found that many of the nine studies they evaluated had design flaws and “serious risk” of bias due to reliance on patient self-reports, missing data or poor outcome measurement. This prompted the authors of the meta-study to point to “the need for cau-

MAY 14, 2020

tion in interpretation of findings.” Still, the meta-study authors said that the nine available studies included in their review “suggest that cannabis was effective as an adjunct to opioids in reducing the dosage of opiods in study participants.” In early April, researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reported that marijuana appeared to mitigate withdrawal symptoms of 75% of 200 addicts attempting to quit using opioids. • • • • After Missouri State Rep. Andrew McDaniel, a Republican, had his fill of his fellow legislators proposing an endless stream of amendments to a health care bill, he proposed a unique amendment of his own: “[M] embers of the Missouri House shall consume a substantial dose of medicinal marijuana prior to entering the chamber or voting on any legislation.” The amendment was subsequently defeated on a voice vote, but both McDaniel and a reporter in the room said they heard several “aye” votes called out. McDaniel said he was moved to act because the health bill had “a whole bunch of crap” attached to it, and he saw an opportunity to “get everyone to chill out and get a little chuckle.” “It was for the real betterment of all Missourians if some people would chill out,” he later tweeted. McDaniel says he supports both medical and recreational marijuana legalization, and describes himself as a libertarian on the issue. Missouri voters legalized medical marijuana in 2018. A petition drive to put a recreational legalization proposal on this year’s ballot was ended last month due to the difficulty of gathering signatures during the coronavirus lockdown.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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