Indy - Nov. 8, 2023 Vol 31. No. 44

Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | ALWAYS FREE

A PUBLICATION OF CITIZEN-POWERED MEDIA

States take steps to hold Big Tech accountable for harming kids (plus tips to help your family avoid screen addiction)

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CONTENTS

Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | Vol. 31, No. 44 Nick Raven

Nick Raven

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Our mission is to deliver the truth, build community and engage citizens.

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FEATURED HOOKED: States take steps to hold Big Tech accountable for harming kids (plus tips to help your family avoid screen addiction)

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OPINIONS

NEWS THE WIRE: News in brief CITY AUD OUT: Century-old venue locked up after failed attempt at rehab

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FAIR & UNBALANCED

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NEWS OF THE WEIRD

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INDY | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | NEWS

Compiled by Pam Zubeck

Pam Zubeck

THE WIRE BUCK WON’T RUN Ken Buck, Colorado’s 4th Congressional District representative, announced Nov. 1 that he would not seek a sixth term in Congress. His parting message to fellow Republicans spoke of the party’s “lying to America” about the Jan. 6 assault on the nation’s Capitol and efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which legitimately seated President Joe Biden.

“Americans are rightfully concerned about our nation’s future and are looking to Republicans in Washington for a course correction,” Buck said in his video message. “But their hope for Republicans to take decisive action may be in vain. Our nation is on a collision course with reality. And a steadfast commitment to truth, even uncomfortable truths, is the only way forward.

“Too many Republican leaders are lying to America, claiming the 2020 election is stolen, describing January 6th as an unguided tour of the Capitol, and asserting the ensuing prosecutions are a weaponization of our justice system. These insidious narratives breed widespread cynicism and erode Americans’ confidence in rule of law.

“It is impossible for the Republican Party to confront our problems and offer a course correction for the future while being obsessively fixated on retribution and vengeance for contrived injustices of the past,” Buck said.

He also said the party is “ignoring self-evident truths about the rule of law and limited government in exchange for self-serving lies.”

Buck’s announcement came the same day as that of Rep. Kay Granger, a Texas Republican, who also said she wouldn’t seek reelection next year, according to media reports.

Buck and Granger were among roughly two dozen Republicans who opposed Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) for the speakership last month and were vilified by the hard right for doing so.

Jordan withdrew and Buck and Granger later backed Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) for House speaker.

Though Buck opposed Jordan over his election denialism, Johnson, too, is an election denier and masterminded a failed attempt to decertify the election results in favor of Biden in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Buck earlier told NBC News he’d received death threats and a notice of eviction from his office in Colorado because his landlord was upset over Buck’s vote against Jordan for speaker.

Buck in September chastised Republicans to stop disseminating false information.

State GOP Party chair Dave Williams and El Paso County GOP chair Vickie Tonkins, both election deniers, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Launchpad, a transitional housing facility for homeless young adults, is under construction at 810 N. 19th St., as a lawsuit against the city for approving the facility is pending. On Oct. 5, the city filed its answer to the suit, saying, “There exists competent evidence in the record to support the decision of the City Council.” The lawsuit was filed in September

by Westside resident Michael Wemple, and advocacy groups Westside Watch and Integrity Matters, who allege the site’s topography is geologically unstable and poses “safety risks to the public.”

Matter of Record CONSERVATION GROUPS JOIN FORCES Three conservation groups announced on Nov. 1 they’ll work together to preserve large tracts of open space and agricultural lands that buffer or serve as training areas for Colorado Springs-based military installations.

It’s one of the most ambitious conservation efforts seen locally and targets land east of the city owned by the State Land Board.

The Trust for Public Land, The Nature Conservancy and Palmer Land Conservancy said in a news release they want to work with local military bases to conserve wildlife habitat and ag land now used by the Air Force Academy.

That land is east of the city on what is known as Bohart Ranch.

The initiative is dubbed the Security, Open space, and Agricultural Resiliency Initiative, or SOAR. Its first step is to acquire 11,900 acres of Bohart Ranch, which totals 48,000 acres and covers 75 square miles now owned by the State Land Board, a state agency that oversees 3 million acres of trust land and leases it for the financial benefit of public schools.

The property in question is now leased to The Nature Conservancy which hopes to “sustainably manage the property’s ecologically important shortgrass and sandsage prairies, which together support over 200 plant species, over 40 species of native mammals, numerous declining grassland bird species, and over 48 miles of streams,” the release said.

The Conservancy, in turn, subleases the ranch to a multi-generational ranching family known for land stewardship. The family will continue to lease and steward the land after this purchase, the release noted.

Eventually, the groups want to purchase the entire ranch.

The skies above it and a remote runway on the property known as Bullseye Auxiliary Airfield are critical Air Force training areas, the release said, but some training zones have been compromised by encroaching development.

Military officials said in the release they support the conservation effort.

Great Outdoors Colorado gave a $2.175 million grant to The Trust for Public Land and The Nature Conservancy earlier this year for the project.

The State Land Board rarely sells land, but last January the governorappointed commissioners at the State Land Board voted unanimously in favor of making Bohart Ranch available for disposal to a conservationfocused buyer, the release said.

“Through the SOAR Initiative, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make major progress in securing the natural, economic and cultural vibrancy of the Colorado Springs region,” Jim Petterson, Mountain West Region vice president for Trust for Public Land, said in the release.

Northrop Grumman and El Pomar Foundation have pledged $1 million each to the project.

Applications for Survive & Thrive, a small business loan program, are being accepted until Dec. 1. The program is offered by Exponential Impact and the city. Startups can apply for $10,000 loans and established small businesses, up to $50,000. Learn more and apply at exponentialimpact.com/ surviveandthrive.

The Water Resources and Agriculture Review Committee on Nov. 1 advanced a bill to preserve water. The bill would promote water-wise landscaping by prohibiting local governments and homeowners’ associations from installing or planting nonfunctional turf, invasive plant species, and artificial turf on commercial, institutional and industrial properties. Nonfunctional, for example, would include infrequently used areas such as medians or parking lot perimeters. The Colorado Legislature’s new session starts in January.

El Pomar Foundation recognized Early Connections Learning Centers, Colorado Education Initiative and Wray Community District Hospital with “awards for excellence.” Also honored were Jason Janz of Denver, Bob and Joyce Rankin of Carbondale, and philanthropist and businesswoman Kathy Loo of Colorado Springs.

The Olympic & Paralympic Museum will offer free admission Nov. 10-12 to veterans and active-duty military personnel in observance of Veterans Day. NEWS | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | INDY

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File photo

CITY AUD OUT

Century-old venue locked up after failed rehab attempt

BY PAM ZUBECK | zubeck@csindy.com

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N NOV. 1, CITY AUDITORIUM OFFIcially became the city’s responsibility once again, and it’s uncertain what the historic structure’s future might hold.

Until Oct. 31, the Colorado Springs Community Cultural Collective, formed in 2020, ran the facility with grand plans to overhaul the 100-year-old building at Weber and Kiowa streets Downtown and refashion it into various performance venues, rehearsal rooms and a nightclub.

But the CSCCC, led by longtime theater instructor and arts advocate Linda Weise, who has run The Conservatory for decades, failed to draw significant donations to fund the ambitious $86 million project.

Thus, in August, Weise notified the city the nonprofit was backing out, effective Nov. 1.

Asked on Oct. 31 to describe City Auditorium’s path forward, Mayor Yemi Mobolade, who took office in June and had nothing to do with the 2021 agreement with CSCCC, didn’t give a definitive answer.

“I am gathering a group of leaders together to make some next steps,” he told the Indy by phone. “I don’t want to pretend I know what’s best.”

Asked specifically if the building would remain available to rent by various community groups, he said “no.”

Asked if the city would hire extra security and keep the utilities on, he said, “We’ll be paying the basic amenities so it doesn’t deteriorate.”

requirement” of $53 million. Again, the contract was changed to allow CSCCC to prove within three years it could raise $85 million, a cost estimate for rehab and renovation that Weise said had grown due to inflation from the original estimate of $53 million.

Amid the contract amendments, the city pitched in $250,000 in tax dollars for operations but made it clear that well had run dry.

“What I didn’t anticipate was the hard line in the sand that the donors would draw,” Weise previously told the Indy.

Weise’s plans were further hindered by the fire marshal limiting attendance in the building.

When Weise turned to Mobolade for help after — Yemi Mobolade he took office, he made it clear the city wouldn’t fund Weise’s vision. Rather, the mayor said in a statement, “My first priority is to our residents and the continued pursuit of providing excellent city services in the areas of our public safety, parks and infrastructure.”

I am gathering a group of leaders together to make some next steps.

AS THE INDY PREVIOUSLY REPORTED, City Auditorium, built in the Classic Revival style, opened in 1923. It cost $424,910 — $7,595,974 in today’s dollars — to build. The plaque over its entrance states, “USUI CIVIUM DECORI URBUS,” or “For the use of the people and the glory of the city.”

City Auditorium has hosted concerts, graduations, prize fights, organ concerts on The Mighty Wurlitzer Theatre Pipe Organ shipped in 1927 from Tonawanda, New York, the Metaphysical Fair, roller derby matches, parties and the like. Its Lon Chaney Theatre on the east side staged plays featuring local actors.

Most recently, the facility hosted a Halloween party on Oct. 28.

Weise had difficulty raising money; potential donors were skeptical of a project that the city wouldn’t contribute to financially, Weise has said.

The nonprofit was handed $2.5 million from the city’s share of American Rescue Plan money and raised another $1.5 million.

But it failed to reach the first contract milestone — to identify sources for $5 million in donations within its first six months. The contract was then amended to extend that deadline to Aug. 31, 2022, but the group again fell short in its goal — to “provide proof to the city of the total fundraising 4

INDY | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | NEWS

NOW, THE AUDITORIUM SITS DARK AS IT awaits its next phase.

Deputy Chief of Staff Ryan Trujillo said via email that the city is developing recommended next steps through a “Solutions Team” that includes 17 community leaders, subject matter experts and city staffers. The team will make recommendations to the mayor.

“Solutions Teams have been a successful new concept that Mayor Yemi has brought to the City of Colorado Springs as part of his First 100 Day Framework, and we are continuing that process moving forward,” Trujillo said.

He went on to say the city will not rent out the building until next steps are decided; the Solutions Team is expected to conclude its work by year’s end.

“We have security measures in place to ensure the safety of individuals entering the building, and the building itself,” he said, not explaining who would be entering the building since it won’t be rented.

He sidestepped a question about whether the building would be sold or demolished, saying, “It is too early in the process to determine a path forward.”

The identities of those chosen for the Solutions Team was not disclosed.

Meanwhile, Weise is searching for a place from which to continue several workforce training programs in culinary arts, theater arts and day care management.

She’s reportedly looking at possible sites in the Downtown area. Responding to questions by text, she says, “New place. New name. More robust programs. More folks impacted. Super excited!”

Photo illustration, stock.adobe.com

ATTORNEY GENERAL’S

WARNING

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N OCT. 24, COLORAdo Attorney General Phil Weiser led a nationwide action, along with 41 other attorneys general, to sue social media giant Meta in federal and state courts.

The allegations: The parent company to Facebook and Instagram “knowingly designed and deployed harmful features on Instagram and its other social media platforms that purposefully addict children and teens. At the same time, Meta falsely assured the public that these features are safe and suitable for young users,” the AG’s office said in a news release.

The specific assertion is that Meta is violating state consumer protection laws and the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

The Federal Trade Commission offers this summary of the act: “COPPA imposes certain requirements on operators of websites or online services directed to children under 13 years of age, and on operators of other websites or online services that have actual knowledge that they are collecting personal information online from a child under 13 years of age.”

The Colorado AG’s office said, “These practices have harmed and continue to harm the physical and mental health of children and teens and have fueled what the U.S. Surgeon General has deemed a ‘youth mental health crisis’ which has ended lives, devastated families, and damaged the potential of a generation of young people.”

Meta, Weiser said, has “deeply harmed our youth. We must address the insidious impact the compulsive use of Meta’s platforms has had on our young generation. Just like Big Tobacco and vaping companies have done in years past, Meta chose to maximize its profits at the expense of public health, specifically harming the health of the youngest among us. We will work tirelessly to hold the company accountable for the harm it has and continues to inflict.”

The following, from The Conversation, provides broader context for this legal action, as well as advice for young people on ways to avoid the addictive traps of social media and mobile devices before ever logging in.

Attorney General Phil Weiser

FEATURE | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | INDY

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UNHEALTHY COMPARISONS

Meta’s filtered, retouched images of influencers lead to adolescent body shame and mood shifts

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ORTY-ONE STATES AND the District of Columbia filed lawsuits against Meta on Oct. 24, alleging that the company intentionally designed Facebook and Instagram with features that harm teens and young users.

Meta officials had internal research in March 2020 showing that Instagram — the social media platform most used by adolescents after TikTok — is harmful to teen girls’ body image and wellbeing. But the company swept those findings under the rug to continue conducting business as usual, according to a Sept. 14, 2021, Wall Street Journal report. The report was based on documents provided by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

Meta’s record of pursuing profits regardless of documented harm has sparked comparisons to Big Tobacco, which knew in the 1950s that its products were carcinogenic but publicly denied it into the 21st century. Those of us who study social media use by

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INDY | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | FEATURE

Thomas Barwick/DigitalVision via Getty Images

BY CHRISTIA SPEARS BROWN | The Conversation/theconversation.com

Instagram’s emphasis on filtered photos of bodies harms girls’ self-image.

teens didn’t need a suppressed internal research study to know that Instagram can harm teens. Plenty of peerreviewed research papers show the

same thing.

Understanding the impact of social media on teens is important because almost all teens go online daily. A Pew

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Research Center poll shows that 77 percent of teens report they use social media daily.

Teens are more likely to log on to Ins-

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tagram than any other social media site except TikTok. It is a ubiquitous part of adolescent life. Yet studies consistently show that the more often teens use Instagram, the worse their overall well-being, self-esteem, life satisfaction, mood and body image.

One study found that the more that college students used Instagram on any given day, the worse their mood and life satisfaction were that day.

MANIPULATED AND FILTERED

sons, which were nearly impossible to stop, still led to envy and lowered self-esteem. Even in studies in which participants knew the photos they were shown on Instagram were retouched and reshaped, adolescent girls still felt worse about their bodies after viewing them. For girls who tend to make a lot of social comparisons, these effects are even worse.

OBJECTIFICATION AND BODY IMAGE

Instagram is also risky for teens But Instagram isn’t problematic because its emphasis on pictures simply because it is popular. There of the body leads users to focus on are two key features of Instagram how their bodies look to others. My that seem to make it particularly colleagues’ and my research shows risky. First, it allows users to follow that for teen girls — and increasingboth celebrities and peers, both of ly teen boys — thinking about their whom can present a manipulated,YOUR own bodies the object of a photo SCHEDULE EYE asEXAM TODAY filtered picture of an increases worrying ABBAEYECARE.COM | 719-257-2713 unrealistic body along thoughts about how with a highly curated they look to others, impression of a perfect and that leads to feellife. ing shame about their While all social bodies. Just taking a media allows users to selfie to be posted later be selective in what makes them feel worse they show the world, about how they look to Instagram is notorious others. for its photo editing Being an object for and filtering capabiliothers to view doesn’t ties. Plus, the platform help the “selfie generais popular among tion” feel empowered celebrities, models and and sure of themselves influencers. Facebook — it can do exactly the has been relegated to opposite. These are not the uncool soccer moms insignificant health and grandparents. For concer ns, because teens, this seamless body dissatisfaction integration of celebduring the teen years is rities and retouched a powerful and consisversions of real-life peers presents a tent predictor of later eating disorder ripe environment for upward social symptoms. comparison, or comparing yourself Meta has acknowledged internally to someone who is “better” in some what researchers have been docurespect. menting for years: Instagram can be People, as a general rule, look to harmful to teens. Parents can help others to know how to fit in and by repeatedly talking to their teens judge their own lives. Teens are espeabout the difference between appearcially vulnerable to these social comance and reality, by encouraging their parisons. Just about everyone can teens to interact with peers face-toremember worrying about fitting in face, and to use their bodies in active in high school. Instagram exacerbates ways instead of focusing on the selfie. that worry. It is hard enough to comThe big question will be how Meta pare yourself to a supermodel who handles these damaging results. Hislooks fantastic (albeit filtered); it can tory and the courts have been less be even worse when the filtered comthan forgiving of the head-in-theparison is Natalie down the hall. sand approach of Big Tobacco.

Negatively comparing themselves Christia Spears Brown is a proto others leads people to feel envious fessor of psychology at the Uniof others’ seemingly better lives and versity of Kentucky. This article, bodies. Recently, researchers even which you can read with its many tried to combat this effect by remindlinks at csindy.com, was originally ing Instagram users that the posts published by The Conversation, were unrealistic. theconversation.com.

It didn’t work. Negative compari-

Negatively comparing themselves to others leads people to feel envious of others’ seemingly better lives and bodies.

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HOOKED ON SCREENS

How much time do kids spend on devices? What does it do to their brains?

BY DAVID ROSENBERG AND NATALIA SZURA | The Conversation/theconversation.com

FIND THE RIGHT BALANCE

All this is not to say that everything about devices is bad. In this digital age, people embark on exciting journeys through the screens of their devices.

Sometimes, screens are the windows to a magical adventure.

But too much screen time can lead to problems. As human beings, we function best when we’re in a state of balance. That happens when we eat well, exercise regularly and get enough sleep.

But spending too much time using digital devices can cause changes in the way you think and behave. Many teens and tweens developed the “fear of 8

INDY | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | FEATURE

MoMo Productions/Digital Vision via Getty Images

T

HINK ABOUT YOUR favorite devices — your smartphone, laptop, tablet, computer or console — the things you use to play cool games, watch hilarious videos and connect and chat with friends.

Many young people spend a lot of free time looking at them. Turns out that teens spend an average of 8½ hours on screens per day, and tweens — that’s ages 8 to 12 — are not far behind, at 5½ hours daily.

Keep in mind those numbers are for only social media, gaming and texting.

They do not include the time that kids used screens for schoolwork or homework.

What’s more, much of the time taken up by social media and texting is apparently not even enjoyable, much less productive. A 2017 study of teens ages 13 to 18 suggests they spend most of those hours on the phone in their bedroom, alone and distressed.

These lonely feelings correlate with the rise in the use of digital media. In 2022, 95 percent of teens had smartphones compared with only 23 percent in 2011. And 46 percent of today’s teens say they use the internet almost constantly, compared with 24 percent of teenagers who said the same in 2014 and 2015.

Our team of psychiatrists who treat young people with digital addiction have many patients who spend over 40 hours per week on screens — and some, up to 80 hours.

Think about it: If you spend “just” an average of 50 hours per week on devices from ages 13 to 18 — the total time you will spend on screens equates to more than 12 years of school!

Today, nearly all U.S. teens have a smartphone.

missing out” — known as FOMO. And one study shows some people develop nomophobia, which is the fear of being without your phone, or feeling anxious when you can’t use it.

Moreover, digital addiction in high school may predict serious depression, anxiety and sleep disruption in college.

Rates of depression and anxiety are skyrocketing among college students.

The fear of missing out is pervasive, resulting in sleep disruption; too many college students sleep with smartphones turned on and near their bed — and wake up to respond to texts and notifications during the night. Sleep disruption itself is a core symptom of both depression and anxiety.

HOW TO AVOID DEVICE ADDICTION A 2016 poll indicated that half of teens felt they were addicted to their mobile devices.

Getting hooked on screens means missing out on healthy activities. To achieve a better balance, some experts recommend the following: Turn off all screens during family meals and outings. Don’t complain when your parents use parental controls. And turn off all the screens in your bedroom 30 to 60 minutes before bedtime — this step will improve sleep.

YOU MAY BE A “SCREEN ADDICT” IF YOU...

• Feel uneasy or grumpy when you can’t use your device.

• Don’t take breaks while spending hours on your device.

• Ignore other fun activities you enjoy, like going outside or reading a book.

• Have trouble sleeping, or falling asleep, because your screen time is too close to bedtime.

• Experience eye, lower back and neck strain.

• Struggle with weight gain or obesity because you’re inactive.

• Have difficulty with real-life, face-toface social interactions.

If you notice these signs, do not dismiss them. But also realize you’re not alone and help is out there. You can find balance again.

A HEALTHY APPROACH

Exercise — riding a bike, playing sports, lifting weights or going for a jog or walk — keeps your brain healthy and protects it against depression and anxiety, as well as limiting your screen time.

Another way to be happier and healthier is to spend time with people — face to face, not via a screen. Seeing people live and in person is the best way to bond with others, and it may be

even better for life span than exercise.

Creative hobbies are good, too.

Cooking, playing an instrument, dancing, any arts and crafts, and thousands of other fun things make people happier and more creative. What’s more, hobbies make you well rounded and more attractive to others — which leads to more face-to-face interactions.

It’s also critical for parents to practice healthy screen habits. But about one-third of adults say they use screens “constantly.” This is not exactly a great example for kids; when adults take responsibility to minimize their own screen time, the whole family gets better.

Our research team used magnetic resonance imaging, also known as MRI, to scan the brains of teens who had digital addiction. We found impairment in the brain’s decisionmaking, processing and reward centers. But after a digital fast — meaning the addicted teens unplugged for two weeks — those brain abnormalities reversed, and the damage was undone.

Our findings also showed that kids with a desire to overcome digital addiction did better with a digital fast than those who were less willing or who denied their addiction.

A balanced lifestyle in the digital age is all about finding joy in screenless activities — being active, connecting with others and exploring your offline interests.

David Rosenberg is a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience and Natalia Szura is a research assistant in psychiatry at Wayne State University. This article, which you can read with its links at csindy.com, was originally published by The Conversation, theconversation.com.

RESOURCES FOR A HEALTHY ONLINE LIFE 5Rights Foundation: 5rightsfoundation.com Log Off Movement: logoffmovement.org The Habit Lab: habitlab.github.io Digital audits can be set up through apps such as Apple’s Screen Time, as well as Moment, Toggl Track and Rescue Time.

The Belle of

Amherst

Award Winning Actress Jessica Robblee delves into the mystery of one of the world’s greatest poets – Emily Dickinson.

DEAD ALIVE

Liz McCombs’ Desert Dreams Revisited is folklore for the cycle of life STORY AND PHOTOS BY NICK RAVEN | news@csindy.com

“Robblee captures Dickinson’s blend of intelligence, inquisitiveness, and underlying melancholy with an astonishing degree of success.” – On Stage Colorado

“Nature just is. It’s good and it’s bad. It’s beautiful.”

A

TINY BIRD MAKES A art may be physically static, but many of home in the decaying husk her works represent dualities locked in of a cactus; the belly of a concert with each other. Among them: a snake is exploded with the decaying raven looks down at the skull branch of a tree inside with flowering of their former partner while a crown buds inside that; a face with a golden blooms new life above them. eye and a tattered wing is attached to “For me, when I look at the natural the severed nub of a log. You can call Liz processes — even though, like any norMcCombs’ new exhibit macabre, dark, mal person, the idea of not existing is a twisted or scary, but the artist would disscary unknown — it’s also a possibility,” agree: It’s a mirror on nature by way of McCombs says. “I think that a lot of what some improvised folklore.

I tried to address in my work is the idea “We think these things are terrible — of possibility.” the idea of decay is terrible — but they Many of the works on display are unitjust are,” McCombs says. “Our human ed by or co-star with quasi-mythical figmind that puts that judgures. They’re harpies with ment on it. Nature just is. wings, they’re figures It’s good and it’s bad. It’s joined at the hip repbeautiful.” resenting today and Nove m b e r ’s Destomorrow. They have ert Dreams Revisited is a scaly skin, elvish ears remix of McCombs’ Desert and impish smiles.

Dreams October exhibi“I read a lot of littion that took over both erature, mythology and The Bridge and Commons those kinds of ideas we galleries (218 W. Colorado had before we had science Ave., thebridgeartgallery. to explain the world — com). Revisited is shrunk when we said it’s entirely down into The Bridge and possible that a chariot pulls injected with eight to 10 the sun across the sky,” — Liz McCombs new works. Their natuMcCombs says. “Some of ralistic sculptures and these creatures — that are whimsical characters reflect autumn a combination of nature and human — and nature as it exists all year, allowing have to do with […] we are still animal, it to dance around much of the seasonal but we’re also this evolved animal, and spookiness that expires immediately sometimes we de-evolve.” after Halloween.

Lending these desert dreams some It’s in the transition between these two authenticity is McCombs’ clever use shows — fitting, given their themes — of mixed media. She utilizes some real that the Indy met with McCombs. Her fish remains while metal wires under-

gird and then protrude in some pieces, providing structure and demonstrating transition. The twisted branches the exhibit’s snakes are modeled around she found in nature, while their eyes come from a taxidermy catalog. She encouraged us to touch the pieces to get a literal feel for them, but we never could’ve figured out that the chimera at the center of her piece “Seven Days” was made almost exclusively out of plastic bags.

While Revisited won’t feature all of the big pieces from the previous show, it won’t be lacking in narratives. The sculptures in The Bridge alone dominated the space with their big, thought-provoking forms.

“Not to be missed !”

8 SHOWS ONLY

THU-FRI-SAT-SUN

NOV 2-12

The RiP Improv!

Presenting unscripted laughs for 18 years!

Each of these pieces has its own little story.

I like that.

“Each of these pieces has its own little story. I like that,” McCombs says. “If something has its own story, not only does it help me create a piece that I feel is more cohesive, it says to me, ‘Does each element that I’m adding support this idea that I’m trying to get across to the viewer? If it doesn’t, don’t do it; if it does, let’s go for it.’”

NOV 18

Please Support Original Local Live Theatre Donate to The Millibo’s 2023 Give! Campaign

www.givepikespeak.org

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | INDY

9

Nick Raven

SK ATE CITY

Skaters dream of a place to call their own at new Eastside park

BY NICK RAVEN | news@csindy.com

The city has several spots for skaters to recreate, like Memorial Park’s 45,000-square-foot skatepark. The Eastside, however, is a skating desert.

W

ILL HOTOP, AN EASTSIDE RESIdent, military veteran and business owner, was under the impression that the new 70-acre multifunctional Coleman Community Park being designed in his neighborhood was going to feature a place for skaters like him to do tricks and tackle obstacles.

“I was skating somewhere and I ran into another local guy who has been a big advocate for skateparks in the Springs,” says Hotop. “He’s helped pour some of them and ... he mentioned that he thought that there was going to be a park put in [at Coleman Park].”

But it won’t have a skatepark. At least not yet.

Colorado Springs has a few skateparks across the city, but Eastside residents have a trek to utilize the closest ones, whether it’s to the newly renovated Panorama Park in the Southeast, John L. Stone Park in Briargate or the 45,000-square-foot skatepark and half-pipe at Memorial Park.

In Hotop’s long, busy rush to get his business — Dynamo Coffee Roasting, within walking distance of the new park — off the ground with his wife Leah, the city was nearly a year into the public input process before he found out a skatepark at Coleman wasn’t in the cards. He began to engage his fellow skaters and community members while also attending Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services meetings.

One of those skaters is Dale Bonnell, who owns DB Skate Designs LLC. His company’s Instagram feed is full of woodworked products fashioned from the lami10

nated Canadian Maple of old skateboards, including tion, the local nonprofit that has been advocating for rings, tables, bowls and more. Bonnell helped spread the more and safer trails and parks since 1987. word, in part because he has some harsh words about “We attend a bunch of boring meetings so you the city’s skateparks. don’t have to,” says Allen Beauchamp, “These are garbage in comparison in charge of community engagement to some of these parks that they’re at TOSC, of the role they play as citizen building all over ... Denver,” Bonnell advocates. “We try to be the eyes, ears says. “It’s wild that we have no fundand the voice.” ing for this.”

They don’t have a red phone to parks Hotop picked up skating in coland rec to get the inside scoop, they simlege and understands the practical ply show up at every meeting and engage and community-building potential with people living in and working for the of skaters having a safe place at the city. They keep track of projects, budget city’s new park, especially one that priorities and far more, but they take no ties together vast amounts of resiposition on any implementation or plan; dences and storefronts. For Bonnell, they merely guide people to and through skating kept him out of trouble as a the process. This made them uniquely kid. equipped to advise Hotop on how to “I grew up in a very big city and advocate for an Eastside skatepark. Beauthe only escape I had was my skatechamp’s guidance: Do what the pickleball — Allen Beauchamp board,” he says. “That kept me out of players did to get courts installed at Mondrugs, it kept me out of gangs, it kept ument Valley Park, among other places. me out of any trouble that I could have gotten into.”

“There’s a pickleball league, so there was an already coalesced group of individuals that were very passionHOTOP SAYS THE CITY’S INITIAL RESPONSES ate about it,” Beauchamp says. were noncommittal and bureaucratic, complicated by The pickleballers were a united front — they had a the transition to Mayor Yemi Mobolade’s administrasimple agenda, they showed up to all City Council meettion. Hotop ultimately met with Connie Schmeisser, the ings and they even had T-shirts made. Being a group, city’s project manager for Coleman Community Park, rather than passionate individuals, they regularly sigwho pointed him to the Trails and Open Space Coalinaled the importance of building more pickleball courts.

INDY | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

I always tell people: If it’s a project or even a concept of an idea, ... reach out to your city councilor.

HOTOP IS FRUSTRATED, HAVING SCRAMbled into the process after much of the community engagement has already occurred — but it’s often a struggle for city employees to get the community engaged at all. Some city works will draw large crowds looking to put their thumbprints on a new project, while other large efforts like Coleman will draw far fewer participants. Coleman planning drew between 70 and 100 people at each of the three inperson-community forums and just shy of a thousand participated in an initial online survey.

“They try everything under the sun,” Beauchamp says. “They do mailings to all the neighborhoods around a major project like that. They try to get in with the school systems, they try to publish the information as much as they can. We like to help promote the master plan meetings because […] then you get the most robust voices as part of that process. I always tell people: If it’s a project or even a concept of an idea,

not even a master plan, but something you’d like to see done, reach out to your city councilor. Let them know what’s super important to you and then kind of lean on them a little bit.”

Even if skaters do win support at Coleman Park — a petition Hotop started has over 400 signatures — bringing it to reality will be difficult. Beauchamp points out that portions of Coleman’s terrain features bedrock immediately under a thin veneer of dirt, making it extremely difficult and expensive to alter, even if a future skatepark doesn’t need to conform to a standard size or format. Then there’s the politics, complicated funding struggles and the years-long wait to come.

“The Coleman Park Master Plan has been presented to Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services Advisory Board,” the city told the Indy in a written statement.

“However, final approval is pending further direction and budget approvals from the new administration.”

Instead of full skateparks, Bonnell says the community might be better served by small “safe spot skate parks” which are simpler skate-ready fixtures that can be deployed much more easily around the city.

Bonnell says the local skate community isn’t optimistic about its chances of getting a new park considering the effort it took to build the skatepark at Memorial Park, but their community isn’t one that easily gives up.

“It’s part of the culture. We’ve [been] told for almost 50 years where to go, how to do it,” Bonnell says. “It’s a sport that’s very much individualized and when you tell an individual they can’t, they’re either gonna listen and believe you or they’re gonna prove you wrong. Skaters are very there to prove you wrong.”

Nick Raven, illustration stock.adobe.com

There’s also the age difference: Pickleballers tend to be older, engaged citizens with more free time, while skaters tend to be younger and in the early stages of their careers, working long hours and unable to keep track of public meetings.

But pickleballers aren’t the only group that TOSC has assisted. Residents around Boulder Park were concerned about the deteriorated state of features there and rallied enough attention to begin a new master plan process. Through collaborative efforts in the Southeast involving RISE and the Youth Advisory Council, local youths were able to participate in the restoration of the Sand Creek trail and see how parks and rec works to improve park and trail features.

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | INDY

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INDY | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

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BY MATTHEW SCHNIPER

city.... It’s a neat idea.” When we speak, Gust is just returning from a trip to Italy and says “after all the stuff I’ve seen in these last days of travel, I think something like this here is needed. It makes sense to have a strong, consistent, local flair within our airport.”

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UPCOMING EVENTS

AIRPORT REFRESH FOCUSES ON SPRINGS FLAVORS AND CHEFS

S

SP AMERICA, A DIVISION of the international SSP Group — not to be confused with SSA Group, which operates the concessions at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo — recently renewed their contract to operate the food and drink offerings for Colorado Springs Airport (7770 Milton E. Proby Parkway, coloradosprings.gov/ flycos).

With that announcement, which notes a “concourse modernization project,” comes a list of future vendors “which celebrate the culinary landscape of Colorado.” Here’s who is arriving (dates unspecified) that’s from our local scene: Atrevida Beer Co., Colorado Craft, Drifter’s Hamburgers, Pizzeria Rustica, and Street Eats by Chef Brother Luck.

(National brands are Camden Food Co., Einstein Bros. Bagels and Einstein Bros.

Express, Mi Casa Cantina and Peet’s Coffee.)

I reached out to Brother Luck, whose brand will occupy the only full-service restaurant and bar, for a comment. He calls this “an exciting partnership.”

“What attracted me to the table,” he says, “was they wanted to source as many local concepts as they could to represent our city, to enhance our brands.

That shows a company that cares... they’re doing this across the country, not just here.”

I ask Luck if he’ll be in charge of dayto-day operations and he clarifies that it will be 100 percent SSP’s operation, but he’ll design the menu with them and be involved in training staff and helping provide guidance. His menu will feature some classic favorites and “revamps” from his prior Street Eats ventures — one

Downtown in the space that has most recently been Folklore and the other in Old Colorado City in what’s now Sherpa Garden’s space. That means plates like his pork belly mac ’n cheese, bacon-jam burger, maple chicken wings and jalapeño poppers.

Luck says the timeline for Street Eats at the airport to open is 12 to 18 months out, as the new kiosks will open in stages along the way concordant with construction happenings. That jibes with a statement I got back from SSP when I asked, regarding “the development [being] tied to the Airport’s terminal renovation... a phased construction project.”

I also had a quick chat with Pizzeria Rustica’s Jay Gust, who confirms his timeline for opening also might extend into 2025. Gust says, “I think it’s going to be great, and great exposure for the

• The 26th annual Gingerbread & Jazz Gala (earlyconnections.org/gingerbread-jazz) takes place at 6 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 11, at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College.

I’ll be co-judging the gingerbread competition. Enjoy live jazz, food and drink samplings; tickets are $125 and benefit Early Connections Learning Center.

• I’ll also be co-judging the second annual Chili Cook Off & Holiday Fundraiser (saladorbust.com/chilicook-off) hosted by Salad or Bust from 1 to 4 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 12, at Ivywild School. There’ll be green, red and vegan chile variants served, and tickets are $15; amateur chefs can sign up to compete with the professionals, including chefs and representatives from Salad or Bust, Picnic Basket, Prime 25, Green Line Grill, Patty Jewett Bar & Grill, The Warehouse, Burrowing Owl, Chiba Bar, The Joint, and Spark at Bristol Brewery.

Matthew Schniper is the former Food & Drink editor and critic at the Indy.

You can find expanded food and drink news and reviews at sidedishschnip.substack.com.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | INDY

13

PLAYING AROUND Karolina Pajak

SHOW PREVIEW

EARLY EYES - FEB 16 (ON SALE NOW) HOCEY DAD - MAR 13 (ON SALE NOW) QUEENSRYCHE - APR 1 (ON SALE FRI) Fri, Nov. 10 - 7:00pm

P.I.D

30FOOTFALL, PUNCH YOUR BOSS GOOD FAMILY, DOOM SCROLL Sat, Nov. 11 - 7:00pm

OVIRA

SIGHTLYNE, LAVA GATO, ARCTIC ORIGINS Thu, Nov. 16 - 7:00pm

FRENSHIP TOWNIE, MON CHER Fri, Nov. 17 - 7:00pm BANDWAGON PRESENTS

KOLBY COOPER WITH SPECIAL GUESTS Sat, Nov. 18 - 6:00pm

ALESANA

LIMBS, VAMPIRES EVERYWHERE, ACROSS THE WHITE WATER TOWER Sun, Nov. 19 - 7:00pm

SLOTHRUST PRONOUN Sat, Nov. 25 - 6:00pm

BLEED YOURSELF ALBUM RELEASE SHOW

MOUTH FOR WAR MUGSHOT, CANDY APPLE, SEWERSLIDE, BACKLIP

FEVER RAY

@ Fillmore Auditorium, Denver

U

NLIKE JANELLE MONÁE and Sun Ra, Karin Dreijer has never claimed to be from another planet. Still, there’s no denying the otherworldly nature of their personas and performances, whether alongside younger brother Olof in the dearly departed avant-electropop duo The Knife or Dreijer’s subsequent solo

work under the alias Fever Ray. From album to album, video to video, and tour to tour, Dreijer regularly reinvents their sounds and visions with the chameleonic fervor of David Bowie in his early years. Few can forget, for instance, Dreijer’s appearance at a Swedish awards show, where they came out in a hooded red robe with blond dreadlocks pok-

ing out the back, hugged the presenters, pulled back their hood to reveal a prosthetic mask that suggested an elderly alien with a melting face, and delivered an acceptance speech consisting of creepy moaning sounds.

Back here in the ostensibly real world, Dreijer is currently promoting the third Fever Ray album, Radical Romantics, which New York Times writer Lindsay Zoladz aptly described as “a sonic kaleidoscope that explodes with infinite variations of gray, as throbbing synthesizers and driving electronic beats provide a steady backbone for Dreijer’s bracing, shape-shifting vocals.”

Radical Romantics also marks Dreijer’s first studio collaboration with their brother Olof in more than a decade — sparking fans’ hopes that a reunion may be in the offing — as well as a couple of semi-industrial rock tracks produced by Trent Reznor.

And then there’s the current Fever Ray tour, a wildly choreographed spectacle that’s been described as a deranged circus with Dreijer as its ringmaster. Dreijer won’t be performing any Knife songs (they almost never have), but they will be doing their interpretation of songs by Peter Gabriel, Vashti Bunyan and Nick Cave. Assuming, of course, that Dreijer hasn’t changed everything by then.

— Bill Forman

Fever Ray, with Christeene, Friday, Nov. 10, 7 p.m., Fillmore Auditorium, 1510 N. Clarkson St., Denver, ticket prices and availability at fillmoreauditorium.org; watch — tinyurl.com/FeverRay-1 and tinyurl.com/FeverRayTheKnife, plus the (essential viewing) speech, tinyurl.com/FeverRay-speech.

Wed, Nov. 29 - 6:00pm

DARKEST HOUR, UNDEATH

Thu, Nov. 30 - 7:00pm, Ages 18+

RENE VACA WITH SPECIAL GUESTS

Fri, Dec. 1 - 8:00pm, Ages 21+

THE EMO NIGHT TOUR CRASHCARLETON TEST STONE DUMMIES Sat, Dec. 2 - 7:00pm

Thu, Dec. 7 - 6:00pm

THE DIVINE INNER TENSION TOUR

HAIL THE SUN TSOSIS, GLASSLANDS Sat, Dec. 9 - 6:00pm

A KILO 45 YEARS OF ROCK SHOW

WEDNESDAY13 GEMINI SYNDROME, INFECTED RAIN, BLACK SATELLITE

DEC 15 - JON WAYNE & THE PAIN DEC 29 - THE IRON MAIDENS JAN 25 - GUTTERMOUTH FEB 16 - EARLY EYES FEB 23 - THE GREEN, MIKE LOVE

1-866-468-3399

14

WEDNESDAY 11/8

Courtesy The Builders and The Butchers

FIT FOR AN AUTOPSY, EXODUS

Blue Frog, covers/originals; 6:30 p.m., Front Range Barbeque’s 23rd anniversary party, frbbq.com/events.

“A Night at the Opera” with baritone Jonathan Hays, Pikes Peak Opera League; 5 p.m., St. Paul’s Catholic Church, tinyurl.com/night-opera.

THURSDAY 11/9 Acoustic Night; 6 p.m., Buffalo Lodge, bicycleresort.com.

The Fooz Fighters, Foo Fighters tribute; 7 p.m., Boot Barn Hall, bootbarnhallco. com.

Poetrio, live poetry and jazz improv; 7:30 p.m., Summa, dizzycharlies.com.

Craig Walter, acoustic; 6:30 p.m., Jack Quinn’s, facebook.com/jackquinns.

FRIDAY 11/10 30footFall, punk rock, with P.I.D, Punch Your Boss, Innocent Sinners, Good Family; doors 7 p.m., Black Sheep, blacksheeprocks.com.

Buckstein, country, with Tim Meegan Jr. & the 105’s, Jacob Christopher; 7 p.m., Oskar Blues, coloradosprings.oskarbluesfooderies.com.

INDY | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Acoustic folk rockers The Builders and The Butchers take the stage at Vultures Friday, Nov. 10.

The Builders and The Butchers, acoustic folk rock, with Run On Sentence; 7 p.m., Vultures, vulturesrocks.com.

Butterfly Assembly, acoustic; 6 p.m., Buffalo Lodge, bicycleresort.com.

Tim Costello, American jam; 7:30 p.m., Jack Quinn’s, facebook.com/jackquinns.

Grizzly Gopher, covers; 8 p.m., Buzzed

Crow Bistro, buzzedcrowbistro.com.

AJ Lee & Blue Summit, bluegrass/ Americana/country/folk, with Two Runner; doors 7 p.m., Lulu’s, lulusdownstairs.com.

Lisa McCall Band, slide guitar/originals/ covers; 6 p.m., Mash Mechanix, mashmechanix.com/events.

Kevin McDeviant, Celtic rock; 7 p.m., Ab-

PLAYING AROUND Amoré, originals/jazz; 6 p.m., Buffalo Lodge, bicycleresort.com.

Big Sky, Grateful Dead tribute; 8 p.m., Mother Muff’s, mothermuffs.com/calendar.

Tracy Byrd, country/Salvation Army fundraiser; 6:30 p.m., Boot Barn Hall, bootbarnhallco.com.

Clay Cutler, country/rock/pop/originals; 6 p.m., Mash Mechanix, mashmechanix.com/events.

Alex Eisenberg, variety; 7 p.m., Abby’s Irish Pub, abbysirishpub.com.

Fooz Fighters, Foo Fighters tribute; 7 p.m., Brues Alehouse, Pueblo, bruesalehouse.com.

Nube Nueve, Latin jazz; 7 p.m., Summa, dizzycharlies.com.

Ovira, metal, with Sightlyne, Lava Gato, Arctic Origins; 7 p.m., Black Sheep, blacksheeprocks.com.

Playing With Smoke, rock/blues/pop/

by’s Irish Pub, abbysirishpub.com.

She’s Got Soul: Capathia Jenkins and the Colorado Springs Philharmonic; 7:30 p.m., Pikes Peak Center, pikespeakcenter.com.

SofaKillers, cover band; 7 p.m., Boot Barn Hall, bootbarnhallco.com.

Craig Walter Acoustic Band, Black Rose Acoustic Society; 7 p.m., Black Forest Community Center, blackroseacoustic.org.

Works of Genius, collage of chamber music masterpieces; 7 p.m., Ent Center for the Arts, tinyurl.com/chamber-Ent. Karl Ziedins, acoustic pop/classic rock; 8 p.m., Cleats Bar and Grill West.

SATURDAY 11/11 Jeffrey Alan Band, originals/country/ classic rock; 6 p.m., Whiskey Baron Dance Hall, tinyurl.com/whisk-dh.

BIG GIGS

©Steve Parke

Upcoming music events

Victor Wooten — bassist, songwriter, five-time Grammy winner — joins brothers Joseph, Roy and Regi onstage at Denver’s Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom on Jan. 11.

Dirt Monkey, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, Nov. 8 Béla Fleck and The Flecktones, Boulder Theater, Boulder, Nov. 8 Full of Hell, Bluebird Theater, Denver, Nov. 8 Kim Petras and Alex Chapman, Fillmore Auditorium, Denver, Nov. 8 K+Lab, Nov. 9, Meow Wolf, Denver, Nov. 9 Black Stone Cherry, Oriental Theater, Denver, Nov. 10 The Builders and The Butchers, Vultures, Nov. 10

Doja Cat, Ball Arena, Denver, Nov. 10 Fever Ray, Fillmore Auditorium, Denver, Nov. 10 Head for the Hills, Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox, Denver, Nov. 10 AJ Lee & Blues Summit, Lulu’s, Manitou Springs, Nov. 10 Royal & The Serpent, Bluebird Theater, Nov. 10 She’s Got Soul/Colorado Springs Symphony, Pikes Peak Center, Nov. 10-11 The Bright Light Social Hour, Globe Hall, Denver, Nov. 11 David Ramirez, Lulu’s, Manitou, Nov. 11 Yam Haus, Bluebird Theater, Denver, Nov. 11 Burna Boy, Ball Arena, Denver, Nov. 12 Vedo, Bluebird Theater, Denver, Nov. 12 Of The Trees, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, Nov. 12 Lil Uzi Vert, Fillmore Auditorium, Denver, Nov. 13 Tinashe & Shygirl, Mission Ballroom, Denver, Nov. 13 Kesha, Mission Ballroom, Denver, Nov. 14 We Are Scientists, Globe Hall, Denver, Nov. 14 We Came As Romans, Ogden Theatre, Denver, Nov. 14 Depeche Mode, Ball Arena, Denver, Nov. 16 Dirty Honey, Summit Music Hall, Denver, Nov. 16 Frenship, Black Sheep, Nov. 16 Muscadine Bloodline, Sunshine Studios Live, Nov. 16 REO Speedwagon, Pikes Peak Center, Nov. 16 Sincere Engineer, Lost Lake Lounge, Denver, Nov. 16 Continued at csindy.com

country; 6 p.m., Palmer Lake Pub, palmerlakepub.net/events-1.

David Ramirez, singer-songwriter; doors 7 p.m., Lulu’s, lulusdownstairs.com.

Redraw the Farm, “amalgam of rock, folk, Americana, Irish, punk, country, and blues”; 7:30 p.m., Jack Quinn’s, facebook.com/jackquinns.

She’s Got Soul: Capathia Jenkins and the Colorado Springs Philharmonic; 7:30 p.m., Pikes Peak Center, pikespeakcenter.com.

SOAPDISH, pajama jam/dance party; doors 6 p.m., Stargazers Theatre, stargazerstheatre.com.

SUNDAY 11/12 Chamber Music Concert, Pikes Peak area musicians; 3 p.m., First Christian Church, firstchristiancos.org/upcoming-music-events.html.

Chat Pile, noise rock, with Agriculture; 7 p.m., Vultures, vulturesrocks.com.

New Horizons Band of Colorado Springs Fall Concert, concert and symphonic bands; 4 p.m., Ent Center for the Arts, tinyurl.com/horizons-ent.

Traditional Irish music; 3 p.m., Jack Quinn’s, facebook.com/jackquinns.

MONDAY 11/13 Little Miss Nasty, rock/metal burlesque, with Sizzy Rocket; 6 p.m., Sunshine Studios Live, sunshinestudioslive.com.

IF

WEDNESDAY 11/15 Countywyde, bluegrass; 6:30 p.m., Front Range Barbeque, frbbq.com/events.

Folk/Americana — Kiel Grove (“traveling songwriter” from Texas) and Gipsy Rufina (traveling songwriter from Italy); 3 p.m., What’s Left Records, whatsleftrec.com.

Austin Johnson, acoustic blues; 6:30 p.m., Jack Quinn’s, facebook.com/jackquinns.

Dan Rodriguez, folk/acoustic songwriter; doors 7 p.m., Lulu’s, lulusdownstairs. com.

THURSDAY 11/16 Jeremy Facknitz, singer-songwriter, with Joe Uvegas; doors 7 p.m., Lulu’s, lulusdownstairs.com.

Frenship, pop, with Torine; doors 7 p.m., Black Sheep, blacksheeprocks.com.

Muscadine Bloodline, country duo, with Teenage Dixie Tour, Gabe Lee, WestRock; 6 p.m., Sunshine Studios Live, sunshinestudioslive.com.

Nerea The Fiddler, stepdancing and fiddling; 7 p.m., Jack Quinn’s, facebook.com/jackquinns.

REO Speedwagon, classic American rock band; 7:30 p.m., Pikes Peak Center, pikespeakcenter.com.

Turquoise, post-rock/experimental/ math rock, with Winter Wayfarer, Jellyfish Farm, Sapphires Garden; 7 p.m., Vultures, vulturesrocks.com.

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | INDY

15

Your guide to events in the Pikes Peak region from original artwork/prints to glass and metal art to wearables to soaps and candles. Through Dec. 28.

The Look Up Gallery, 11 E. Bijou St. (inside Yobel), thelookupgallery.com. Flow State, new work by Springs artist Nathan Travis.

Cottonwood Center for the Arts, 427 E. Colorado Ave., 719-520-1899, cottonwoodcenterforthearts.com.

Transformation — A Mixed Media Event, with works by Nancy Stage Robinson. “Working in a wide variety of mediums ranging from painting to sculpture, and everything in between, her art is both lyrical and controlled, and showcases her passion for color and composition.”

Manitou Art Center, 513/515 Manitou Ave., Manitou Springs, 719-685-1861, manitouartcenter.org. Works by local artist Gary King. Through Nov. 25.

Disruptor Gallery, 2217 E. Platte Ave., shutterandstrum.org. Jesse Allan Rozell’s Playtime, works in an ongoing project that “celebrates hedonism, vanity, memory, vibrancy, and chaos — an attractive and sometimes obscured, star-studded view into the men and women of yesterday.”

G44 Gallery, 121 E. Boulder St., 720-9510573, g44gallery.com. Whiteout by Rachel Espenlaub, who “developed her unique style of triangle-based geometric abstraction after years of realism painting.” The acrylic works in Greg Johnson’s Unpredictable Order: “When poured on the canvas, the paint will interact with its environment freely and express much more personality than Greg could hope to do by squeezing the pigment out of a brush.”

“Tonka” by Greg Johnson

ART EXHIBIT

Greg Johnson’s “Tonka” is part of his new show, Unpredictable Order, at G44 Gallery. His works, in acrylics, “place themselves along a continuum somewhere between completely abstract, impressionistic, and representational. Most pieces will embody multiple characteristics depending on the distance from which they are viewed.”

ART EXHIBITS 45º Gallery, 2528 W. Colorado Ave., Suite B, 719-434-1214, 45degreegallery.com.

Pottery Palooza, 750-plus pieces by 10plus artists.

Academy Art & Frame, 7560 N. Academy Blvd., 719-265-6694, academyframesco. com. The Beauty of the Earth, works by oil painter Joni Ware. Artist reception Friday, Nov. 17, 4-7 p.m.; through December.

power structures and the human spiritual experience — is frequently presented in partnership with institutes and entities outside of the traditional gallery experience.” Through Nov. 17.

Citizens Art Gallery at City Hall, works by mixed-media/encaustic artist Melissa Porter. Second floor gallery, 107 N. Nevada Ave.; enter through the ADA entrance on the southeast corner of the building.

Gallery 113, 125½ N. Tejon St., 719-6345299, gallery113cos.com. Painter Kathy Jackson’s landscapes in oils and Al Bach’s wooden creations.

The Bridge Gallery, 218 W. Colorado Ave., #104, 719-629-7055, thebridgeartgallery. com. Desert Dreams Revisited (with all new art for November) takes “a different look at the work of Liz McCombs’ desertthemed sculptures which explore the resilience and tenacity of life in arid landscapes.” Through Nov. 25.

Bosky Studio, 17B E. Bijou St., boskystudio.com. The Jane Doe Project: Studies and Sketches by Lindsay Hand, whose “deeply researched work — focused on

Commonwheel Artists Co-op, 102 Cañon Ave., Manitou Springs, 719-685-1008, commonwheel.com. 2023 Holiday Market with work by 32 Colorado artists — everything

LightSpeed Curations, 306 S. 25th St., 719-308-8389. Now You See Me, with works by “experimental artist” Nat Feather.

16

INDY | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

ZoneFIVE, 1902 E. Boulder St., zonefivecs. com. Daydreams and Night Lights, a juried photography exhibition presented by Radiant Aberration and ZoneFIVE that

Hunter-Wolff Gallery, 2510 W. Colorado Ave., 719-520-9494, hunterwolffgallery. com. November’s featured artist: Sculptor Cheri Isgreen.

Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, 30 W. Dale St., 719-634-5581, fac.coloradocollege.edu.

Solo(s): Krista Franklin. Franklin “creates books, poetry, collages, handmade paper, installations, murals, performances, sound works, sculptures, and lectures.”

Through Dec. 16. Mi Gente: Manifestations of Community in the Southwest, with works from the FAC collection; through Feb. 3. Museum free days: Nov. 11 and 17.

The Colony, 2 S. Wahsatch Ave., #100, thecolony.studio. New work from acrylics/watercolor painter Dan Sampson and multimedia painter Victoria Wekamp.

Surface Gallery, 2752 W. Colorado Ave., 719-359-6966, surfacegallerycos.com. A husband-and-wife show... The Heralds of Unwanted Wisdom by Riley Bratzler: “On July 31, 2022 her brother was killed, forever changing the course of her life. Drawing inspiration from historical alchemy manuscripts, this body of work plays with the idea of anthropomorphic deities as messengers of the lessons she has learned in coping with her loss.” Brett Andrus’ Remembering How to be Human: “We have seen war, economic turbulence, and environmental change. To cope, we silo ourselves into our safe camps on our social media streams, relying on AI to show us versions of what humanity looks like now.”

GOCA (Galleries of Contemporary Art, UCCS), Ent Center for the Arts, 5225 N. Nevada Ave., gocadigital.org. Martha Russo’s Caesura — “her sculptural investigations appear at once fragile and potentially dangerous, cautioning one away while hypnotically drawing one in — ever closer — for intimate examination.” Through Dec. 2.

Kreuser Gallery, 125 E. Boulder St., 719464-5880, kreusergallery.com. Collateral BEAUTY: Part 1, No More Silence by Karen Mosbacher: “My entire life I was told ‘Don’t Tell.’ ... This exhibition is for all the other women who have lived through intimate personal terrorism and held these secrets for 12,000 generations.”

Magnificent Wild, a collaboration of Audrey Gray (“I am remembering how to look at nature and the world around me through the eyes of a child.”) and Lupita Carrasco (“Magnificent Wild is an invitation to remember and explore the sacred space of childhood.”). Finding Hope by Melissa Porter: “a reflection of a time in my life when I was going through a bitter divorce from my abusive husband and fighting a custody battle I did not see coming.” Through Nov. 24; artist talks: Porter, Nov. 10, 5:30 p.m.; Mosbacher, Carrasco and Gray, Nov. 15, 5:30 p.m.

Anita Marie Fine Art, 109 S. Corona St., 719-493-5623, anitamariefineart.com. Storied Places, oil paintings that share the intimate emotional relationship between artist and place. Works by Chuck Mardosz, Richard Dahlquist and Joanne Lavender.

Through Dec. 21.

Platte Collections, 2331 E. Platte Place, 719-980-2715, plattecollections.myshopify.com. First Friday Cocktail Hour with works by artist/visual storyteller Shannon Dunn, who is a painter, sculptor and creator of installations. Through December.

stock.adobe.com

CALENDAR

GOT WRITER’S BLOCK? NaNoWriMo 2023, November is National Novel Writing Month, when writers around the world hunker down to produce 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days.

On Saturdays, 1-3 p.m., PPLD’s Rockrimmon branch is playing host to national NaNoWriMo reps who will offer resources, strategies and encouragement. Sessions are Nov. 11, 18 and 25, and the Thank God It’s Over party is Dec. 2. 832 Village Center Drive; follow ppld.org/programs for Rockrimmon for info on Saturday sessions.

FOR FULL EVENT LISTINGS, AND TO SUBMIT YOUR OWN EVENTS, GO TO CSINDY.COM!

CALENDAR

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EXHIBIT CELEBRATION

Courtesy Heller Center

MANIFESTATIONS OF COMMUNITY IN THE SOUTHWEST

SEPTEMBER 1, 2023– FEBRUARY 3, 2024

Heller Center Arts Exchange: “Historia Sin Fin is a graphic novella about a clan of beings not quite like ourselves, living in a canyon somewhere in the Southwest. Life is good for the clan until one day a sinister cloud drifts over the canyon....” UCCS student artists created works “in response to and in collaboration with” this work by Peter Marchand and Marc Shereck. Opening party Friday, Nov. 10, 6-9 p.m.; 1250 North Campus Heights/UCCS; see heller.uccs.edu/events for exhibit dates/hours. “explores the creative imagination. What oddity or mirage do you picture during the day? Have you captured apparitions or things that go bump in the night?”

Through Nov. 30.

DANCE When Night Meets Day, “Ormao as artists in residence at Pikes Peak State College for Fall 2023 culminates in this repertory show with professionally choreographed work connecting Ormao dancers with current PPSC students and alumni.” Friday-Sunday, Nov. 10-12; PPSC Centennial, 5675 S. Academy Blvd.; tinyurl.com/PPSC-Ormao.

KIDS & FAMILIES The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee: “An eclectic group of six midpubescents vie for the spelling championship of a lifetime.” Presented by Colorado College music, drama and dance students; 7 p.m. Friday-Saturday, Nov. 1011, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 12; free/no tickets required; Packard Hall/CC, 5 W. Cache La Poudre St.; coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/calendar.

Fall nature hike, an all-ages, naturalistled 2½-mile hike to “explore the autumn woods as it gets ready for winter. Mammals are getting their winter coat, winter resident birds and squirrels are stocking up on food for the winter. Elk and deer are in the rut.” Sunday, Nov. 12, 9:30 a.m. to noon; Mueller State Park, 21045 CO-67, Divide; tinyurl.com/Mueller-hikes.

Volcano Island, a “quirky, educational show for kids features molten lava, rocksolid science and a romantic coconut.”

Demos after performances. Saturday, Nov. 11, 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.; Fountain Creek Nature Center, 320 Peppergrass Lane, Fountain theatreacrossborders.com.

A Charlie Brown Christmas, the stage adaptation of the animated classic. Monday, Nov. 13, 6:30 p.m.; Pikes Peak Center, 190 S. Cascade Ave.; pikespeakcenter.com.

Blippi: The Wonderful World Tour, “Shout out your favorite vehicles, shake out all the wiggles, and OJ Twist your way through this brand-new musical party!” Nov. 12, 2 p.m.; Pikes Peak Center, 190 S. Cascade Ave.; pikespeakcenter.com.

Family Star Party: Telescopes 101, “learn all about the different types of telescopes, how they work, and how to use them.” Friday, Nov. 17, 6-8 p.m.; Space Foundation Discovery Center, 4425 Arrowswest Drive; discoverspace.org/upcoming-events.

Balloonacy, “a red balloon drifts through the window of a solitary old man’s home.

But then some serious silliness begins....”

Through Nov. 19; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., fac.coloradocollege.edu.

LEARNING & LECTURES “Taking the Field: Soldiers, Nature, and Empire on American Frontiers,” presented by Amy Kohout, CC associate professor of history, “tracing the ways soldiers in the U.S. Army made sense of the landscapes of their service in both the U.S. West and the Philippines.” Saturday, Nov. 11, 2 p.m.; register at cspm.org/programs-and-events;

continued on p. 18 ➔

FOR FULL EVENT LISTINGS, AND TO SUBMIT YOUR OWN EVENTS, GO TO CSINDY.COM!

fac.coloradocollege.edu (719) 634-5581 Sylvia Montero, They Came on Ships (detail), image courtesy the artist

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | INDY

17

CALENDAR ➔ continued from p. 17 Gaylord Hall/CC, 902 N. Cascade Ave.

THEATER John Proctor Is the Villain, “at a rural high school in Georgia, a group of lively teens are studying The Crucible while navigating young love, sex ed, and a few school scandals.” Pikes Peak State College Theatre Department; Nov. 9-19, see tinyurl. com/Proctor-PPSC for dates/times; Studio West, 22 West Sierra Madre St. Antigone, Sophocles’ classic tragedy — “A city on the brink of anarchy. A family torn apart. A woman ready to defy the law.” —

by UCCS Theatre Company, directed by the Millibo’s Birgitta De Pree. Through Nov. 12; tinyurl.com/UCCS-Antigone.

The Belle of Amhurst, a one-woman performance based on the life of poet Emily Dickinson, set between 1830 and 1886 at her home in Massachusetts. Through Nov. 12; Millibo Art Theatre, 1626 S. Tejon St.; see themat.org for times and tickets.

Trap, a psychological documentary thriller by the Mitchell High School Performing Arts Department. “Every person in the audience of a high school play falls unconscious — every person but one.” ThursdaySaturday, Nov. 9-11, 7 p.m.; Mitchell High, 1205 Potter Drive; mitchelldrama.org.

SKATE IN THE PARK

Downtown’s festive-season tradition — ice skating in Acacia Park — is back, beginning at 4 p.m. Friday, Nov. 10 and running through the end of January. Check downtowncs.com/event/skate for prices, dates, hours and special events.

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INDY | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

LOWDOWN

By Jim Hightower jimhightower.com

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Big money is choosing the

GOP CANDIDATE

A

RE YOU EXCITED BY — or do you dread — the upcoming presidential election season? Either way, buckle up, for it’s only 12 weeks ’til the Iowa caucuses, and then (zoom!) there’s nonstop voting across America for the rest of 2024. Democracy at work!

Well… unless you don’t notice the Plutocratic Primary, where — shhhh — presidential voting is already taking place. However, this balloting is only open to a teensy number of very exclusive voters: billionaires.

These privileged ones don’t have to go to public campaign events — candidates come to them for closed-door têteà-têtes, making undisclosed promises in exchange for millions of dollars in campaign funds. This secretive primary lets moneyed elites initiate or eliminate policies that candidates obediently support.

Moreover, by granting or withholding large donations, billionaires can determine which candidates are considered “viable,” letting the super-rich have a heavy hand in “choosing the choices” that we commoners will have next year.

I think it’s up to the donors to decide which candidates should get off the stage.

— Nikki Haley

The New York Times reports that this flexing of the money muscle was recently exercised at a closed meeting of GOP sugar daddies in Utah. Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie and other presidential wannabes were on display, pleading with the donors to choose them as the party’s alternative to Donald Trump — and to shoo the other Republican contenders out of the race.

Haley bluntly appealed to the rich clique’s plutocratic ego: “I think it’s up to the donors to decide which candidates should get off the stage.” Christie went a step further toward plutocratic rule, asking the elite attendees to decide who would be “the best president.”

No one in the room bothered asking

the obvious question: Best for whom?

Everyone knew he meant best for the rich. No need for messy elections — let the billionaires choose!

MEANWHILE... THERE IS NOTHing quite as pitiful as whiny billionaires.

And the whiniest of all is the richest — Elon Musk. This self-entitled bully runs over anyone in his way, then whines when they protest.

Elon’s latest high-pitched screech was prompted by public demands that his profiteering schemes obey clean-water and safety regulations. He owns a corporation named (believe it or not) the Boring Company — an underground tunneling venture based in Bastrop, Texas, digging out tons of soil, chemicals and contaminated groundwater. But where to put all the waste? I’ll just dump the stuff in the nearby Colorado River, said Lord Musk. Lots of stuff — 140,000 gallons of wastewater per day!

But that river is our main water source, said local people — you’ll need to comply with water treatment and disposal rules.

Outrageous, whined Elon, maniacally squealing that “Construction is becoming practically illegal” in America. So, he proceeded to dump his waste without a permit.

Then he encountered Chap Ambrose, a Boring neighbor and former Musk admirer. Chap began asking questions and getting nothing but evasions, lies and disrespect. Musk was messing with Texas, so Ambrose rallied local opposition through a website he named “Keep Bastrop Boring,” promoting it on a local billboard. With a drone, he videoed Musk’s expanding industrial mess, broadcasting the videos throughout the area. He filed actions with county, state and national regulatory authorities, and got his state senator to hold a hearing, attended by hundreds of residents in this rural county.

Musk can bamboozle powerful officials, but not feisty people like Chap, who recently ridiculed the pouty billionaire. “I’m sorry, neighbor,” Ambrose told him, “development remains legal in Bastrop, but what is illegal is polluting Texas water… You’re making this way harder than it has to be.”

The fight goes on — and I’m betting on Chap.

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OPINION | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | INDY

19

FAIR AND UNBALANCED

By Mike Littwin Courtesy The Colorado Sun

WHY IS KEN BUCK QUITTING?

W

HO AMONG US thought that the Ken Buck we’ve known for so many years would apparently end his political career by calling out the Republican Party for its, well, fecklessness — my word, not his — and doing it on MSNBC? Seriously. Raise your hands. I’ll wait.

OK, still waiting.

It wasn’t a shock that Buck said he wouldn’t run for reelection in 2024. It

wasn’t a shock that Buck once again called out the absurdity of GOP election denial despite the fact that 70 percent of Republicans still won’t say that Joe Biden’s election was legitimate.

It wasn’t a shock that in a tweeted video — yes, I’m staying with “tweeted” — announcing that he wouldn’t run again, Buck said, “Too many Republican leaders are lying to America.”

Of course they are. But Buck could have come out against Trump at any

time. He could have called out election deniers at any time.

Why now?

You must remember the old Ken Buck.

The one who blew up his 2010 Senate run against Michael Bennet by comparing gays to alcoholics in a nationally televised late-campaign debate. And now he’s the conscience of the Republican Party?

The one who was a Tea Party candidate back in the day before the Tea Party

gave way to MAGA Trumpism.

And, yes, the one who said he wouldn’t vote for Jim Jordan for speaker because Jordan was an election denier and then voted for Mike Johnson, who is not only a denier but who helped draw up the House plan to refuse legitimate electors on Jan. 6.

My bad. That wasn’t the old Ken Buck.

That was last month’s Ken Buck.

Did Buck suddenly get, uh, religion?

Or is it part-time religion? Or does he really want to give up politics and go where the money is — as a TV talking head?

Or is he afraid that now, despite his status as a longtime member of the farright Freedom Caucus, he’d be stuck with the dreaded RINO label and face a serious primary challenge next year if he ran again?

I DON’T KNOW. I’M CONFUSED. But it’s a good confusion for now — or at least until the heavily Republican Fourth Congressional District, which Buck has represented for more than a decade, picks someone to succeed him.

I don’t know who that would be. The only thing we know for sure is that the primary will be, as someone once said, wild. But it’s fair to note that among the leading candidates is state Rep. Richard Holtorf. Do I need to say more?

Buck was definitely going to be primaried. You don’t move to the antiTrumpist camp, where Buck has taken up residence, even going so far as to say he wasn’t sure what he’d do in case of a Trump-Biden rematch, and not face a primary in the most Republican district in the state.

That doesn’t mean he would necessarily lose, but Buck wouldn’t necessarily win, either.

I mean, let’s look at Buck’s last vote, which was to table a Marjorie Taylor Greene resolution to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat who is the first Palestinian American to serve in Congress, for her criticism of Israel in its war against Hamas. Greene didn’t stop there.

She also accused Tlaib of fomenting an “insurrection.”

I wish Tlaib had accused Greene of failing to understand irony. You see, the only person apparently allowed to criticize Israel, in Greene’s view, is her pal,

20

INDY | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | OPINION

telling author McKay Coppins what he actually thinks of his GOP colleagues in Coppins’ new bestseller, The Reckoning.

Romney called Newt Gingrich “smarmy” and “smug.” He called Ted Cruz “scary” and a “demagogue.” He said that Mike Pence, in his loyalty to Trump, was “more willing to ascribe God’s will to things that were ungodly.”

Of Ron DeSantis’ primary challenge to Trump, he asked, “Do you want an authoritarian who’s smart or one who’s not smart.”

The question being asked about Romney is whether, at this late stage, he’s trying to save his soul.

And Buck? Whatever his reasons for leaving the House, he must know this: He’s got a better chance of trying to save his soul than saving the Republican Party.

Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons

Donald Trump, who also added for good measure that Hezbollah was “very smart.”

Still, Buck was one of 23 Republicans to vote against Greene’s resolution, which was enough to sink it. And Greene, of course, went ballistic, or should that word be reserved for Lauren “Get Your Guns” Boebert?

So Greene called Buck a “CNN wannabe” for his vote. Of course, Greene also lashed out at “vaping, groping” Boebert, who actually voted with her. You also might have heard they’re not so friendly anymore.

Did Buck suddenly get, uh, religion?

IT’S THAT KIND OF COMITY that the House GOP has embraced.

And Buck is ready to give all that up?

He’s not the only one. I don’t know what the over-under will be on the number of retiring Republicans or the even greater number of Republicans who will face a primary, but both numbers will be significant.

And of course over in the Senate, there’s Mitt Romney, who announced he’s not running again, but only after

Mike Littwin’s column was produced for The Colorado Sun, a reader-supported news organization committed to covering the people, places and policies of Colorado. Learn more at coloradosun.com.

Buck, part of the problem up to the end, would rather quit than try to fix the GOP.

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OPINION | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | INDY

21

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

By Heather Cox Richardson heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

CHRISTIAN AUTHORITARIANISM over democracy?

22

INDY | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | OPINION

U.S. Congress

O

N OCT. 29, 1929, THE U.S. stock market crashed.

It had been rocked five days before, when heavy trading early in the day drove it down, but leading bankers had seen the mounting crisis and moved in to stabilize the markets before the end of the day. Oct. 24 left small investors broken but the system intact. On Monday, Oct. 28, the market slid again, with a key industrial average dropping 49 points.

And then, on Oct. 29, the crisis hit.

When the gong in the great hall of the New York Stock Exchange hit at 10 o’clock, the market opened with heavy trading, all of it downward. When the ticker tape finally showed the day’s transactions, two and a half hours later, it documented that more than 16 million shares had changed hands and the industrial average had dropped another 43 points.

Black Tuesday was the beginning of the end. The market continued to drop.

By November the industrial average stood at half of what it had been two months before. By 1932, manufacturing output was less than it had been in 1913; foreign trade plummeted from $10 billion to $3 billion in the three years after 1929; and agricultural prices fell by more than half. By 1932 a million people in New York City were out of work; by 1933, 13 million people — one person of every four in the labor force — were unemployed. Unable to pay rent or mortgages, people lived in shelters made of packing boxes.

While the administration of Republican president Herbert Hoover preached that Americans could combat the Depression with thrift, morality, and individualism, voters looked carefully at the businessmen who only years before had seemed to be pillars of society and saw they had plundered ordinary Americans. The business boom of the 1920s had increased worker productivity by about 43 percent, but wages did not rise. Those profits, along with tax cuts and stock market dividends, meant that wealth moved upward: In 1929, 5 percent of the population received one third of the nation’s income.

In 1932, nearly 58 percent of voters

Speaker Mike Johnson, MAGA champion

turned to Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who promised them a “New Deal”: a government that would work for everyone, not just for the wealthy and well connected.

As soon as Roosevelt was in office, Democrats began to pass laws protecting workers’ rights, providing government jobs, regulating business and banking, and beginning to chip away at the racial segregation of the American South. New Deal policies employed more than 8.5 million people, built more than 650,000 miles of highways, built or repaired more than 120,000 bridges, and put up more than 125,000 buildings. They regulated banking and the stock market and gave workers the right to bargain collectively.

They established minimum wages and maximum hours for work. They provided a basic social safety net and regulated food and drug safety.

When he took office in 1953, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower built on this system, adding to the nation’s infrastructure with the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which provided $25 billion to build 41,000 miles of highway across the country; adding the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to the government and calling for a national health care system; and nominating former Republican governor of California Earl Warren as chief justice of the Supreme Court to protect civil rights. Eisenhower also insisted on the vital importance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to stop the Soviet Union from spreading communism throughout Europe.

Eisenhower called his vision “a middle way between untrammeled freedom of the individual and the demands of the welfare of the whole Nation.” The system worked: Between 1945 and 1960 the nation’s gross

national product jumped by 250 percent, from $200 billion to $500 billion.

BUT WHILE THE VAST MAJORITY of Americans of both parties liked the new system that had helped the nation to recover from the Depression and to equip the Allies to win World War II, a group of Republican businessmen and their libertarian allies at places like the National Association of Manufacturers insisted that the system proved both parties had been corrupted by communism. They inundated newspapers, radio, and magazines with the message that the government must stay out of the economy to return the nation to the policies of the 1920s.

Their position got little traction until the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional. That decision enabled them to divide the American people by insisting that the popular new government simply redistributed tax dollars from hardworking white taxpayers to undeserving minorities.

A promise to cut the taxes that funded social services and the business regulations they insisted hampered business growth fueled the election of Ronald Reagan for president in 1980. But by 1986 administration officials recognized that tax cuts that were driving the deficit up despite dramatic cuts to social services were so unpopular that they needed foot soldiers to back businessmen. So, Reagan backed the creation of an organization that brought together big businessmen, evangelical Christians, and social conservatives behind his agenda. “Traditional Republican business groups can provide the resources,” leader of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist explained, “but these groups can provide the votes.”

By 1989, Norquist’s friend Ralph Reed turned evangelical Christians into a permanent political pressure group. The Christian Coalition rallied evangelicals behind the Republican Party, calling for the dismantling of the post-World War II government services and protections for civil rights — including abortion — they disliked.

As Republicans could reliably turn out religious voters over abortion, that evan-

gelical base has become more and more important to the Republican Party. Now it has put one of its own in the House Speaker’s chair, just two places from the presidency. On Oct. 25, after three weeks of being unable to unite behind a speaker after extremists tossed out Kevin McCarthy (R-California), the Republican conference coalesced behind Representative Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) in part because he was obscure enough to have avoided scrutiny.

Since then, his past has been unearthed, showing interviews in which he asserted that we do not live in a democracy but in a “Biblical republic.”

He told a Fox News Channel interviewer that to discover his worldview, one simply had to “go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.”

JOHNSON IS STAUNCHLY AGAINST abortion rights and gay rights, including same-sex marriage, and says that immigration is “the true existential threat to the country.” In a 2016 sermon he warned that the 1960s and 1970s undermined “the foundations of religion and morality in the U.S.” and that attempts to address climate change, for example, are an attempt to destroy capitalism.

Like other adherents of Christian nationalism, Johnson appears to reject the central premise of democracy: that we have a right to be treated equally before the law. And while his wife, Kelly, noted last year on a podcast that only about 4 percent of Americans “still adhere to a Biblical worldview,” they appear to reject the idea we have the right to a say in our government. In 2021, Johnson was a key player in the congressional attempt to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election.

In his rejection of democracy, Johnson echoes authoritarian leaders like

Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, both of whom have the loyal support of America’s far right. Such leaders claim that the multiculturalism at the heart of democracy ruins nations.

The welcoming of various races and ethnicities through immigration or affirmative action undermines national purity, they say, while the equality of LGBTQ+ individuals and women undermines morality. Johnson has direct ties to these regimes: His 2018 campaign accepted money from a group of Russian nationals, and he has said he does not support additional funding for Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression.

The rejection of democracy in favor of Christian authoritarianism at the highest levels of our government is an astonishing outcome of the attempt to prevent another Great Depression by creating a government that worked for ordinary Americans rather than a few wealthy men.

But here we are.

After Johnson’s election as speaker, extremist Republican Matt Gaetz of Florida spelled out what it meant for the party... and for the country: “MAGA is ascendant,” Gaetz told former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, “and if you don’t think that moving from Kevin McCarthy to MAGA Mike Johnson shows the ascendance of this movement, and where the power of the Republican Party truly lies, then you’re not paying attention.”

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OPINION | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | INDY

23

Free Will ASTROLOGY

CROSSWORD PUZZLE

BY ROB BREZSNY

Edited by David Steinberg | Themeless Sunday 56 by Rafael Musa SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In my horoscopes for Scorpios, I tend to write complex messages.

My ideas are especially thick and rich and lush.

Why? Because I imagine you as being complex, thick, rich and lush. Your destiny is labyrinthine and mysterious and intriguing, and I aspire to reflect its intricate, tricky beauty. But this time, in accordance with current astrological omens, I will offer you my simplest, most straightforward oracle ever. I borrowed it from author Mary Anne Hershey: “Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Play with abandon. Choose with no regret. Continue to learn. Appreciate your f riends. Do what you love.”

From bbs.amuniversal.com

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In her poem “Requiem,” Anna Akhmatova says, “I must kill off memory ... and I must learn to live anew.” I think most of us can benefit from periodically engaging in this brave and robust exercise. It’s not a feat to be taken lightly — not to be done more than once or twice a year. But guess what: The coming weeks will be a time when such a ritual might be wise for you. Are you ready to purge old business and prepare the way for a fresh start? Here are your words of power: forgiveness, clearing, cleaning, release, absolution, liberation.

Across

49 "Uh-huh"

13 "Succession" family name

1

Fedoras, berets, etc.

52 Fix, as a broken heart

5

Word after "price" or "phone"

55 Singer-songwriter Ella

14 Afternoon brew

56 Sport whose balls are used for beer pong

17 Congresswoman Rashida

12 "Oh, crud!"

60 Volcano in Sicily

13 Argue against

62 Lost it in public

20 Infamous Roman emperor

15 Unaccounted for, in military lingo

63 Casual tops

16 "Stay tuned!"

65 Notion

27 Savory donut topping

18 Volleyball game subdivisions

66 Sets an alarm for 7 p.m. instead of 7 a.m., say

29 Strike zone?

30 Singer Levine

67 "r u ___?" ("rly?")

32 Sparkling mixer

8

Tennis great Arthur

19 "We all make mistakes, OK?!"

64 Gets ready, informally

21 Org. that regulates pesticides

68 Put on the housing market

22 Palindromic flour used to make naan

1

TV cable letters

2

Smell of fresh banana bread, e.g.

3

Deck with Minor Arcana

31 ID whose first three numbers cannot be 666

4

Artery openers

5

Nail ___ (salon workers, informally)

34 Single guy's home

6

"I don't know ___ you, but I'm feeling 22" (Taylor Swift lyric)

23 Pigs' home 24 This, in Spanish 26 Bro or sis 28 Latte art pro

Down

37 Dog's sound 39 Scheming group

7

41 "Yes! Thanks for thinking of me!"

Chewy treat shaped like an animal

8

44 Male turkey

Batteries for a Wii Remote

9

Optimal thing to hit

40 Greek I

45 Decorative wreath 46 Dog's sound 48 The writing is on the ___

10 Children's game with fast-paced tossing 11

Disney queen who ruled Arendelle

25 Assistant that might read your iMessages

31 Big gulp 33 Resolution made with resolution 35 100 Grand and PayDay 36 "Succession" channel 38 Tumbled 42 Stop suddenly 43 They're twice as valuable as nickels 47 Lead writer?

50 Wise community member 51 Takes a furtive look 53 Author Okorafor 54 Wines and ___ 55 Dole (out) 57 Electric guitar accessory 58 Instructors who are often grad students 59 "Is this ___ taken?"

61 Stubborn animal

Find the answers on p. 25 24

INDY | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | CANDY

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): We need stories almost as much as we need to breathe, eat, sleep and move. It’s impossible to live without them. The best stories nourish our souls, stimulate our imagination and make life exciting.

That’s not to say that all stories are healthy for us. We sometimes cling to narratives that make us miserable and sap our energy. I think we have a sacred duty to de-emphasize and even jettison those stories — even as we honor and relish the rich stories that empower and inspire us. I bring these thoughts to your attention, Capricorn, because you’re in a phase of your cycle when you will especially thrive by disposing of the bad old stories and celebrating the good ones.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20 -Feb. 18): I could be wrong, but I don’t think so: You are smarter and wiser than you realize about the pressing issues that are now vying for your attention.

You know more than you know you know. I suspect this will soon become apparent, as streams of f resh insights rise up f rom the depths of your psyche and guide your conscious awareness toward clarity. It’s OK to squeal with glee every time a healing intuition shows up. You have earned this welcome phase of lucid certainty.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In Indigenous cultures throughout history, shamans have claimed they have the power to converse with and even temporarily become hawks, coyotes, snakes and other creatures. Why do they do that? It’s a long story, but one answer is that they believe animals have intelligences that are different from what humans have. The shamans aspire to learn from those alternate ways of seeing and comprehending the world. Many of us who live in Western culture dismiss this venerable practice, although I’ve known animal lovers who sympathize with it. If you are game for a fun experiment, Pisces, I invite you to try your own version. Choose an animal to learn from. Study and commune with it. Ask it to reveal intuitions that surprise and enrich you.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Your victories-inprogress are subtle. They may not be totally visible to you yet. Let me describe them so you can feel properly confident about what you are in the process of accomplishing. 1) A sustained surge of hard-earned personal growth is rendering one of your problems mostly irrelevant.

2) You have been redefining what rewards are meaningful to you, and that’s motivating you to infuse your ambitions with more soulfulness. 3) You are losing interest in a manipulative game that doesn’t serve you as well as it should. 4) You are cultivating more appreciation for fascinating and useful problems.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Taurus physicist Richard Feynman was a smart and accomplished person who won a Nobel Prize. He articulated a perspective that will be healthy for you to experiment with in the coming weeks.

He said, “I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and there are many things I don’t know anything about.”

Give Feynman’s approach a try, dear Taurus.

Now is an excellent time to explore the perks of questioning everything. I bet you’ll be pleased with how free and easy it makes you feel.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): To earn money, I have worked as a janitor, dishwasher, olive picker, ditch-digger, newspaper deliverer, and 23 other jobs involving hard labor. In addition, I have done eight artistic jobs better suited to my sensitive temperament and creative talents. Am I regretful or resentful about the thousands of hours I toiled at tasks I didn’t enjoy? A little. But mostly I’m thankful for them.

They taught me how to interact harmoniously with a wide array of people. They helped forge my robust social conscience. And they motivated me to eventually figure out how to get jobs I really loved. Now I invite you to take an inventory of your own work life, Gemini. It’s an excellent time to evaluate where you’ve been and where you want to go in the future.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): There are so many kinds of sweetness. Zesty spicy sweetness. Tender balmy fragrant sweetness. Sour or bitter sweetness. Musky piquant sweetness. Luscious succulent sweetness. One of my favorite types of sweetness is described by Cancerian poet Stephen Dunn. He wrote, “Often a sweetness comes as if on loan, stays just long enough to make sense of what it means to be alive, then returns to its dark source. As for me, I don’t care where it’s been, or what bitter road it’s traveled to come so far, to taste so good.” My analysis of the astrological omens suggests to me that you are about to commune with at least three of these sweetnesses, Cancerian.

Maybe most of them.

LEO (July 2 3 -Aug. 22): Author Dan Savage advocates regular indulgence in sloth.

He notes that few of us can “get through 24 hours without a little downtime. Human beings need to stare off into space, look out the window, daydream, and spend time every day being indolent and useless.” I concur, and I hope you will indulge in more downtime than usual during the coming weeks. For the sake of your long-term mental and physical health, you need to relax extra deep and strong now — to recharge your battery with delicious and delightful abandon.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): According to my deep and thorough analysis of your astrological rhythms, your mouth will soon be a wonder of nature. The words emerging from your lips will be extra colorful, precise and persuasive.

Your taste buds will have an enhanced vividness as they commune with the joys of food and drink. And I suspect your tongue and lips will exult in an upgrade of aptitude and pleasure while plying the arts of sex and intimate love. Congratulations, Mouthy Maestro!

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In addition to being a masterful composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) played the piano, violin, harp, bassoon, clarinet, horn, flute, oboe and trumpet. His experience led him to believe that musicians best express their skills when they play fast. It’s more challenging to be excellent when playing slowly, he thought. But I will invite you to adopt the reverse attitude and approach in the coming weeks, Libra. According to my astrological analysis, you will be most successful if you work gradually and incrementally, with careful diligence and measured craftiness.

stock.adobe.com, generated by AI

News of the

WEIRD

BY THE EDITORS AT ANDREWS MCMEEL

Safety third

Two men in Minnesota were shot on Oct. 22 in separate incidents involving child shooters who were participating in youth hunting events, CBS News reported. In the first case, a 45-year-old dad from Becker Township had his 12-year-old daughter in a deer stand, where she had just successfully shot a deer. But then she accidentally shot her father in the leg. Another family member applied a tourniquet until emergency personnel arrived. In the second incident, a 50-yearold man was trying to explain to a 10-year-old boy how to unload a hunting rifle when the child accidentally pulled the trigger, somehow hitting both of the adult’s buttocks. No news on the condition of either victim.

Perfect climbing

While Amir Khan and Kat Warren of Washington, D.C., were visiting the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Oct. 19, they became stranded along with other tourists at the top when a man was discovered climbing the structure. On hand with the couple was Associated Press reporter Pat Eaton-Robb, who was also visiting.

Lucky for them, Eaton-Robb caught the moment when Khan decided to propose.

He had been planning to do so later that evening at a restaurant, but “she always wanted to be proposed to on or under the Eiffel Tower. So I figured, ‘This is it, this is the moment,’” Khan said. While romance was in the air atop the tower, police were arresting the climber, who

was inexplicably carrying a banner that said something about singer-songwriter Billie Eilish.

Cheers to Debbie!

Members of the Auburn, Massachusetts, fire department knew Debbie Virgilio well, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported on Oct. 25. First responders had transported her frequently during her final years, but when she passed last year, they had no idea of the plans she had made for them. Virgilio left the department $525,000 in her will; they used the money to buy a new ambulance and updated equipment. Fire Chief Stephen Coleman said, “It means a lot to me, as the chief, to know my people made such an impact on somebody, they’re willing to donate half a million dollars to us when they pass. It’s a testament to the men and women of this department.”

Cheers to Debbie.

Just say neigh

Jad K. Shipman, 48, of Longview, Washington, was arrested on Oct. 17 on two counts: soliciting a prostitute and firstdegree attempted animal cruelty, Big Country News reported. A vice detective who had been monitoring an online forum identified Shipman in August.

Allegedly, he offered $440 for a person to come to Longview and sexually touch him and his miniature horse. Shipman is out on bail and prohibited from being around animals.

FRENEMY MINE

S

INCE SEPT. 20, ALEJANDRO RIOS, 25, HAS BECOME THE TARget of a dive-bombing magpie who follows him as he rides his bike home from work. Fox News reported on Oct. 18 that the Brisbane, Australia, resident first felt something hit his head more than a month ago. “I ... thought a piece of fruit had fallen off a tree or someone had hit me,” he said. Rios’ helmet and eyewear protect him from injury, but the bird is persistent. Scientists say magpies remember faces and this one is likely protecting his young. “It’s a bit of a friend and a bit of a nemesis,” Rios said of his attacker. “I want to say it’s my friend — but it really, really hates me.”

PUZZLE ANSWERS

Crossword

Find the familiar phrase, saying or name in this arrangement of letters.

MINI SUDOKU X

Complete the grid so that every row, column, diagonal and 3x2 box contain the numbers 1 to 6.

SUDOKU X

Complete the grid so that every row, column, diagonal and 3x3 box contain the numbers 1 to 9.

CANDY | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | INDY

25

Slytherin

LGBTQ Courtesy ICONS

Focus

Networking with pride

LGBTQ-friendly businesses carve out niche

BY AMANDA MILLER LUCIANO

ICONS owners Josh Franklin (left) and John Wolfe perform at their LGBTQ-friendly bar.

O

n Nov. 19, it will be one year since a gunman opened fire inside LGBTQ-friendly Club Q, killing five people and injuring 17 others. The hate crime paints a picture of Colorado Springs as a less accepting place, though some LGBTQ business owners say they don’t view it that way. But the city also lacks an abundance of loud and proud LGBTQ businesses or a publicly visible network of queer business owners that many cities do cultivate.

Type “Colorado Springs gay-owned business… LGBTQ business… queer business” into a search engine and not much comes up.

There’s a skinny nondescript list of a 26

dozen or so businesses on the Colorado Springs Chamber & EDC website. When you click the links to the business websites, most don’t make a statement about being queer-owned or even queer-friendly businesses on their Home or About pages.

There is a “Networking with Pride” group on Facebook, says Jeffrey Jensen, who owns Urbanus Designs, an architectural design business, and Consign & Design shop on Garden of the Gods Road.

“I’m hoping ‘Networking with Pride’ is going to be a precursor to an LGBTQ chamber,” Jensen says.

But he says creating and building an official chamber of commerce, like those that exist in other cities, would likely take

COLORADO SPRINGS BUSINESS JOURNAL | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | CSBJ.com

a bigger investment of time and money than the queer business community could commit to making right now. In the meantime, he has a rainbow sticker on his front door, advertising to those entering that the shop is a safe space for the LGBTQ community.

Reactions to the sticker, when there are any, are positive.

“Thank goodness it has not been negative,” Jensen says. “The sticker potentially could be putting a target on my store. For those who would be so inclined, they know where they could try to inflict some pain.

It’s a risk that me and my staff have to live with.”

Of course, Jensen says his business is one where customers are never surprised

to learn he is gay.

“I’m a stereotype of a stereotype,” Jensen says. “I’m an interior designer. No one is clutching the pearls when I start talking about my husband.”

He says he knows the road can be harder for other LGBTQ business owners.

Caleb David, owner of David Commercial Real Estate, was raised an evangelical Christian and grew up in a missionary family in India.

“I always knew I was different,” David says. “But I went the traditional evangelical way of marrying a woman and having a family.”

During the pandemic, he realized he had

to come out. The revelation tore everything in his life apart, including his commercial real estate business.

“I lost 80 to 85 percent of my book of business,” David says.

He ventured out on his own and started a new brokerage. He displays a rainbow icon next to his website in search engines and works with a lot of LGBTQ business owners and nonprofits to find commercial spaces.

“To start a company from scratch is a lot of work,” he says. “I had to go back to the drawing board and had to rediscover who I am as a person and as a business owner.”

He was careful in his branding and marketing to show that he is inclusive. Being queer is part of David’s identity now. And since his business bears his name, he doesn’t shy away from having that identity be a part of his business.

“There are a lot of queer-owned businesses in town, but very often they are quiet because they don’t feel safe,” David says.

“Creating space and building community is the purpose of what we do in commercial real estate. I wanted to make sure minorityowned businesses and queer-owned businesses would have a commercial broker they felt safe with.”

Jensen grew up in Colorado Springs and moved away for design and merchandising careers in New York and London before returning in 2015 with his husband to care for his parents.

He says the community is a much more comfortable place today than it was when he was growing up in Briargate in the 1980s.

However, there’s more work to do, Jensen says. He is on the board of Inside Out Youth Services and works to make Colorado Springs an even safer place for the LGBTQ community.

Josh Franklin grew up in Colorado Springs in the 1990s. He and his partner, John Wolfe, were both professional Broadway performers. They moved to Colorado Springs at the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020. Franklin says Colorado Springs is a much friendlier and more comfortable place today than it was when he was growing up here. But he wanted to be part of improving it further.

“When you googled ‘gay bar’ or gayanything, nothing came up,” Franklin says.

“We wanted to change that narrative.”

On Halloween in 2020, they opened ICONS, a gay piano bar where the bartenders break into song and there are regular live drag performances. ICONS just celebrated its third anniversary.

Franklin and Wolfe had friends who had performed in traveling productions in Colorado Springs and the two knew there were people who would be looking for a safe space Downtown where they could have a good time.

provide a safe space for the LGBTQ comThey didn’t think they would be eligible munity. And they feel that mission is even for bank loans to start the business since more important now. they didn’t have a background in bar ownICONS is one of only a few outwardly ership. So they used retirement savings and queer gathering spaces in pitched the idea to friends town. of friends who could loan “There are some other them the start-up capital. businesses that are dipping “Everybody loved it — their toes in the water,” and everybody also said Wolfe says. “There are a lot you can’t call it a gay bar,” of pride flags and rainbow Wolfe says. “And that was stickers Downtown. But we a non-negotiable for us. We don’t know of anyone fully wanted to celebrate queer going for it. We would really culture.” support anyone who does.

Wol f e a n d Fr a n k l i n It would be great to have a heard many cautionar y proper Gayborhood.” wo r d s f r o m p e o pl e i n The couple say they feel the community that they great support and optimism shouldn’t advertise themin Colorado Springs as gay selves as a gay bar. The — John Wolfe business owners. warnings were as much, if W hile the shooting at not more, about the viabilClub Q is a deeply felt tragedy for the ity of a gay bar as a business as they were ICONS owners and the gay community about safety. they are part of, they say it shouldn’t define “It’s especially odd since, businesswise, the city or prevent the gay community from there was no competition Downtown,” celebrating queer culture here.

Franklin says.

“It was a truly horrific setback in a city Today, the business is a success. that was growing and improving and build“ICONS is bright and loud and celing a better reputation. We were making ebratory, and all of the things we weren’t such progress and we still are. But what allowed to be in the ’90s,” Franklin says. bothers me is the national impact,” FrankSince the shooting at Club Q, Franklin lin says, “because I don’t think it reflects and Wolfe have invested heavily in security where we are.” CSBJ at ICONS. The whole point of the bar is to

It would be great to have a proper Gayborhood.

n

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Tuesday, December 5, 2023 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM | The Antlers Hotel

REGISTER HERE

FESTIVE MENU, FUN, ENTERTAINMENT, GIVEAWAYS, AND GIFTS TO ALL ATTENDEES! Join us in celebrating our successes of 2023 and learn about our strategic plans for serving the community, our members, and business partners to help them elevate and grow their businesses in 2024.

The luncheon is open to both members and prospective members.

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5 Questions

BY KATHERINE ATHERTON Emily Hampson

Joe Saliba Snapp Trash

J

oe Saliba wants Colorado Springs to reconsider how it thinks about trash and recycling.

Before graduating from UCCS in 2007, Saliba was already delving into unconventional waste solutions with a company called Wine Punts, which repurposes wine bottles into custom glassware. He’s since moved from the recycling bin to the trash can with his Snapp Trash App, Colorado’s first on-demand trash collection and recycling company.

Did your time in college spark your entrepreneurial side?

Well, I went to Hilo [University of Hawai’i] first for two years on a golf scholarship. And I guess my experience there was my first time away from Colorado living on my own, and Hawai’i is an interesting place.

It’s slow. Everything’s ‘tomorrow’ and my professors didn’t wear shoes sometimes. It was great for a while — then it was kind of slow-paced for me. I was always ready to go on to the next new thing. My mind was racing. So I came to UCCS. ... I’ve always had an entrepreneurship style, wanting to create things. I started a company while I was at UCCS called Wine Punts. It’s still going today; I’m still a third owner. I learned a lot through that and it kind of led me to Snapp Trash.

Let the customer decide when they put the trash out.

What inspired you to create an ondemand trash and recycling service, and why did you choose to make it an app?

Trash isn’t exciting. Recycling is not exciting. But it’s necessary.

When I forgot to put trash out one day I’d be upset. It’d be a snowstorm or windy and I’d see trash going down the street, and that’s not good. That’s not good for any community.

The question became how do we simplify this? What came to us was: Let the cus-

tomer decide when they put the trash out.

Not only is it more efficient, but it is better for the environment. And it just makes way more sense than being forced to do what the company tells you to do.

Everybody’s on their phone these days — there’s no question about that. And if you can roll your trash can out and say ‘Pick it up,’ you’ll never forget your trash.

That was the idea behind just using the app.

We bounced around the idea of somebody being able to do it on a website as well, and we said no, we’re gonna do it strictly on the app. It simplifies everything.

What systems, cities and methods did you look at before deciding that there was a niche for on-demand trash collection?

We were mainly focused on our community first and seeing how we can help here.

We do have the idea of expanding to others,

but if we can help the community here and the consumers want it, they will want it in other markets. Our demographic, Colorado Springs, is actually perfect. I don’t think it works as well in New York or San Francisco. I think having single-family homes and an abundance of them that are close, concentrated in small areas is a better market for this. Not to say that those [other] places wouldn’t benefit from it. I think it’ll happen down the road, but proving the model and knowing that this is what people want is the first step, and that’s what we’re doing.

What areas of Colorado are you currently serving? Do you plan to expand to other areas?

We’re serving a handful of ZIP codes right now: 80903, 80907, 80919, 80917 and 80906. We will expand as we go. We’ll expand adjacent to those ZIP codes first.

The whole idea is to be efficient, but ultimately, we will expand to the entire state.

How do you think this service will benefit Colorado Springs as the city expands?

I think it will give the community more options. I’m a fan of competition and, unfortunately, we haven’t had the best options in trash. One thing that I think was missing with the other traditional trash companies is communication. We’re very big on having that open line of communication. If they have a problem, we’re there to fix it. They’re not going to have to worry about trying to get through to somebody.

I think the other positive to this is there are no contracts. With traditional options you pay three months in advance. Then if the first week, they don’t pick up your trash, you’re kind of stuck. With this, you only pay for the service when it’s necessary. That’s it. CSBJ

CSBJ.com | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | COLORADO SPRINGS BUSINESS JOURNAL

n

29

Front

stock.adobe.com

The

Hiring veterans:

Advice for businesses

H

iring veterans can be a big win for businesses, especially those in industries with worker shortages. The combination of leadership skills and training means veterans are excellent workers — and many business owners say that the rewards far outweigh any negatives.

We’ve asked local business owners why they hire veterans and how they Paul Price ensure veterans are successful in the workplace.

What veterans bring

• Leadership values. For Mark Stafford, CEO of Delta Solutions and Strategies, it’s all about the leadership ability that comes with military service.

“They learn leadership early,” he said, “and it’s hard to find that from another program. And the Army teaches them to be part of a team. I always tell our veterans: You’re still part of a team; there’s still the camaraderie you are used to. It’s just in a different form.”

• Skills, certifications and clearances. Military members are highly trained. And for a tech company like Delta Solutions, that training is invaluable. Stafford says the bonus is that many veterans have a security clearance, which saves time and money on government contracts that require workers to be vetted at the highest level.

“That skill set, combined with the certifications and the clearance make military members just invaluable to us,” he said. “About 65 percent of our workforce are veterans — I just retired from the Air Force Reserve myself — and they’ve been great for our business.”

• A willingness to learn, honesty and a strong work ethic.

Tracie Dominguez, owner of HomeWell Care Services, 30

says it’s hard to find workers with the right kind of work ethic combined with values that veterans possess.

“You can teach people how to lift someone out of bed or to care for our elderly folks,” she said, “but that work ethic and adaptability, that’s hard to come by. Veterans are used to assimilating into different organizations every few years; they get deployed. They learn fast.”

Matt Greene, owner of MAVericks Construction LLC, says that in today’s tight workforce, the military values of integrity, honesty and hard work are vital for his construction business.

“I spent 23 years in the Air Force,” he said. “I decided to start my business because of two societal challenges — thousands of veterans who need to make a living, and the very tight job market in the trades. People are retiring and the young people don’t want to do these jobs.”

• Values and integrity. “You can’t teach those values,” Greene said, “at least not in a short amount of time. You can’t teach showing up on time and working hard; you can’t really teach that doing the job well for the client is vital.

And veterans do all that.”

Advice to businesses

It’s a mistake to paint all veterans with the same brush.

As a cross-section of society from different backgrounds, veterans also had different experiences in the military.

That’s why it’s important to learn about those experiences to meet any required accommodations. Here are some tips for hiring and keeping veteran employees.

• Emphasize culture. At Delta Solutions and Strategies, each employee is given a mentor on their first day to help navigate the company culture and processes.

“The other thing that makes us unique is that the COO and I meet every single employee on their first day, and then we follow up with them,” Stafford said. “That means we follow up in two weeks, in three months, six months and a

COLORADO SPRINGS BUSINESS JOURNAL | Nov. 8 - 14, 2023 | CSBJ.com

year. We just want to make sure that we are there for them.

• Meet their needs. Sometimes veterans might need assistance with transitioning from military rules to a civilian workforce, Stafford says. He’s learned that it can take up to six months to really transition and feel comfortable at work.

Usually, all it takes is time.

“Sometimes you have higher-level [non-commissioned officers] or officers and they are used to being in charge,” he says, “and they aren’t in charge of everything here. It can take some getting used to.”

But meeting needs can also mean providing additional assistance.

“It’s important that people ask for help,” Greene said.

“And sometimes, we have workers who don’t realize how broken they really are. They think because they do [physical training] every morning, they’re fine. And we’re in a labor-intensive field. Sometimes they find they can’t be on their knees in a garage for eight hours.”

In that case, Greene says he helps them find other positions better suited for them. And sometimes, he provides the right kind of connection to other resources for posttraumatic stress disorder or other challenges.

“It’s about working together,” he said, “and finding those solutions to make it work for everyone.”

Paul Price is director of operations for Mt. Carmel Veterans Service Center.

The Front is a collaboration between the Colorado Springs Business Journal, Mt. Carmel Veterans Service Center and its partners.

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31

VETERANS DAY In November 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words: “To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations...”

Armistice Day was primarily a day set aside to honor veterans of World War I, but in 1954, after World War II had required the greatest mobilization of Soliders, Sailors, Marines and Airmen in the Nation’s history; after American forces had fought aggression in Korea, the 83rd Congress amended by striking out the word “Armistice” and inserting in its place the word “Veterans.” With the approval of President Dwight D. Eisenhower this legislation on June 1, 1954, November 11 became a day to honor American veterans of all wars.

The observance of Veterans Day not only preserves the historical significance of the date, but helps focus attention on the important purpose of Veterans Day: A celebration to honor America’s veterans for their patriotism, love of country, and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good.

– U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

TO DAY & E V E RY DAY

Your Sacrifice will Never be Forgotten

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