CS Independent Vol. 1 Issue 16 | December 12, 2024
+ IN THIS ISSUE | DESPITE CLOSURE, ROCKRIMMON SUPPORTERS FIGHT ON | A BELOVED CC ARTS PROGRAM LOSES FUNDING | STAND-UP COMEDIANS FIND HEALING IN HUMOR
A Pikes Peak Media Company
PUBLISHER
Francis J. Zankowski
EDITORIAL
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Ben Trollinger
REPORTERS Andrew Rogers, Cannon Taylor, Noel Black and Karin Zeitvogel
CONTRIBUTORS
Lauren Ciborowski, Bob Falcone, Dave Marston, Patricia J. Rettig, Meg Mortitz, Jeffrey Payne and Rob Brezny
COPY EDITOR Willow Welter
SALES
AD DIRECTOR JT Slivka
ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES
Monty Hatch, Josh Graham, Carla Wink and Karen Hazlehurst
AD COORDINATOR
Lanny Adams
ART & PRODUCTION
SENIOR EDITORIAL DESIGNER
Adam Biddle
OPERATIONS
DIGITAL AND MARKETING MANAGER
Sean Cassady
DISTRIBUTION MANAGER
Kay Williams
Mayor Yemi Mobolade is
council members after a recent Daily Wire report. | Courtesy: City of Colorado Springs
Zeitvogel
By BEN TROLLINGER • ben.trollinger@ppmc.live
It’s all over but the shouting — that’s the idiom that’s been kicking around in my head since it was announced back in October that the Rockrimmon Library would close at the end of last month.
In one sense, the phrase might refer to the library board’s intransigence toward the public outcry following the shock announcement. The board members had made up their minds, and no amount of dissent — or shouting, or facts, for that matter — would change that. (Or will it? Read Karin Zeitvogel’s story on Page 9 for more)
In another sense, I wonder what the rancorous political debates about libraries (drag queen story hours, book banning, the problem of the unhoused, etc.) say about the future of reading. Are we just hollering as the Great Library of Alexandria burns — or, more accurately, molders? Are we just using libraries as the latest ideological battlefield? Or, do we actually still care about books?
In a quotation I never tire of using, the late media critic Neil Postman explains that Aldous Huxley’s dystopia is perhaps more relevant to our present culture than George Orwell’s Oceania:
“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one,” Postman writes in his 1985 classic, “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” “Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley
A LIBRARY IS A REFUGE
feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”
Encouragingly, the fact that Rockrimmon patrons have come out in force to save their neighborhood library seems to belie those fears. It appears that many of us are still willing to take a stand on behalf of the written word. Many of us refuse to simply drown in Huxley’s sea of irrelevance. We are not afraid to say that libraries are essential to a free society, that they are an invaluable investment in the future.
"IT APPEARS THAT MANY OF US ARE STILL WILLING TO TAKE A STAND ON BEHALF OF THE WRITTEN WORD. ... WE ARE NOT AFRAID TO SAY THAT LIBRARIES ARE ESSENTIAL TO A FREE SOCIETY, THAT THEY ARE AN INVALUABLE INVESTMENT IN THE FUTURE."
The library board, meanwhile, is unyielding in its dark message — libraries are a luxury, not a right. Tell that to the kid who could have discovered a life of intellectual curiosity and purpose at Rockrimmon but now cannot. In Karin Zeitvogel’s story for this issue, she quotes a library supporter named Sam, who said this: “I was born and raised in Rockrimmon, and the Rockrimmon Library was a second home to me. I attended Girl Scout troop meetings, discovered my love for reading, completed summer reading programs and sought refuge there from my abusive family home.” There is immense power
in Sam’s words — a library is a refuge. I fondly remember spending much of my childhood in the stacks of the Skyline Branch Library in Dallas, where I grew up. For my younger self, it was a beautiful, architecturally interesting building with lots of natural light. At the time, libraries didn’t seem all that controversial. They didn’t seem particularly lefty or far-right. They were just the wonderfully silent places where I’d spend countless hours poring over book after book. It’s where I finished my first novel, “Treasure Island,” by Robert Louis Stevenson. From then on, I was hooked.
That library, though I haven’t been back to visit in ages, still stands today in a historically poor and working-class neighborhood. For many there, it’s still a lifeline, a place of sanity, hope and peace. That’s something we should fight for. In fact, that’s really the only reason we should ever fight — to protect something we love. I know I don’t have to tell that to Rockrimmon supporters, though. They’re just getting started.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR must be signed with full name and include daytime phone number, full address, or email address. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. We reserve the right to edit all submissions. | EMAIL ADDRESS: letters@ppmc.live
MIPSTERZ, The Mirage (detail), 2022. Courtesy the artist.
NEWS .
Under Fire
AA hate crime hoax, an FBI investigation, and a conservative media blitz has engulfed City Hall. Will Mayor Mobolade weather the onslaught?
By NOEL BLACK noel.black@ppmc.live
t a time when conservatives want to roll back everything they perceive as “woke,” the story is irresistible: The first elected Black mayor of a white conservative city is tied to a hate crime hoax that might have helped get him elected. On the eve of his historic victory, he had received cryptic texts from one “Phoenixxx Ugrilla,” the alias of Derrick Bernard Jr., another Black man and small-time local media personality who recently got convicted of murdering a rival rapper and who, along with two accomplices, has been accused by the Feds of scrawling the N-word across the mayor’s yard sign, sticking a cross in the
ground and burning it, and then recording the shocking tableau on an iPhone for an instantaneous injection into the social media bloodstream as a “hate crime.”
It’s got everything the Jussie Smollett hoax had but the celebrity and some inconveniently missing facts. But who needs all the facts for a story this good?
It’s not just irresistible; it’s red meat on a hook for everyone who might want to see the mayor go down, including his political rivals. Before anyone can blink, the story has spread across the world. African media outlets have falsely announced on Twitter/X that the mayor is not only under indictment for lying to the FBI, but he’s in jail!
If it all sounds like the now-proverbial
“fake news,” well … let’s unwind things and talk about why the reporting raises even more questions than the allegations it makes against Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade.
On Nov. 21, The Daily Wire, an openly conservative online news source based in Washington, D.C. published an article by Luke Rosiak titled “Mayor Lied In Hate Crime Hoax Probe But DOJ Refused To Charge Him, FBI Official Says.” The article, which cites a single unnamed “FBI official,” alleges that Mayor Mobolade was aware of, and lied to the FBI about, a racially charged incident during the mayoral run-off race with Wayne Williams on April 23, 2023.
For those not yet familiar with the
dustup, an indictment released by The United States District Court for the District of Colorado (USDCDC) on Nov. 12 names Derrick Patrick Bernard Jr., 35, Ashley Danielle Blackcloud, 40, and Deanna Crystal West, 38, as the alleged perpetrators of the hoax.
According to the indictment, “BERNARD, BLACKCLOUD, and WEST worked together to place a wooden cross in front of that campaign sign. Red spray paint, similar in kind to a can later found in the passenger compartment of BLACKCLOUD’s car, was used to write the word ‘nigger’ on the sign. The wooden cross was then set on fire. An iPhone was used to take a short video of the scene and to take a photograph …”
Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade denies wrongdoing in connection to a hate crime hoax committed on the eve of his historic election. | Courtesy: City of Colorado Springs
The indictment also contains many examples of texts allegedly sent from Bernard to Mobolade before and after the incident. It also references a fiveminute phone call between the two several weeks before the runoff. It’s unclear how the texts and the record of the phone call landed in the hands of the FBI, but Derrick Bernard Jr. was recently sentenced to life in prison for ordering the murder of rapper William Underwood, aka “FYL Jackk.” Mobolade’s side of the texts are not revealed, and it’s unclear to what, if any, extent he may have replied. (Most of Bernard’s texts are contained in the indictment, which is available online).
According Rosiak’s original article in the Daily Wire, an anonymous source said that Mobolade was interviewed at least three times by the FBI, during which, “Mobolade explicitly and strenuously denied contact with Bernard, the official said. The official said there were dozens of messages between Bernard and the now-mayor. The official also said Mobolade was scrolling through his phone as a memory aide [sic] during the interview, but that ‘he was literally skipping over text messages,’ not realizing that the bureau had already obtained them elsewhere.”
The Nov. 21 article has since circulated widely online. A follow-up article by Rosiak that skewers Mobolade for characterizing himself as the “victim” of the hoax and for criticizing the Daily Wire’s assertions without clearly stating whether he lied to the FBI was published on Dec. 2. City Councilman Dave Donelson also brought the matter up in the Nov. 25 City Council work session. He has since called on the mayor to explicitly state whether he lied to the FBI. The Gazette’s coverage of the issue includes an opinion written by George Brauchler, the Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln County district attorneyelect. The piece takes a strident, almost indignant stance on the matter, which is notable given that he doesn’t live or work here, or otherwise have an obvious dog in the fight.
While the allegations against Mobolade, if true, would be damning, Rosiak’s article and its spinoffs are problematic for a number of reasons.
First, reporter Luke Rosiak — who previously worked at The Gazette’s sister paper The Washington Examiner — did not reply to The Independent’s offer to
confirm his source and maintain their anonymity. Allowing us, or another credible journalism outlet, to confirm the source and their information while giving Rosiak full credit would dispel any doubts about the credibility of the reporting.
Corey Hutchins, the director of the Journalism Institute at Colorado College and a board member of the Colorado chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, says anonymous sources can be necessary at times, but the journalist using them has to be trustworthy and accurate.
“The problem with the anonymous source is that we don’t know if it’s a legitimate source or not. It could be an FBI agent. But because they aren’t named, we have to trust the source, and there are reasons why I might not, given what else is in that story.”
To that point, Hutchins notes that Rosiak also missed several of the basic facts of the story, referring to Mobolade as “a leftwing candidate” and, later, as “the first black mayor of Colorado Springs.”
Mobolade is, in fact, “unaffiliated.” He has since championed a wide range of initiatives including a new police training academy, which could hardly be called
a left-wing cause. And Leon Young was the first Black mayor of Colorado Springs after he was appointed when Bob Isaac retired.
“We just have to trust the source of this information that it’s legit and well vetted because of the anonymous sourcing. When I personally saw the story calling the mayor a ‘left-wing’ candidate, that gave me pause,” says Hutchins.
Second, Rosiak provides no actual documents to back his claims or the claims of his anonymous source. Had Rosiak’s source provided him with some kind of verifiable documentation of these allegations, the article would, again, be far more credible.
Third, The Daily Wire is an unabashedly partisan news source (their About page states: “The Daily Wire does not claim to be without bias. We’re opinionated, we’re noisy, and we’re having a good time.”) It was founded by the conservative commentator and podcaster Ben Shapiro and puts a conservative spin on most of its articles. While this doesn’t necessarily discredit their reporting, it’s important to be aware of it, particularly when it’s reporting on politics. And it’s enough to cast doubt on a story that makes major,
anonymously sourced allegations.
“Do I think this person [Luke Rosiak] made it up wholesale? Probably not,” notes Hutchins. “But could somebody be taking them for a ride or something? It’s possible. What is an FBI ‘official’?”
Fourth, Rosiak has demonstrated a loose relationship with the facts in his previous reporting. In an Aug. 5, 2023, New York Times Magazine article titled “How a Sexual Assault in a School Bathroom Became a Political Weapon,” reporter Charles Homans details how Rosiak bent the facts about the sexual assault of a girl by a male who occasionally wore a dress to insinuate that the boy was transgender in order to put a conservative political spin the story. And in 2020, Rosiak’s reporting promoted unfounded conspiracy theories about a group of Muslim and Pakistani immigrants who worked in the IT department of the House of Representatives in Washington.
Fifth, the list of questions that Rosiak sent to Mobolade, which he lists in his Dec. 2 article, are more intent on ensnaring the mayor in black-and-white statements, especially since he’s been named as a witness in the case against Derrick Bernard.
Derrick Bernard, aka “Phoenixxx Ugrilla” in the Family Flavors the Slide recording studio. | Courtesy: Derrick Bernard’s Facebook page
NEWS .
To be clear, Mobolade publicly expressed doubts about the legitimacy of the supposed hate crime at the time it happened, has since denied any involvement in the hoax and has stated that he cooperated fully with the FBI. Yes, it’s entirely conceivable that the mayor left out information as it’s characterized by Rosiak’s alleged source. But that doesn’t mean he lied, and it lacks context. Peppering him with such loaded questions (like the infamous “When did you stop beating your wife?”) is a well-known rhetorical strategy used when trying to corner an opponent in a debate. Not only does it not allow for nuance or context, it doesn’t leave much room to respond at all. And the fact of the matter is that the mayor has been named as a witness in the case, which his office says is set to begin in January, since he’ll be called as a witness, at which point the media will have ample opportunity to scrutinize his responses and learn, definitively, whether he is under investigation or indictment.
Sixth, Rosiak’s article implies that there was a racial element to the Department of Justice’s alleged failure to indict Mobolade. He quotes his source as saying, “The initial response from the Department of Justice was ‘we can’t indict the first black mayor of Colorado Springs.” Whether or not this is true, the FBI does have a long, dark history of unfairly targeting, investigating, spreading disinformation and sometimes killing Black leaders through programs like J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO. And this unwarranted scrutiny and harassment still happens today. Activists in Colorado Springs affiliated with the Chinook Center on the city’s southeast side were targeted and infiltrated by the FBI as recently as 2020. In an article titled “The Honey Trap” published in The Intercept on May 30, 2020, reporter Trevor Aaronson details how the FBI sent Colorado Springs Police Department officer April Rogers undercover among local activists and tried to entrap them.
“The FBI investigation in Colorado Springs, 70 miles south of Denver, shows that federal law enforcement had embarked on a broad, and until now, secret strategy to spy on racial justice
groups and try to entrap activists in crimes,” wrote Aaronson.
Seventh, let us not forget that the allegations against Bernard and his co-defendants in the indictment are still allegations.
Finally, Mobolade is not the only local politician to have interacted with Derrick Bernard and his associates named in the indictment. Outgoing County District 4 Commissioner Longinos Gonzales Jr., who has joined Dave Donelson in demanding that Mobolade state definitively whether he lied to the FBI, was among the speakers announced at
wrong, but after many weeks of our own reporting, investigation, and questioning of the mayor on this matter during which we withheld judgement, we were unable to confirm Rosiak’s assertions or turn up any other evidence to support his claims. And questions remain: What did the mayor discuss with Derrick Bernard for five minutes? If he suspected, or knew that it was a hoax at the time, why didn’t he report it to the police or the FBI? Will Rosiak’s alleged source come forward or be confirmed by another credible news source? Does Luke Rosiak’s supposed source have an axe to grind with their colleagues or superiors who may have, in fact, gone easy on him during these interviews? We simply don’t know the answers to any of these questions yet, and may not know more until Bernard, Blackcloud and West’s trial in January.
All that said, as Donald Trump — who has built much of his career and political standing in the media by criticizing and discrediting the media — prepares for his second term as president, we’re almost certain to see an explosion of poorly sourced, partisan articles of this kind. And, says Corey Hutchins, we’d likely see more of it whether Trump had been elected or not.
a July 2022 event organized by Derrick Bernard and his Family Flavors the Slide WBN organization.
None of this adds up to anything definitive one way or the other, and none of this is to say that Luke Rosiak is wrong, or that he’s lying about his source. But in the new choose-yourown-adventure online media landscape where people tend to favor news sources that confirm their biases, Rosiak’s article offers up a BINGO card of current conservative talking points without covering all the squares.
Again, this doesn’t mean he’s necessarily
“I think we’d see more of it regardless of who the next president is just because of how cheap and easy it’s becoming to produce, and the incentives for producing it,” says Hutchins. And, he adds, “I think we’ve kind of reached a point where it doesn’t matter if this was in The Gazette, The Independent or some online tabloid we’ve never heard of. People in city government are acting on this information.”
It’s also likely we’re going to see more media reporting from outside our communities when events match political agendas in Washington and elsewhere, which makes it even more important that readers become “media fluent,” says Hutchins.
“A story like this shows why having a better understanding of how to consume media is important, whether you’re an average reader in Colorado Springs getting a text or email link from someone to something posted somewhere online or a member of City Council.”.
Mayor Yemi Mobolade was the subject of a recent story in the Daily Wire that has some members of city council calling for answers. | Courtesy: City of Colorado Springs
‘NOT GIVING UP’ Rockrimmon Library backers fight on to keep local library open
by KARIN ZEITVOGEL karin.zeitvogel@ppmc.live
Rockrimmon Library closed its doors on the last day of November in what many feared would be the last time it would serve northwest Colorado Springs as a branch of the Pikes Peak Library District. But at the last minute, as supporters vowed to keep the pressure on to retain an easily accessible community meeting place and library in their neighborhood, the PPLD board announced it would vote again on closing the much-loved library at a meeting Dec. 4.
“We’re cautiously hopeful,” said Elizabeth Carter, a member of the grassroots Save Rockrimmon Library movement.
Backers of the library have held weeks of eleventh hour meetings with PPLD officials, who cited financial constraints when they announced in October that the library would go dark Nov. 30. They also attended City Council meetings and kept the discussion about closing the library front and center.
They pleaded with City Council members to add their names to a letter of support for the library, and eventually got five of them — a majority — to back their cause. At the beginning of the fight, only one council member, Dave Donelson, was in their corner.
Library patrons Chris Johnson and Joe Pelka met with PPLD CEO Teona Shainidze-Krebs, the district’s Chief Financial Officer Randy Green, and board of trustees member Julie Smyth four days before the shutdown to discuss the district’s finances and other library-related issues.
Johnson described the 2 ½-hour meeting, during which he and Pelka gave the board a list of questions library supporters wanted answered, as “cordial.”
The two sides discussed issues like TABOR — the 1992 Colorado amendment that limits the amount of revenue the state can retain and spend — the PPLD budget and the board’s search for a replacement building in the Rockrimmon neighborhood.
Johnson, who is the chief financial officer of a Colorado Springs company, said he
presented the board members with his analysis of the PPLD’s budget, showing that it ran a surplus, not a deficit as the PPLD has insisted.
“They explained that they budget as if they are fully staffed … and that’s why they’re showing they’re $3 million under budget on personnel,” he said.
“But it doesn’t take that long into the year to know that you’re not going to fill all those positions,” he said. “By February, you already know you have however-much from January for the jobs you didn’t fill.”
LIBRARY BACKERS ‘UNCONVINCED’
Although the PPLD officials were “very gracious with their time” and “gave their answers,” Johnson said, “they in no way convinced me that they do not have a quarter of a million dollars available to keep this building open for one more year.”
Library users have been asking for the PPLD to extend the lease for another year to give both sides time to find a longer-term solution that would allow them to keep a library in their neighborhood.
The landlord has offered to cut the rent and the length of the lease, from five years to one year, and the Save Rockrimmon Library group has raised tens of thousands of dollars in pledges to keep the library open.
Announcing that it was taking a new look at the lease and the decision to shutter Rockrimmon, the board mentioned that Save Rockrimmon Library has raised nearly $70,000 in six weeks.
Previously, they had steadfastly refused to consider what library user Sam — she didn’t give a last name — called, in a comment sent to the Independent, “creative solutions.”
“I was born and raised in Rockrimmon, and the Rockrimmon Library was a second home to me,” she said.
“I attended Girl Scout troop meetings, discovered my love for reading, completed summer reading programs and sought refuge there from my abusive family home. I went there almost every day after school as a middle schooler at Eagleview when my parents couldn’t pick me up. It was a vital piece of my education.”
A SUITABLE BUILDING
Johnson said board member Aaron Salt had mentioned at the Nov. 25 City Council work session that the PPLD was not having much success as they looked for other buildings in northwest Colorado Springs to move the library to.
“Mr. Salt mentioned looking for other buildings in this vicinity … I believe his language was, ‘We haven’t been able to find something that works for all the needs of the district,’” Johnson told the Independent outside Rockrimmon Library on the clear, crisp, sunny Saturday, which was supposed to be its last day of operations.
“So we asked them to provide us with a checklist of what the district requires in a building so that the Realtors in our group, in our community, can begin doing exactly what we’ve always said we want to do, which is to help them,” he said.
“I’m hopeful that we’ll get that and can hold them to their word that they’re open to a different location in the area … although I have a hard time picturing them finding a better location than this.”
OPAQUE PROCESS
Library supporters have complained that they have had no dialogue — until the small meeting attended by Pelka and Johnson, the Tuesday before Rockrimmon closed — with the board since they decided at a retreat in late September to shutter the facility.
After weeks of being met with a wall of silence from the board, Councilman Dave Donelson, who has tried to help keep Rockrimmon open, called for applicants seeking positions on boards and
commissions to submit their resumes before a vote to all nine council members, not just to the two councilors who interview the candidates.
“As we’ve learned with the library board of trustees, who we appoint to these bodies is important,” he said at the Nov. 26 City Council meeting.
Since October, the Independent has emailed several questions and interview requests with most members of the library board to the PPLD but received no answer until December. The emails had been blocked by the PPLD’s firewall, communications director Denise Abbott said. An interview scheduled for Dec. 4 with two members of the board of trustees was too late to be included in this edition of the paper.
Some of the grassroots supporters of the library told the Independent they planned to file a lawsuit against the PPLD, which they say violated Colorado’s Sunshine Act by deciding in a closed-door retreat to shutter Rockrimmon. The 1972 Sunshine Act requires meetings of state and local bodies to be open to the public when public business is discussed or formal action is taken. This includes meetings held by email, but excludes private meetings where public business is not the main topic.
Closing the library is public business.
The lawsuit had not been filed at the time of writing, following the discovery of more information that might help to keep Rockrimmon open, an individual working on the legal filing said, asking to remain anonymous.
Dozens of people hold signs and chant outside Rockrimmon Library in northwest Colorado Springs on Nov. 30, 2024. | Credit: Karin Zeitvogel
‘Utter disregard of personal danger’
First American to die in 1941 Pearl Harbor attack was from Colorado Springs
by KARIN ZEITVOGEL karin.zeitvogel@ppmc.live
In a hallway at Doherty High School in northeast Colorado Springs, shiny plaques adorn a gold-painted wall where a row of drab blue lockers once stood.
As the hallway descends gently to a door leading outside, murals depict submarines, Navy ships and aircraft on one side, and Colorado Springs natives and residents who served in World War II, and other heroes, on the other.
The inspiration for the wall was Aviation Machinist’s Mate 1st Class Daniel Griffin, whom Navy officials believe to be the first American to die in the attack on Pearl Harbor, which drew the United States into World War II.
A Colorado Springs native and graduate of what is now Palmer High School, Griffin was stationed at Kaneohe Bay on the north shore of Oahu in 1941. He wasn’t supposed to be on duty on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, but took a shift for a friend who had had too much to drink the night before.
“When the Japanese attacked the island of Oahu, their first mission was to knock out the PBY reconnaissance planes so (the Americans) couldn’t go find the Japanese aircraft carrier,” Griffin’s grandson, Dr. Dave Griffin, told the Independent.
“So they hit Kaneohe Bay minutes before they went to Pearl Harbor.”
When Griffin saw the incoming Japanese planes, he swam out to his PBY plane, which was in the bay. With another Navy aviator on board, they took off.
“He was about 50 feet off the water when the Japanese shot his plane down, and it burst into flames,” Dave Griffin said.
AMM1C Griffin was able to get out of the plane but was shot and killed as he tried to swim ashore. His body was recovered five days later, and he was buried in a mass grave with other men who were killed in the attack at Kaneohe Bay, the opening salvo of the U.S. involvement in World War II.
His widow, who watched her husband die from the porch of their home, was awarded the Purple Heart that Griffin earned, and Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet, recognized him for his “prompt and efficient action and his utter disregard of personal danger in the defense of Naval Air Station, Kaneohe Bay,” shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
In 1947, he was disinterred from the shared grave he was buried in and moved from Hawaii to Colorado Springs, where he was laid to rest in Evergreen Cemetery, on Hancock Expressway, in a quiet ceremony.
For many years, his story of heroism went unrecognized, said Greg Thomas, a retired Navy captain who has led the Navy Junior ROTC program at Doherty for the past 12 years.
But in 2016, an archivist and historian
for the library district was doing research and found troves of information about Griffin, including a photograph of his burial at Evergreen Cemetery. The archivist passed the information on to Thomas and asked if he might be able to use it in some way.
“So I asked the principal, ‘Can I do something with the hallway?’ because the hall was bare. And he said, ‘You can do whatever you want.’ So I put an ad on Craigslist for a muralist, and (Australianborn artist) Kim Polonka answered,” Thomas said.
And the Hall of Honor in Doherty High School came to be.
MURALS AND PLAQUES
The project began in 2016 with the murals and was expanded earlier this year to include the golden wall with the ships’ plaques, mementos given to officers and senior-ranking seamen when they finish a tour.
The Hall of Honor not only beautifies the high school but helps to preserve naval history that would otherwise be lost, Thomas said,
“I think most of these get thrown away into the landfill because when old people pass away, kids don’t want them, grandkids don’t want what is just some big heavy plaque to hang on a wall,” said Thomas, who buys the plaques on eBay and other websites, and occasionally receives them as gifts.
The wall is lined with scores of plaques, including one from the USS Randolph, on which this reporter’s father served.
“This will be the only high school in America that has this collection,” said Thomas. “This history needs to be saved, and this is a perfect place to do it.”
PSILOCYBIN TREATMENT CENTERS STIRS UP EMOTIONAL DEBATE
Colorado Springs City Council voted 6-3 to extend the setback to 1 mile between psilocybin treatment centers and schools, day cares and rehabilitation facilities, applying the same rule to psilocybin as it voted in for recreational marijuana retailers.
The vote came after hours of debate between councilors and testimony from a dozen members of the public who said they have benefited from using the psychoactive mushrooms to successfully treat behaviors from binge drinking to post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
Councilors Yolanda Avila, Nancy Henjum and David Leinweber voted against the broader setback. The rest of City Council was in favor.
Leinweber became emotional as he testified that some of his employees desperately need natural medicine like psilocybin to treat severe depression and other conditions, and he likened the treatment to the experimental drug that helped him beat cancer when he was a teenager.
The council’s move to extend the setback distance to 1 mile put psilocybin treatment centers on the same level as recreational marijuana, for which council increased the distance between dispensaries that sell rec and schools, day cares and rehab centers from 1,000 feet to 1 mile.
To restrict something that hundreds of people have found relief from — a mental health crisis, a trauma situation or even a physical disability — “I think that’s just really not appropriate,” Leinweber said.
“No child is allowed inside these buildings. It’s not a dispensary. It’s not a place where you sell something. It is literally a center where you receive treatment. So I would just ask my fellow council folks to not lump this in with marijuana sales. … This is not that. This is something different that’s done in a controlled environment,” he said.
Colorado voters passed an initiative in 2022 creating a Division of Natural Medicine that will license treatment spaces where psilocybin can be legally consumed.
Daniel Griffin’s high school yearbook photograph. | Courtesy: Dave Griffin
SPRINGS HEROES
Plans are in the works to honor Griffin with a statue outside his alma mater, Palmer High School.
“We’ve just been kind of plugging away, wanting to help people remember him and … we felt like it’s worth trying to pursue a memorial for him that would be able to tell a story for years to come,” Dave Griffin said.
“The heart of it all is that this is a person from Colorado Springs who might be just like you,” he said. “He went to Palmer High School — Colorado Springs High School at the time — and decided to go into the Navy and see the world. In his short life, he did some pretty heroic things to protect freedom, and I think it’s important that we connect these brave acts that men and women do around the world for our country that allow us to enjoy different freedoms — freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to protest,” he said.
Meanwhile, the mural in the Hall of Honor pays tribute to other Colorado Springs heroes such as Phil Long, a decorated Hellcat fighter pilot, who
flew some 120 missions in the Pacific theater off the USS Enterprise, the most decorated ship of the World War II era, which also features on the wall. After the war, he founded the car dealership that still bears his name.
There’s also Lt. Col. Marion Rodgers, a Tuskegee airman who flew 69 missions in Europe for the Army Air Force during World War II. Rodgers also served in the Korean War.
And above the portrait of Rodgers is a B-24 bearing the nose art and squadron emblem of the plane that Bob Masonheimer flew 30 South Pacific combat missions in during World War II. Masonheimer lived in northern Colorado Springs and “came here (to Doherty) with all of his medals and talked to the kids,” Thomas said.
“As I was taking him back to the old folks’ home, he said, ‘You know, Capt. Thomas, I don’t know how many days I got left, but I’m going to remember today,’” Thomas said, not without a dose of pride.
Masonheimer died before the Hall of Honor was dedicated on Pearl Harbor Day, 2022.
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11
The state has codified and established rules for the licensing, cultivation, manufacturing, testing and clinical use of psilocybin products starting Jan. 1, 2025.
A second hearing will be held by City Council before an ordinance on psilocybin takes effect.
CANNABIS QUESTIONS
Colorado Springs voters chose last month to allow recreational marijuana to be sold out of medical dispensaries that are at least 1,000 feet away from schools, daycare facilities and rehabilitation centers.
But, a month earlier, City Council members had approved an ordinance that increased the setback distance between retailers who sell rec and sensitive populations from 1,000 feet to one mile, effectively ruling out rec sales within Colorado Springs.
Who supersedes who on questions like this? Is it voters who cast their ballots in a general election or the city of Colorado Springs’ nine city council members who pass an ordinance?
The answer is: we’re not sure. But based on the statement below from the city, we think it’s the voters.
“The City Attorney, City Clerk and Planning Director are currently reviewing the existing medical dispensaries and the retail marijuana distance requirements currently in our zoning code, and what City Code changes may be needed to apply the citizen-initiated ordinance,” City of Colorado Springs spokesman Max D’Onofrio said in a statement emailed to the Independent.
“We are aiming to share this analysis by the first of the year,” he said.
other
Retired Navy Capt. Greg Thomas tells the story of Daniel Griffin, the first American to die in the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. A Colorado Springs native, Griffin inspired the mural in Doherty High School’s Hall of Honor. | Credit: Karin Zeitvogel
The wall of ships’ plaques seen through the door of a classroom at Doherty High School. | Credit: Karin Zeitvogel
Councilman David Leinweber stresses the importance of natural medicine like psylocibin to treat depression and
conditions. | Credit: Karin Zeitvogel
AN ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE FOR THE NEXT 14 DAYS. (12/12-12/25)
LEFT/RIGHT BRAIN
Friday, Dec. 13, Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., 7 p.m. fac.coloradocollege.edu/event/spotlight-series-2
Marketed as a “TED Talk meets house party,” the Spotlight Series is a night of art and academia by/about Muslim scholars and creatives. Come meet and the wonderfully creative people in Colorado Springs, both onstage and in the seats next to you. Visit csindy.com/mipsterz to read more.
TOYS AND TUNES
Saturday, Dec. 21, The Black Sheep, 2106 E. Platte Ave., 8 p.m. blacksheeprocks.com
The Black Sheep’s Christmas toy and food drive is the perfect storm of hip-hop and holiday happiness. The night is headlined by Space Cowboys, who are joined by local legends VetLyfe and BullHead*Ded. LavaGato will also make an appearance, proving that there’s really nothing more metal than charity. Finally, Seance will be rounding the night out with electronic jams. Bring non-perishable food items and new toys for a ticket discount at the door.
UNDERSEA PUPPETRY
Thursday, Dec. 12, through Sunday, Dec. 29, Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St. Times vary. fac.coloradocollege.edu/theatre-events/the-little-mermaid
The Fine Arts Center’s production of “The Little Mermaid” includes over 50 silly little fish puppets. I’m sold! Beyond the phenomenal puppets, the play features a cast of human actors gaining vital job experience for whenever they audition to appear on “The Muppets.” Directed by Cory Moosman, “The Little Mermaid” promises a fin-tastic take on an old tale.
HIPPIE HOLIDAYS
Thursday, Dec. 12, through Saturday, Dec. 28, Commonwheel Artists Co-op, 102 Cañon Ave., 10 a.m. Hidden away in Manitou Springs is the Commonwheel Artists Co-op, a collaboration among rotating artists for half a century. The co-op began as a bunch of hippies tying balloons to parking meters and developed into a genuine business practice. Their holiday market of local goods runs through Dec. 28. To read more about Commonwheel’s history, visit csindy.com/commonwheel-50.
HIGH SOCIETY AND HORSES
Thursday, Dec. 12, through Sunday, Dec. 22, Ent Center for the Arts, 5225 N. Nevada Ave. Times vary. entcenterforthearts.org/theatreworks
Wear your heart on your sleeve or keep your guard up? Theatreworks’ adaptation of Jane Austen’s first novel, “Sense and Sensibility,” shows us that maybe a balance between the two is best for everyone. Come for the drama, stay for the … horses? Visit csindy.com/sense-and-sensibility to read more.
Local bands The Amber Gene, Same Dude, Total Cult and Solar Point are playing a “Christmas show,” but don’t worry if you’re sick of Santa slop; The Amber Gene guitarist Ben Maney promises that it’s basically a normal show with a few Christmas covers thrown on the setlist. Don’t miss your chance to check out some of the Springs’ best indie bands!
Thursday, Dec. 12, through Wednesday, Jan. 1, Cottonwood Center for the Arts, 427 E. Colorado Ave. Times vary. cottonwoodcenterforthearts.com
What do hula hoops, construction cones and the U.S. military have in common? DayGlo. Since 1946, their fluorescent paints have been used to enhance the grooviness of T-shirts and the visibility of aircraft and construction workers alike. A group of inspired artists is using neon tones to bring illumination to our Colorado Springs winter, when the sun sets before supper. 2 6 4 1 5 3 7
BRING THE CABIN DOWN
Tuesday, Dec. 17, The Black Sheep, 2106 E. Platte Ave., 8 p.m. blacksheeprocks.com
NIKOLA’S NUTCRACKER
Tuesday, Dec. 17 and Wednesday, Dec. 18, Pikes Peak Center, 190 S. Cascade Ave. Times vary. pikespeakcenter.com
Y’know what’s really missing from Russian ballet? Civic pride. The Colorado Ballet Society are bringing you “The Nutcracker” with a twist – William Jackson Palmer. Yes, the founder of Colorado Springs is a character in this retelling, and the young girl Clara is gifted a magical Nutcracker not by Santa Claus, but by Nikola Tesla. It sounds bizarre, which is exactly why I want to go see it.
JAMS ON TOAST
I was pretty much sold on Ax and the Hatchetmen when I saw the cover art for their single “Peach Trees,” which sported a goofy-looking blue dinosaur reaching its long neck to nab some fruit. I was further sold by the almost underwater tone of the guitar and the saxophone looming in the background. These indie tunes were engineered for joyful yet intimate live performance. 8 9 12
Ska — everyone’s favorite obscure musical genre. I, for one, have gone most of my years without tuning in to ska. But when I checked out classic ska band The Toasters on a whim, I found myself bobbing along to their bouncy bass, upbeat trombone, and rapid-fire vocal delivery. These pieces of toast are getting old, but they sure ain’t growing mold.
Rock Ledge Ranch is ever committed to the old-fashioned. This Christmas, they’re pulling out all the stops with wagon rides, hot cider and a St. Nicholas impersonator. (Not Santa. That would be too modern.) One of these days, I’ll catch St. Nicholas texting. Then, I’ll snatch the phone from his hands, hurl it on the ground and scream, “You’re breaking the immersion!” That’ll show him.
TEXTILE STYLE
Thursday, Dec. 12 through Saturday, Dec. 14, Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St. Times vary. fac.coloradocollege. edu/exhibits/senga-nengudi-warp-trance
Avant-garde artist Senga Nengudi’s instillation “Warp Trance” exhibits an obsession with textile mills. (I promise it’s more interesting than it sounds.) Recordings of textile mills are projected onto punch cards from Jacquard machines. These machines control looms using punched cards in a precursor to computer programming techniques. Nengudi’s exhibit mesmerizes some and invokes dance in others.
CHRISTMAS CABARET
COMPILED BY CANNON TAYLOR 10 13 11 14
Thursday, Dec. 12 through Saturday, Dec. 21, Millibo Art Theatre, 1626 S. Tejon St., 7:30 p.m. themat.org
If you missed “The Modbo Ho Ho” earlier this month (which you probably did, based on how quickly it sold out), get your yearly dose of holiday sauciness at the Millibo Art Theatre’s cabaret “Yule Be Naughty, Please!” There’ll be jazzy tunes, risqué dance numbers and aerial acrobatics, but most importantly, they’ll be offering cheesecake and Swedish glögg cocktails fit for a Viking.
A Colorado Springs improv troupe will be gracing Peak Improv Theater with riotous yet family-friendly Christmas comedy. The name of this troupe? Stick Horses in Pants. (Who knew they could wear them?) The art of improv is all about thinking on your feet; considering that horses of the stick variety don’t even have hooves, it should be an interesting night.
The 14er is a curated list of the best events you should experience in Colorado Springs over the next two weeks. Listed in order from “You can’t miss this!” (1) to “Check it out if you have a chance” (14).
(1)
Photo Credits:
Jamie Cotten, (3-4) Isaiah Downing, (5) The Amber Gene, (8) Rett Rogers, (10) Candidly Created, (11) Millibo Art Theatre, (12) Vultures, (13) Stick Horses in Pants
ARTS&CULTURE .
STUCK IN NEUTRAL
Colorado College pulls funding for arts organization on wheels
by CANNON TAYLOR • cannon.taylor@ppmc.live
The Ford E-350 was equal parts engineering marvel and beautiful art object. The truck was decked out with speakers, a fold-out stage and shelves in the interior so, like some sort of creative Transformer, it could become a host to plays, outdoor concerts and art galleries in any parking lot.
The exterior of the truck was itself a sort of gallery. Painted on one side of the truck was a man in a baseball cap with a massive orange butterfly tucked behind his ear like a pencil. On the other side, people gathered in a floral city. On the rear doors was a psychedelic, translucent rainbow of musical notes, hands and cacti.
A quote from author Adrienne Maree Brown adorned the hood: “Art is not neutral. It either upholds or disrupts the status quo, advancing or regressing justice.”
Giving a tour of the truck was Naomi Henry, a recent graduate in Southwest Studies and program coordinator for Colorado College’s Mobile Arts Program. “This is my full-time job out of college, which is great but unstable,” Henry laughed nervously.
In less than a month, Henry will likely be out of a job. The team of dreamers and drivers behind the program will be forced to turn in the keys to their vibrant truck and discontinue their free community arts
Wood received approval from former Dean of Faculty Claire Garcia, and a truck and relevant equipment were purchased. The designing and engineering of the truck were a collaborative effort among community artists and Colorado College faculty, though it was visiting professor and astrophysicist Dimitri Klebe who did the brunt of the build-out. Without Klebe, the sturdy, fold-out stage that’s almost as long as the truck itself would not have been possible.
Wood’s original dream was to have musicians perform from the top of the truck Carnival-style, but given the railings that would have to be built to approach anything close to safety standards, she was willing to concede that point to Klebe.
Beyond the stage and built-in speakers are a solar power generator, a wheelchairaccessible ramp and even lighting for outdoor events created using advice from the Fine Arts Center’s theater department.
Mobile Arts was ready to roll in May 2021. It was the perfect beast, bringing the arts out of the galleries, museums and universities and straight to the people, entirely for free.
For Hatfield, the chaos didn’t overwhelm the beauty of Mobile Arts’ work. The neon noise of the “Latin Fever” event was particularly memorable. Held in the alleyway next to CO.A.T.I. Uprise, the event featured ultraviolet paintings by Diego Arnedo, music by DJ Juanito Loops and community dance workshops.
“I just remember being like, ‘This is so incredible, like, to have this otherworldly experience,’” Hatfield recalled. “It’s 7 p.m. on a Tuesday, and we’re doing homework and work all day, and then this is where we are now.”
Current student employee Camila Espinosa remembers Mobile Arts’ 2023 Día de los Muertos celebration as the unexpected inception of a new arts program. A young woman with cerebral palsy and her mother had attended the event, and as they crafted “Ojos de Dios” and connected with the staff, they mentioned their desire for arts programming designed for adults with disabilities. In the spring 2024 semester, Mobile Arts launched a monthly workshop, Crafts at the College, that did just that.
project. Colorado College has declined to provide further funding for Mobile Arts.
TRICKED-OUT RIDE
Mobile Arts began as a small idea in the overwhelming gloom of the COVID-19 pandemic. Naomi Wood, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, had been awarded the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Distinguished Professor Fellowship, a three-year position held by tenured faculty members in the humanities department at Colorado College. Wood’s 2021-2023 professorship gave her access to $1 million in grant funding ($250,000 from the NEH and $750,000 from Colorado College). Under the grant, she was expected to develop and fund projects that supported teaching and learning in the humanities at Colorado College.
“I was trying to think of ways to use that money that wouldn’t continue the trend of having virtual round tables, virtual guest speakers, virtual encounters, because the isolation was weighing heavy on me and folks in my community,” Wood said. Then, the idea hit her: the Brazilian Carnival. In Salvador, Brazil, live bands play music from the roofs of trucks as people march and dance alongside them. The idea of outdoor community events was appealing, to say the least.
The idea became reality in early 2021 as
CRUISING THROUGH CHAOS
With a laugh, Colorado College alum Jane Hatfield described the early days of Mobile Arts as “totally chaotic.”
Hatfield was involved in Mobile Arts from May to November 2021 as a student employee. She described her research assistant position as “event planning to the max.”
Students learn important skills while working for Mobile Arts — applying for events permits, establishing and maintaining relationships with artists and community partners and troubleshooting the sound system — but the most vital one is flexibility.
“The whole practice of having an idea and planning it to the best of your capacity, but also knowing that it’s not going to go how you planned whatsoever, is a very important lesson I’ve learned,” Hatfield said.
Co-directors Wood and Nancy Ríos didn’t expect chaos management to be a central theme of working at Mobile Arts, but as event after event experienced some minor or major hiccup, from inclement weather to flat tires, they realized that the adaptability and quick thinking learned by student employees were valuable career skills.
“They’re going to be uncomfortable, and they’re going to be challenged, but we’re there to support them in that,” Ríos said.
“That’s part of what we really seek to do, is make arts accessible. People never have to pay to participate in any of our programming. And so, that’s an opportunity for adults with disabilities to connect with college-age peers, and for their parents to connect with each other,” Espinosa said. As she told her story in a coffee shop, Espinosa perked up. She pointed out a Food to Power truck as it cruised by outside and mentioned that it was one of Mobile Arts’ many collaborators. Espinosa, who grew up in Denver, never would have known about the Colorado Springs nonprofit, which redistributes surplus food to communities in need, if she wasn’t a part of Mobile Arts.
That was one of the goals of Mobile Arts from the beginning: to break down the academic barriers sequestering Colorado College from the rest of the city. After all, even out-of-state students live, vote and affect change in Colorado Springs for a brief period.
“Mobile Arts gives us an opportunity to understand the issues in our city, the people who are organizing, the people who are fighting for a livable city, a racially and socially just city,” Ríos said.
And it’s more than just engaging Colorado College students civically; Mobile Arts also makes Colorado Springs feel more like home.
Wood recalled a concert at the now-closed Independent Records as an example of this. Independent Records employees engaged
Zianah Griffin, Chloe Agenor, Naomi Henry, Pang Pongsirirushakun, Naomi Wood and Azaria Hampton of CC Mobile Arts. |Courtesy: CC Mobile Arts
attendees with the history of the store and local music scene.
These regular concerts began as a collaboration between associate professor of music Iddo Aharony and Samir Zamundu of hip-hop duo The Reminders. Aharony and Zamundu’s teaching culminates in Mobile Arts concerts starring The Reminders and Aharony’s students.
Collaborations between Colorado College professors and Mobile Arts have been frequent, providing them a way to mix up their pedagogy and take students off campus.
Much like an institution like the Fine Arts Center, Mobile Arts elevates Colorado College from an ivory tower of arts and academia to a staple of the broader community.
“The values that are embedded into our work and our team are so important to me, and 100% the reason that I want to stay in Colorado Springs, and the reason that I love the city, and the reason that I’ve met so many people and engaged in so many different communities and events that I hold so much love for,” Henry said. “It’s just connected to so much of what Colorado Springs means to me.”
SPEED BUMPS
In 2023, Wood’s NEH endowed professorship ran out, but Dean Emily Chan allocated $5,000 toward Mobile Arts, and then-Chief of Staff Manya Whitaker chose Mobile Arts as a campus initiative to receive funding from a donation made in support of the Antiracist Initiative. These funds, in addition with minor funding from other grants and organizations, kept the engine running through 2023 and 2024.
In spring 2024, Wood approached the President’s Office and the Dean’s Office and was told that neither office would allocate any funds toward the program going forward. Mobile Arts was told to look for outside grants or consider breaking off from the college once their funding ran out in December.
Wood alleges that budgeting error on the part of the college cut funding short in September.
On Friday, Sept. 6, Wood and Ríos received an email from interim President Whitaker stating the following: “Given these fiscal realities, please cancel all upcoming programming and immediately reconcile any remaining expenses to your operating budget. Please send Chief of Staff, Sam Heim, a final report of all activities
during the grant funded periods of January 2023-September 2024 to inform our impact report for donors who graciously supported the CC Mobile Arts Truck. Finally, please immediately park the truck in the FAC lot and return the keys to Facilities in the Van Briggle building at 1125 Glen Avenue.”
Wood and Ríos were also notified that Mobile Arts’ donation-based campaign, which had launched a few days before to keep the program afloat, would be shut down, with all gifts returned to the donors.
Mobile Arts had scheduled several events for that weekend, including an event commemorating Lil’ Miss Story Hour founder Vanessa Little, who had died a few months prior. Mobile Arts held the events anyway.
The following week, Wood met with Heim, who backtracked on the previous cease-and-desist notice and assured her that the President’s Office would fund Mobile Arts through the end of the year to keep good on the initial promise that programming would end in December, and to keep the students working for Mobile Arts — some of whom receive federal work-study financial aid and rely on their work hours — employed through the rest of the semester.
Since then, the leadership of Mobile Arts has been in regular conversation with college administration. In these conversations, it has been repeated that the college administration will not financially support Mobile Arts and that the program’s best possible future is as a nongovernmental organization (NGO).
Colorado College’s reasoning for pulling funding from Mobile Arts after three years of programming remains elusive to Mobile Arts leadership. However, a statement from Whitaker issued to the Independent seems to imply that the program is financially unsustainable in its current form.
“CC values the interdisciplinarity of a liberal arts education. To achieve that mission, we must steward college resources responsibly. The CC Mobile Arts program has been an impactful program, but as grantfunding is inherently limited in duration, it is important to plan for the conclusion of the initiative or to develop strategies for sustaining its outcomes beyond available resources. We’ve therefore been in discussions with the CC Mobile Arts team and should the program directors or others in the future arrive at a sustainable and responsible plan for its continuation, we would be happy to include it among
ARTS&CULTURE .
the many touchpoints of community engagement, alongside the Collaborative for Community Engagement and the Fine Arts Center.”
The Independent was unable to interview Colorado College administrators involved in the decision to cut funding.
Mobile Arts is currently fundraising for the spring 2025 semester. They have received funding from the college’s Feminist and Gender Studies Department, the Hulbert Center for Southwest Studies and a small allocation from the current NEH Distinguished Professorship.
Both the leaders and the student workers at Mobile Arts have been researching, writing and applying for grants. They have four grants under review.
Mobile Arts is also crowdfunding $10,000. Of that sum, $2,500 is allocated for student workers, $3,000 for program coordinator Naomi Henry, $3,500 for co-director Ríos and $1,000 for artists. Wood has co-directed as a volunteer since 2023. The $10,000 account for one month’s budget at limited
functioning.
Between the backing they have received, grants and crowdfunding, Mobile Arts hopes to continue through the end of the academic year.
Mobile Arts future may be found off campus, but because the truck is Colorado College property, a break from the college would mean starting from scratch.
So what’s next for Mobile Arts? Will they be saved by grant funding? A wealthy benefactor? A change of heart? Or will they have to turn in the keys permanently?
Naomi Henry believes Mobile Arts will continue in some way, shape or form.
“You come up against more walls when you’re part of an institution, and we always want to stay true to our beliefs, our values, the quote that’s on the hood of our truck,” Henry said. “But there’s a lot more considerations that you have to take into account when you belong to something. ‘Belong.’ I don’t say that with love. When you’re owned by something.”
Artist Lisa Villanueva at a collaborative event between CC Mobile Arts and Pikes Peak Children’s Museum. |Courtesy: CC Mobile Arts
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Wisecrack
Joe Huisman finds new addiction in comedy
by CANNON TAYLOR cannon.taylor@ppmc.live
Thirty-year-old Joe Huisman had failed his drug test. They had found cocaine in his system. Huisman’s probation officer could’ve thrown him in jail to serve out his one-year DWI sentence right there and then, but she decided to give him a second chance. That second chance necessitated that he spend 72 hours in jail before restarting his outpatient treatment. So, of course, a drugdependent Huisman did everything in his power to get high before going cold turkey in jail for three days.
“I couldn’t score,” Huisman recalled. “It was all I cared about. It was so important to me that I get drugs that night that I didn’t care that I was pissing people off, annoying people, asking people I shouldn’t be talking to. And I was drinking the whole time.”
At the end of the night, as Huisman stumbled onto his bus home, it hit him: He was a laughingstock, a complete joke of a human being.
Although Huisman spent his entire 72 hours in jail daydreaming about smoking his way through a pack of cigarettes, as soon as he was released, drugs had lost their appeal.
Twenty-three years later, Huisman makes people laugh about his drug addiction. He woodworks, plays guitar and spends time with his two daughters, but it’s stand-up comedy that has him hooked.
“I don’t know if that’s a healthy addiction or not a healthy addiction, but it seems to be an addiction nonetheless,” Huisman jested.
After coming off drugs, Huisman got his associate degree in computer networking. He moved from the restaurant industry to tech and began paying off his debt. He even kept in touch with his probation officer, hoping his occasional updates were a bright spot in her career.
As he began building a family, he treated his experience with addiction as a skeleton in his closet. That all changed when he
began writing jokes about it in comedy workshops in 2023. As he began telling jokes at open mics, audience members would come up to him afterward and share their experiences with addiction.
“I figure if I can stand onstage, and I can make a joke about some crazy stuff that I did back in my days of using, and somebody out there is feeling some shame around something similar, and we can laugh at the ridiculousness of it together, then maybe it eases some of that shame and makes people feel a little better,”
Huisman said. “We all walk around with these shameful thoughts in our brains, and we’re afraid if somebody found out about these that they would think less of us or judge us. But the reality is, by sharing these thoughts, especially with a group, there’s going to be people like, ‘Yeah, me too.’ And then, suddenly, it’s no longer shame. It’s connection. It’s a feeling of belonging, really.”
Huisman loves the saying “The opposite of addiction is connection” because it applies so well to his life. Growing up, he felt disengaged from his peers. He sought validation from relationships that he felt unworthy of. Whenever he achieved success, it felt like some kind of elaborate ruse he had somehow been able to pull off.
Huisman tried to fit in at parties as a teenager, but to curb his social anxiety, he felt the need to keep his hands busy. The nearest release was taking sip after sip of beer until he felt ill. He was introduced to cocaine at 17, which eased his anxiety and dulled the effects of alcohol. Eventually, cocaine became the center of all his relationships.
“I didn’t feel that I belonged in this world, and I was always seeking that group to be a part of. And it’s really easy to find a group of people that want to hang out with you, especially when you’re the only one in a group of drug addicts that has a job,” Huisman said. “[I] was always seeking that validation externally, and never really recognizing that the validation that was missing was my own validation.”
These days, Huisman is decreasing the stigma around addiction and fostering connection through Second Chance Comedy, a comedy show about addiction. Huisman founded Second Chance after he was laid off from his job at a software company in March.
Second Chance Comedy’s roster of comedians is diverse, from Von Sprecken, who incorporates dark comedy about his abusive father into his set, to Tara Check, who tells anecdotes about the addictions of family members from an outsider’s perspective.
And, of course, there’s Huisman, the host of the show, making jokes about how sugary treats like “Christmas Crack” are incomparable to their namesake.
The humor is pitch black, but like any good dark comedy, it pulls from the comedians’ own experiences instead of poking fun at the misfortune of others.
“It’s a tough balance. How do we delicately laugh through the pain, collectively, versus making fun of ‘those stupid addicts?’ … If you are like, ‘Addicts are stupid because they do this,’ then you’re punching down. But if you say, ‘Hey, I was stupid. I did all this crazy stuff,’ then it’s more self-deprecating and a little more inclusive,” Huisman said.
“Good comedy is something that’s real. It’s something that comes from inside you. So, it’s writing about something you care about, that you have a strong opinion about. That’s when it resonates with
Joe Huisman | Credit: Jared Chandler, courtesy Second Chance Comedy
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... CONTINUED FROM PAGE 19
people and builds that connection.”
And Huisman doesn’t let just any former addict onstage.
“I get people all the time that reach out to me, and I don’t feel that their relationship with recovery is in a healthy place, or they’re not willing to be vulnerable, or they’re just not funny,” Huisman elaborated. “There’s a lot of different things to consider, but I’m very protective of the audience because I recognize that a lot of these people are very new in recovery.”
Second Chance Comedy tries to play sober shows, and if a venue does serve alcohol, they notify the audience so anyone who is new to recovery can be aware of the risks of relapse.
The jokes are about addiction, and 20% of ticket sales benefit Sobriety House, but Second Chance Comedy is not just for former and current addicts; it’s a space for former addicts and straightedges alike to laugh while supporting addiction recovery.
“A lot of people are looking at this show and thinking, ‘Oh, it’s just going to be a 12-step speaker meeting or something with some humor,’” Huisman said. “That’s really not what it is. It’s a standup comedy show. We just have a purpose behind it.”
Second Chance Comedy will appear at the Ent Center for the Arts on Dec. 14 at 7 p.m. The venue will serve alcohol. Tickets can be found at tickets.entcenterforthearts. org/events.
Clockwise from the top: Tara Check, Donna Shannon, Elliott Broder and Von Sprecken | Credit: Jared Chandler, courtesy Second Chance Comedy
December 12 - December 25 | 21
ARTS&CULTURE .
AUSTENSIBLY GOOD
W.I.P. IT
By LAUREN CIBOROWSKI
Iknow I’m in the minority here, but I am not a fan of Jane Austen. Last year, someone in my book club nostalgically suggested we read “Pride and Prejudice,” since she remembered loving it in high school. I showed up to our discussion having gotten through just a quarter of the book, and that’s saying something because I’ve never jumped ship like that before. (I mean, I even slogged my way through a 500-page tome on Catherine the Great for this book club once!) I think it’s the combination of what I find to be her verbose prose and the pat romantic elements that make me roll my eyes so hard they might get stuck that way.
So you can imagine my reaction when I was invited to a dress rehearsal for Theatreworks’ new production of “Sense and Sensibility,” which Kate Hamill adapted from the Austen novel. I politely said yes … just like one of those Regency England bitches would have done, come to think of it. However, I’m here to tell you, despite the pride I have in my prejudice, there’s plenty to love about the production.
Before I got to the theater, I had the chance to catch up with artistic director Caitlin Lowans. Unlike me, Lowans was “one of those Jane Austen middle-schoolers,” as she enthused. She disagrees with the popular assessment of Austen’s focus on romantic love and instead finds the greatness in this story to
be the sisterly love between the Dashwood sisters, a relationship possibly modeled on Austen’s own love of her sister, Cassandra. “I’m always excited about stories that explore family love, love that goes beyond pursuit,” said Lowans.
In this production, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood are adeptly played by Anatasha Blakely and Carla Brown, respectively. And true to Lowans’ thoughts on the matter, their sisterly love was quite evident. Also evident was the time and thought put into the scenic design (Nicholas Renaud) and costumes (Pheobe H. Boynton). The stage was a whimsical, resplendent teal masterpiece, and the costumes contained sumptuous mixes of velvet, satin and brocade.
One standout actor was Kaley Corinaldi, a UCCS theater and dance major who is headed to New York City in the spring to pursue a career in acting. In “Sense and Sensibility,” Corinaldi plays four different characters, and with aplomb. I asked her which she related to the most, and she waxed poetic about the youngest Dashwood sister, Margaret, who is 13 but desperate to be included with the adults and fit into the artificial high Regency society.
“For me, as a kid, I always wanted to fit in,” said Corinaldi. She sees the role as good reinforcement to be herself, to work with herself and what she uniquely has to offer the world.
The world that Lowans created is a fun one; there are definitely some silly, laugh-out-loud moments that caught me by surprise. (For example, it might be worth it for you to go just to see how she dealt with some casting of the equine variety.) The show runs through Dec. 22. You need art. Art needs you.
Lauren Ciborowski writes about the arts and music in every issue. W.I.P. stands for Works in Progress.
The Magic of Christmas 2024 Gold Camp Christmas
December 12th
Winter Wonderland Reception
• 3:30-6:30 pm Aspen Mine Center
Silent Auction through December 14th Aspen Mine Center
December 13th
Soup for the Soul
• 11:30-1:00 pm Aspen Mine Center
Victor Parade of Lights
• 6:00 pm Victor Main Street
Victor Christmas Tree Lighting
• 6:30 pm Victor
Victor Christmas
• 6:45 pm Elks Lodge
Victor Jingle Bell Ball
• 7:00 pm Elks Lodge
December 14th
Christmas Craft Fair • 9:00 - 3:00 pm
Parks & Recreation
Hot Chocolate/Cider/S’mores • 11:00-1:30 pm Aspen Mine Center
Rumours, Colorado Springsteen | Fleetwood Mac and Bruce Springsteen tribute bands performing at Lulu’s Downtown. 32 S. Tejon St. 8 p.m.
The Sleights, Upon a Field’s Whisper, Nautiloid, inTheTeeTh | Rock bands performing at Vultures. 2100 E. Platte Ave. 8 p.m.
Hot to Go: The Chappell Roan Party | Chappell Roan dance party at the Black Sheep. 2106 E. Platte Ave. 9 p.m.
SUNDAY, DEC. 15
Pikes Peak Philharmonic’s “Cozy Thoughts” | Winter orchestral concert at the Ent Center for the Arts. 5225 N. Nevada Ave. 3 p.m.
First Presbyterian Church’s “Christmas Joy” | Christmas variety show at Pikes Peak Center. 190 S. Cascade Ave. 1:30 p.m. & 4:30 p.m.
TUESDAY, DEC. 17
Ax and the Hatchetmen with Rec Hall | Indie bands performing at the Black Sheep. 2106 E. Platte Ave. 8 p.m.
Stony Jam | Reggae band performing at Armadillo Ranch. 962 Manitou Ave. 8 p.m.
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 18
Todd Haller | Acoustic guitarist performing at Distillery 291. 4242 N. Nevada Ave. 5:30 p.m.
Springs Contemporary Jazz Big Band | Sixteen-piece jazz band performing at Trinity Brewing Co. 1466 Garden of the Gods Road. 6 p.m.
Steve Langemo & Andy Clifton | Guitar duo performing at Tokki. 182 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd. 6:30 p.m.
Matt Heckler, Casper Allen | Folk musicians performing at Vultures. 2100 E. Platte Ave. 8 p.m.
THURSDAY, DEC. 19
Jazz Thursdays | Free, live jazz music at the Mining Exchange Hotel. 8 S. Nevada Ave. 5 p.m.
Michael Reese | Rock musician performing at Rico’s Cafe and Wine Bar. 322 ½ N. Tejon St. 5 p.m.
John Wise & The Tribe | Jazz band
Local Live Music, Dec. 12 through Dec. 25
SpringsSCENE
performing at Tokki. 182 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd. 6:30 p.m.
E J R M | Ambient multi-instrumentalist performing at Ohana Kava Bar. 112 E. Boulder St. 7 p.m.
“In the Christmas Mood” with the Glenn Miller Orchestra | Christmas orchestral show at Broadmoor World Arena. 3185 Venetucci Blvd. 7 p.m.
The Heavy Devils | Jazz band performing at Armadillo Ranch. 962 Manitou Ave. 8 p.m.
The Toasters | Ska band performing at Vultures. 2100 E. Platte Ave. 8 p.m.
FRIDAY, DEC. 20
Annette and Doug Conlon | Country musicians performing at Goat Patch Brewing Co. 2727 N. Cascade Ave., No. 123. 5 p.m.
Katie Hale and the P-47s | Jazz band performing at Rico’s Cafe and Wine Bar. 322 ½ N. Tejon St. 6 p.m.
Cody Cozz | Country Christmas show at Phil Long Music Hall. 13071 Bass Pro Drive. 7 p.m.
Ian Ferguson & The Dustbowls | Band performing at Tokki. 182 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd. 7 p.m.
Al’s Hwy50 | Reggae band performing at the Black Sheep. 2106 E. Platte Ave. 8 p.m.
Big Pinch, Matt Lynn, Surprise Soup | Indie bands performing at Lulu’s Downtown. 8
SATURDAY, DEC. 21
Mistura Bela | World band performing at Rico’s Cafe and Wine Bar. 322 ½ N. Tejon St. 6 p.m. Westrock | Folk band performing at the Whiskey Baron Dance Hall & Saloon. 5781 N. Academy Blvd. 6 p.m.
Jacob Larson Band | Funk and soul ensemble performing at Tokki. 182 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd. 7 p.m.
Colorado Springs Philharmonic’s “Christmas Symphony” | Christmas concert at Pikes Peak Center. 190 S. Cascade Ave. 7:30 p.m.
Olympic City Christmas Toy & Food Drive featuring Space Cowboys, Vet Lyfe, BullHead*ded, Seance, Lava Gato | Toy and food drive featuring live music at the Black Sheep. 2106 E. Platte Ave. 8 p.m.
SUNDAY, DEC. 22
Colorado Springs Philharmonic’s “Christmas Symphony” | Christmas concert at Pikes Peak Center. 190 S. Cascade Ave. 2:30 p.m.
Lucked Out, Noseslide, Bad Anatomy, Copyright, Anystate, Phantom Landfill | Hardcore bands performing at Vultures. 2100 E. Platte Ave. 6 p.m.
p.m.
The Sleights. | Courtesy: The Sleights
FROM MOUNTAIN LIONS TO MARS
Colorado-based author David Baron on his journey to becoming an award-winning author of nonfiction books
By MEG MORITZ
• Rocky Mountain Reader •
Growing up in suburban Boston in the 1970s and early 1980s, award-winning author David Baron was captivated by astronomer Carl Sagan, space exploration and National Public Radio. His dream was to be a science journalist, and by the time he graduated from college he was well on his way.
But a dozen years later, with a portfolio of top-notch reporting to his credit, he was ready for a new challenge. It came in the form of a Ted Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Reporting, a yearlong program based at the University of Colorado Boulder. That proved to be the path from his East Coast roots to his new home in the Rocky Mountain West. Baron has published two books of nonfiction — “The Beast in the Garden: The True Story of a Predator’s Deadly Return to Suburban America” (2004) and “American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World” (2017). His book “The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America” will be released in 2025. In this interview, edited for clarity, Baron describes his journey from the frenzied world of deadlines and broadcast newsrooms to the solitary, but no less demanding, life of a book author based in Colorado.
Q: You’ve now written three books. Were books and reading a big part of your life growing up?
DB: I wasn’t a big reader. I mean I certainly read plenty of books for school, and there were influential books. Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” was very influential for me when I was a kid. I grew up not very far from Walden Pond, but books were not a big part of my early life.
Q: Were you interested in science or in writing or radio, any those things?
DB: Well, definitely not writing. I was very much into science. As a kid I was watching Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.” I enjoyed math, and in college I double majored in physics and geology, but I did everything possible to avoid courses where I had to write papers
because I hated writing papers.
Q: How did you get interested in radio?
DB: I was a big public radio fan from the time I was in junior high school. My great dream was to be a science reporter for NPR. That just seemed like, who would want to do anything else? But radio was a hobby. I was having fun (in college) doing radio on campus and then interning for NPR, eventually working summers as a substitute tape cutter on “All Things Considered.”
Q: NPR was setting national standards for excellence in reporting. You landed a plum job at NPR.
DB: When I left college, I wasn’t ready to go to graduate school, and I thought I might just make a go of it for a few years doing radio science journalism. I liked the performance aspect of it. I liked producing stories, putting together the tape, the sound effects, the sound bites. I never liked writing the script, but over the years I realized, well, I did learn to write.
Q: You had your dream job. What made you think about leaving?
DB: I’d been working as a science reporter for 12 years, and, honestly, I was pretty burned out. I had been working so hard, just churning out stories, and I think it was a bit of an existential crisis, too, because here I was in my early 30s. By then I’d achieved what I had wanted, and I wasn’t so sure it was what I wanted to continue doing. But I had no idea what else I would do.
Q: When you came to Colorado for your fellowship, did you suspect that it would be a turning point for you, including a move west?
DB: I always considered myself a New Englander and had the snobbery of coming from New England, [thinking] that there’s no place better than Boston. It’s the most intellectual, sophisticated, and I very much enjoyed living in Boston. But when Paul, my now-husband, and I came out to Colorado in 1998, we immediately understood just how deluded we were about being such New England snobs and how much nicer life can be in a beautiful setting, with nice weather and friendly people.
Q: Was the fellowship also influential professionally?
DB: The fellowship program is not just a
sabbatical. It’s not just to take time off to take classes and think. You’re supposed to have some sort of project, which is usually a writing project. I could have easily done a radio project. But I decided I was going to write a long-form magazine piece because I’d never done that before, and it scared me. And if there was any way I was going to write a book, I better see if I could actually write print and not just a short article.
Q: Well your fellowship project ultimately did turn into your first book, “The Beast in the Garden,” and a very successful one. How did you choose the topic?
DB: I was really interested in what I saw happening with wildlife in America. People then were still thinking about wildlife populations as endangered, making sure that we didn’t overhunt animals. But there was this growing issue of urban wildlife, animals that were becoming quite adept at living among people in urban and suburban areas.
I did a bunch of stories (at NPR) on this, like deer in suburbia back East, which were becoming pests. I mean, people at first loved having the deer around. And then, when the deer started eating their gardens and causing automobile accidents, there were huge conflicts about what to do about the deer.
I did a story in Massachusetts about beavers, which, going back to colonial days, were trapped for their hides, for their pelts, but now were protected. And now beavers were becoming quite abundant and moving into the suburbs and damming streams and flooding backyards, and people were furious about this.
I did a story about grizzlies in Montana, which were not exactly abundant but were now protected by the Endangered Species Act and leaving the national parks and ending up on people’s back porches.
Q: You settled on a Colorado story about mountain lions, which eventually became “The Beast in the Garden.”
Was that with an eye toward staying in Colorado?
DB: The crazy thing is, I had no idea that the story I was going to tell was going to revolve around Boulder. My first semester at CU, I was looking all over the country
for a good, compelling story about people living with large predators, with wolves, with alligators, with mountain lions, with grizzlies. I just happened to discover there were these two biologists in Boulder studying mountain lion behavior and documenting how the lions were adapting to this human landscape, following the deer into town, adapting to Boulder’s welcoming landscape. And they were arguing that this was a dangerous recipe.
Sure enough, in 1991 Colorado suffered its first fatal mountain lion attack not very far away, from a lion’s perspective, in Idaho Springs. And so it all came together with Boulder as a microcosm of what was happening in the whole country. I ended up writing a magazine piece for the Boston Sunday Globe, which was published at the end of my fellowship year
Q: What was the motivation to expand the project into a book, and how long
David Baron | Credit: Isairts
did that process take to go from the magazine piece to the book?
DB: Just before the fellowship started, I met with a literary agent, an acquaintance of mine that I knew from college. In fact, we worked together at the campus radio station at Yale. He had gone on to become a lawyer, and then a literary agent, and was starting his own agency and hearing me on the radio. We met for lunch, and he really encouraged me to think about writing a book. He made it sound like something that maybe was doable. I went back to Boston, back to NPR, and spent a year of evenings and weekends putting together a book proposal and then actually getting a book contract, which is what allowed us to move back to Boulder to write.
Q: Financially, being an author is so much more precarious than having a paycheck. How did you negotiate the financial part?
DB: I didn’t quit my job at NPR until I had a book contract with an advance. The advance was not big. I guess it was probably about the equivalent of my oneyear salary at public radio. And I thought it might take me a year and a half to write. It took me 2 1/2 years. I had imagined that I’d be making all sorts of money in royalties. Well, most books don’t earn out their advance. “The Beast in the Garden” has, but it’s not like I’ve made a lot of money on it.
Q: Did you follow the same game plan for your second book as the first, having a paycheck until you had a book contract in hand?
DB: I went back and got a job again. I didn’t quit that job until I had a book contract. I knew I wanted to continue that kind of life, writing books. I just found it very satisfying. I can take as long as I want and go as deep as I want, but there’s a real danger to that, which is: I could go broke.
Q: Your latest book, “The Martians,” will come out in 2025. It seems like a logical follow-up to your second book, “American Eclipse.” Were you committed to a subject that would tap into your astronomy background?
DB: Actually, I was trying out all sorts of different things, like self-driving cars and artificial intelligence. One day, it just came to me: the story of Percival Lowell
and the canals of Mars. He was a wealthy Bostonian from the Lowell family that made its fortune in textiles in Lowell, Massachusetts. He decided in his early 40s that he wanted to be an astronomer and founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, specifically to study Mars.
He saw on Mars [in the 1890s] this bizarre network of straight lines he interpreted as a network of irrigation canals that the Martian civilization was using to grow their crops. It just electrified the world. And I was astonished to turn up these articles in the New York Herald and the New York Tribune and the New York Times, writing in all seriousness about the civilization on Mars, and attempts to communicate with the Martians and what we might learn from the Martians. Of course, it was wrong, and it has gone down in history as one of the great embarrassing episodes in science.
And then people are talking a lot about Mars today. We’re sending our Rovers there. We’ve been talking for a long time about sending astronauts there. Elon Musk wants to start building cities there. And there’s, of course, plenty of excitement still about alien life. There seemed to be a lot that resonated with today, and it had some connection to the American West, more to Arizona than Colorado, although there is a Colorado connection too. And a Boston connection. I mean, that’s me. I want a good story to tell, but I also want to feel like I’m an appropriate person to tell the story.
When I have an idea that the deeper I go, the richer it becomes, it’s like looking at some fractal image, where the more I zoom in, the more detail there is, and the more beautiful it is. I’m making it sound like I knew that it would work. It took me 2 1/2 years to write the book proposal with no income, no guarantee that anything was going to come of it, but I finally got the contract. It all worked out.
This interview first appeared at rockymountainreader.org. Meg Moritz is an educator, filmmaker and journalist based in Boulder. A UNESCO chair (retired) and professor emerita at CUBoulder, she currently is working on a film biography of Isobel Lennart, a writer whose most iconic work is “Funny Girl.” n
THE RICH GET HEALTHIER, THE POOR GET SICKER
The parable of The Box animates debut dystopian sci-fi novel
By JEFFERY PAYNE • Rocky Mountain Reader •
Aclever ad kicks off the novel “Transference”: “Life Have You Down? MAKE YOURSELF WELL — Try the Disease Transfer Machine Today!”
Here’s the catch: In this dystopian society, only the superrich can afford The Box (the disease transfer machine), while the rest of humanity is paid to take on sickness and diseases.
Colorado Springs author Ian Patterson presents, in his debut sci-fi novel, an intriguing story that provokes several questions and ideas. Would you take on someone’s ailments or diseases for monetary gain? How much payment is enough to take on a common cold? What about cancer?
In Patterson’s masterfully crafted world, a rigid caste system governs the lives of those within this future city. Our protagonist, Nicholas, hails from the tenements of Five Boroughs, where he takes on ailments of the wealthy upper classes. After narrowly escaping death from his previous job with The Box, Nicholas has a daring plan to dismantle the machine’s servers, expose its true nature and transform society (for the better, or so he believes).
We learn through Nicholas of the incredibly alluring, and somewhat scary, medical procedures that are available to those in the upper echelons of this society. Honestly, if these were available to us today, I’d have a challenging time not having something done (except for face melting … big pass on that one). In a rare opportunity, the technology of the time allows Nicholas to assume someone’s identity — someone who has quietly and recently passed. Someone
who has access to the multilayers of this vexatious population.
His body is pinpricked and realigned, and memories and experiences are downloaded into his system so he is able to become that person. Nicholas’ plans coalesce further, and his determination is strengthened. Trusting in his conviction, his marvelous, good looks and the fresh new memories he’s inherited, he is ready for the next step. He signals to his new family he is coming back home after a months-long recovery.
" COLORADO SPRINGS AUTHOR
above his new family, and she’s the key to cementing Allen’s resolute goal of destroying The Box. Will she accept Allen, who has now eschewed the thing that drove them apart, and his story of rebirth and determination? Or will she recognize him as the outsider he is?
IAN PATTERSON PRESENTS, IN HIS DEBUT SCI-FI NOVEL, AN INTRIGUING STORY THAT PROVOKES SEVERAL QUESTIONS AND IDEAS. WOULD YOU TAKE ON SOMEONE’S AILMENTS OR DISEASES FOR MONETARY GAIN? HOW MUCH PAYMENT IS ENOUGH TO TAKE ON A COMMON COLD? WHAT ABOUT CANCER?. "
A hovercar ride later, Allen, formerly known as Nicholas, is adjusting to his new life of luxury, tiny robots that dress him, delicious food and even a talking panther. As he learns more about his new family, he’s surprised to embrace their warmth and care. They aren’t at all what he was expecting. The greatest challenge is meeting Allen’s ex-girlfriend. She’s part of the even more privileged group
Each of Nicholas’ and Allen’s personal histories collide at a celebration where they discover that the rich and powerful aren’t so different from the rest of us. They like to have fun and be a little bit naughty, just like us. During the party, something unexpected and important happens that puts Allen’s true identity at risk. Is this when his charade will be discovered? The incident summons the dark and scary Inquisitors, automatons that terrify even the most innocent people. In these circles, Inquisitors are always watching. Perhaps the life of the privileged isn’t so grand at all.
In the aftermath of the party, Allen and the girlfriend make up. They realize
they have a common goal and work together to make things right. But they’re not the only ones who want to change things. Things get really intense, and Allen barely makes it out alive. This is where the story takes a wild turn, leading the reader on an exciting adventure, revealing that not everyone is as they seem. Last but not least, will The Box be turned off?
Patterson’s first novel is a real pageturner. He paints a vivid and believable world that feels as though it could happen. His writing is engaging and brings a fresh take to the genre. This is the first book in “The Narrator Cycle,” and I can’t wait to see where it goes next. Book 2 of this duology is due in early summer 2025, according to Patterson.
This review first appeared at rockymountainreader.org . Jeffery Payne has been a bookseller for over 40 years. Currently living and working in downtown Colorado Springs, he is incredibly grateful that he gets to do what he loves to do. When not shelving books, he can be found tending his garden and working out ways to sneak more books into the house. n
SPORTS & OUTDOORS
A FAN’S NOTES ON SWITCHBACKS VICTORY
by MARK TURNER
Special to the Independent
When the final whistle rang out at a capacity Weidner Field on a sunny Saturday morning, the joy experienced by a victorious Switchbacks FC team was felt ten-fold by their loyal fanbase.
WThe Colorado Springs Switchbacks soccer team, the only professional sports team in our city of over half a million people, was founded in 2015. Many of the fans who attended the Switchback’s first appearance in a USL Championship Final in the club’s 10-year history today, were there at the very start of this journey over a decade ago.
Since the club’s inception, their passionate fanbase has bought season tickets, jerseys, and assorted merchandise, shown up to games, tailgates, try-outs, and sundry other events in all weather in a show of unwavering support for their hometown team.
Today, they were rewarded — as were CBS viewers — who witnessed the Colorado outfit put visitors Rhode Island FC to the sword by a dominating 3-0 scoreline. The tally didn’t flatter the Switchbacks either. They were good value for their victory. But more of that later.
When the club released its beautiful 10thanniversary jersey to kick off the 2024 season, hopes were high. A new coach (former assistant James Chambers) and a bolstered roster further freshened things up, causing many fans to speculate that post-season soccer could be on the cards this year.
And then the season started. Badly. The Switchbacks, as is well documented at this point, suffered 5 defeats and a tie in their first six matches, conceding 10 goals in the process and notching only 2 themselves. However, once Chambers found his formula, the team began to climb the table, losing only 2 of their next dozen matches. Impressive road form coupled with an exuberant Weidner Field helped the Switchbacks rise to the play-off spots and
ultimately secure an impressive second place in the Western Conference table — something that seemed inconceivable back in May.
The strength of their league seeding and momentum generated throughout the season helped them plow through the playoffs in commanding fashion, earning the right to host the Western Conference quarter, semi, and last week’s final versus Las Vegas Lights — a point beyond which the Switchbacks had never previously progressed. Some unlikely results in the Eastern Conference playoffs ensured that the Switchbacks seeding would again see them as the home team for the USL Championship Final, welcoming first-year outfit Rhode Island FC to the Centennial State.
And so the stage was set for a fairytale ending. A wretched start to the year in the club’s 10th season, with a ‘green’ head coach and players unfamiliar with one another … could it really culminate in a
championship final success on home turf no less? Were the city’s long-suffering fans finally going to see their hopes and dreams of the past decade realized in their own backyard?
Step forward, the special Juan. Juan Tejada has a knack for scoring gamewinning goals - a remarkable 7 of his last 8 - and so it was again today. However, when the game MVP smartly diverted Yusuke Hanya’s cross in off his thigh in the 22nd minute, he probably wasn’t imagining that tally would be the difference. With 70+ minutes still to go, none among the 8,000 present were taking the win for granted. Time for another Switchbacks ‘super Jairo’ to make his mark. Jairo Henriquez, the Salvadorian who had declined his most recent international call-up to ensure he would be available for every USL playoff game, scored an absolute banger on the second attempt. As Henriquez’s volley rocketed into the roof of the Rhode Island net, Switchbacks fans’ hopes rose similarly.
The home team were dominant in the first half. It was to be more of the same in the second period. Rhode Island, unsurprisingly looking a little shellshocked, tried to battle their way back into the game, creating a handful of chances in the process, but the Colorado Springs outfit never looked flustered. And there was an air of the expected when Ronaldo Damus sprinted from one end of the field to the other before cooly slotting home the Switchback’s third and game-killing goal. In less than an hour, the match was over as a contest. Finally, the black and blue faithful could exhale - and celebrate! Weidner Field went into full party mode in the remaining half an hour. Flags were waved, scarves twirled, songs sung, drums banged and horns blown, and the now trade-mark blue smoke released in a carnival of color and cacophonous sound, marking perhaps the finest moment in the city of Colorado Springs professional sports history.
The Switchbacks FC celebrate winning the USL Championship. | Credit: Isaiah Downing
SPORTS & OUTDOORS .
GIFT IDEAS FOR THE OUTDOORSY
Finding the right gift for the outdoorsy person on your holiday shopping list can be difficult. Want proof? Ask my wife. If I need something, I get it. If I don’t have it, it’s probably out of our budget. All of which doesn’t leave her much to shop for. I’m pretty sure the same can be said for most of us who enjoy recreating outdoors.
But all is not lost. Here are a few ideas to help you wrap up your gift shopping. First, start with the “10 Essentials” for hiking. There are a couple of minor variants to this list, and for the purposes of this article, I’ll be using the list provided by the American Hiking Society.
1. Appropriate footwear. Boots are something any hiker will need, if not now, then sometime during the upcoming year. But they can be hard to buy, with so many different brands, styles and size variations between brands. So, unless you know exactly which boots to buy, you might want to pass. On the other hand, socks are always a need, with my favorite brands being Darn Tough – and their lifetime warranty, or Smartwool. Also, snowshoes are footwear, and not that hard to buy. Check my article in the November 28 edition of the Indy on how to choose snowshoes.
2.Map/Compass/GPS. A GPS is an almost indispensable tool for outdoor recreation. Even the least expensive
models are highly accurate, can be loaded with detailed topographic maps, and can not only track hikes, but can also help plan a hike. Even if your gift recipient is carrying a GPS, they should also carry a printed map as backup and for quick reference. Locally produced and frequently updated, Pocket Pals Trail Maps (https://www.pptrailmaps. com/ ) are small, easy to read, and inexpensive. A compass is almost a necessity with a printed map, so look at one of those, too. If your recipient isn’t familiar with how to properly use a GPS, map or compass, then maybe buy them class to learn how to effectively put them to use. Big time outdoor recreation chain REI also offers classes in backcountry navigation (https://www.rei.com/ events).
3. Water. Who doesn’t need another water bottle? OK, maybe I’ve been told to not bring home anymore water bottles, but nonetheless, a good, insulated water bottle (my favorite are made by Yeti) are always useful. If a water bottle isn’t quite the right thing, then maybe a water purification system such as a Steri-pen, or Camelbak bottle with a built-in UV purifier is something to consider. Still not the right thing? Then consider a backpack with a built-in water bladder, such as from Camelbak.
4. Food. This is kind of hard to buy as a gift, but maybe a case of their favorite energy bars is something to consider.
5. Rain gear and fast drying layers. When it rains here, even in the summer, it’s a COLD rain. A small, packable rain jacket that can be folded into itself and stuffed into the bottom of a backpack is indispensable. I never hike without one. Also, lightweight and moisture wicking outer or base layers are often easily packable.
6. Safety Items, such as a light, fire starter or whistle. You can’t have
enough flashlights, and a whistle is a must have safety device. These make good stocking stuffers.
7. First Aid Kit. Absolutely, positively, a must have. Also, sign them up for a first aid class, so they know what to do with the kit. From basic to more advanced wilderness firstaid there are wide variety of classes to choose from.
8. Knife or Multi-tool. In my opinion, this should read “knife and multitool”. Like with flashlights, I don’t think you can have enough of these, either. A small folding or straight blade knife with a clip-on sheath can be attached to clothing or a backpack shoulder strap. Multitools with built in knives, screwdrivers and pliers come in a variety of sizes and are useful when field repairs to equipment might be needed. These also make good stocking stuffers.
9. Sun protection. Sunglasses, especially with UV-A and UV-B protection will keep your favorite persons eyes healthy. A good, wide-brimmed hat is a must in the heat of summer, and my favorites are from Tilley and Fjallraven.
10. Shelter. A small, packable tent might be overkill for a day-hiker, but a couple of space blankets are good stocking stuffers. A poncho, while ostensibly is rain gear,
can also be a good, improvised shelter, and they are typically easy to pack. These can also be good stocking stuffers.
If none of these ideas strike a chord, then consider giving an adventure. Companies such as Off the Beaten Path ( https://www.offthebeatenpath.com) or REI Adventures (https://www.rei.com/ adventures ) feature a variety of trips, with varying types of experiences. I’ve travelled with both and found them to be very enjoyable. REI Adventures lean more towards hiking, cycling and backpacking, if you want the most physical activities.
Lastly, a yearly national or state parks pass is a great little gift, too. If all else fails, then there are always gift cards or gift certificates.
Happy Holidays!
Be Good. Do Good Things. Leave No Trace.
Bob “Hiking Bob” Falcone is a retired career firefighter, USAF veteran, an accomplished photographer and 30year resident of Colorado Springs. He has served on boards and committees for city, county and state parks in the Pikes Peak region, and spends much of this time hiking 800 or more miles each year, looking for new places and trails to visit, often with his canine sidekick Coal.
By BOB “HIKING BOB” FALCONE
| Credit: Adobe Stock
LET’S SCRAP THE STIGMA OF MENTAL ILLNESS
By DAVE MARSTON
Even though one in five Americans is estimated to suffer from mental health illness, talk about mental health in the rural West remains muted. I’d like to talk about it this Thanksgiving because I’m grateful I got the help I needed after a long-fought problem: I’m bipolar and I’m being treated for it.
I didn’t start out bipolar. I was 24 when my behavior took a dive. At first, I chalked it up to my job in New York where I was buying and selling stocks all day. I became manic and anxious, prone to l periods of depression laced with sleepless anxiety.
During a period of ramped-up mental anguish, I jumped out of a moving car. It was going fast, over 30 miles per hour. I was with friends when someone made a joke at my expense, and rather than fire back a witty response. I thought, “I’m going to explode.”
I opened the door and jumped. Ten seconds later I was hobbling down a dark suburban street. Sure, I was bloody, gravel lodged in my hands, but I was relieved to be out of that car.
Running from problems became my life’s work. It was that or suddenly erupting in anger, seeming without notice. But for years I dodged seeing a psychiatrist, consulting a therapist instead. I’d grown up in a rural Western community and seeking psychiatric help seemed impossible.
When I finally sought out a psychiatrist 15 years later, he asked tough questions. What were the most erratic things I’d done? Jumping out of a moving car ranked first on the list. Had I ever been hospitalized for my behavior? No, nothing that severe. He took notes, then gave me his diagnosis: I was bipolar. I firmly resisted that conclusion.
Skeptically, he offered anti-depressant medication. “Typically, a bipolar person will have a poor reaction,” he said. I had seven bad reactions to seven anti-depressants. I finally gave up, “I’m not saying I’m bipolar,” I said, “but if I were, what medication would you prescribe?”
“I’d prescribe an anti-psychotic,” he said. At that point the continuing anguish of my daily life outweighed my fear of being diagnosed as mentally ill. “I’m ready,” I said.
Sure enough, the medication was effective, and life changed. I slept soundly and could readily work. I experienced calm. I married, had a child and eased into what passes for normal life. But I never talked to people about being bipolar, about the medication that made life worth living. I bought life insurance and went through a
medical exam. Afterward, the agent said I could get a much better rate without an antipsychotic in my daily regimen.
I paid the higher rate for what I called my “bipolar tax.”
In 2022, my family and I moved from New York to the town of Durango, Colorado. I called psychiatrists in the area and explained I was looking to start treatment locally. One doctor quickly texted me back and asked me to text my medications. “Whoa!” he texted, “I don’t treat bipolar patients.” The next psychiatrist rejected me also.
I tried to wean off medication, but the old hamster wheel of anxious thoughts spun faster and faster. In western Colorado, it took finding a telehealth doctor who would prescribe the medication that allowed me to function.
I also got to know my neighbor John Truitt, who is, among other things, on the autism spectrum and happy to chat about it. Sensing a kindred spirit, I began, “This is a big secret.” His reaction to my confession was surprising: “Big deal you’re bipolar,” he said. “You’re what’s called 2E for twice exceptional.” That meant I was “neurodiverse” and gifted, he said.
My gift had once been turning the chaos of financial markets into profitable trades, something I can’t do now while medicated, but I’m fine with that.
Since that day, I’ve told more people about my diagnosis and subsequent learning curve. This spring, I gave a commencement speech at the private Heron School for Twice-Exceptional Students in Moab, Utah, sharing with parents, teachers and students my bumpy ride with mental illness.
Looking at the audience, I saw understanding and acceptance.
Because so many of us live with it, mental illness needs to be acknowledged, treated and talked about. I could have saved so much time, energy and pain by seeking the right kind of help earlier. How much healthier we would be if we treated mental illness the way we treat any other illness—with openness and compassion.
Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Durango, Colorado. n
IMAGINE A RIVER MORE EXCITING THAN FOOTBALL
By PATRICIA J. RETTIG
Imagine a best-selling, 900-page novel using “a sad, bewildered nothing of a river” as its centerpiece, connecting the earth’s geologic origin and dinosaur age to 1970s rural Colorado.
Now imagine that novel becoming a touchstone for its times, yet still relevant today, as our nation approaches its 250th anniversary. The book is James A. Michener’s Centennial, an unlikely novel published a half-century ago. By creating a microcosm of the country, he explained America to itself in anticipation of the 1976 bicentennial.
That the Pulitzer-prize winning Michener chose as his landscape the West—and the little-known South Platte River on Colorado’s northeastern plains—is surprising only in that this was his first epic novel related to the U.S. mainland.
But ever since he briefly lived in Greeley, Colorado, in the late 1930s before his writing career began, the winding South Platte River stuck with him. As a young college professor, Michener recognized the wealth of stories resulting from the hardships of people surviving in an arid area.
After Michener’s service on a national bicentennial committee left him frustrated, he decided to return to the Centennial State, Colorado, which gained statehood in 1876. He hoped to tell a tale of the
American experience, and in the opening chapter a character states, “If we can make the Platte comprehensible to Americans, we can inspire them with the meaning of this continent.”
Forgoing stereotypical Western stories of railroad builders and farmers’ daughters, Michener fictionalized selected histories of settlement and created relatable characters.
Native Americans, French trappers, Mennonite settlers, farmers of German-Russian descent, English ranchers, Mexican and Japanese laborers—all depended on the South Platte River and its tributaries in the dry, inhospitable land. They also had to depend on each other. By starting with the land’s formation, Michener depicts every character as an immigrant. He estimates human arrival in the region at about 12,000 years ago, and those Indigenous peoples and their descendants remain present throughout the story. As more people arrived and society evolved, everyone built lives in relationship with the river.
For many, the river provided a pathway to the West. For a few, it revealed golden nuggets, though the real wealth was the water itself.
Yet what Michener presents as progress gradually becomes recognized as unsustainable.
erwise—is important to understand today, but also significant is knowing the history of how communities got built. Michener also shows the conflicts that arose with each wave of newcomers bringing their own ideas about how to live.
"FOR MANY, THE RIVER PROVIDED A PATHWAY TO THE WEST. FOR A FEW, IT REVEALED GOLDEN NUGGETS, THOUGH THE REAL WEALTH WAS THE WATER ITSELF."
The memorable Potato Brumbaugh has not only the innovative idea of irrigating crops but also the radical concept of digging a tunnel under the Rocky Mountains to import water from west of the Continental Divide. When this source is not enough, groundwater pumping increases, with dire consequences.
Such innovation—water-related and oth-
He also demonstrates changing attitudes, including acceptance of racial differences and increasing dismay over environmental destruction. His story concludes in the early 1970s, referencing Watergate, international conflict and immigration. Characters face inflationary times and polluted air and water. They know they need to solve the coming water shortages.
Not much is different today.
The key difference is that as Michener’s characters decry the environmental damage caused by their ancestors and neighbors, they also recognize they need to know their history and honor their
longstanding connections to the land and water.
This is what modern humanity has forgotten. Through the innovations of pipes, plumbing and chemical treatments, we have relegated our rivers to the background, as if they were merely an unending supply of water at our command. We have lost our connections to natural resources, to history, to each other.
As we now prepare for our 250th anniversary, Centennial, both the novel and the groundbreaking 26-hour television miniseries airing from 1978 to 1980, reminds us of the country’s strengths.
Nearly 900 pages in, a character skips a Colorado-Nebraska college football game to survey the South Platte by plane. As he nears the Nebraska state line, he says, “No one in Colorado will believe it, but this river is more exciting than football.” Imagine if more people, in all states, felt the same way.
Patricia J. Rettig is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She is the archivist for the Water Resources Archive at the Colorado State University Libraries. n
The South Platte River | Courtesy: Writers on the Range
Scraps of progress on recycling goals
Advocates say more big changes ahead in stymied efforts to divert waste from landfills
By MICHAEL BOOTH • The Colorado Sun
When is 6.9 million tons of trash a good thing? When that number represents a slight improvement from the 7 million tons of Colorado trash sent to landfills in previous years, according to a new report from state recycling officials.
Solid waste officials, private composters, nonprofits and first gentleman Marlon Reis celebrated the eighth annual “State of Recycling” report recently at a city of Denver transfer site, calling the decrease the first improvement in waste diversion after years of stagnating Colorado efforts.
“I’m excited to announce that for the first time, this year we have seen our overall waste go down slightly, while our population continues to rise,” said Randy Moorman of Eco-Cycle, the largest recycler in the state and a leading waste education nonprofit. “Our total waste generated in Colorado went from just over 7 million tons in 2018 to less than 6.9 million tons in 2023, so our efforts as a state to reduce waste are starting to pay off now.”
Pressed by reporters on how Colorado can draw useful conclusions from a waste and recycling system with so many moving parts and so many possible measurement points, state officials acknowledged there’s some art mixed in with the science. They are calling the progress a trend, if not necessarily a bankable raw number. They rely in part on waste intake statistics from regulated landfills.
And they were quick to note Colorado has a long way to go just to catch up with other states that are better at recycling.
“Our recycling and composting rate is still too low at 15%,” Moorman said. “But Colorado is on the brink of a major change.”
State, city and private recycling leaders used their news conference outside a city of Denver gravel storage dome to cite a litany of state laws and local rules that should boost Colorado numbers in coming years. Top on their minds is the producer responsibility fee, which consumer goods companies will charge on themselves for each package they sell. Beginning in 2026, the collected packaging fees will fund an expansion of curbside recycling around the state to communities that don’t currently offer it.
A producer-controlled board will set the fees and create the funding system, which could raise about $310 million a year for statewide recycling improvements under a middle-case scenario the legislature approved last spring.
Recycling advocates say the producer-led program, involving big packaging users like Coca-Cola, Molson Coors, Colgate Palmolive and more, could boost waste diversion in Colorado by 50% once more state residents have access to easy recycling. They also hope a big increase in volume of recyclable packaging materials will help create a local industrial network of businesses that sort, process and
manufacture recycled commodities into new goods.
Denver officials at the State of Recycling report release pointed to local changes that should boost waste diversion numbers in coming years. Denver announced this month it was speeding up its rollout of composting carts that are part of a recycling revamp, which included charging people monthly fees for garbage bins while giving recycling and composting carts for free.
Denver had been offering composting carts neighborhood by neighborhood, but will now offer the green carts to all residents by May, waste diversion and outreach manager Nina Waysdorf said. That speedup required a shift in recycling, which will now be picked up every other week instead of once a week. Denver officials confirmed this month that people who typically fill their recycling bins within a week can ask for a free second recycling cart under the new schedule, but those may not be delivered until later in 2025.
Denver’s emphasis on composting will focus where the volume is, officials said.
“We believe that in composting, we have a huge opportunity to increase our waste diversion in Denver and reduce our community’s greenhouse gas emissions,” Waysdorf said, noting that organic materials break down in landfills and produce damaging methane gas. “We know that about one-quarter of what people throw away in their trash in
Denver could be recycled, and about half of what people throw in their trash could be put in the compost cart.” Composting companies turn the organic material, such as food waste and yard clippings, into garden mulch and soil. One of the biggest challenges for composting companies remains educating residents and businesses about what can safely be included in the compost bins without damaging sorting equipment or spoiling loads with unusable materials. Front Range composters have had to warn city collectors and residents about contaminating loads with glass, plastic film, greasy cardboard or paper and other items. Consumers are learning, said Julie Mach, owner of Salida’s Elements Mountain Compost. Sorting behavior will get another boost, officials said, from a 2023 Colorado law requiring more accurate in-store labeling of compostable materials.
The labeling “is going to clarify when you see a to-go container or green bag that says ‘compostable’ on it, it’s actually got to be certified compostable. It goes through a rigorous testing process,” Mach said. “So that’s going to help improve that education piece for users, and help us as composters.”
The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonprofit news outlet that covers our state. Learn more and sign up for free newsletters at coloradosun.com n
A worker at GreenSheen’s recycling plant begins the process of refining leftover paint into something new. | Courtesy: GreenSheen
STATE .
Mad Moms call for mental health reform
Group’s members hope to stop churn that traps their adult children in mental hospitals and jail
By JENNIFER BROWN
• The Colorado Sun •
When the chaos seemed at its worst, Barbara Vassis created a spreadsheet to record the number of days her daughter spent in hospital emergency rooms, mental health facilities, homeless shelters, detox and jail.
It was 106 days out of the previous 365.
The pattern goes like this: Vassis’ daughter, who has schizoaffective disorder, doesn’t take her medicine or is denied medication, goes into psychosis, gets arrested and goes to jail, is released to the streets, is admitted to a mental health facility, is released on Day 13 or 14 because her Medicaid insurance runs out on Day 15, does OK for a few days or weeks and then stops taking her medication again. Repeat.
This story is not unique.
It’s similar to all the other stories told by parents whose adult children have serious
mental illness and are cycling through the mental health and criminal justice systems. Like Vassis, the rest of the Mad Moms — a new and rapidly growing group of advocates for change — are fed up with a system they say is broken.
“You have these crazy, ridiculous stories, but they’re not isolated,” Vassis said.
“This happens again and again and again, and all of our stories are very similar. And what we hear from social workers is, ‘Oh, she kind of fell through the cracks.’ Well, there is nothing but cracks. It is one giant chasm that everyone slides through.”
Mad Moms began organizing in Colorado over the summer and already has a network of about 200 people. It’s modeled after the Angry Moms, a national group that began in Arizona, where moms are raising a ruckus to push for new laws on mental health and have taken their testimony to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s drug safety and psychopharmacologic drug committees.
The first mission of Angry Moms and the Colorado-based Mad Moms is to relax the rules around a drug called clozapine, which is used to treat schizophrenia and anosognosia, a symptom in which the brain is unable to recognize it is sick. Anosognosia is the reason why some people with mental illness don’t think they need to take their medication.
The strict protocol for receiving clozapine includes weekly and then monthly blood draws, and uninterrupted communication between the prescribing doctor and the pharmacist about the lab results. It’s so stringent, say the Mad Moms, that it’s nearly impossible for patients to stay on it or even to find a doctor willing to prescribe it. Because of the FDA protocol, only about 5% of people in the United States with serious brain illness are on clozapine, compared with about 85% in Australia.
In November, after listening to expert testimony from doctors and the pharma-
ceutical industry, the FDA’s two committees voted to recommend that the FDA relax the protocol and open up broader access to clozapine. About 70 members of the Angry Moms and Mad Moms attended the hearing, and the vote followed emotional testimony from parents and people who take the drug, as well as pharmaceutical companies and medical experts. It’s not yet known when the FDA will take up the recommendation.
“We have been gathering our stories and posting them at the FDA and making noise,” said Kate Rawlinson, the founder of Colorado’s Mad Moms.
Nationwide, there are about 148,000 active prescriptions for clozapine — but experts testified that somewhere between 815,000 and 2 million people would benefit from the drug, which has been found to halt suicidal ideation.
Rawlinson credits clozapine for bringing stability to her son’s life after years wasted in the jail-mental facility loop. She and her son protested in Washington, D.C., in May 2023 and met with members of Congress to push for new rules on clozapine. Two weeks ago, Rawlinson flew from Colorado to Maryland to attend the FDA committee hearing and watch the 14-1 vote.
PARENTS SHUT OUT
This was only step one for Mad Moms. There’s much more on their to-do list.
The group is gathering data from its members that it will share with policymakers as they advocate for increased funding for psychiatric beds and higher salaries for mental health professionals.
The moms want to end the “criminalization” of their sons and daughters who end up getting arrested for crimes like disturbing the peace or breaking and entering. And they want to make it easier for family members to provide basic health information to mental health and criminal justice facilities instead of getting blocked by federal privacy laws, including HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. They also want the mental health and justice systems to use universal ROIs, or releases of information, so the agencies can talk to each other about people in their systems.
Mad Moms already has shared its requests with Colorado’s Behavioral Health Administration and meets regularly with state Rep. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat who passed legislation this year to divert people accused of low-lev-
Caption here. | Courtesy:
el crimes into mental health treatment instead of requiring them to be “restored to competency,” a process for which the waitlist is months long. And Mad Moms has found a fiscal sponsor, the Colorado Nonprofit Development Center, to help with fundraising.
Besides all that, Mad Moms is a support group. They gather on Zoom, share their stories and realize they are not the only ones.
“I don’t often leave one of our Zooms without just crying afterwards, because what people are dealing with, it’s just unreal,” Rawlinson said. “And none of us expected it. Most of us had children who were very functional, if not gifted and talented.
“We are here as a support network for other moms and families, trying to help them navigate the systems and keep them from feeling alone. The biggest problem is that most of us feel so alone because our families shun us, our neighbors shun us. They don’t want to hear about it. They’re afraid to invite us to events. It becomes really, really difficult.”
‘SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS’
Rawlinson’s son had a high IQ and was a talented double bassist and composer. His brain issues began in high school, when he started struggling with severe anxiety and experimented with drugs, Rawlinson said. Illnesses on the psychosis spectrum, which includes Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia, run in their family.
Rawlinson got her son enrolled in an Outward Bound program, counseling and a new high school, but none of it worked for long. At age 20, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
After going off his medication, he assaulted a family member and ended up in jail for six months. Rawlinson attempted, unsuccessfully, to get him moved to the state mental hospital. He came out of jail in the best shape he had been in in eight years, Rawlinson said, because he was on his medication and had received counseling.
But soon after, he began using drugs again and ended up losing his job and housing. He lived on the streets, getting blacklisted from hotels, throughout the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. What finally changed the pattern was
clozapine, along with a court diversion program that required he stay on his medication and meet weekly with a case manager. Also, Rawlinson once again gave him a stable place to live.
Her son, 31, has been taking the drug for more than two years and lives in Rawlinson’s guesthouse, though he is hoping to move to an apartment of his own. “He’s sober. He works part time. He’s social,” she said. “He is more my son than he’s been in 15 years.
“It’s just like watching them wake up.”
After five or six months on clozapine, a “tricky medication” that requires titration to get the correct dosage, Rawlinson’s son accepted that he had schizophrenia. The “basic human interactions,” like saying, “How are you?” and “Good morning,” that he is incapable of during psychosis resurfaced.
“I had to learn a lot fast, and there was just not a lot of help out there,” Rawlinson said. “So we want to provide education. We also want to advocate for radical change, in terms of health care, in terms of the judicial system, in terms of all the social services, just fair treatment. And it’s just not happening. We’ve got to figure out how to stop the churn.
“It’s not individual problems — it’s systemic problems.”
‘CANNOT CONFIRM OR DENY’
Over the summer, Vassis believed her daughter was in the state mental health hospital at Fort Logan in Denver, though she couldn’t confirm it. When she called, she got the “we cannot confirm or deny” that she was there, Vassis said.
Vassis finally confirmed she was there because her daughter agreed to let her visit.
Her daughter, 34, lives in a state of delusion in which she believes she is a high priestess working to heal the universe, align communications systems and open trade routes. She also thinks she designs shoes, works for the CIA and has $800 million in her bank account.
Because she refuses to take medication, her life has been in chaos for more than a decade.
Vassis’ daughter had a major psychotic break at age 21, when she was found clinging to a tree in a subdivision and was taken to a Boulder hospital. She was allowed to leave on her accord, even though her mother argued that she needed more help.
One of Vassis’ spreadsheets recorded nine hospital stays for her daughter within one year. Six times out of the nine, she ended up in jail within three days or less of being released from the hospital.
Vassis would find out she was no longer in the hospital when her daughter called from
jail. Or a homeless shelter. Or a bus station. “I would call the hospital and say, ‘This is what’s been going on. Here’s how many times this is occurring.’ And of course, it’s like, ‘We can’t really talk to you,’” Vassis said, referring to privacy laws.
After another psychotic break in 2017, Vassis’ daughter ended up in Fort Logan, where she stayed for two months. She did well for years afterward, until COVID-19 disrupted her routine, her mother said.
Last year, Vassis’ daughter spent three months at the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo. She’s now gone through nine rounds of the state trying to restore her to competency but has not yet been deemed restored.
Vassis counts 12 times that her daughter has been to jail. Most recently, it was because she broke into her mother’s house — five days after she was dropped by her mental health clinic for missing appointments. She stole several items and brought them to her boyfriend’s storage locker, Vassis said.
In jail, she is allowed to refuse to take her medication.
“Colorado recognizes that she has a mental illness as a disability, but yet, when she’s in the carceral setting, she’s allowed to refuse her medication,” Vassis said. “So in essence, I feel like the state of Colorado is allowing her to remain in psychosis.
“It’s just this cluster of trying to find help.”
It was in 2021-2022 that Vassis’ daughter spent 106 days out of 365 either in jail, the hospital or a mental health facility.
Vassis figures the churn has cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars at this point.
The cost of this cycle is one of their future talking points. Inspired by the Angry Moms in Arizona, the Colorado Mad Moms were among the first of the state groups to organize, starting with a logo, social media sites and a biweekly newsletter.
It was the hard work of moms around the country, Rawlinson said, that “has inspired us to muster the energy and make some noise.”
The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonprofit news outlet that covers our state. Learn more and sign up for free newsletters at coloradosun.com n
A Denver Health photo shows a hallway in the psychiatric emergency department.
| Courtesy: Denver Health
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News of the WEIRD
BY THE EDITORS AT ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION
HOLIDAYS DOWN THE DRAIN
Los Angeles is known for many things, but perhaps its most ignominious claim to fame is being the “clogged capital” of the United States on “Brown Friday” — the day after Thanksgiving, when plumbers nationally go out on emergency calls 65% more often than on other Fridays. Analysis by Yelp showed that plumbing-related searches went up 73% in LA., followed by 37% in Miami, United Press International reported. Roto-Rooter said the most common problem areas were kitchen sinks, toilets and garbage disposals.
A SLICE OF CHINA
Looking for a different type of pizza than the standard pepperoni or sausage? At Pizza Hut restaurants in China, customers are being offered deep-fried frogs on top of their pies, The Independent, a British newspaper, reported Nov. 21. The pizza has a thick crust with red sauce and basil, with a whole fried bullfrog on top. The limited-time variety is being offered in a collaboration with Dungeons and Dragons and is called “Goblin Pizza.”
IT’S A MYSTERY
George Oliver of Calvert County, Maryland, often walks the beach looking for fossils, NBC News reported. As he strolled along Chesapeake Bay on Nov. 4 during low tide, he spotted a coffin in the water. Inside was a nearly whole human skeleton. Oliver removed the skeleton and dug the mostly submerged coffin out of the water. “When I first found it,” he said, “you could not tell that there was human remains. You just thought that it was full of beach sand.” Oliver called the sheriff’s department, who called an archaeological society. Based on the construction of the coffin and the condition of the body, it’s believed to be at least 100 years old. Kelcey Ward, a crime scene technician with the sheriff’s office, said the skull showed signs of “a gunshot wound or blunt force trauma of some sort.” The remains and coffin will be interred at a local cemetery.
DEAD WRONG
Starting Jan. 1, the Garden of Remembrance cemetery in Stoke-on-Trent, England, will welcome visitors from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, the Stoke Sentinel reported. But should family members want to visit at other times, they’ll be required to buy a VIP pass for 5 pounds (or 10 pounds, if they also want to visit the rose garden). “Now I need to pay a membership fee to visit my dad’s grave,” groused Jode Bourne, whose father, Mark, is buried there. “This is an absolute disgrace.” A posted notice says the new rules will make “the site secure for our staff, families and visitors.”
A prop gravestone for Ebenezer Scrooge, left behind after a 1984 movie adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” starring George C. Scott, was smashed Nov. 24, the BBC reported. The cemetery next to St. Chad’s Church in Shrewsbury, England, was part of the scene where Scrooge meets the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come; much of the movie was filmed there. Town Council Clerk Helen Ball said the stone is “in multiple pieces. I think it’s one of those things that’s very dear to everybody’s hearts.” She said the council would determine whether the stone could be repaired.
NO GOOD DEED ...
Nigel Carter, 64, of Comrie, Perthshire, Scotland, collected 500 bikes to send to a charity in Sudan that helps people who need cheap transportation to school or work, the BBC reported Nov. 22. But a Scottish Environment Protection Agency inspector said the shipment could not leave the port because some of the bikes needed minor repairs, such as oil on chains and new brake cables. Carter said he found it “ludicrous” that the bikes were returned to him. A SEPA official said he had a duty to ensure that Scotland’s waste was not dumped on another country, but Carter said the Sudanese charity had picked out the bikes and were happy with their condition. They will likely be returned to the recycling center where they came from and scrapped.
THE SOLE THIEF
Parents and teachers at Gosho Kodomo-en kindergarten in southwestern Japan thought for sure someone with a footwear fetish was swiping little shoes from cubbies at the school, the Associated Press reported. Police installed three cameras in the school, and on Nov. 11, they zeroed in
on the real culprit: a weasel. “It’s great it turned out not to be a human being,” said Deputy Police Chief Hiroaki Inada. The stolen shoes have not been found, but the school has installed a net over the cubbies to keep out the weasel, who is still on the loose.
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
ARIES (March 21-April 19): If you were walking down the street and spied a coin lying on the sidewalk, would you bend down to pick it up? If you’re like most people, you wouldn’t. It’s too much trouble to exert yourself for an object of such little value. But I advise you to adopt a different attitude during the coming weeks. Just for now, that stray coin might be something like an Umayyad gold dinar minted in the year 723 and worth over $7 million. Please also apply this counsel metaphorically, Aries. In other words, be alert for things of unexpected worth that would require you to expand your expectations or stretch your capacities.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): In December 1903, the Wright Brothers flew a motorized vehicle through the sky for the first time in human history. It was a very modest achievement, really. On the first try, Orville Wright was in the air for just 12 seconds and traveled 120 feet. On the fourth attempt that day, Wilbur was aloft for 59 seconds and 852 feet. I believe you’re at a comparable stage in the evolution of your own innovation. Don’t minimize your incipient accomplishment. Keep the faith. It may take awhile, but your efforts will ultimately lead to a meaningful advancement. (P.S. Nine months later, the Wrights flew their vehicle for over five minutes and traveled 2.75 miles.)
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): “Amazing Grace” is a popular hymn that tells the story of a person who concludes that he has lived an awful life and now wants to repent for his sins and be a better human. The composer, John Newton, was a slave trader who had a religious epiphany during a storm that threatened to sink his ship in the Atlantic Ocean. God told him to reform his evil ways, and he did. I presume that none of you reading this horoscope has ever been as horrible a person as Newton. And yet you and I are in regular need of conversion experiences that awaken us to higher truths and more expansive perspectives. I predict you will have at least three of those transformative illuminations in the coming months. One is available now, if you want it.
BY ROB BREZSNY
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The world’s longest tunnel is over 35 miles long. It’s the Gotthard Base Tunnel in the Swiss Alps. I’m guessing the metaphorical tunnel you’ve been crawling your way through lately, Capricorn, may feel that extensive. But it’s really not. And here’s even better news: Your plodding travels will be finished sooner than you imagine. I expect that the light at the end of the tunnel will be visible any day now. Now here’s the best news: Your slow journey through the semidarkness will ultimately yield rich benefits no later than your birthday.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The Taurus writer Randall Jarrell compared poets to people who regularly stand in a meadow during a thunderstorm. If they are struck by the lightning of inspiration five or six times in the course of their careers, they are good poets. If they are hit a dozen times, they are great poets. A similar principle applies in many fields of endeavor. To be excellent at what you do, you must regularly go to where the energy is most electric. You’ve also got to keep working diligently on your skills so that when inspiration comes calling, you have a highly developed ability to capture it in a useful form. I’m bringing this up now, Taurus, because I suspect the coming weeks will bring you a slew of lightning bolts.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): My upcoming novels epitomize the literary genre known as magical realism. In many ways, the stories exhibit reverence for the details of our gritty destinies in the material world. But they are also replete with wondrous events like talking animals, helpful spirits and nightly dreams that provide radical healing. The characters are both practical and dreamy, earthy and wildly imaginative, well-grounded and alert for miracles. In accordance with your astrological potentials, I invite you to be like those characters in the coming months. You are primed to be both robustly pragmatic and primed for fairy-tale-style adventures.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): During the rest of 2024, life’s generosity will stream your way more than usual. You will be on the receiving end of extra magnanimity from people too. Even the spiritual realms might have extra goodies to bestow on you. How should you respond? My suggestion is to share the inflowing wealth with cheerful creativity. Boost your own generosity and magnanimity. Just assume that the more you give, the more you will get and the more you will have. (P.S. Do you know that Emily Dickinson poem with the line “Why Floods be served to us — in Bowls”? I suggest you obtain some big bowls.)
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “Thinking outside the box” is an American idiom. It means escaping habitual parameters and traditional formulas so as to imagine fresh perspectives and novel approaches. While it’s an excellent practice, there is also a good alternative. We can sometimes accomplish marvels by staying inside the box and reshaping it from the inside. Another way to imagine this is to work within the system to transform the system — to accept some of the standard perspectives but play and experiment with others. For example, in my horoscope column, I partially adhere to the customs of the well-established genre but also take radical liberties with it. I recommend this approach for you in 2025.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Would you like to avoid wilting and fading away in January, Aquarius? If so, I recommend that during the coming weeks, you give your best and brightest gifts and express your wildest and most beautiful truths. In the new year, you will need some downtime to recharge and revitalize. But it will be a pleasantly relaxing interlude — not a wan, withered detour — if in the immediate future you unleash your unique genius in its full splendor.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): The term “cognitive dissonance” refers to the agitation we feel while trying to hold conflicting ideas or values in our minds. For example, let’s say you love the music of a particular singer-songwriter, but they have opinions that offend you or they engage in behavior that repels you. Or maybe you share many positions with a certain political candidate, but they also have a few policies you dislike. Cognitive dissonance doesn’t have to be a bad or debilitating thing. In fact, the ability to harbor conflicting ideas with poise and equanimity is a sign of high intelligence. I suspect this will be one of your superpowers in the coming weeks.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): I don’t recommend burning wood to heat your home. Such fires generate noxious emissions harmful to human health. But hypothetically speaking, if you had no other way to get warm, I prefer burning ash and beech wood rather than, say, pine and cedar. The former two trees yield far more heat than the latter two, so you need less of them. Let’s apply this principle as we meditate on your quest for new metaphorical fuel, Sagittarius. In the coming months, you will be wise to search for resources that provide you with the most efficient and potent energy.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): My treasured Piscean adviser, Letisha, believes it’s a shame so many of us try to motivate ourselves through abusive self-criticism. Are you guilty of that sin? I have done it myself on many occasions. Sadly, it rarely works as a motivational ploy. More often, it demoralizes and deflates. The good news, Pisces, is that you now have extra power and savvy to diminish your reliance on this ineffectual tactic. To launch the transformation, I hope you will engage in a focused campaign of inspiring yourself through self-praise and self-love.
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