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Growing ’Grass 50 years later, RockyGrass in Lyons has become one of America’s great bluegrass festivals

by John Lehndorff

Leaving Oath Keepers, part II, p. 10

Diners want sustainable food, p. 24

Brittney Griner is a victim of the drug war, p. 30

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JULY 21, 2022

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

feature:

Oath Keepers chief Stewart Rhodes’ son explains why he left ‘Daddy Trump’ —part II

by Dakota Adams

buzz:

50 years later, RockyGrass in Lyons has become one of America’s great bluegrass festivals

by John Lehndorff

arts and culture:

In debut collection, Loveland native Claire Boyles explores how the work we do affects our lives and our land

by Bart Shaneman

nibbles:

The Snail of Approval and Zero Foodprint awards help diners put their money where their values are

by John Lehndorff

weed between the lines:

With Brittney Griner’s Russian detainment, the U.S. finally has a meaningful reason to pass cannabis reform—but it won’t

by Will Brendza

10 14 19 24 30

departments 6 7 9 21 22 23 27 29

The Anderson Files: Colorado GOP’s militia gang City Beat: Boulder City Council is back for its first meeting after summer break Astrology: by Rob Brezsny Events: What to do when there’s nothing to do Film: ‘In Bed With Ulysses’ and in love with James Joyce Savage Love: Gays and confused Drink: Growing Grove Street Alchemy Cuisine: Finding Smoky Chicken, Filipino Fare, Adobo Mayo, Lime Coconut Cubes and more

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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JULY 21, 2022

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Publisher, Fran Zankowski Circulation Manager, Cal Winn EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief, Caitlin Rockett News Editor, Will Brendza Food Editor, John Lehndorff Interns, Ben Berman, Rebecca Rommen Contributing Writers: Dave Anderson, Emma Athena, Rob Brezsny, Michael J. Casey, Shay Castle, Angela K. Evans, Mark Fearer, Jodi Hausen, Karlie Huckels, Dave Kirby, Matt Maenpaa, Sara McCrea, Rico Moore, Adam Perry, Katie Rhodes, Dan Savage, Bart Schaneman, Alan Sculley, Will Matuska, Tom Winter SALES AND MARKETING Market Development Manager, Kellie Robinson Account Executives, Matthew Fischer, Carter Ferryman, Chris Allred Mrs. Boulder Weekly, Mari Nevar PRODUCTION Art Director, Susan France Senior Graphic Designer, Mark Goodman CIRCULATION TEAM Sue Butcher, Ken Rott, Chris Bauer BUSINESS OFFICE Bookkeeper, Regina Campanella Founder/CEO, Stewart Sallo Editor-at-Large, Joel Dyer July 21, 2022 Volume XXIX, number 45

As Boulder County's only independently owned newspaper, Boulder Weekly is dedicated to illuminating truth, advancing justice and protecting the First Amendment through ethical, no-holds-barred journalism, and thought-provoking opinion writing.

Free every Thursday since 1993, the Weekly also offers the county's most comprehensive arts and entertainment coverage. Read the print version, or visit boulderweekly.com. Boulder Weekly does not accept unsolicited editorial submissions. If you're interested in writing for the paper, please send queries to: editorial@boulderweekly.com. Any materials sent to Boulder Weekly become the property of the newspaper.

690 South Lashley Lane, Boulder, CO, 80305 p 303.494.5511 f 303.494.2585 editorial@boulderweekly.com www.boulderweekly.com Boulder Weekly is published every Thursday. No portion may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. © 2022 Boulder Weekly, Inc., all rights reserved.

Boulder Weekly welcomes your correspondence via email (letters@boulderweekly.com) or the comments section of our website at www.boulderweekly.com. Preference will be given to short letters (under 300 words) that deal with recent stories or local issues, and letters may be edited for style, length and libel. Letters should include your name, address and telephone number for verification. We do not publish anonymous letters or those signed with pseudonyms.

Letters become the property of Boulder Weekly and will be published on our website.

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Colorado GOP’s militia gang

by Dave Anderson

V

iolent far rightists have been around for some time, but the Jan. 6 hearings have revealed their incestuous relationships with some of the most powerful figures in American politics.

Rachel Kleinfeld, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, published a disturbing article on the Just Security blog on July 6 entitled “The GOP’s Militia Problem: Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Lessons from Abroad.”

The House Committee revealed that the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were the ring leaders of the calculated mayhem at the U.S. Capitol. Kleinfeld notes that “violence (that day), first used as a political tool and now partially mainstreamed, has spread. The events on January 6 are not past. They are prelude.”

JULY 21, 2022

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She explains: “As a researcher on violence and democracy around the world, I have studied party-linked militia groups for years.

In countries like Iraq, Nigeria, Lebanon, and Colombia, politicians outsource violence to specialists in the trade, just as they hire consultants for robocalls and direct mail.

In the past, googling these terms brought up countries just escaping from conflict or descending into it. Now, the United States, where militias have been embraced by GOP leaders at the national, state, and local level … appears among the early search results.”

She provides numerous stories from all over the country. She cites only one example from our state: an article see THE ANDERSON FILES Page 7 BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

THE ANDERSON FILES from Page 6

from the Colorado Springs Independent and Colorado Springs commentator about the El Paso County RepubliMichelle Malkin. cans using United American Defense Oltmann hasn’t been a marginal Force (UADF), the armed wing of figure in the Colorado GOP. The conservative political group FEC current state Republican Party Chair United, standing for “Faith, EducaKristi Burton Brown served as FEC tion and Commerce.”

United’s president, and Oltmann FEC United was created by a himself was briefly nominated for 48-year-old Douglas County busigovernor at the GOP’s state assembly nessman Joe Oltmann who owns a last spring. gun shop, a car repair outfit and a Oltmann has a blood-thirsty data marketing firm. In 2020, he orobsession with executing political ganized protests against COVID-19 opponents and “foretells a dark future restrictions. He when violence then was involved will be necesin pro-police ralsary,” according lies in opposition to a review of his to Black Lives rhetoric by WashMatter protests. ington Post reHe became porter Rosalind nationally famous S. Helderman. with in rightwing On his podcircles six days cast last Decemexecuting political oppoafter the 2020 ber, Oltmann nents and “foretells a dark was enraged that election when he claimed on his 19 Senate Refuture when violence will Conservative Daipublicans voted ly podcast that he with Democrats be necessary.” had infiltrated an to approve an “Antifa confer11-week stopgap ence call” and spending bill. heard someone he This was in identified as Eric Coomer say, “Don’t conflict with a far right demand for a worry about the election, Trump is government shutdown to stop federal not gonna win. I made fucking sure vaccine mandates for employers. of that. Hahahaha.” Coomer was In response, Oltmann said, an employee of the Denver-based “There’s your list of 19 traitors to the Dominion Voting Systems. Oltmann American people, along with all the went on to claim that Dominion other traitors to the American people.

Voting Systems, Coomer and Antifa I want people to go out there and get took part in a conspiracy to steal the some wood. The gallows are getting 2020 election. wider and longer. We should be able Coomer sued Oltmann, FEC to build gallows all the way from United and more than a dozen Washington, D.C., to California.” individuals and organizations for Later in the broadcast, he called defamation. The defendants tried Gov. Jared Polis a traitor and a liar. to get the case dismissed, but Judge He said the governor should be Marie Avery Moses of the Denver lynched.

District Court ruled in May that the Colorado Secretary of State lawsuit can proceed to trial. In the Jena Griswold has been persistently 136-page ruling, Moses said evidence denounced by Oltmann. She decided presented in the case shows that the to travel with a security detail. “Any defendants engaged in “the deliberate person, when they see an election spread of dangerous and inflammatodenier group with a militia arm call ry political disinformation designed for them to be hanged, would take to sow distrust in democratic instituthat extremely seriously,” she told the tions.” Oltmann has never produced Washington Post. any evidence or answered any key questions about the alleged call, the This opinion column does not judge said. The defendants include the necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Trump presidential campaign, Sidney Weekly.

Powell, Rudy Giuliani, One America News Network, The Gateway Pundit Email: editorial@boulderweekly.com

OLTMANN HAS A BLOOD-THIRSTY OBSESSION

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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Increased climate tax and police reform

Boulder City Council is back for its first meeting after summer break on the new Thursday schedule

by Shay Castle

B

oulder is proposing a new $6.5 million annual tax on natural gas and electricity to tackle the rising costs of a warming climate, including the now year-round risks of wildfires. If approved by votes this fall, the tax will shift the majority of cost to businesses and industry.

Council has been discussing the tax for more than a year as it looks to replace two sunsetting sources of revenue for the city’s climate work: the Climate Action Plan Tax (a tax on electricity, expiring in 2023) and the Utility Occupation Tax (ending in 2025; initially funding the takeover of Xcel’s Boulder system, now paying for joint projects).

Together, they bring in $3.9 million per year. A combined tax was initially proposed to raise $5 million the first year and increase with inflation every year thereafter until 2040.

Staff are now suggesting $6.5 million as the starting point.

“The original target for the new climate tax of $5 million was developed … during a period of time when staff, community, and Council were just starting to face the stark reality of wildfire risk after the Marshall Fire,” JULY 21, 2022

staff wrote in notes to Council ahead of the July 28 study session. “The issue of climate-related resilience, especially in the context of wildfire, has become an urgent citywide need and priority.”

Fire was top-of-mind for many respondents to a recent poll about the climate tax, according to staff. An overwhelming 78% of those surveyed would support a $5 million tax, the poll found, and 71% would vote for an $8 million tax.

The average homeowner would pay $6.71 more each year, compared to current CAP and UOT rates. Businesses, however, would see their bills increase by nearly $200 on average; industrial users would pay an average of $722 more.

Additional revenue could be used to pay for a dedicated wildfire risk assessment team, greater mitigation on open space, burying power lines, electrifying buildings and vehicles, and other “Big Moves” identified in the city’s climate strategy.

Council will take a preliminary vote on ballot content Thursday. The public’s first opportunity to weigh in is Aug. 2, when Council will take see CITY BEAT Page 8 l

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CITY BEAT from Page 7

its final vote on this and other ballot items, including a move to even-year elections and a measure to undo the CU South annexation.

ALSO THIS WEEK: Council will assess the Planning Board’s refusal to allow a drivethrough chicken restaurant chain (Raising Cane’s) to set up shop in Boulder.

NEXT THURSDAY: POLICE REFORM Council will discuss the long-awaited results of “Reimagining Policing,” the reform efforts/update to Boulder PD’s guiding document.

A draft plan has been released.

In it, Police Chief Maris Herold writes of the need to reduce arrests and farm out some of the department’s responsibility to other agencies, and promises that new police practices will address “inequities and concerns raised by social justice activists.”

“A holistic government model of public safety produces outcomes that are more effective, ethical, and equitable than relying on law enforcement alone to address crime and victimization,” Herold wrote in an opening “Letter from the Chief.”

“Asking officers to continually respond to recurring problems, with no plan to address underlying conditions, is unacceptable.”

The draft plan includes six focus areas—mostly about working with the community while maintaining a healthy police force—and a values statement, which reads, l

“We feel safe in our community when: • We are all free to enjoy public and private spaces without fear of harm; • Laws are enforced equitably; • Police respond professionally and respectfully when we need them, but we have alternative and creative resources to address problems not suited to policing; • We demonstrate we are a compassionate community that supports the basic needs and the right to be free from crime for all community members; • Criminal behavior is met with accountability measures that are fair and just within policing and other systems, with opportunities for individuals to be supported in underlying issues; and • Officers are part of the communities they serve, building relationships and understanding and addressing problems before having to step up enforcement and resort to force.”

• There will not be opportunity for public input at the July 28 study session, but a fourth engagement window will begin later this month or next and run through September. Community members will be invited to provide feedback on the draft plan.

ALSO JULY 28: Staff will update Council on plans to convert city streetlights to LED, and on efforts to reduce noise, partying and trash on University Hill.

Email: editorial@boulderweekly.com

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Outdoor Industry Social SPONSORED BY ZWIFT JULY 26TH 6-8PM

by Rob Brezsny ARIES

MARCH 21-APRIL 19: Fiction-writer John Banville tells us,

“There are moments when the past has a force so strong it seems one might be annihilated by it.” I suspect that’s sometimes true for many of us. But it won’t apply to you Aries anytime soon. In fact, just the opposite situation will be in effect during the coming months: You will have more power to render the past irrelevant than maybe you’ve ever had. You will wield an almost indomitable capacity to launch new trends without having to answer to history. Take full advantage, please!

TAURUS

APRIL 20-MAY 20: Researchers have proved that lullabies

enhance the health of premature babies being cared for in hospitals. The soft, emotionally rich songs also promote the well-being of the babies’ families. I bring this to your attention because I believe you should call on lullaby therapy yourself in the coming weeks. Listening to and singing those tunes will soothe and heal your inner child. And that, in my astrological opinion, is one of your top needs right now. For extra boosts, read fairy tales, eat food with your hands, make mud pies, and play on swings, seesaws, and merry-go-rounds.

GEMINI

MAY 21-JUNE 20: Dancer and singer-songwriter FKA

Twigs has taken dance lessons since she was a child.

In 2017, she added a new form of physical training, the Chinese martial art of wushu. Doing so made her realize a key truth about herself: She loves to learn and practice new skills. Of all life’s activities, they give her the most pleasure and activate her most vibrant energy.

She feels at home in the world when she does them. I suspect you may have similar inclinations in the coming months. Your appetite for mastering new skills will be at an all-time high. You will find it natural and even exhilarating to undertake disciplined practice. Gathering knowledge will be even more exciting than it usually is.

CANCER

JUNE 21-JULY 22: Cancerian author Laurie Sheck writes, “So

much of life is invisible, inscrutable: layers of thoughts, feelings, and outward events entwined with secrecies, ambiguities, ambivalences, obscurities, darknesses.”

While that’s an experience we all have, especially you Cancerians, it will be far less pressing for you in the coming weeks. I foresee you embarking on a phase when clarity will be the rule, not the exception. Hidden parts of the world will reveal themselves to you. The mood will be brighter and lighter than usual. The chronic fuzziness of life will give way to a delightful acuity. I suspect you will see things that you have never or rarely seen.

LEO

JULY 23-AUG. 22: It’s always advisable for you Leos to

carry on a close personal relationship with mirrors. I’m speaking both literally and metaphorically. For the sake of your mental health, you need to be knowledgeable about your image and monitor its ever-shifting nuances.

And according to my analysis of the astrological omens, you are now authorized to deepen your intimate connection with mirrors. I believe you will thrive by undertaking an intense phase of introspective explorations and creative self-inquiry. Please keep it all tender and kind, though. You’re not allowed to bad-mouth yourself.

Put a special emphasis on identifying aspects of your beauty that have been obscured or neglected. By the way, Leo, I also recommend you seek compassionate feedback from people you trust. Now is an excellent time to get reflections about your quest to become an even more amazing human.

VIRGO

AUG. 23-SEPT. 22: At your best, you are a flexible purist, an

adaptable stickler for detail, and a disciplined yet supple thinker. Maybe more than any other sign of the zodiac, you can be focused and resilient, intense and agile, attentive and graceful. And all of us non-Virgos will greatly appreciate it if you provide these talents in abundance during the coming weeks. We need you to be our humble, understated leader. Please be a role model who demonstrates the finely crafted, well-balanced approach to being healthy.

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LIBRA

SEPT. 23-OCT. 22: In my Astrological Book of Life, your

life purposes as a Libra may include the following: 1. to be beautiful in the smartest ways you can imagine and smart in the most beautiful ways you can imagine; 2. to always see at least two sides of the story, and preferably more; 3. to serve as an intermediary between disparate elements; 4. to lubricate and facilitate conversations between people who might not otherwise understand each other; 5. to find common ground between apparent contradictions; 6. to weave confusing paradoxes into invigorating amalgamations; 7. to never give up on finding the most elegant way to understand a problem. PS: In the coming weeks, I hope you will make extra efforts to call on the capacities I just named.

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SCORPIO

OCT. 23-NOV. 21: Author Clive James loved the Latin term

gazofilacium, meaning “treasure chamber.” He said that the related Italian word, gazofilacio, referred to the stash of beloved poems that he memorized and kept in a special place in his mind. In accordance with astrological omens, Scorpio, now would be an excellent time to begin creating your own personal gazofilacium: a storehouse of wonderful images and thoughts and memories that will serve as a beacon of joy and vitality for the rest of your long life. Here’s your homework: Identify ten items you will store in your gazofilacium.

SAGITTARIUS

NOV. 22-DEC. 21: Tips to get the most out of the next three

weeks: 1. Keep your interesting options open. Let your mediocre options shrivel and expire. 2. Have no regrets and make no apologies about doing what you love. 3.

Keep in mind that every action you perform reverberates far beyond your immediate sphere. 4. Give your fears ridiculous names like “Gaffe” and “Wheezy” and “Lumpy.” 5. Be honest to the point of frankness but not to the point of rudeness. 6. Don’t just run. Gallop.

CAPRICORN

DEC. 22-JAN. 19: Capricorn poet Richard Hugo wrote, “It

doesn’t bother me that the word ‘stone’ appears more than 30 times in my third book, or that ‘wind’ and ‘gray’ appear over and over in my poems to the disdain of some reviewers.” Hugo celebrated his obsessions.

He treated them as riches because focusing on them enabled him to identify his deepest feelings and discover who he really was. In accordance with astrological omens, I recommend a similar approach to you in the coming weeks. Cultivate and honor and love the specific fascinations at the core of your destiny.

AQUARIUS

JAN. 20-FEB. 18: Author Violet Trefusis (1894–1972) and

author Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) loved each other. In one letter, Violet told Vita, “I want you hungrily, frenziedly, passionately. I am starving for you. Not only the physical you, but your fellowship, your sympathy, the innumerable points of view we share. I can’t exist without you; you are my affinity.” In the coming weeks, dear Aquarius, I invite you to use florid language like that in addressing your beloved allies. I also invite you to request such messages. According to my reading of the planetary omens, you are due for eruptions of articulate passion.

PISCES

FEB. 19-MARCH 20: I’d like to honor and pay homage to a

past disappointment that helped transform you into a beautiful soul. I know it didn’t feel good for you when it happened, but it has generated results that have blessed you and the people whose lives you’ve touched.

Would you consider performing a ritual of gratitude for all it taught you? Now is an excellent time to express your appreciation because doing so will lead to even further redemption.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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This is the second installment of a series we began last week. If you missed ‘part I’ you can find it on our website, boulderweekly.com.

The Oath Keepr’s Son—part II Oath Keepers chief Stewart Rhodes’ son explains why he left ‘daddy Trump’ and the ‘far-right’ cult

by Dakota Adams

A

t 18 years old, knowing that it hardly mattered in the grand scheme of the Electoral College, I cast my first ever vote in an election for Donald J. Trump. I joked on social media that my vote would single-handedly swing Montana’s results and save the United States.

I was, like many Americans, glued to election night coverage and thrumming with anxiety, running to and fro between our table in a rural bar and grill on the Canadian border and the parking lot where a ghost of cell service let me check the news as votes were counted. I kept mainstream sources open in one window and 4chan’s toxic politics board in another to have one eye on the crazy people’s take. I had plenty of crazy opinions in my personal life of course, but the 4chan crowd had fewer delusions of grandeur.

“What do you think,” said Stewart after confiscating my small paycheck for answering emails for Oath Keepers to panic-buy canned goods and dog food, “if we take Oath Keepers to the Capitol to act as security, will the Left use that as an opportunity for a false-flag attack?”

Stewart had been obsessed with the specter of a Clinton presidency, terrified of the FBI unleashed to go after the militia leaders who had slipped away from Bundy Ranch. I was mainly concerned that federal agents raiding our house to arrest Stewart could end with our dogs being shot. It did, however, mark one important difference from the past: Stew-

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art was losing his mind over this month’s AS A CHILD potential apocalypse and I felt almost totally Dakota’s father, indifferent to the end-of-world aspect.

Stewart Rhodes, made his family I had political anxiety a-plenty, sure, but prepare for an I had detached myself from the cyclical fear apocalypse and of every headline that had ruled my life unparticipate in til a peak at Jade Helm ‘15. While Stewart militia training. fretted and plotted in insane megalomania, laboring under the self-gratifying delusion that the Clinton dynasty and Bilderberg Group were hinging their plans with bated breath on Stewart’s tactical decisions, the first thread in my belief had unraveled.

The bitter thought that Stewart’s decisions were putting our dogs in danger of being shot during a standoff at our home would be the beginning of the next step. My belief in The Donald had already peaked, although I did not know it.

My entanglement in Pizzagate and Clinton conspiracy theories would allow me to ignore the pointed fact that no one had been arrested as promised, but I could only ignore the advance of time for so long. This, the forever wait by the Lock Her Up contingent of Trump voters, would become what I mark as the prototype of the eternal “two more weeks” familiar to anyone who has studied QAnon. I was not down for eternally clinging to scraps of theory and inference, and so my enthusiasm for Trump dwindled to a gray indifference while others were sucked in deeper.

The second step would take longer, a slowly dawning awareness against a backdrop of childish tweets from the White House and ineffectual media circus leadership. This was largely because I started to see uncomfortable parallels between the way Trump ran his cabinet and the toxic mismanagement style Stewart brought to the Oath Keepers board of directors. Any similarity between my father and Trump was cause for concern, and being raging narcissists the similarities were many, since I was by now completely aware that my father was a psychopathic fraud. I’d begun planning my family’s escape, a process that would take nearly two years to complete, and took on myself a world’s weight of new responsibility. Online political discourse and conspiracy theory simply took a backseat.

I would jerk back to attention, however, when our country betrayed the Kurds.

Like a lot of the militia adjacent right wing, I’d become somewhat enamored with

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

the struggle of the Kurdish people. All the conservative American cultural notes were hit: independent mountain people with a love for democratic government and personal freedom who’d been at our side since the Iraq war and had taken the brunt of the losses in combating ISIS. I’d researched the foreign volunteer regiments and decided against buying a plane ticket after reading about one fighter getting his nose broken in a headbutt by a Pirates of the Caribbean actor, which was tracked for a public relations focused outfit that would take middle-aged dads from the UK and untrained American idiots. Like a militant Groucho Marx, I realized I should be wary of joining any paramilitary that would be willing to take me as a member. Still, I had become deeply emotionally entangled in their cause and believed they represented a bright light in a dark time for the world.

Over the course of a single hour-long phone call with a foreign dictator, our president was convinced to completely abandon our most faithful regional allies in the Global War on Terror in one of the worst strategic decisions made by any president in modern history. The Kurds were added (again) to our long list of local allies betrayed in conflicts from Tripoli to Laos, and permanently set the reputation of the United States as an unreliable ally and fair-weather friend. I watched dumbfounded as a state that possibly intended genocide was given free reign to roll over the people who had done all the dying to destroy the caliphate our national failures helped create, just so that Trump could get an attaboy from an autocratic strongman. Or maybe not just an attaboy; the more I looked at the situation objectively, the more I saw that in every aspect Putin gained enormously. This decision had done us no good in any respect, but had many advantages for the strategic goals of Russia. Standing in the family kitchen, I remember jokingly telling my mother that I was ready to re-think all of those Russiagate allegations. It didn’t feel like a joke.

Almost more worrying was the way people I knew reacted, changing their own viewpoints to stay in lockstep with Trump. Later, when Trump was trying to drum up support for a war with Iran, I would have a bizarre argument with a bartender in which we circled endlessly from her insistence that we had no part in Middle Eastern “tribal conflicts” and should leave well enough alone in the entire region before immediately declaring that we needed a troop presence in the Middle East to keep hostile Muslim nations down before they posed a threat. No matter how many times I tried, she could not see the contradiction.

After the Las Vegas shooting I would see it again, in the swirl of disinformation that included one local trying to convince me that the entire shooting had been faked because a photographer with a telescopic lens couldn’t see any bullet holes in the street.

I knew people in Las Vegas BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

who’d been there, which led to some awkward confrontations around my small town as conspiracy theory spread. In the aftermath, Trump signed a gun control bill that banned the bump stock accessory that had been used by the shooter, successfully passing more gun control in four years than Obama had in eight, and I watched in amazement as many of the hardcore Second Amendment fanatics I was surrounded by twisted themselves in knots to avoid conflicting with Trump’s actions.

One redneck youth told me that Trump had stopped all mass shootings permanently by banning bump stocks, people with Gadsden flag plates suddenly advocated for red flag laws and even confiscating all weapons from veterans on grounds of PTSD only to stay in step with Trump.

I began to worry that there was nothing Trump could do that would shake their belief.

My increasing concern with Trump’s cult status was not enough to draw me out of the right wing completely, although I was agreeing with liberal criticisms of the administration more and more, but that shock would be coming soon enough.

The Donald continued to lose me throughout the pandemic, the well studied absolute failure of the administration to act decisively or effectively, particularly striking to a lifelong prepper who’d grown up hearing dire warnings of antibiotic resistant plagues and weaponized viruses. Not only had the administration failed in the crisis, they’d politicized it. I watched in shock as a public health crisis was outright denied so that appropriate response

could be turned into a wedge issue, and again as people I knew who had panicked the hardest at the first reports from Wuhan seemed to gradually forget that they’d ever believed in the virus at all.

All chaos and death was blamed again on the shadowy NWO, obviously out in the world sowing societal havoc with gremlin glee to create that ever-precious power vacuum. This frustrated me to no end, as someone who had followed news about the virus closely from the start. Conspiracy theory outlets that had milked the early downplaying of the outbreaks by health organizations, presenting themselves as champions of truth when governments claimed that all was well, turned to alleging that the entire pandemic had been a hoax or a cover for attacks by secret microwave weapons.

Oath Keepers would perform a similar 180.

Stewart, scrambling to recover from an open letter to Trump asking for harsher COVID measures, would appear in a maskless photo op with a gym owner who refused to comply with lockdown orders in an attempt to salvage support from his base.

This was symptomatic of a larger shift in the militia movement, a sea change I’d been largely unaware of after gradually dropping out of militant circles. Oath Keepers presents an excellent case study, an unpublished open letter to Trump by Stewart Rhodes that “schooled” the president on the constitution in an adversarial tone. This letter would have marked a course forward for Oath Keepers as a less partisan watchdog organization looming over the shoulder of the Trump administration, on the lookout for misbehavior, a direction that was in line AS DONALD with the mission statement of Oath TRUMP’S presidenKeepers more than armed standoffs in cy rolled on, Dakota the desert. It was, however, just one of Adams began to see several strategies Stewart was evidently past the indoctrinaweighing for keeping the Oath Keeption of his youth. ers relevant after the 2016 elections.

A perennial problem in militia and conservative activist organizations is keeping members engaged and money flowing when a Republican is in office, the threat being that many members would assume that all was now well, to “go to sleep” instead of continuing to power Oath Keepers. Taking up position as he who watches the watcher would be one legitimate path to keeping Oath Keepers in circulation as an organization.

However, going full MAGA and setting itself against the shadowy leftist threat would prove to be the path of least resistance. Many militias would make this choice, aligning unquestioningly with MAGA to stay relevant and keep the numbers up despite going against their stated antiauthoritarianism and distrust of government.

If I fully understood this at the time, the events of the BLM riots see OATH KEEPERS Page 12

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JULY 21, 2022

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OATH KEEPERS from Page 11

would have been less of an awful surprise.

This part is going to be hard to imagine, even after getting oriented a bit on what the inside of my younger self ’s brain was like, but the fact that the entire constitutionalist militia movement did not turn out in solidarity with Black Lives Matter in 2020 was a massive shock to my entire belief system.

In 2014 Ferguson, the Oath Keepers rooftop security teams had been planning an armed march in solidarity with BLM, including the loan of AR15s to organizers, to demonstrate that the Second Amendment belonged to all Americans. It never happened, Stewart blaming local Oath Keepers’ leaders for dropping the ball. Stewart had given the green light to collaborate with the John Brown Gun Club, but simply never got around to answering emails from them. Oath Keepers had even offered to join the Standing Rock protests, and been turned down in the justifiable fear of it being co-opted into another standoff circus.

The death of EMT Breonna Taylor, shot in bed during a no-knock raid on her home, had clear parallels to the 2011 shooting death of marine veteran Jose Guerena who had similarly been killed in a SWAT raid when he was given no time to recognize the intruders in his home as police and lay down his rifle.

Oath Keepers had protested his death, staying the course even when every single police officer on the Oath Keepers board of directors resigned in protest to our protest and left half the national leadership seats vacant. Our media guy assembled a touching memorial video that was instrumental in early awareness of Oath Keepers when it hit the internet, sending a loud and clear message that Oath Keepers would stand up for veterans even if it meant criticizing the police. I saw no reason why the killing of a first responder should be different from the killing of a marine vet, especially when both had been drug busts that targeted not the shooting victim, but an associate under investigation. For Guerena a family member, for Breonna a boyfriend.

In my view, Oath Keepers and many allied militias had more history of sympathy with BLM than of being antagonistic, or at least of general ideological alignment. Oath Keepers had taken great pains to boycott events that also hosted speakers from racist groups, maintained careful separation from alt-right and Identity Europa contingents at the Berkeley protests, and once kicked Randy Weaver out of an Oath Keepers parade after he refused to renounce white separatism. I saw the militia movement I had lived in as a force loyal to the idea of America, not an ethnic majority.

A lot of this I put down to the influence of 3% founder Mike Vanderboegh, whose life’s work was forging the disparate militias into an anti-racist armed civil disobedience movement that could gain political legitimacy.

I had marched in several protests he organized in my childhood, the gun rights marches drew armed crowds and police monitoring. His talks establishing a link between gun rights and racial justice drew a handful of attendants.

According to the dogma of the constitutionalist side of the militia movement, white supremacists were supposed to be the enemy. Racist groups were perhaps a lower priority to some than communists, out of a belief that radical leftists had influence in government that the Klan lacked (a hilarious irony in hindsight), but domestic enemies of the constitution nonetheless.

They were a constant presence that had to be checked, a camel with its nose perpetually creeping under the tent, attempting to advance themselves by associating with constitutionalist militias in the eyes of the media to increase conflict and puff themselves up. I’d been long since out of touch with most Oath Keepers, but I assumed that the mission remained unchanged. All enemies, foreign and domestic.

It follows logically that an anti-racist, anti-government movement would turn out for racial justice protests after egregious killings by agents of the state.

What happened instead was that the militias finally got to see the black helicopters and ‘black bag’ abduction squads they’d long predicted in action, vindicated at last, and they stood aside to cheer on the state.

I was baffled when escalating police violence against peaceful protests was met by jeers from my remaining militia contacts on social media. Federal agents in plain clothes abducted protesters in unmarked rental vans without legal arrests ever being recorded, crowds were barricaded in place for mass arrests, citizens shot with less-than-lethal munitions on their own front porches, tanks rolling through neighborhoods flanked by police and soldiers in gas masks. It was a scene out of any and every paranoid antigovernment fantasy come to life, and the reaction was ‘serves you right.’ l

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

THE ONLY THING THAT MADE ANY SENSE to me, later, was to wonder whether I’d always believed in a lie and the whole movement really was racist to the core . . . I stopped wondering, and I severed a lot of contacts.

Instead of stepping up to seize the moment, even in a self-promotional move to gain legitimacy and a wider platform, the militiamen all stayed home chuckling over the schadenfreude of seeing ‘the left’ being repressed after ‘the left’ had refused to stand up for right-wing protesters and gun owners in the past.

Debatable as that is, the Teamsters Union went to bat for Cliven Bundy after all, the obvious correct response would have been to act the bigger man and march out anyway. Especially after Bundy Ranch, a lot of police violence would have been cooled by a line of backwoods paramilitary Bubbas, all with wild beards and American flag bandanas, standing between the police and protesters and simply refusing to move.

Instead, they stayed at home, laughing at ‘the left’ for finally getting their turn under the boot (in a very particular view of reality) and actively cheering the black helicopters. The use of state violence against protest movements in modern America moved toward normalization, the president threatened the deployment of US military forces to crush protests, and the anti-government freedom fighters applauded from home.

Except the ones that went to counter-protests. They turned up all right, to try to provoke queer teens into fights while strutting around in their plate carriers and tactical vests, and to unexpectedly run into the eldest son of their generalissimo on the wrong side of the crowd. They turned up waving Trump flags and the star spangled banner, as if a protest against the unlawful killing of black people was inherently a protest against Trump and America itself. I thought about that image, the defensive reflex of the militia right to any attack on racism, for a long time.

Their excuses when pressed were varied, shallow, and made little sense. The protest was ridiculous because black abortions happened and people protest that less, where was the protest for people killed by illegal immigrants, there’s ‘intelligence’ that Antifa is going to launch a terrorist attack at 7 p.m. (in which case you absolutely should be standing in the open, clearly identifiable as right wing militia and incredibly predictable in your regular movements while you patrol the venue, you go dude), the killing of George Floyd was a conspiracy because that many cops shouldn’t have shown up that quickly for a counterfeit bill call and that meant a false flag engineered to sow social chaos. On and on, bewildering bullshit and empty whataboutisms without any real concrete reasons that had more than a single sentence of depth.

The only thing that made any sense to me, later, was to wonder whether I’d always believed in a lie and the whole movement really was racist to the core.

My remaining militia movement Facebook friends started referring to people by barely disguised racial epithets like ‘dindus’ and the leader of the local group, a splinter of Oath Keeper’s CPT program, told me that he’d be willing to accept white nationalist members if they didn’t rock the boat. I stopped wondering, and I severed a lot of contacts.

In all this, I sort of lost track of what Trump was doing. I’d tuned in a bit to the endless conga line of scandals and instantly burned out when the sheer volume was too much to handle. It felt like diving into a monstrous comic book series with a confusing timeline, by design, and except for when Trump wandered across the street to hold a bible upside down and tear gas reporters I hadn’t paid a lot of attention. I hadn’t yet mastered the post-2020 mindset of staying perpetually afraid and angry of and about everything, all the time...

You can read the rest of this article on our website at Boulderweekly.com Email: editorial@boulderweekly.com BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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W

e’ve always thought of RockyGrass as our local festival. Boulder County residents take it for granted that the world’s best bluegrass musicians will migrate here every summer for the always sold-out event.

Mention RockyGrass to bluegrass fans and musicians across the U.S. (and the world) and they smile. They revere the little festival in Lyons as one of the premiere bluegrass events in existence.

According to two of the genre’s most recognized pickers, Pete Wernick of Hot Rize and Chris Thile of Punch Brothers, RockyGrass has been essential to their careers. Their celebrated bands might not have been formed without RockyGrass, originally known as the Rocky Mountain Bluegrass Festival.

Bill Monroe Started It All

We can thank the father of bluegrass music for also parenting Colorado’s first bluegrass festival.

In 1972, members of Denver’s small, growing bluegrass scene formed the Colorado Bluegrass Music Society. When they met Monroe after a show at Tulagi’s in Boulder, he convinced them to put on a Colorado festival in 1973 at the Adams County Fairgrounds. He even footed the bill for the first event and booked the allstar lineup featuring his Bluegrass Boys plus Lester Flatt, Ralph Stanley, Jim & Jesse, the Bluegrass Alliance and Country Gazette. Monroe would oversee three more of the gatherings.

“In the early years, the festival was at a dusty rodeo ground,” Pete Wernick says.

“There were a few trees in the camping area. Certainly, no beer was served. The wind would come up sometimes. One time it blew Jim and Jesse McReynolds’ hair out of shape so it stood straight up.”

The festival eventually moved to Loveland before the promoters of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival took over the event in 1992, moved it to its current Planet Bluegrass location, and rechristened it “RockyGrass.”

Making Hot Rize

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Growing

’Grass

50 years later, RockyGrass in Lyons has become one of America’s great bluegrass festivals

by John Lehndorff we’ll play again. Hot Rize doesn’t have any other shows scheduled,” Wernick says.

The Rocky Mountain Bluegrass Festival was essential to his musical future.

“I met Tim O’Brien at RockyGrass the first time I played there with Country Cooking in the third year,” the banjoist says. “He won the fiddle contest. (Late guitarist) Charles Sawtelle was the soundman for the festival.

That’s where most of Hot Rize met.” Hot Rize debuted in 1979 and eventually became RockyGrass’ host band.

“The festival changed everything for bluegrass in Colorado,” Wernick says. “Right away we had Bill Monroe coming to Colorado, all the major acts in bluegrass came and the best local bands, too.”

He also credits bluegrass radio shows on KGNU and KCFR with building the devoted following for the music. (Boulder’s KGNU will broadcast and livestream RockyGrass again this year.)

“There’s a lot more to bluegrass than playing the hits. It’s a subculture of l

SUSAN FRANCE

At the age of 76, Wernick—known as Dr. Banjo—suffered a heart attack in February. He has recovered and is preparing for a rare festival finale set July 31 with Boulder-born Hot Rize, including Tim O’Brien, Nick Forster and Bryan Sutton.

“This is special. There’s no telling when

HOT RIZE, PHOTO BY SUSAN FRANCE

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

musicians,” Wernick says. “You didn’t see Placido Domingo singing in the parking lot at an opera festival.

“RockyGrass was the one place devoted to bluegrass and almost everybody camped, so there was lots of mingling,” he adds. “That was the first place I jammed with my heroes like Byron Berline and later with Drew Emmitt (of Leftover Salmon) in the campground.”

Band, Sam Bush, and the Steep Canyon Rangers.

Thile’s mentor, Edgar Meyer, will team up for what Wernick calls a “bluegrass adjacent” progressive bluegrass set with banjo superstar Bela Fleck and mandolinist Mike Marshall.

Other highlights are a reunion of Uncle Earl and the debut of a new Colorado band, Big Richard. Both bands are composed of women musicians.

Putting the Punch in the Brothers

Chris Thile, the mandolinist, singer and leader of the Punch Brothers band, came to RockyGrass as a teenager with his first band, Nickel Creek.

“RockyGrass was the first national festival to hire Nickel Creek,” Thile says. “I was maybe 16 and my whole family drove to Lyons from Kentucky.

I remember being backstage and meeting (bassist) Edgar Meyer, one of my heroes. He kindly talked to me about classical music and he’s become one of my biggest mentors.”

It all came around a few years later when Chris Thile was greeting fans in the merchandise tent.

“This 12-year-old girl came up to get an autograph,” he says. “It was Sarah Jarosz and she said she hoped we could play together some day.

You hear that a lot. A few years later we were onstage at RockyGrass jamming together.” Jarosz has gone on to national acclaim and Grammy awards.

“That’s the kind of place RockyGrass is,” Thile says. “When you’re there, because it’s so intimate, you’re more open to new musical connections being made.”

The robust picking scene backstage and in the campgrounds at RockyGrass was also vital.

“The first time I met and played with Noam Pikelny and Chris Ethridge (of the Punch Brothers) was at RockyGrass. I also met my ex-wife there,” he says with a sigh.

The Punch Brothers perform July 29 at the festival. “We never say no to Rockygrass. The place is an acoustic anomaly. The cliff behind the creek makes it sound unlike any other place, almost amphitheater-like,” Thile says, adding that the presence of so many musicians in the audience drives bands to deliver stellar sets.

The 50th anniversary of RockyGrass will also feature some of bluegrass’ biggest acts, including Del McCoury, Peter Rowan, Yonder Mountain String

TIM BENKO/ PLANET BLUEGRASS

DAVID HILL

Molly, Billy and Future Bluegrass

According to Pete Wernick, also a nationally known bluegrass educator, the music is in good hands for the future with a bevy of young, talented stars like Sierra Hull, Molly Tuttle and Billy Strings rising to the fore.

“Bluegrass started 75 years ago and it’s invulnerable to fads,” Wernick says.

“There’s no place for posing. In bluegrass, if you have the talent and the soul, that’s good enough. There’s not much left in our culture that is still like that.”

There is no doubt that if more tickets were available—or if another day was added, RockyGrass would still sell out.

The fact that the festival is forced to stay small because of the location is a huge “gift,” Thile says: “Since RockyGrass can’t get any bigger, it only gets better.”

John Lehndorff has written about bluegrass music in Colorado since the late 1970s for diverse publications including Bluegrass Unlimited.

Email: johnlehndorff@gmail.com

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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ON THE BILL: KGNU

will livestream and broadcast RockyGrass July 29-31 at 88.5 FM and at AfterFm.com/ RockyGrass.

TOP: Chris Thile (on mandolin) performs with The Punch Brothers.

ABOVE: Bill Monroe talks to a fan at the first Rocky Mountain Bluegrass Festival in 1973.

JULY 21, 2022

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Extracting stories from the industries of the American West In debut collection, Loveland native Claire Boyles explores how the work we do affects our lives and our land

by Bart Schaneman

I

n the ruins of the sugar mill on Madison Avenue in Loveland, one of the buildings has a message painted on the roof: “IT WAS SUGAR, STUPID!” The story behind that message goes back more than a decade and served as a small piece of material—a beet for processing, if you will—for a piece in Claire Boyles’ debut collection of stories, Site Fidelity.

The quick summary is that someone was arrested near the factory for what an initial test said was methamphetamine, but was later proved to be only sugar.

It’s one of those details that seems too good to be taken from real life.

“I wish I had made that up,” Boyles, who lives in Loveland, says. To use that detail, she cleared it with one of the actual people involved in the case, whom she knows personally.

Many of the stories in this collection, which won the Whiting Award and is longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award and the Reading the West Award, are inspired by journalism, both current and past.

Take the piece “Flood Stories,” which opens with a dramatic telling of a mother and daughter caught in the Big Thompson River flood of 1976.

Here, Boyles writes beautifully about what her characters see: “The rock wall of the canyon against the road turns pink-golden in the waning hours of the day, the tops of pines that line the steep mountain incline on our side of the river catch the sunset light and burn like torches.”

Boyles and her family lived firsthand

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

the struggles of working class Coloradans many years ago when they tried for five years to run a 20-acre farm north of Kersey, Colorado, with vegetables and cut flowers and chickens and pigs.

“It just sort of didn’t go,” she says. “It feels to us like we lost the farm.”

After the farm wasn’t a success, Boyles went back to get her master’s in creative writing at Colorado State University when she was 40. She graduated in 2018.

She wrote most of these stories in her classes at CSU. Now she has a collection published by W.W. Norton.

“I did not go into it thinking it would work out this way,” Boyles says. “There was never a moment where I thought this right here is where I would be in 2022. But I'm very grateful.”

All of the pieces are set in the American West. If there’s a throughline in the book it’s Boyles’ interest in how resource extraction, including fracking and mining, affects our lives and environment.

To highlight that, she points out that the mining history of the West is still alive and relevant.

“Even though it's often thought of as exclusively a ’49ers, Gold Rush-situation, which is absolutely not what it ever only was and not what it is now,” Boyles says.

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She explores these themes without devolving into polemic or coming off as preachy.

The stories are character-driven more than anything, with the themes of environmentalism woven in with skill and subtlety.

She follows characters through generational stories to show how extractive industries, including agriculture, drive the way people live in this part of the world and how it impacts the land.

“One of the beauties of fiction is that it is often centered around narrative, and it is often centered around character exploration and character development and character relationships,” Boyles says. “But the environmental and climate issues of the book, none of us are living lives that are devoid of those things.”

This is not a linked collection, but many characters reappear throughout, like Sister Agnes Mary, who, in one story, has taken to sabotaging heavy machinery on a fracking site next to a playground in an effort to protect children from toxins entering the atmosphere.

The attempt strains the health of the older woman, but Boyles deftly renders the tenacity of her purpose.

“The pain is excruciating, all-encompassing, as if her joints have split open to leak poison into the rest of her, but her soul feels once more fertile and verdant, honeysuckle over boxwood, evergreen,” Boyles writes.

“Sister persists, but she moves so slowly through her pain that she worries she will not finish the job before the men arrive.”

Boyles’ writing shows how climate change and environmental problems affect humans, while also showing how humans have lives beyond those concerns.

It’s important to Boyles to find ways to show the reality of life, with people living in ways that don't harm the planet, but also sometimes in ways that are contributing to an environmental issue.

She does this without being heavy-handed, erring on the side of drama, entertainment and character, showing how peoples' circumstances affect their relationships to the industries around them, or, as she puts it, “The ways we often don't have choices about whether or not to engage, or choices about whether or not those things show up where we live."

“I try to have compassion," she adds.

"We're all caught in the systems.”

Many of the main characters in the stories are women, which Boyles points out is not always the case in narratives about this region.

“You need to show what it means to be a woman in the modern American West and what women are contributing to the narrative,” she says.

Email: editorial@boulderweekly.com

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E VE N T S

EVENTS

n Autism Society of Boulder County presents Grapes for Good Fundraiser

If your organization is planning an event, please email the editor at crockett@boulderweekly.com

n John Gendall—‘Rocky Mountain Modern’

6:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 26, Boulder Bookstore, 1107 Pearl St., Boulder. Tickets: $5, boulderbookstore.org John Gendall’s new book, ‘Rocky Mountain Modern,’ presents inspiring modern residences of the Rockies. Perched on cliffsides, with picture windows framing breathtaking vistas, these striking homes reveal modern living at its best. Rocky Mountain Modern celebrates modernism through the residences of the region, designed by such architecture studios as Selldorf Architects, and Allied Works in Aspen, Telluride, Vail and other area locales.

6-11 p.m. Boulder Jewish Community Center, 6007 Oreg Ave., Boulder. Tickets: $125-$150, bit.ly/3PpdvH9 This annual wine tasting has been the Autism Society of Boulder County’s principal fundraiser for more than 15 years. Over the years, it has expanded from a small, home grown event into a polished, sophisticated night out.

With a generous sponsorship from Superior Liquor, guests will be able to sample over 150 different wines. The night also features a delicious dinner catered by Spice of Life. There will be entertainment with dueling pianos from Denver Piano Shows, as well as both live and silent auctions. The auction items typically include everything from gift baskets and gift cards to fine art and luxury accommodations in mountain resorts. After a two year absence, it promises to be back and better than ever.

n eTown presents Will Hoge n square product theatre presents ‘DANCE NATION’

Friday, July 22-25, 28-30, ATLAS Blackbox Theater on the CU Boulder campus, 1125 18th St., Boulder. Tickets: $12.50-$25, squareproducttheatre.org Somewhere in America, an army of preteen competitive dancers plots to take over the world. And if their new routine is good enough, they’ll claw their way to the top at the Boogie Down Grand Prix in Tampa Bay. But in Clare Barron’s raucous pageant of ambition and ferocity, these young dancers have more than choreography on their minds, because every plié and jeté is a step toward finding themselves, and a fight to unleash their power. Featuring a multigenerational cast of women playing these pre-teen heroines, DANCE NATION is a play about ambition, growing up, and how to find our souls in the heat of it all.

n Author Talk with Dr. Jon Kedrowski

6:30 p.m. Monday, July 25, City Council Chambers, 350 Kimbark St., Longmont. Free Dr. Jon Kedrowski will discuss exploring the mountains and high mountain lakes of Colorado as featured in his newest book, Stories of Adventure.

He will focus on trip planning as well as weather and climate conditions in Colorado for the recreational hiker and will include information on safety and backcountry preparedness. Kedrowski will also talk about some of his favorite swimming spots as well as his adventures with “Wild Ice’’ skating in this multimedia presentation. As a bonus, Kedrowski will tease his recent expeditions to both Everest and K2. He will discuss the strategy, risk management, and weather considerations for climbing these 8,000-meter giants.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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7-9:30 p.m. Saturday, July 23, eTown Hall, 1535 Spruce St., Boulder. Tickets: $27, etown.org Nashville-native Will Hoge’s passionate vocals and songwriting have fueled his relentless touring since the start of his solo career in 1998. His blue collar rock sound is accompanied by fantastic storytelling and soulful melodies.

He’s released 11 albums so far, each one emblematic of his love for Americana, rock ‘n’ roll, and country music.

n A Celebration of Life for Clela Rorex

11 a.m. Saturday, July 23, Boulder Jewish Community Center, 6007 Oreg Ave., Boulder. Free Back in 1975, while she was county clerk, Clela Rorex issued the first samesex marriage license in the United States, right here in Boulder County.

Please come celebrate her life at this event. There will be music, poems, singing, and community. At Clela’s request, there will be time in the program to share stories about the impact she had on your life.

n ‘Traveling Exhibition’ Opening Reception

5 p.m. Friday, July 22, Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder. Free, thedairy.org As a play on words, “traveling exhibition” often refers to an exhibition that is presented to the public in the same way at multiple venues.

Traveling Exhibition, in this context, unfolds this concept and reflects back on the artists’ personal experience, combining and showcasing multiple locations of artistic inspiration presented within one venue. The works on view speak to our human connection to travel and our ability to reflect on experiences through art-making that at one time inspire us and at another moment intrigue us enough to ask more questions. The reception is an opportunity to meet and mingle with the artists and curators. Enjoy live music and refreshments available for purchase. All receptions are free and open to the public.

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Genius, so-called ‘In Bed With Ulysses’ and in love with James Joyce

by Michael J. Casey ON THE BILL: In Bed With Ulysses. July 21-24, Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, thedairy.org.

O MORE FUN TRAILS • Volunteer to build/maintain trail • Meet up for a Group Ride • Come out for a Skills Clinic Connect with the Boulder mountain bike community Join (BMA membership) to support our programs Join BMA today and access social events and group rides--

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bouldermountainbike.org 22

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n June 16, 1904, a 22-year-old James Joyce walked with 20-year-old Nora Barnacle around the Dublin suburb of Ringsend. They enjoyed each other’s company, the sunshine in the park and the sea lapping against the rocks lining the port. And as they sat on a bench and took all this in, Nora unbuttoned Joyce’s trousers, shoved her hand down there and, according to a letter Joyce later wrote, made him a man. Some days stick in the memory more than others.

Ten years later, Joyce—now married to Nora—fixed June 16 in the smithy of his soul, set pen to paper and began writing the book that would make him famous, challenge the legal definitions of pornography and usher in a new era of modernist literature. That book, you may suspect, was Ulysses. For seven years and across three countries, Joyce wrote, rewrote and courted Ulysses as his mistress. Nora was none too impressed.

“I should also write a book,” she told a friend. “I’ll call it: My Life with a Genius, So-Called.”

Genius, Ulysses and marriage swirl around in Kate Taverna and Alan Adelson’s 2012 documentary In Bed With Ulysses—screening July 21-24 at the Dairy Arts Center.

The title, like Joyce’s prose, carries multiple meanings. Ulysses is not necessarily a book you might read in bed, despite that Molly Bloom, one of the story’s central characters, never gets out of hers. Molly is the wife of cuckold Leopold Bloom, a middle-aged Irish-Hungarian-Jew who spends June 16 wandering around Dublin, trying not to think of his wife in the arms of another. Among the many Dubliners Bloom crosses paths with is Stephen Dedalus, a young scholar who knows the words of the world but not the song. Molly does: It’s “Yes,” sung like a l

chorus rising to a crescendo.

In Bed With Ulysses is in love with Joyce.

The movie is mostly an investigative documentary replete with scholarly talking heads, archival images and subdued narration about Joyce and Nora’s marriage, Joyce’s work and the myriad women who helped Joyce from poverty to posterity. Adelson plays the investigator. He’s staging a stripped-down version of Ulysses for a black box theater—these rehearsal scenes reinforce the musical quality of Joyce’s prose—while also visiting Buck Mulligan’s Martello tower, getting to read from Joyce’s original manuscripts, and talking to everyone he can about the book.

In Bed With Ulysses came out in 2012, back when access to filmmaking equipment and digital distribution flooded the art-house market with docs stylistically in line with PBS. That might sound like a knock, but it isn’t meant to be. It’s more to orient your aesthetic expectations. Let’s face it: In Bed With Ulysses is made for those enchanted by Joyce’s radical prose.

You’d think a movie devoted to a book this challenging would take more risks.

Instead, In Bed With Ulysses aims for accessibility. Taverna and Adelson love Ulysses and want you to, too. They also want you to consider what life might have been like for Nora Barnacle, the wife of a genius, so-called, who probably took his book to bed with him more than once.

For more movie reviews, tune into After Image Fridays at 3 p.m., on KGNU: 88.5 FM and online at kgnu.org. Email questions or comments to editorial@boulderweekly.com.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Stressed Out? Think Massage!

ROMAN ROBINSON

bottoms and my Daddy is a gentle Daddy Dom. Do I bring them together or do I keep these two relationships separate?

—Lusting After Daddy

BY DAN SAVAGE From the end of Roe to the assault on democracy to the climate crisis to the war on Ukraine, it’s all bad news, all the time, for everyone. But the monkeypox outbreak is an extra little helping of bad news specifically for gay and bi men. (More than 96% of monkeypox cases have been in gay and bisexual men.) Hey, faggots?

If you have a rash or feel like you have swollen glands, stay home. And if you’re sexually active or hope to be soon, get the monkeypox vaccine at your earliest opportunity. In the meantime, here’s a column featuring all gay questions to remind us that gay life isn’t just freaking out about ingrown hairs.

– Dan Dear Dan: I’m a mid 50s gay man, married to a man. We’ve been together 30 years. We love each other and have built a great life together, but our sex life is so lackluster it’s nearly extinct.

After years of trying to get my spouse to talk about our likes, wants, needs, and differences, and after years making suggestions about how or what we could do either together or apart to improve our sex life, I finally had enough and began having dalliances here and there.

I encouraged him to pursue sexual satisfaction where he likes, but his response is always, “I couldn’t do that.”

So, what’s the problem? I’ve always been drawn to Daddy/boy scenarios—it plays into my submissive tendencies— and I recently met a hot Daddy. We’ve been meeting up for six months, we’re both GGG, and the sex is awesome!

But my spouse does not know about my relationship with Daddy. I would love for the two to meet, as I think they would enjoy each other’s sense of humor and personality, as they are both wonderful men. Is it possible to introduce them so that the three of us could be friends and maybe ease my spouse into opening things up? My spouse and I are both sub

Dear LAD: If what you’re seeking from me, LAD, is some way to tell your husband you’ve been fucking another man for six months without upsetting him, I can’t help you. He’s most likely going to be upset. Additionally, there’s no way to tell your husband about your recently acquired fuckbuddy without putting your vague DADT agreement at risk.

Now, assuming your husband isn’t an idiot, LAD, he knows you’ve been having sex with other men. When you told him to pursue sexual satisfaction elsewhere, he must’ve known you planned to do (or were already doing) the same. But there’s a difference between knowing something because you kindasortafigured, LAD, and knowing something because you were literally fucking told. And there’s a difference between having sex with other men—one-offs, one at a time—and having sex again and again with one man.

(Which, during this monkeypox outbreak, is a far safer option for you and your husband than one-offs.) Sexual infidelity is one thing, emotional infidelity is another.

But the odds your husband will leave you—after 30 years—seem slim. And even if he’s upset at first, who knows?

If he’s open to meeting your boyfriend/ daddyfriend once his anger dissipates, and if he’s attracted to your Daddy Dom and your Daddy Dom is attracted to him, a series of hot threesomes might revive your sexual connection with your husband. Things could also go from not great to truly terrible—you could wind up getting divorced—but things aren’t going to get better on the sexual front without a shakeup, LAD, and telling the truth is a pretty good way to shake things up.

All that said, LAD, telling your husband, “I have a boyfriend, I’d like you to meet him, I think you two might click,” is a big risk and there are no backsies.

Call 720.253.4710 All credit cards accepted No text messages

Tantric Sacred Sexuality Exploration & Education Now Offering: • In Person Workshops • Virtual and In Person Private Coaching For more information: 720-333-7978

www.tantricsacredjourneys.com

Go Out Local and Green In The Natural Funeral’s Green Section of the beautiful Lyons Cemetery.

Green burial means: • No Vaults (grave coverings, usually cement or plastic) • Only biodegradable caskets or shrouds • Ritual of hand-lowering • Natural care of the body

Other green options include body composting (natural reduction) and water cremation (alkaline hydrolysis).

We also offer flame cremation.

To continue reading “Savage Love,” go to savage.love/savagelove!

Email questions@savagelove.net Follow Dan on Twitter @FakeDanSavage.

Find columns, podcasts, books, merch and more at savage.love.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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Contact our Advance Planning Consultant, David Heckel for tea and a chat in our parlor to pre-plan to minimize your final footprint.

720-515-2344 david@thenaturalfuneral.com info@thenaturalfuneral.com TheNaturalFuneral.com JULY 21, 2022

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BLACKBELLY MARKET has Slow

SUS AN

FRA NC E

Foods’ Snail of Approval stamp, which evaluates a restaurant’s sourcing, environmental impact, cultural connection, community involvement, staff support and business values.

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here’s no doubt that most of us want to know that the food we order at eateries is not bad for the Earth—and not just those of us in Boulder. Forty-three percent of U.S. diners say they’ll pay more at restaurants that focus on sustainability. Half of us want restaurants to be more transparent about sustainability, according to a recent Censuswide national survey.

Here’s the rub: How do you know that your platter of sizzling fajitas actually supports sustainability, social responsibility and transparency? I mean: Who has the time to vet brunch?

It can be hard to be sure that your money is actually helping good chefs and farms and the planet.

Two fresh initiatives from national organizations—the Snail of Approval and Zero Foodprint—are designed to help diners identify local eateries and food businesses that are doing the right thing.

Slow Food’s Snail of Approval awards began in January.

The inaugural Boulder County winners include Farow Restaurant, Blackbelly Market, 24 Carrot Bistro, Fortuna Chocolate, Pastificio Boulder, Mountain Fountain, GB Culinary, Dryland Distillers and Whistling Boar catering.

“These are businesses that share the same values around sustainability,” says Maya Brook, executive director of Slow Food Denver, which has teamed up with Slow Food Boulder County on these awards.

To win the Snail of Approval, restaurants, bars, farms, breweries, wineries and other food producers are evaluated in the following six

Side order of sustainability

The Snail of Approval and Zero Foodprint awards help diners put their money where their values are

by John Lehndorff

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areas: sourcing, environmental impact, cultural connection, community involvement, staff support and business values.

For Hosea Rosenberg, the decision to apply for the Snail of Approval was “a slam dunk.”

“I’ve always aligned myself with Slow Food’s values,” Rosenberg says. “It matches our mission at Blackbelly. We live that way.

It shows in the way we approach sourcing ingredients and treat our staff.”

Rosenberg is Blackbelly’s award-winning chef and owner. He also operates Blackbelly’s in-house, whole animal butcher shop as well as Boulder’s Santo restaurant.

“It’s so easy for restaurants to lie about all the locally grown produce and meat they use,” he says. “The Snail of Approval means so much more than Yelp reviews or Trip Advisor ratings because it isn’t greenwashing.”

Educating diners about sustainability is part of Blackbelly’s mission as well connecting with local ranchers and farmers. “These people are our community and customers,” he says.

The Snail is a tool that helps diners decide which eateries they’ll support.

“When I go out to eat, I’d rather spend my money at a restaurant that is following sustainable practices,” Slow Food’s Maya Brook says. “Over time we hope diners will use the Snail of Approval as a dining guide.”

For a complete list of restaurants and food businesses or to apply for the Snail of Approval: slowfoodboulder.org/snail-of-approval

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Leave a 1% tip for the planet

Simply put, Zero Foodprint makes supporting sustainability at local farms more transparent for restaurants and diners.

“As much as 70% of a restaurant’s carbon footprint is in the ingredients they use,” says Anthony Myint, executive director of the national Zero Foodprint non-profit organization. “If we changed the way food is grown, it could be a society-level climate crisis solution.”

Restore Colorado is Zero Foodprint’s public-private collaboration between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and local SUSAN FRANCE governments that fights the climate crisis by building healthier soil on local farms and ranches.

Zero Foodprint restaurants put a 1% fee on their meal checks. Consumers can opt out, but so far few of them choose to, according to Myint.

Zero Foodprint businesses in Boulder County include Ash’Kara, Dry Storage, Nude Foods Market, River and Woods, Whistling Boar catering and Wonder Press.

“Hypothetically, you could buy the nice grass-fed beef from the rancher, but it doesn’t help the rancher transition to regenerative methods,” Myint says. “The whole organic movement after 50 years is still just 1% of American acreage.”

Some restaurants use produce and meats from sustainable local farmers and ranchers and follow other practices, but not all eateries can do that.

RIVER AND WOODS The local Zero Foodprint roster also includes all five Boulis one of Boulder’s der Subway locations owned by Tim Schiel.

Zero Foodprint “Some restaurant owners want to make a difference but businesses, putting they can’t shop at the farmer’s market, but they can send 1% an optional 1% of purchases to help local farmers plant cover crops, afford fee on their meal compost and transition from fertilizers,” Myint says. Among checks, to promote the recipients of the regenerative assistance is Longmont’s sustainability.

McCauley Farms.

“This program lets individuals take real local action they can see,” he says.

To see the complete list of Zero Foodprint food businesses or to apply for the program, go to: zerofoodprint.org/restorecolorado

Local Food News: Grey Poupon Ice Cream

New York-based Van Leeuwen Ice Cream is opening a scoop shop at 1750 29th St., Boulder in August. The shops’ more out-there flavors have included Grey Poupon and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese ice creams. … La Marquesita is open at 1515 Main St., Longmont, serving sweet and savory crepes, ice cream and Mexican frozen desserts. … Scrumptious, the Longmont ice cream and candy shop, has reopened at 508 Main St. … Coming soon: Alpine Modern Cafe at 29th Street in Boulder; P.F. Chang’s To Go at 1100 Ken Pratt Blvd., Longmont

Words to Chew On

“I sometimes think the act of bringing food is one of the basic roots of all relationships.” —The Dalai Lama John Lehndorff hosts Radio Nibbles at 8:20 a.m. Thursdays on KGNU (88.5 FM, kgnu.org) BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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GROW YOUR FUTURE WITH ESCOFFIER www.escoffier.edu JULY 21, 2022

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A taste of modern Japan in the heart of Boulder Summer is here and our three patios are the perfect place to immerse yourself in everything Pearl Street has to offer.

Prefer the great indoors?

Take a seat at one of our lively bars, feast alongside the jellyfish or sink into a comfy lounge.

If a sushi picnic more your style, all of your favorites are available for curbside pickup too.

No matter how you choose to dine don’t miss our ever-evolving specials, delicious seasonal cocktails, and latest rare whiskey!

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Zesty liqueurs and alcoholic alchemy Growing Grove Street Alchemy

by Matt Maenpaa

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uilding a bar is more than just your favorite bottles of booze and some canned mixers. Getting into the territory of cocktail enthusiasts and professional bartenders, the liquor shelf starts swelling with amaros, bitters and liqueurs—we nerds need to have all the right flavors and components on hand.

Frustrated with the artificiality of sugar-laden liqueurs, D.J. Riemer started making his own from scratch to use in the bars that he worked at. Like anything else scratch made, the goal was to have more control over the quality of ingredients he used.

“I’ve been behind the bar for 23 years at this point,” Riemer says. “I spent a lot of time tweaking recipes behind the bar and finding that some of these ingredients I could make myself for bartending worked just a little bit better in certain cocktails.”

Fresh oranges, organic sugar and non-GMO spirits pack a huge punch in the liqueur, with an emphasis on the natural flavors. Riemer said that there is at least one whole orange worth of zest and peel in each bottle of the liqueur, lovingly zested by hand. “(Zesting oranges) is so insanely tedious and boring, I haven’t learned how to love it yet,” Riemer says with a laugh.

The effort is worth it, he explains, to never use dried ingredients. Helping out the process, Riemer says his girlfriend designed a pair of rotary lathes that bring much needed efficiency to the zesting process. Preparing 1,200 oranges is now just a morning’s work, instead of a day or two.

As Riemer found more interest in his liqueurs from other bartenders, ideas started percolating and he reached out to his friends at the now-closed Still Cellars in Longmont. The distillery offered up some space for

Riemer to start making his orange liqueur in greater capacity and soon after, Grove Street Alchemy was born.

Grove Street’s portfolio has grown in that time too. In addition to the orange, Riemer has added an amaretto, hatch chile and a chai spice to the year-round selection, with Meyer lemon and cranberry varieties available seasonally.

When Still Cellars closed a few years back, Copper Sky took over the space and production license. Riemer kept up the contract partnership with the new owners and his alchemical creation carried on. Now that Copper Sky has relocated to a larger space, Riemer saw a need and an opportunity. Coming full circle, Riemer took over the space Grove Street Alchemy started in almost five years ago.

“One of the bigger challenges has been the physical space,” Riemer says. “All of this has come from demand for the product. We’re only available in Colorado, but we’ve had enough success and enthusiasm from people that really enjoy the product, I’m very grateful.”

Riemer hasn’t done much marketing for Grove Street Alchemy, he explains. The brand has spread by word of mouth and a dedicated following, supported by all the people and partnerships that helped Riemer grow over the years. Beyond the orange liqueur, Riemer is reluctant to take credit for the recipes and flavors, he says, attributing more to the partners he’s had at other distilleries.

The liqueurs themselves are well-worth seeking out, sweet without feeling syrupy or cloying, packed with nuanced flavors that sip just as well on ice as they do mixed into a cocktail.

“They’re all supposed to be very pliable, accessible tools to work with,” Riemer says. “You can mix them with just one other ingredient, like the chai spice goes well with lemonade.”

Riemer’s goals as Grove Street Alchemy expands into its own space are still focused on quality of production, scaling up as demands require. He has plans for a few more liqueur varieties in the near future, as well as some other product lines in development.

For the curious and inspired bartenders, Riemer was kind enough to share one of his cocktail recipes with Boulder Weekly’s readers, a delicate take on an Amaretto Sour. email: editorial@boulderweekly.com

Alchemy Amaretto Sour 1.5 oz Grove Street Amaretto .25 oz rye whiskey .66 - .75 oz fresh lemon juice Orange peel for garnish “Combine all ingredients (minus the orange peel) in a shaker with ice and shake hard,” Riemer says. “Dump everything into a glass, squeeze your orange peel and enjoy with a smile.”

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

JOHN LEHNDORFF

by John Lehndorff Finding Smoky Chicken, Filipino Fare, Adobo Mayo, Lime Coconut Cubes and Global Cuisine

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ometimes you just have a need for ’cue on a summer evening. When that craving struck, I headed to a familiar place I hadn’t visited in a long time. KT’s BBQ opened in North Boulder in 1995, dishing classic smoked meats and sides in an ambience heavily loaded with Elvis Presley memorabilia. It was nice to hear the sound of meat being chopped and smell that smoke.

I dug into a chicken sandwich, a white bun loaded with smoked dark and white meat pulled from the bones, dressed with sweet-hot barbecue

sauce. It’s the kind of messy sandwich that you need to hold onto until you finish eating it or it falls apart.

KT’s has a great offer: a smoked rib with purchase for $1. It was a satisfyingly, meaty chew laced with tart, hot Memphis sauce. On the side was mac and cheese, and red beans bolstered with bits of barbecued meat.

It reminded me that I judged an Elvis impersonator

Recipe Flashback: Adobe Mayo for Corn

Another Roadfood Attraction: Halo-Halo for All

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ou don’t have to look far to find a Chinese, Thai or Vietnamese restaurant in Boulder or the Denver metro area. There are even pan-Asian spots, but when was the last time you saw a Filipino eatery?

Manila Bay Filipino Restaurant in Aurora dishes the real thing. Filipino cuisine is a fascinating fusion of Chinese, South Asian, Spanish and even American. It’s easy to love the lumpia, the thin, crisp pork and vegetable egg rolls, and pork adobo simmered in vinegar, soy sauce and garlic broth with steamed rice, as well as the noodle dishes. If you’re more adventurous, order the whole grilled pompano with potent garlic fried rice and wash it down with calamansi-ade—it’s a hybrid lemon-orange flavor.

Make the drive to Manila Bay just for the halo-halo, which is as much fun to say as it is to eat. It translates as “mix-mix,” and that’s how you consume this refreshing combination of shaved ice, sweetened beans, coconut, and ube (purple sweet potato) ice cream and evaporated milk.

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hef Jimmy Schmidt operated the Rattlesnake Grill, a groundbreaking Southwestern eatery, in Denver’s Tivoli Brewery building from 1985 to 1989. It elevated Colorado’s dining savvy immediately. Schmidt shared this recipe back then for big flavor mayo to use on sandwiches, Mexican-style street corn and as a dip for hot fries.

Jimmy Schmidt’s adobe mayonnaise 2 egg yolks 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice 1 tablespoon grained mustard 1 tablespoon vinegar 1 tablespoon achiote paste 1 cup olive oil 1 tablespoon chipotle chilies in adobo sauce, minced Salt, to taste In a mixer or blender, combine yolks, lemon juice, mustard, vinegar and achiote paste. At high speed, gradually add oil until blended. Add chipotle peppers and blend. Taste and adjust salt. Thin, if necessary, with a little warm water. Refrigerate.

SUSAN FRANCE

Summer Food Hack: Lime in the Coconut

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pgrade your summer by making ice cubes with coconut juice and a spritz of fresh lime juice. It adds that little something else to beverages and cocktails as it chills the liquid. For a change of pace, use fresh watermelon juice.

Finding Farm-Fresh Flavor Statewide

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he July 14 Boulder Weekly included a guide to Boulder County’s roadside farm stands. For more information on the state’s farmers markets, stands, U-pick places, wineries, ranches, apiaries and other local food producers, consult the state’s 2022 Colorado Farm Fresh directory: ag.colorado.gov/category/farm-fresh

Send information about Boulder County and Colorado food and drink events, classes, festivals, farm dinners, farm stands and tastings to: nibbles@boulderweekly.com.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

contest for KT’s in the late 1990s.

Bones and the remains of decimated wet wipes and napkins littered my table.

Pro-tip: Order your sandwich “Elvis-style” and you get some free coleslaw on it.

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Culinary Calendar: Get your Okonomiyaki

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saka’s restaurant in Boulder hosts Natsumatsuri on July 24 from 3-7 p.m. in the parking lot near McGuckin Hardware. On the menu for the summer festival are okonomiyaki pancakes, sake and Japanese sweets. … Colorado Brazil Fest takes place Aug. 13 at the Boulder Bandshell with Brazilian music and food, thedairy.org … The Colorado Polish Food Festival is Aug. 27-28 in Denver, polishfoodfestival.org … The Taste of The Middle East Festival is Sept. 17 in Aurora, tasteofthemiddleeast.com. … Send information about local food events, classes and fairs to: nibbles@ boulderweekly.com

JULY 21, 2022

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From Russia, with hash

With Brittney Griner’s Russian detainment, the U.S. finally has a meaningful reason to pass cannabis reform—but it won’t

by Will Brendza

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here wasn’t anything Brittney Griner could do as the Russian airport guard rummaged through her roller bag. She was traveling through Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow and her luggage had been pulled aside. Sitting just a few feet away, Griner watched as the man removed her belongings one at a time, until he found the vape cartridges. No doubt Griner’s stomach dropped. She was arrested on the spot and has been in custody ever since.

That was over 22 weeks ago. The 31-year-old former number one draft pick for the WNBA was playing for the Russian EuroLeague Club UMMC Ekaterinburg. Now she’s become a prisoner and political bargaining chip for Russia, facing up to 10 years behind bars. And with the U.S. still upholding its own prohibition laws, there isn’t any higher moral ground for our government to stand on.

According to Justin Strekal, the founder of the cannabis policy advocacy group, Better Organization for Winning Legalization (BOWL) PAC, this could be a chance for the Biden administration to follow through on promises made on the campaign trail; to decriminalize cannabis and pardon those Americans still behind bars for non-violent cannabis crimes like possession. However, Strekal isn’t holding his breath.

“In every sense of the word, this is an opportunity for the Biden administration,” he says. “And unfortunately, it appears that their intransigence is causing them to watch the pitch go by.”

If the White House and Congress stepped up to the plate here and swung for the fences, to sign executive orders or pass any number of proposed federal cannabis bills (the MORE Act, the SAFE Act, the States Reform Act, or Chuck Schumer’s ever-forthcoming Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act), they could set a

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new global precedent.

It would be a home run. What better reason will they ever have to finally pass cannabis reform? What better time to start mass pardoning prisoners locked up for non-violent cannabis crimes?

It would certainly make a statement, Strekal agrees.

But we’re 18 months into Biden’s presidency and there’s been no meaningful effort on his administration’s part to pull that lever, he points out.

“Unfortunately, we’ve seen nothing but hollow, empty promises,” Strekal says.

Griner’s detention, which began on Feb. 17, has been extended three times already. On July 7 she pleaded guilty to her charges of “large scale transportation of drugs,” though she says she never had any intention of breaking Russian law.

Cannabis cultivation has been illegal in Russia since 1934, three years before the U.S. launched its own prohibition with the Marihuana Tax Act. However, it wasn’t until the 1970s that the Soviet government started to place higher criminal penalties on possession. Around the same time, Richard Nixon had declared drug abuse “public enemy number one” and the U.S. began exporting its drug war all around the world.

“Through leveraging its influence on the UN Convention Treaty and the global prohibition of cannabis,

JULY 21, 2022

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the root of every [modern] nation’s criminalization of marijuana can be traced back to the United States,” Strekal says. “It is very hard to see how [Biden] can build a credible geopolitical pressure campaign against Russia when we would similarly incarcerate Brittney Griner for a very minor offense.”

Yet the federal government is making some very bold statements about the nature of Griner’s arrest—statements that seem to contradict its own policies and convictions.

White House Press Secretary Karine JeanPierre said in a briefing, “When it comes to U.S. nationals who are being held abroad, who are being held wrongfully, detained wrongfully, who have been held hostage, we are going to do everything that we can [and] use every means that we have to bring them home.”

That official statement might sound incredibly hypocritical coming from a country that currently has over 40,000 people in prison for drug possession, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. However, Morgan Fox, the political director for the National Organization for Marijuana Laws (NORML), the phrase “wrongfully detained” is likely in reference to Russia’s ulterior political motives to detain her, rather than a statement about her guilt or innocence.

Nevertheless, Fox says, it’s not a good look for the U.S. “In many places in the United States, the cannabis laws are almost as bad as Russia’s,” Fox says. “I certainly hope that the administration has been using this as an internal excuse to really start rethinking their position on this issue . . . It’s something that definitely needs to change.”

And not just because of Griner’s predicament, either.

But because, as Strekal points out, 78% of Americans believe that cannabis should be legal under federal law.

And because, simply, it’s the American thing to do.

“If we still want to be able to credibly assert that we are the Land of the Free, then President Biden should follow through on his campaign commitment to decriminalize marijuana and then you can leverage that to build geopolitical influence,” Strekal says.

Email: wbrendza@boulderweekly.com

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