April Laughs, Play Us As Fools

April Laughs, Play Us As Fools

Springtime bliss: April skies, showers and love! Days are longer, brighter and warmer this month creating joyous feelings. All seemingly stimulated by April Fool’s Day. References to the day go back to medieval times in literature. Ages ago when it all apparently got started some of those tricks, pranks and foolishness lasted up to a week.

No joke: The song “April Fools” was included in an album by folk singer Loudon Wainwright III that was released in 1998. However it was never released as a single.

Though April showers may come your way, here are our choices for shopping, dining and entertaining so life holds a goodly share of bliss when the sun goes away:

3          Enjoy the bluegrass tunes of Colorado musical powerhouse Turkeyfoot playing Globe Hall April 2. Group shares momentous instrumental and songwriting talents. Shows are at 7 and 9 p.m. Information: 303-296-1003.

3          Watch as JAAMM Fest live-streams a three-course springtime meal cook-along April 7 by restaurateur Admony, 7 p.m. Information: 303-399-3660.

3          View rarely seen Salvador Dali lithographs at the Denver Botanic Gardens show titled Gardens of the Mind, April 10-Aug. 22. Information: 720-865-3500.

3          Join the virtual Homeowners Townhall fraud prevention session sponsored by Paul López April 13, 6 p.m. Information: denverclerkandrecorder.com.

3          For food, fun and relaxation drive to S. Holly’s Esters Neighborhood Pub ranked as one of Yelp’s Top 100 Places to Eat in 2021! Reviewers love the neighborhood atmosphere, food and booze. Information: 303-955-4904.

3          Planning a wedding? Infinity Park Event Center is there to support you with flexible catering, 360 degree video screening plus outdoor wedding options and free parking. Information: infinityparkeventcenter.com.

3          Catch William Black whose EP climbed to #1 on the iTunes Dance charts playing the Bluebird Theatre April 24, 9 p.m. Information: 303-377-1666.

3          See the One Club Paper Fashion Show of outfits made entirely of paper at the Fillmore Auditorium April 29, 5:30 p.m. Information: 720-838-3797.

3          For a night beyond your wildest dreams plan to attend Central City Opera’s Theatre of Dreams Gala, April 23, 6:30 p.m. This year’s gala at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science will be a hybrid event, featuring Central City’s apprentice artists in a virtual setting. Gala will feature two operas, a new song cycle plus an operatic illustrated audiobook. Proceeds benefit the up-and-coming-composers. Information: 303-292-6700.

“Sometimes an April day will suddenly bring showers, rain to grow the flowers for her first bouquet.” April Love was the fifth of Pat Boone’s six No. 1 hits, topping the charts for six weeks in 1957. The movie by the same name starred Boone and Shirley Jones. Boone’s song is the only tune with April in the title to reach No. 1 on the charts.

“April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom. Holiday tables under the trees.” While many artists recorded the tune, Count Basie’s 1955 classic brought the song to the forefront.

Denver isn’t precisely Paris: The City of Love’s relative humidity is 41.3% higher with 1275 fewer hours of sunlight per year. Still the Mile High City gets that “feeling, no one can reprise.” A teasing, lighthearted month: April laughs, plays, and, of course, April fools. Will Denver’s Covid-19 color dial turn green by April 30? Will, it May!

— Glen Richardson

The Valley Gadfly can be reached at newspaper@glendalecherrycreek.com.

Jeff Christie

Jeff Christie

Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom during Trump’s State of the Union address.

In previous award-winning columns, I’ve written about the profile of the kind of person who really understands what I do for a living and what other people try to do. “It” being what I call a radio guy.

Rush Limbaugh passed away. In the non-radio world that seems to be now dominated by “talk show hosts” it was akin to the death of Julius Caesar, Winston Churchill, George Washington, and Babe Ruth.

Limbaugh was lionized, put on the shields of fellow warriors and carried through the streets of Rome. You saw it, I saw it, we all heard it. The truth always throws a curve ball and it deals from the bottom of the deck.

Rush Limbaugh was born in a small town in Missouri. His father was a banker and WWII fighter pilot. His grandfather was U.S. Ambassador to India, and his uncle was a federal judge. Limbaugh was a failure. When he was eight-years-old his father and mother bought a system so that he could be up in his room playing records and they could be downstairs listening on what was called a transistor radio. I think the record player needle, like a junkie shooting heroin, went right in the boy’s arm. His father, as an investor, owned part of a radio station in the town. Limbaugh got his first gig.

Now there are earmarks on how a radio guy operates in life. Let me list them for you. Number one, Rush Limbaugh used three different names on the air: Jeff Christie, Rusty Sharp and, of course, Rush Limbaugh. And in true DJ fashion, number two, Rush was married four times.

He went to rehab, another earmark to present someone as a radio guy, and most insiders believe that those drugs caused his hearing loss. As someone in recovery myself, it’s highly probable. He was fired seven times. A longtime friend of mine, Cliff Powers, worked with Limbaugh in Pittsburgh, when he used the air name of Jeff Christie, and told the stories of Limbaugh being blown out in Pittsburgh, not once wrestling fans, but twice.

He had less than a year of college, another benchmark since now this business is dominated by people who address each other as “Doctor.” And what I always thought was the whammo show-stopper, was for all the money, and what’s behind the curtain, when he finally settles in Sacramento, he replaces Morton Downey Junior.

His brother made most of his business deals. He used callers as records like good disc jockeys do. He did parody tunes as most great DJs. He did voices on air and was, in fact, what used to be dubbed a shock jock. He was brilliant, apparently very shy, and a lot of people around him never could explain whether a lot of what he did was an act or whether he truly believed it. I think its probably somewhere in the middle.

He got it! He understood it. He was a radio guy. He wasn’t leading Christianity although at the end of his life he became religious. I think he definitely loved the country. He loved the legacy. Yet with all the foibles, and all the problems, and all the good that he did, he changed what we do for a living, he changed the AM radio band and made us all better.

His voice will be missed, there is no replacement. Rest in peace, the best radio guy I ever heard, Rush Limbaugh.

— Peter Boyles

Thought Police

Thought Police

In the year 2000 I sat down to clarify my thoughts about the strange circumstances that seemed to be gathering momentum in our American culture. In light of our situation today, I think you will agree; if we would have cared to look, we would have seen this coming and acted sooner!

What will we do today to stop the accelerated loss of our personal liberty? If we do nothing; what will our “Liberty” look like in a few short years or for that matter months?

Today is Sunday January 24, 2021. Almost One year into a worldwide Pandemic and lockdown.

The world as I saw it in the year 2000 no longer exists — without the lessons learned from great past civilizations, will our Grandchildren have the ability to create a future?

 

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past!”
— George Orwell

March 2000

Personal Liberty is under an assault from a counter culture bent on absolute control of our government and the American way of life. Have I lost my mind — probably, but not on this issue. This statement sounds like I am outside staring at the sky awaiting the arrival of black helicopters. If I had made this comment 20 years ago, around the table, over a few beers you would still be able to hear the laughter. In the same setting today, the reaction would be quite different — disbelief, fear, and discomfort would replace the laughter. Not because the audience disagreed with the statement, but because someone said “such a thing” in public. The insidious, unrelenting Thought Police tasked with destroying “intolerance” with an iron fist have stifled us. We now find ourselves on the outside barely able to look in.

 

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be the master — that’s all.”

— Lewis Carroll,

Through the Looking Glass

A general malaise infects our culture. The common person knows that a “misplaced” opinion or humorous comment about a “protected” group can destroy their lives. Equality of opportunity has given way to equality of outcome, personal rights to group rights. Personal rights bring personal wealth, personal success, and competition, and those who don’t make the grade are left behind. The counter culture believes in false equality predicated on the lowest common denominator.

To the counter culture, “social justice” has come to mean “protection” for certain groups from attacks by the “enemy” (principally white heterosexual males). It seems that everything we say, or do, can somehow exemplify our intolerance or downright hatred for a “protected” group. The great elixir of mankind, humor, should be avoided altogether. In fact, humor seems to be non-existent in the lexicon of the Thought Police. The ironical self-deprecating humor that was the hallmark of our nation’s immigrants is now considered to be hate speech on the part of the “enemy.” Even if you are the brunt of your own joke, the counter culture believes there exists an underlying “intolerance” that lurks dormant and insidiously hidden in your psyche that must be purged by the counter culture. Ultimately, it is not just our freedom of speech that is under attack, it is the freedom of thought.

“The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.”

— John Stuart Mill

To avoid falling into this “trap” we have developed a habit of self-censorship that has become so unconscious we fail to recognize the mind-numbing subliminal effort involved in maintaining the correct speech necessary to escape the wrath of the Thought Police. At some point it is easier to avoid thinking, and subsequently, disengage.

We are becoming a lobotomized society in which everyone believes that it’s every man for himself. A considerable number of Americans fail to recognize the counter culture’s agenda, and believe that the counter culture is interested in “inclusion” and constructive dialogue. They have become the unwitting foot soldiers that practice appeasement as a way to reconciliation. History shows us that the appeasers (after their usefulness expires) are the last to be executed.

Control The Debate

Frame the debate! Dehumanize your enemy! Call your adversary a sexist, racist or bigot, and you will no longer need to answer his arguments. He is now faced with defending his character. In the courts, there is a presumption of innocence until proven otherwise. However, in the court of public opinion if you are charged with sexism the burden of proof falls squarely on the shoulders of the accused. This is precisely how ideologues entrench themselves in a system; they exploit and ruin those on whose backs they rode to power. They begin by working in the establishment, and through insinuation and infiltration rather than through confrontation, they erode the system from within, all the while claiming that the root of the problem stems from the old guard, and its ideals. Thus, we find ourselves in a situation where the counter culture not only controls the answers but the questions asked. It is attempting to control how we understand the daily events of our lives.

Control History

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past!”

— George Orwell

“To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots.”

— Alexander Solzhenitsyn

When attempting to destroy your enemy, destroy the record of their past, and fill the void with a new history. Dishonor or disgrace his heroes, and you can demoralize his people. Besmirch, and degrade your adversary to the point that any and all outrageous comments will go unchallenged. Sit back and watch the crows devour what is left of the past and your future!

Yours in Hope, Etienne

Denver’s Vaccination Situation: Overcoming Obstacles In The Mission To Inoculate For Covid-19

Denver’s Vaccination Situation: Overcoming Obstacles In The Mission To Inoculate For Covid-19

“It’s not vaccines that save lives, it’s vaccinations.”
— Stephanie Wasserman, Executive Director, Immunize Colorado

by Luke Schmaltz

The strategy for combating the spread of Covid-19 and thus, reducing the subsequent fallout of loss and tragedy is fairly simple: inoculate the population. While this equation reads well on paper, implementing it across the Mile High region has a distinct set of challenges.

From a practical standpoint, it would seem that the biggest obstructions to vaccine distribution would be the tiered system of rollout phases (eligibility based on vulnerability) and the availability of enough doses for each demographic. While this is certainly the case, vaccine task force officials — including government appointed teams and private sector organizations — are facing formidable yet invisible hurdles anchored in misinformation and inter-generational mistrust of the medical system at large.

A Clearly Laid-Out Plan

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has a systematic vaccination rollout plan.

The Office of Colorado Governor Jared Polis, in conjunction with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), have established a series of phases to be implemented in a systematic, step-by-step fashion.

Phase One begins with high-risk individuals and healthcare workers (1A), people age 70+, moderate risk healthcare workers and first responders (1B.1), citizens aged 65-69, pre-K-12 educators, cold care workers and continuity of state government officials (1B.2), people aged 16-64 with two or more comorbidities and frontline workers (1B.3).

Phase Two includes Coloradans 60-64, people with high-risk conditions and continuity of operation workers in state and local government.

Phase Three, at last, includes anyone and everyone in the general population ages 16-59.

Governor Polis has gone so far as to speculate, as stated in a recent article by The Denver Post, that he expects folks to be returning to their beloved restaurants, nightclubs and bars by May, in a gradual transition of systematically loosening restrictions and returning everyday personal freedoms.

At the time of this writing, rollout of phase 1B.2 is underway and just about everyone involved in education including teachers, substitutes, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, janitors, and other support staff will be able to access the vaccine as will select members of the executive and judicial branches of government. These folks do not present an accessibility concern for vaccinators, but the other demographic this phase accommodates, folks age 65-69, is where things are set to get tricky.

The Front Lines Of Trying Times

Immunize Colorado is a nonprofit organization working in cooperation with CDPHE to get vaccines into arms across all Denver communities.

Stephanie Wasserman is the Executive Director of Immunize Colorado and has been out in the field and on the front lines since before the Covid-19 vaccine arrived. On a daily basis, she combats the social side effects of the pandemic. “My organization became gravely concerned because of the disproportionate impact Covid-19 has had on communities of color both in Colorado and nationally,” she begins. “We are not doing too bad in terms of getting shots into arms, but we are not meeting our equity goals. Also,” she continues, “there is significant hesitancy that exists in some communities due to the historic mistrust of the medical system.” Wasserman also cites “predatory behavior” as another driver of vaccine hesitancy, stating, “We have a very active anti-vaccine movement here in Colorado and they have recently targeted communities of color with disinformation.”

Clearly, this phenomenon reveals age-old fears that are easily agitated by misinformation. These negative (mostly online) messages tend to magnify the historical underservice of communities of color by the medical establishment and redirect that mistrust towards the vaccine rollout. Wasserman and her colleagues are undaunted and are fighting back via the recent launch of the Colorado Vaccine Equity Task Force (https://www.coloradovaccineequithe vaccines and y.org/). This site and its Spanish-translated partner site (https://www. equidadvacunacolorado.org/) are combatting the online misinformation with facts about the disproportionate impact COVID-19 has had while broadcasting endorsements from trusted, professional voices from communities of color as ambassadors for the vaccine. “The group comprises 35 members hailing from all walks of life,” Wasserman explains, “and all with one common trait — they identify as a person of color from an underserved community.” These include faith leaders, retirees, doctors, nurses, educators and one man who volunteered for one of the early Moderna clinical trials.

The Colorado Vaccine Equity Task Force is determined to vaccinate citizens in underserved communities.

In essence, the Task Force is mounting what is turning out to be a grassroots reeducation campaign to assuage fears, to combat misinformation and to ultimately get people from underserved communities vaccinated in order to stop the disease. “It has been super successful so far,” says Wasserman, “We’ve done policy and communication work, advocacy, outreach and engagement. It is really about getting into communities as much as possible, starting constructive conversations and allowing trusted community members to speak to their neighbors about the merits of the vaccine. “For example,” she begins, “We have two retired nurses on the Task Force who are very active and well known in their parish in the Montbello neighborhood. They held a pop-up clinic at their church and because it was hosted by them, hundreds of people signed up to be vaccinated and all supplies were gone in two hours.”

A Factually-Informed Outlook

Colorado State Representative Yadira Caraveo is also a Pediatrician with a medically-informed understanding of vaccines.

State Representative Yadira Caraveo, in addition to her role as an elected official, is also a pediatrician and a member of the aforementioned Colorado Vaccine Equity Task Force. Her primary roles are those of a coordinator and an administrator in the effort to achieve distribution equity of the vaccine. Regarding the timeline for getting the prescribed 70+% of the population vaccinated, Caraveo is hesitant to make an exact prediction. “I think the timeline has been changing as the realities on the federal level trickle down to the state level in addition to the lack of planning from the previous administration,” she explains. “Still, I think it is realistic and hopeful that we could get everyone who wants a vaccination taken care of by late summer, early fall.”

Optimism aside, Caraveo’s role in the Task Force has given her an informed perspective about vaccine hesitancy. “I think a lot of the uncertainty about this particular vaccine comes from the perceived speed with which it came out,” she begins. “People are out there saying ‘well, it can’t possibly be safe — it has only been 10 months since the pandemic started.’ But the important thing to remember is that science is ongoing and is built on decades of research and development. The research for these vaccines was built upon the research that was done for the MERS and SARS vaccines as well as mRNA that has been studied since the 1950s. It is a fact that scientists are continually working on things that they anticipate may be needed at some point — which is why this came out so quickly.”

Caraveo continues with a vaccine advocacy home-run hit, “As doctors, we’ve been talking for decades about how people don’t understand the need for vaccines because they haven’t seen a lot of the illnesses we vaccinate against now. Most people alive today have never seen someone with polio or tetanus because of the vaccines. This is the first instance in a century where we have developed a vaccine for something that people can see every single day — people who are getting sick and dying of COVID-19. The effects of the vaccine, or any vaccine for that matter are very minimal compared to what the illness does. The chances of anything happening [negatively] with the vaccine are one in a million as opposed to the chances of something bad happening should you get COVID-19.”

Caraveo ends with one last stark, unarguable, scientific gem of truth, “This is a perfect example of why vaccine hesitancy has grown over the last century and why it shouldn’t have grown. Now we can see, in real time, the effect of a vaccine versus the effect of an illness.”