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| Nederland, Colorado to Boulder 22 Miles |
| Neos Restaurant in Nederland--where I worked as a dishwasher in the 80's |
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| The X-Tour, 2003 |
| It was "frozen dead guys days" in Nederland, Colorado--one more attempt to bring the tourists up to the snow-starved Rocky Mountains and explore the meaning of life's end at the same time. Colorado has gone through a tough century and a half. Its natives were slaughtered without much mercy by men who paraded through city streets with bloody scalps hanging from their belts, and soon had college dormitories named after them. Then it became the federal government's mistress--loaning her body for gold mines leaking deadly cyanide, nuclear missiles, Norad, the Timothy McVeigh show trial, and supermax prisons. Now "Bowling for Columbine" defines the place for a generation of moviegoers. Last spring, the drought was so awful, few wildflowers bloomed and summer saw the state go up in flames, covering Denver with a blanket of smoke. The largest fire, which came within a few miles of the capital city, was blamed on a forest service employee burning a letter she received from her estranged husband. So it seemed appropriate to me that I was there to see the new improved movie released by my ex, called "Grandpa's in the Tuff Shed." It is tough to think about drawing a thick line between the present and the past, lovers and ex-lovers, when in the greater world the resident dreamer in the White House plays like an ancient crusader in the Middle East, trying desperately to make ambiguous metaphors from the two thousand year-old Book of Revelations into brutal realities. The war still hadn't started when I made it up the Boulder River canyon to Nederland with my friend Shirley Whiteside, co-worker at the Denver Voice. I would need all the help I could get. My ex's moviemaking was a family affair. Her whole clan would be there and I didn't want to be alone. to be continued... |