Why Men Should Love Pedicures

by James Burrus

One of the many lessons life has taught me is that the rewards of a good foot rub are legion. Getting one is an unmitigated pleasure anytime. Getting one at the end of a day spent hiking in the backcountry with a 60-pound pack on your back imparts the hope, fortitude and will to get up the next day and keep walking farther away from the civilized trappings of hot water, vehicles and grocery stores.

I’ve done a lot of (what I consider) gutsy things in my day. They include talking extemporaneously to an auditorium full of people, skiing off a rock band without first scoping out the landing and taking a “shortcut” down a cliff via the tops of some 100-foot-plus tall trees. But none of those compare to the sheer terror I felt walking into Boulder’s Star Nails and asking to get a pedicure.

The four or five other women in the shop in various stages of getting their nails done (toes and fingers) paid me little attention as the Vietnamese woman who greeted me reached for the gift certificates in response to my request for a pedicure. But when I said, no, it was for me, heads turned in unison and an excited chatter in foreign tongue ensued.

With surprise and delight, the young woman installed me in a massage chair and filled the foot Jacuzzi with warm sudsy water.

The combination of having heated, vibrating rollers pulse up and down your back while someone scrubs, cleans, trims and files your feet, toes and toe nails is brilliant. But add an earnest foot rub and lower-leg massage, and the result is a half hour of top-shelf livin’.

The other women in the room kept constant watch of my reaction to each step of the process. My obvious enrapture during the foot and calf massage prompted the woman to my left who was getting paint for her toes to say “I guess the secret is out. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of you.” No indeed; this kind of pampering and pedi-pleasure is worth all manner of snickers and surrender of perceived masculinity.
Ahh, but my response to the punch line of this treatment earned me the respect and smiling nods of approval from the estrogenettes in the room.

“What color would I like?” the woman asked, completely unable to grin about putting me on the spot.

“I’ll take a French pedicure, thank you,” I replied, having done my homework and knowing that a good buffing sans polish was—absent declining any finish at all—the most masculine out possible.

In the years since my pedi-ephiny, I have quested for the best I could find—thorough callus removal, painless nail trimming and filing and most important: strong, vigorous foot and lower leg massage.

But all this self-pampering has paid other dividends as well. Over time, getting a good pedicure allowed me to give them as well. This earned me massive kudos with a girlfriend who had joined me on a seven-day trip into the backcountry.

This tough woman spent the first day hauling a load that weighed about half of her weight of 103 pounds. Toward the end of the day, crankiness ensued so I called for a break and demanded she remove her boots. After airing those dogs and giving them and her calves a deep, patient rubbing, her mood did an about-face. That such attention was from then on expected at the end of each day but was a small price to pay for ensuring that our outing was fun and enjoyable.

So guys, get a pedicure. Anyone who mocks your manhood for doing so will be shown the error of their pre-Cambrian thinking when they see you holding the foot of a grateful and satisfied woman. If nothing else, your reputation among the opposite sex will spread like wildfire.

December 2008

The Families of Recovering Addicts Need Help, Too

by James Burrus; illustration by Nick Mott

Pam Mains was hunting with her husband, some other family and friends in southern Colorado when her cell phone rang on the morning of Nov. 17, 2003. What she heard dropped Mains to her knees in the middle of a dirt road; a gaping hole had been ripped in her heart. Her oldest daughter, Mia, the second of five children, had been found dead by her brother of a heroin overdose. She was 26.

I fell down screaming ‘God, not her! Don’t take her! Take me instead,’” Mains says, recalling the day a piece of her died, leaving an emotional wound that, despite being nearly five years old, is as fresh and painful as ever. “The four-hour drive home took forever. And walking down the steps to the Boulder County Morgue was like walking down to hell; seeing her lying there on the cold, steel table…”

Today, the pain of Mains’ loss competes with the persistent ache of regret; regret for calling the police when Mia stole her car or kicking her out of the house when she forged a check, all in support of her spiraling drug habit. “The what-ifs are really hard,” Mains said. “What if I had kept her grounded longer; what if I had done more to help her? It drives you crazy as a parent. You never get over it.”

Mains’ experience, and that of her family and friends, is on the extreme end of the spectrum of emotional and physical collateral damage caused by those struggling with addiction, be it alcohol or drugs or both.

There are myriad programs, groups, books and materials available to addicts seeking help. But what of the parents, spouses, siblings and kids of those addicts whose lives have been damaged?

For those people, Joe Herzanek is nothing short of a savior. As a chaplain working with addicts seeking recovery in the Boulder County Jail since 1993, Herzanek last year published Why Don’t They Just Quit? and a companion DVD that addresses this issue directly. The book and DVD have its roots in his experience working with addicts and their families, as well as his own recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. “For every addict, there are 6-8 people, sometimes more, that are impacted by that person,” Herzanek says. “Even if they have quit, they have done damage to those relationships, either knowingly or unknowingly.”

And just as Pam Mains’ did, the first reaction by a close friend or family member to an addict seeking rehabilitation is to blame themselves. “What they want to do is take the blame,” Herzanek says. “They say to themselves, ‘If I had been a better parent or wife or brother, they wouldn’t have this problem.’ But what they need to know is that they didn’t cause the problem, and they can’t cure (it).”

Getting Help
Patsy says that stumbling onto Herzanek’s Changing Lives Foundation website came just in time for she and her husband. The Loveland couple (who did not want their last name used) have been at their wits’ end dealing with their son, Matt’s, growing alcohol and cocaine addiction problem.

“A year ago, he said he wanted to come clean,” Patsy says of their 27-year-old son who works as a carpenter and house framer. “He’s been trying to stop, but it’s hard when you don’t have a support system.”

That system typically involves family and friends who function as a safety net for an addict who is just learning how to live and function as a sober person, free from drugs and alcohol. As Herzanek says, in order to succeed at kicking addiction, fundamental changes must occur. But in many cases, the best efforts can be undermined by the good intentions of loved ones that instead provoke or enable an addict to return to drugs.

“My husband is a huge enabler,” Patsy says. “He’s bailed Matt out of jail three times.” Patsy’s husband has also given their son thousands of dollars for bills, car repairs, and bail and fines associated with the arrests—ranging from drug and alcohol to assault.

Thanks to Herzanek’s book, Patsy convinced her husband to leave Matt in jail after a recent arrest. Because his behavior has alienated his older brother and sister, they, too, refused to bail him out of jail.

During this latest episode, Patsy was left searching for answers to questions she had about addiction and her enabling behavior. “I wanted to find out more about what I could do and what I shouldn’t do,” she says. “Matt is a real nice guy; he’s an awesome worker, and everybody likes him, but he’s still an addict.”

Herzanek’s advice spoke directly about such tough love tactics that convinced Patsy that she was doing the right thing.

“The tough love of saying ‘no’ makes the pain of suffering the consequences of (an addict’s) behavior a good motivator for getting help,” Herzanek says.

“Parents often take responsibility…but they don’t know when they have crossed the line from helping to hurting.”

Collateral Damage
A no-contact order prevented Matt from going home to his girlfriend, so he asked to move back home—again. With guidance from Herzanek’s book, Patsy let Matt come back—with conditions.

“If he was going to live here, I had a whole list of things he had to do, and if he didn’t follow the rules, he was out,” Patsy says. “I wasn’t losing another night’s sleep over this.”
By finally finding a support mechanism for her family to deal with Matt’s addiction and recovery, Patsy is optimistic again. “I’m excited; this is the first time I’ve felt hopeful. I don’t want to make any more mistakes. The last time he moved back home, he wouldn’t stick to our rules. He would lie to us and manipulate us—it was a terribly hopeless feeling; especially when it’s your own son. But now, he knows that if he doesn’t follow the rules, he has to move out.”

Those kind of real consequences are a must for addicts in recovery and among the hardest for compassionate family and friends to enforce, Herzanek says. And that was a big reason for his writing the book and creating the non-profit Changing Lives Foundation.

“Over the years I’ve seen how much family members struggle with this, and they don’t deserve it,” Herzanek says. “They want to take responsibility for a family member’s addiction and that can leave them bitter for years, and they don’t understand why.”

Experience: a stern teacher
Much of the power in Herzanek’s message stems from its foundation in truth; qualities born from personal experience.

As a teenager growing up in Kansas City, Herzanek was smoking pot at 19. Over the next 10 years, he indulged in hash, alcohol, cocaine and Valium.

As his tolerance increased, so did the frequency of his use.

When he finally began getting help at an inpatient treatment center and embarked down the long, difficult road to recovery, Herzanek started to see the pain he was causing his family as well.

“I was blind to how my actions were affecting my brother and two sisters,” Herzanek writes in his book. “Actually, the entire family did not understand what was happening. Even now, more than 25 years later, some members of my family remain bitter, and we have never been able to resolve those hard feelings.”

So after 15 years as a chaplain with the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office working with inmates wanting to recover, Herzanek took a year off to write Why Don’t They Just Quit? and launch, with his wife, Judy, Changing Lives. With no one willing to publish the book, Herzanek did it himself year.

The “innocent victims” that result from a family dealing with a loved one’s addiction are the primary audience that Herzanek is trying to reach. For addicts, Herzanek is a firm believer in the effectiveness of the 12-step program, so much so that he helped institute the first class at the jail using its tenets.

But for the family and friends dealing with an addict in recovery, he saw the need of something tailor made for their experience.

That something is a book that, in essence, has been decades in the making. The book is the product of the drug use, the struggle to stay on the road to recovery, and the subsequent work helping other addicts and their loved ones.

The unique approach and clear, strong, brutally honest writing style won it a Next Generation Indie Book Award this past spring for Best Self-Help Book. And despite not having a big-name publisher, he is slowly promoting his book through his website and free email newsletter sent out to subscribers.

“Often the focus is on the addict or alcoholic,” Herzanek says.
“When I went to treatment…there was little or no attention paid to family members. Now they have things like family week where they are brought in so they can deal with those people, too.”

As much as making family and friends of addicts the focus of his book and the resources it contains, it is the honesty and willingness of Herzanek to make an example of himself that at once gives his advice and proscriptions a grounded authority.

And it’s that authority, in addition to the hope and the solace of the specific actions that he recommends, that has opened the door of recovery for family members as well.

“The book…is for family and friends, to help them recognize the signs of addiction, what to do when they see those signs, how they can help them stay drug and alcohol free and what they might be doing to make the problem worse,” Herzanek says. “People can’t quit on their own.”

Proof is in the People
For Patsy, just having someone explain what her son is going through as well as what not to do to enable him to continue his addictive behavior was a blessing.

“There is a lot of information out there and programs for addicts, but you don’t realize how someone with an addiction problem affects the whole family,” Patsy says. “It’s such a relief to finally understand what we’ve been dealing with for the past several years …we are in recovery, too.”

For Pam Mains, the knowledge gained from the book painfully stoked the fires of regret that she didn’t do more sooner that may have saved her daughter’s life. But it also gave her the tools, the strength, the hope that she, too, is on a long path of recovery from the grief, regret and self blame she feels.

“Until I got some help after Mia’s passing, I had myself convinced it was all my fault,” Pam says. “It was too much… Sometimes it’s still too much. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about what I could have done differently. But addicts con you, they all do. And that’s what Joe’s book helps you understand; that their addiction wasn’t your fault and there’s nothing you can do to cure someone else’s addiction. Knowing that won’t bring Mia back, but it helps make sense of it all.”

December 2008

[Kudos]
Tell Us Something We Don’t Know
We didn’t need Forbes Magazine to tell us something that pretty much every Boulderite will freely admit—Boulder is the smartest town in the country. Where else can you get your espresso served to you by an MBA or your meals brought to you by a Ph.D.? Not too mention, it’s hard to walk very far without bumping into a professor or well-employed technology professional. Forbes based its findings on the proportion of people older than 25 with bachelor’s, master’s, professional and doctoral degrees. Fort Collins came in at No. 10. Ann Arbor, Mich., Washington, D.C., San Jose, Calif., and San Francisco rounded the list’s top 5. If you think ignorance is sexy, Lake Havasu, Ariz., where you can find many CU students during spring break, is the country’s least educated city. We’re hoping the CU students have nothing to do with that ranking.

[Gambling]
Welcher Gone Wild
We’re wondering if Sean S. Ahn’s mother ever taught him a lesson about gambling more than he could afford. Betting not. The Superior poker player is under the gun for allegedly skipping out on his bets, according to a lawsuit filed in Boulder. Ahn reportedly lost $29,000 during a friendly night of cards with some chums (what friends don’t bet thousands of dollars on poker night?). When it came time to pay, Ahn claimed to be short of cash and offered to settle the debt by with a few checks. The checks bounced, according to a lawsuit filed by the card game’s host. Following the rules of Omerta, Ahn has refused comment. No word as to whether he’s joined the witness protection program, cancelled his phone or sleeps with the fishes.

[Poor taste]
This Will Haunt
If karma is real, then someone is gong to be reincarnated as a cow dung for decapitating a 1,000-pound-Buddah statue. Originally from Bali and valued at $4,000, the statue stood outside the Indochine store in Boulder. The store’s owner, Hugo Brooks, said the suspect, or suspects, wanted to take the entire figure, but could only get away with the head. “It was really heartbreaking,” Brooks, who has operated the shop for 13 years, told the local newspaper. “It’s a symbol of unity and peace and generosity. What this person did is equivalent to taking the head off a statue of Jesus. Not only is it bad karma, but  it’s also a perverted idea to steal it. It’s like stealing a cross from a church.”

[Election]
Delusional Politician
Marilyn Musgrave is a sore loser. She’s many other things, too, but we’ll hold off on other rants for now. The soon-to-be former congresswoman representing a large swath of northern and eastern Colorado never made the obligatory congratulatory call to Democrat Betsy Markey who ousted her in a heated race for the Fourth Congressional District. She’s remained mum on almost all aspects of the loss, except for a recorded robo-call to help boost Georgia Sen. Saxby Chabliss in a runoff election last month. In the message, she blamed her lost on “leftist special interests” that “smothered the truth with vicious attacks and lies.” Yeah, that and a horrible congressional track record and a history of leaning so far right, she made George W. look like a liberal. Thankfully, the voters in this increasingly moderate district finally grew tired of Musgrave, who had already been named to Rolling Stone’s list of 10 worst congressional leaders in 2006.

December 2008

Making Booze Shine at Altitude

by James Burrus; photo by Bob Spencer

Matthew Baris is to the hard stuff what Charlie Papazian is to beer. When President Jimmy Carter made brewing beer at home legal in 1978, it opened the creative and entrepreneurial floodgates for the astounding variety and quality of craft brewed beer that many take for granted.

But as commercial and homebrewers alike hit their stride, it was inevitable that the do-it-yourself crowd would begin cooking—distilling—their homemade products. But homebrewers, meadmakers and moonshiners beware, making your own hooch at home is still illegal.

That’s why startups like Boulder’s Altitude Spirits, producers of Vodka 14, are a novelty. But for those who take the plunge, as the father-son team of Mitch and Matthew Baris did with Altitude, the results can be satisfying and enlightening.

Encouraged by the growing number of specialty distillers in Colorado producing everything from bourbon and brandy to gin and grappa, Matthew Baris decided to get in the game with vodka.

“I wanted to make something special, something that stood out,” Baris says.
That something was Vodka 14. Made with pure Rocky Mountain water and certified organic grain, Vodka 14 is named for the towering 14,000-foot peaks that make Colorado special.

Using top-shelf organic ingredients—with a “USDA Organic” certification on the bottle—isn’t just about wearing a badge of quality. It reflects the philosophy of the business, its local roots, and the Baris’ desire to be good stewards of the environment and community. Portions of the company’s profits are donated to a laundry list of charitable organizations ranging from the American Red Cross to the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless.

“To the extent we are successful, we want to share that success with the community,” Baris says.

But using impeccable ingredients was only the beginning. Baris kicked his liquor up a notch by using a continuous distillation method that involves heating the mash continuously and letting the alcohol condense and then vaporize again. And again and again. When the alcohol has put considerable distance between itself and the mash, it is then filtered and bottled.

At present, Baris is focusing on serving the local market of the metro area and select Colorado resort towns. With production running about 150 cases a month, give or take a couple of dozen, don’t look for a nationwide distribution anytime soon.

The idea of starting a distillery seemed to come out of nowhere, but after telling his dad about it, he realized it might
be genetic.

“My great-great-grandfather made vodka for friends and family in Russia,” Baris says. “Not a lot, just small batches.”

Producing the modern version is a family affair with Matthew’s dad, Mitch, handling production and quality control and mom, a CPA, handling the books. But unlike the national brands that produce millions of cases annually and have marketing budgets to match, Baris says he’s content with letting people discover the crisp, clean, pure flavor for themselves. To be sure, the silver medals in 2006 and 2007 at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition don’t hurt. And neither do the head-to-head taste tests in which judges unanimously preferred Vodka 14 over Ketel One.

But just as you can get a great India Pale Ale distributed by a national craft brewer but pick the version on tap at your local brew pub, Baris is counting on locals choosing a hometown product.

“We think it’s one of the best, but there’s so much more to it,” Baris says. “We are rooted in the community. When you choose Vodka 14, you’re not just choosing quality, you’re also choosing to support local organizations and a local company that reflects local values.”

Na pososhok!

[Vodka 14] For information on where to buy and a few great drink recipes, visit its website.

December 2008

Cruising along Highway 287 near U.S. 36 in Broomfield, it’s easy to drive right past this hidden hodgepodge of local business gems. Well, next time you’re in the area, take a side trip for lunch, shopping or some tropical flowers. (more…)

December 2008