Weblog of Leland Rucker

After more than 2,000 miles of riding, Alberto Contador won the Tour de France Sunday, defeating a 180-man field. Contador withstood the assaults and attacks of every other rider, including Columbia-HTC’s Frank and Andy Schleck and surprise Garmin-Slipstream contender Bradley Wiggins.

Albert Contador (left) defeated Lance Armstrong (right) in the 2009 Tour de France.

But as Contador said after Saturday’s dramatic climb of Mont Ventoux, the real battle came from one of his teammates. The most serious obstacle to his victory was Lance Armstrong, back after four years away from being the most dominant bicycle rider of his era.

Contador, who won the Tour two years ago, was on a comeback of his own. Denied entry in last year’s tour because he had joined Astana, which had been involved in doping scandals before he joined the squad, Contador had plenty to prove, too. Johann Bruyneel, the director who had guided Armstrong to his seven Tour victories, had recruited the Spanish rider after Armstrong retired.

Then, last August, Armstrong decided to return to cycling and the Tour, he said, completely to promote Livestrong, his powerful cancer foundation. But it was equally obvious that Armstrong intended to win another tour, and he signed up with Astana because of his long partnership with Bruyneel, who suddenly had the strongest team with the best rider in the world and his predecessor on the same squad – both with the same goal.

Armstrong, perhaps the best strategist in the history of the sport, used every kind of psychological warfare against Contador. He belittled him at every opportunity in the press. After Contador missed a break in an early stage, Armstrong reminded us that “he’s still got a lot to learn.” He claimed that Contador wasn’t a team player after the Spanish rider caught out Armstrong and the rest of the pack on the ride up to Arcalis in Stage 7 and later reprimanded Contador for supposedly leaving teammate Andreas Kloden on a Alpine stage.

Contador kept his tongue throughout the race even while Armstrong kept the barbs coming after almost every stage. The American media actually seemed to go along with the idea that Armstrong might (or even should) win the Tour and/or be able to defeat Contador. The irony, of course, is that Armstrong, who rode a sensible and inspiring race himself, would be the one to learn that he could never defeat Contador, or Andy Schleck, either. His third-place finish should be applauded for what it is, a wonderful performance that shows that though his skills have diminished, he can still ride among the best.

What Armstrong defenders seem to be missing is that Contador dominated the field just as Armstrong used to in his heyday. Look at his move on Arcalis. Pure Lance. Look over at the rest of the struggling pack and saying, “Bye, bye.” But Armstrong derided him for disobeying orders, which is ridiculous unless the order was to keep Lance in the race for the yellow jersey. But, just as Armstrong would have done back in his day, Contador picked the perfect time to remind everybody that he was the boss. He did the same thing on the second time trial, crushing the pack as the final rider of the day just as Armstrong used to do. On Mont Ventoux he shadowed Andy Schleck and led Armstrong up the mountain to his podium finish.

But what we heard from Armstrong was that Contador was inattentive, that he disobeyed orders, that a later attack in the Alps eliminated Andreas Kloden, that he wasn’t a team player. What did he expect after hijacking a team designed to perpetuate Contador’s reign and trying to defeat him within the team? Who was a better team player?

Throughout Armstrong’s attempts to demean his accomplishment, Contador has kept a civil tongue about the dissension between him and Armstrong (which seemed often to be the only question on reporter’s minds) and showed the mark of the true champion, the kind of champion that Lance Armstrong once represented.

I began watching and became interested in cycling because of Lance Armstrong. He has brought immense attention to the sport of cycling, and more importantly, has used his celebrity to raise awareness and money to battle the scourge of cancer. But at this Tour de France, his hubris got the best of him, he got his butt beat, and he acted like a petulant, spoiled child who didn’t get his way.

Alberto Contador scattered the field on Sunday's steep climb to Verbier.

Whew. We finally got that settled.

The 15th Stage of the Tour de France is in the books, and there should be no lingering doubts that Alberto Contador is the leader of the race, the Astana team and the man with the best chance of winning this tour.

On Tuesday, Lance Armstrong will become Contador’s domestique (and he owes Andreas Kloden a big favor, too). After watching him Sunday, it should be clear to everyone, including Armstrong himself, that barring injury or mishap, he will not be in the yellow jersey next Sunday. And he’s got a real battle on his hands to even be on the podium.

That is not to say his feat in this year’s race is not remarkable. He is second in this tour after a four-year absence from professional cycling. But he is not the best man in this race. Or the second or third, either.

Armstrong performed admirably on a difficult stage that ended with a first-category climb that seemed to get steeper as it moved into the clouds, ending with a precipitous right turn just before hitting the finish that left everybody except Contador gasping as they crossed the line.

Versus commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, mindful of the great story it would be if Armstrong won, kept reminding us that Armstrong looked strong until it became painfully obvious to everyone that he was struggling to keep up with the contenders, and it was hardly surprising when Bradley Wiggins, Frank Schleck, Vincenzo Nibali, Carlos Sastre and Cadel Evans all raced away from him near the end. Had not teammate Andreas Kloden been there to pace him to the top, more riders would have probably passed him, too. (We watched the last climb a second time, and it was even more palpably obvious that Armstrong was at his physical limit.)

Hopefully we can get on with the real race. The much-hyped Armstrong/Contador rivalry, when you think about it, was kind of ridiculous from the get-go. Beyond the fact that he had won seven tours and dominated the race in years gone by, there was no reason to believe that Armstrong, 37, could ride the high Alps with Contador, 26, who won the Tour two years ago and has been riding competitively during the entire period that Armstrong was out of racing. There were suggestions that he would psyche out Contador like he did Jan Ullrich in his salad days, but that was pure sportswriters’ imagination to whip up interest in this year’s race. Nobody is getting inside Contador’s head this time around.

Anybody who has seen Contador knows he’s the best climber in the world; two years ago this week he danced around his rivals at the Tour at the tops of the Alps like they weren’t really there. He did the same thing last week on the ride into Andorra, which should have been warning enough but was cast by observers as some kind of rash move on Contador’s part that hurt the team dynamic.

To this observer Contador was merely biding his time pedaling with the pack before he took off and left everybody in his wake. And let’s not forget that both attacks were pure cycling poetry in the classic Armstrong sense – he waited with the leaders until the exact moment that he knew nobody could catch him and took off like a locomotive.

There is still about a week’s worth of racing left, so a lot can happen. But with the Armstrong/Contador issue finally behind us, the commentators and the rest of us can begin to concentrate on the real contenders as they battle for the jersey in a wild finishing week.

Alberto Contador is the rider to beat at the 1/3 point in the Tour de France.

We are at about the one-third point of the Tour de France, and as the riders head out onto the flats again for a few days before the next mountain stages, there’s not a lot to report.

After nine stages, it has been most enjoyable to watch three breakaways succeed and beat the peleton and the sprinters to stage wins. I can’t stop rooting for breakaway riders, and seeing three win in a week is as much fun as the Tour can be on the flatlands. Columbia’s Mark Cavendish has distinguished himself as the top sprinter, by winning two more stages (he won three last year) and staying in the race over three days of mountain climbing.

Beyond that, the entire story, at least from the American media’s perspective, has been the return of Lance Armstrong four years past his seventh Tour victory, back in the saddle and among the leaders again. Lost is the story of almost every other rider on the Tour, including Alberto Contador, who won this race two summers ago and was not allowed to compete last year.

Not only was Contador unlucky enough to not enter last year’s event because of a technicality (he joined Astana after the doping revelations of Alexander Vinokourov were exposed and was banned along with team director Johann Bruyneel), he now is on the same team as Armstrong and Bruyneel, and he doesn’t speak English, so we’re left with Armstrong’s perspective and those of his admirers in the press corps.

The tour directors appear to have tried to make this year’s tour not produce a legitimate leader/winner until the penultimate stage, the long climb of Mt. Ventoux on the day before the riders enter Paris. Still, their decision to end two of the three Pyrenean stages in long sprints instead of at the tops of mountains, which provide most of the fireworks and drama, left most of us incredulous. The only things worth watching the last three days were the incredible rural scenery and  Contador’s dash at the end of Stage 7. The climb of the Tourmalet, one of the most dramatic mountain finishes, was completely wasted and laughably boring, as all the teams pedaled up in a group behind a dozen or so breakaway riders and followed them for another hour after they got off the slopes.

Given the strange make-up of the Astana team, which includes perennial contenders Levi Leipheimer and Andreas Kloden (who all also among the top five riders at this point) and experienced workhorse climbers (Yaroslav Popovych and Halmar Zubeldia) to lead them up, it appears that it might all come down to the climb of Ventoux and that the only real drama is which Astana rider will be first, which second and which third on the podium.

That seems more likely every day. Cadell Evans, who came in second the last two tours but is on a weak team, has been totally shut down by Astana, as have Team Saxobank’s Schleck brothers, last year’s winner Carlos Sastre and anybody else who dares challenge Astana’s hegemony.

Rumors abound that Armstrong and Contador are both eager to win the race and don’t like each other much, and having them on the same team kinda spoils the various strategies that teams use to try and win the race, since the team is working behind no particular leader and probably will stay that way until near the end.

The only thing we saw in nine days of racing was that, given the chance, Contador will attack, and to this observer, will probably beat Armstrong if it comes down to a mano a mano ascent up Ventoux. Two years ago he danced ahead of everybody except doper Michael Rasmussen at the tops of the Alps, and his dash away on the first Pyrenees stage shows he’s dying to strut his stuff.

Armstrong is the supreme mind-gamer the modern Tour has ever seen, and it’s hard to bet against a man who dominated the Tour for as long as he did. We can always hope for another team to take advantage of an Astana mistake or mishaps. If it comes down to intellect on the slopes of Ventoux, give Armstrong a slight edge. But if it depends on the legs, Contador will dance away and come out on top

Stage One: Monaco
Winner: Fabian Cancellara
Maillot Journe: Fabian Cancellara

Fabian Cancellara won the time-trial prologue of the 2009 Tour de France.

At the beginning of the day it was all Lance Armstrong. Stories, rumors and innuendo circulated about who is the number one rider on the Astana team. And though Astana includes three riders who have wound up on the podium in the years since Armstrong retired the first time – Alberto Contador, Levi Leipheimer and Andreas Kloden – the only question on commentators’ minds at the beginning of Day One seemed to be whether Armstrong will win this race.

Versus’ color guy, Bob Roll, absolutely believes it. So, apparently, does longtime announcer Phil Liggett. Of the Versus staff, only Paul Sherwen questions that wisdom, believing that Alberto Contador, eleven years younger than Armstrong, will be the winner. Bob Roll rolled his eyes at that one, suggesting that Armstrong will psyche his way to victory.

Perhaps. But today, those twelve years that separate Contador and Armstrong were readily apparent. Armstrong ran early – very early – in the prologue individual time trial. His time along the 15.5 kilometer course was better than any predecessor, but his time was quickly eclipsed by Tony Martin and then teammate Levi Leipheimer, whose 20:02 beat Martin by three minutes and remained as the time to beat until the big boys got on the course.

Versus showed Armstrong’s entire 21-minute traverse – the only time it did that — and commentators Liggett and Sherwen were pointing out his good form and pulling for Armstrong to do well.

Armstrong came in tenth, but more importantly, he came in fourth on his team, which clearly leaves Contador, who looked the way Armstrong used to. Contador came in only 18 seconds back of Fabian Cancellara, who, as expected, came down the second half of the course like a luge.

Teammate Andreas Kloden was only four seconds behind Contador and just a second ahead of Cadell Evans, also a challenger for the maillot journe. After one day, Armstrong is already behind by 40 seconds, 22 seconds behind Contador.

This day certainly doesn’t disqualify Armstrong from winning this year’s tour, or being the guy to beat by the time they get to the Alps in week three. But it does show that Armstrong, at least at this juncture, is going to have to dig deeper than he ever has to win the race, or even challenge his own teammates. It seems much more likely that he will be helping Contador or Kloden ascend the Alps and the podium.

A familiar view for those of us crazy enough to watch the Tour de France from beginning to end on television.

Ah, yes, it’s that time of year again. The Tour de France begins tomorrow morning in Monaco. My Twitter account is atwitter with those following and riding the race, and I’m trying to catch up on hash marks and RSS feeds. I just found the weblog of Martin Dugard,  whose commentary on the last few races generally rises a step above the usual swirl of rumors and speculation.

And the rumors and speculation could not be at a higher pitch. Will Lance Armstrong win the race for an unprecedented eighth time, eclipsing even teammate Alberto Contador, generally recognized as the best cyclist riding today? Phil Liggett, erstwhile television commentator, is not alone in already proclaiming that Armstrong will be on the podium come July 26. Our local newspaper has had stories on Armstrong every day for a week, and stateside interest in the tour seems higher than, well, the last time Armstrong participated.

Drugs still loom large over the Tour, and given the ingrained nature of doping I’m sure a few riders will be bounced before it’s all over. Tour officials have bragged about increased testing procedures, yet they were forced to allow sprinter Tom Boonen, who tested positive for cocaine in the last year, to compete after a last-minute ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport of the French Olympic Committee.

Le Tour. All the highest and lowest qualities that sports has to offer wrapped around three weeks of epic European backcountry scenery. Who could ask for more?

Anybody can join the Bluegrass jam every Tuesday night at Oskar Blues in Lyons.

Every Tuesday night about eight o’clock they pull back the chairs in the upstairs bar at Oskar Blues and line them up in a circle. Various guitars, banjos, mandolins, dobros, fiddles and a big acoustic bass are pulled from cases, and players begin to sit down and tune up. Soon enough someone calls a song, and the Lyons Bluegrass Jam is underway.

More players arrive as the night goes on, and as diners start to leave over in the next section, some pickers standing around the edges break off and start their own circle. Sometimes upwards of fifty musicians are huddled in different circles, passing around songs. The jams generally wind down around 11, but occasionally, like one night in March when Vince Herman and his son, Silas, stopped by, the picking went on after midnight.

Seeing someone like Herman, a founder of Leftover Salmon, isn’t that unusual in this little town, now home to a growing number of world-class musicians.  Lyons and the mountain communities from here up to Nederland have quietly become a roots-music artist colony. The gypsy jazz group Taarka, Grammy-award-winning slide guitarist Sally Van Meter, the bluegrass quartet Spring Creek, bassist Sally Truitt, Elephant Revival, bassist Eric Thorin, Dave Watts from the Motet, songwriter Nancy Thorwardson, guitarist Jason Hicks of the Blue Canyon Boys, Caleb Roberts of Open Road, drummer Brian McRae, luthier and guitarist Romano Paoletti, bluesman Lionel Young, classical violinist Mintze Wu and multi-instrumentalist K.C. Groves are just a few of the many accomplished musicians living in the Lyons area.

What is curious about the jams is that despite the plethora of talent, players of all levels are encouraged to pull up a chair. “Bluegrass, by nature, is a pretty competitive music,” explains resident Eric Zilling, a jam regular. “At festivals there are contests for best fiddler, best guitarist etc. Here, everybody knows where they stand. You go around the circle, you get your opportunity to play, and then somebody from Spring Creek, who’s sitting next to you, plays. It’s a welcoming atmosphere.”

Longtime resident Dave McIntyre books music and runs the soundboard at Oskar Blues. Fresh from New Jersey, he fell in love with Lyons, at that time, he says, “a sleepy bedroom community, good-old-boy oriented place.” McIntyre, who bought a house near downtown in 1976 and has watched the music and arts scene blossom over the last dozen years, says, “Planet Bluegrass was the catalyst for people to move here.”

Craig Ferguson, who heads Planet Bluegrass, which books the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and brings high-profile national events RockyGrass and the Folks Festival and other concerts to its local stages, first moved to Lyons in 1994. “I would guess we had something to do with it, probably more to do with bringing people to experience Lyons and having them fall in love with it — like we did. Now I’d say there really are a lot of musicians in town.”

Ferguson says that the scene is “more self-generating” today. “There is so much music in town, pickin’ parties, jams, that we really have nothing to do with.”

Singer and bassist Jessica Smith relocated to Lyons with the other members of Spring Creek three years ago. “We had been in Crested Butte and knew Colorado was a good market for bluegrass,” she says. “We wanted to be closer to the Front Range so we can get to places more easily, but we didn’t want to live in the city. We had been to RockyGrass, knew of other musicians living here and decided it would be a good place for us.”

Annie Sirotniak moved here in 2007 from Boulder. “There are folks to pick with, friendships form and there’s a great vibe,” she says. Sirotniak books 4-7 shows a year through High Street Concerts, an all-volunteer consortium started in 2003 by Sam Tallent, Mike Whip and K.C. Groves. This year High Street has presented guitarist Beppe Gambetta, fiddle wizard Casey Driessen and Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum, among others. “Profit isn’t the motive,” she says. “We have a committed volunteer crew. We’d rather put on a show and give as much as we can to the artists. I’ve been a performer as well, and know firsthand that it’s tough to make it as a musician. I guess that’s part of the reason I volunteer all my time.”

Profit isn’t the motive at the blues jams Patrick Cullie hosts each month at Oskar, or at the popular Tribute Nights that Jami Lunde manages once a month, either. Up to 20 bands each perform two or three songs from the catalogues of, so far, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Neil Young, Hank Williams (I, II or III) and Gram Parsons/Emmylou Harris.

The idea, Lunde says, grew out of endless nights in living rooms and festival backstages when guitars are passed around the circle. “Oftentimes the circle will come around to cover songs,” she says, “and it ends up that we are having so much fun playing, singing, dancing.” The format has caught fire with musicians and audiences alike, making it one of Oskar’s biggest nights.

Last year several people, including Zilling and Groves, who co-hosts the bluegrass jams with Eric Thorin, started Redstone Radio, a station that streams the music of Lyons over the Internet. Zilling says the idea started at a Spring Creek show last May. “I had bought a handheld digital recorder, and I was walking around Oskar and I showed my new toy to K.C., and she started walking around interviewing people like a television reporter. It was pretty funny, and afterwards she came over and said we should start a radio station.”

The idea stuck, and working incrementally, they created Redstone Radio, an internet-only station. Without doing a lot of promotion, the station logs about 800 listener hours per month playing 80 percent local musicians and 20 percent musicians with local ties, like Herman or Tim O’Brien. Everybody gets paid for their music, and Zilling says that after a year of operation, “It’s pretty darned self-sustaining.”

Redstone recently took a further step, renovating an abandoned cinderblock building at 4th Street and Broadway. Volunteers, many of them musicians or local music fans with trade skills, are bringing the building up to code, adding drywall and converting it into the Groove Shack, which gives Redstone Radio a physical space, but more importantly, adds a rehearsal and teaching space for musicians.

The gap that usually exists between artists and fans is absent here, and the synergy between residents, fans and musicians is as organic as it is self-sustaining. “Mostly, I think that musicians attract musicians at this point,” says Ferguson. “They also seem to attract other artists, as I’ve felt that there are so many more ‘artistic’ people around now, painters, potters, you name it.”

“It’s a great little town with a great mix of people,” Smith says. “There are people whose families have been here for generations, and people like us who come for artistic reasons. Planet Bluegrass brought people who wouldn’t have come here for any other reason and settled here. And it’s still happening.”

This article appears in the Summer issue of Boulder magazine.

A coyote heads off near the Boulder Reservoir last month.

A columnist in the Denver Post today talks with some common-sense Greenwood Village residents circulating petitions to stop the killing of coyotes in their city.

After a spike in dog/human/coyote incidents, the city hired sharpshooters to kill “aggressive” coyotes with high-powered rifles within the city’s park system.

The Colorado Division of Wildlife has killed several coyotes in the city of Broomfield in response to a couple of well-publicized dog/human/coyote interactions in that city earlier this year. The DOW, which knows that killing the animals doesn’t address the problem – its spokesperson recently said that if the entire United States were paved with asphalt, we would still be living with coyotes — is instead overreacting to mostly misguided public fears that somehow “more aggressive” coyotes have become a threat to our well-being and our way of life.

These knee-jerk, appease-the-populace reactions will almost certainly guarantee that the cities will continue to experience dog/human/coyote interactions. Greenwood Village says its main goal is to educate, and to its credit has generally good advice about coyotes on its website.

But instead of vigorously enforcing current leash laws (which is the underlying reason for almost every one of these so-called “attacks”), the city has decided to blame the wild animals. It’s so much easier than actually dealing with the problem.

I think most people who have been around animals understand that most animal-behavior problems are really human-behavior problems. Even people who experience the harshest of wild-animal interactions – being mauled by a grizzly – generally understand their own culpability in an “attack.”

The word “attack” has all sorts of negative connotations. This YouTube video, for instance, is labeled as an “attack” by a polar bear. My immediate reaction to the video is that there was no attack, except perhaps that the woman could be seen as attacking the bears by jumping into their enclosure. But had the bear chosen to “attack,” the woman would certainly not be alive to tell her story. The bear, though it appears to bite her on the ass, seems more curious about the intruder than anything else.

Despite the biblical injunction about dominion over animals, humans have never been good stewards of wildlife; indeed we seem incapable of “managing” wild animals beyond exterminating them when they become nuisances.

Think of the consequences of the United States’ decision, for instance, to eliminate the top predators, wolves and grizzly bears from the entire Western ecosystem to accommodate ranchers with cattle and sheep, The consequences of that decision still reverberate across the Western landscape, with no end in sight.

One of the effects is that about half a million coyotes, along with hundreds of thousands of other animals, under the guise of “wildlife management,” are killed every year under the Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services division. Despite the annual slaughter, which in 2008 was almost five MILLION animals, coyote numbers are increasing around the country, even in places that have never seen coyotes before. (For more on coyote behavior, here’s an excellent report from Marc Bekoff in Canid News.

In Colorado, the DOW and Greenwood Village council members over-reacted mostly to appease the fears of a small percentage of citizens. And instead of concentrating on human behavior (”my dog is under control, even without the leash,” “I left my leash at home,” “My dog wouldn’t hurt a fly,” “Why aren’t you out catching real criminals?”), we seem to easily defer to expecting the animals to change theirs. And if the animals, in this case coyotes, don’t comply: Bang, you’re dead.

There’s one constant in the spike in dog/human/coyote interactions in the Denver area: Off-leash dogs were involved and often initiated contact with the coyotes. The inference is, of course, that coyotes, because they’re wild, “attack” dogs, which are “tame.”

If you’ve been around animals, you know that’s not a given. The coyotes might have attacked the dogs, but it’s equally probable that the dogs, off-leash and curious as all dogs are, approached the coyotes, who, perceiving them as attackers, responded accordingly. We won’t know exactly what happened – eyewitness accounts are wildly inconclusive  — but what if the dogs were the aggressors and the coyotes just defending themselves or their territory? Would we shoot the dogs?

But it’s easy to make some sort of distinction between wild animals and pets, even if domestic animals are just wild animals bred to be tame. (Consider, for instance, that if your housecat weighed 105 pounds, she might consider you a snack instead of a food provider and a lap to sit in.)

Our general fears in this regard are completely out of balance with reality. Domestic dogs are inherently more dangerous to humans than coyotes ever will be. Domestic dogs actually do kill people — and many dogs that kill were trained to do so by humans.

Only one or two human deaths in history have ever been attributed to a coyote. More than FOUR MILLION Americans are treated for domestic dog bites EACH YEAR, and 10-15 people annually are fatally attacked by domestic dogs.

But hey, it’s easier to blame the coyotes than change our behavior, right?

Could you tell if this Fanner 50 was a toy at fifteen feet?

PRINCETON, N.J., June 3 (UPI) — Princeton University students were cleared to resume normal activities Wednesday after reports of a campus gunman were determined to be false, officials said.

Upon questioning, it was determined that the suspected handgun was only a dark green plastic toy that could be confused with an actual weapon, they said.

I read this story with interest. I once would have laughed at the stupidity, but after a toy-gun situation of my own, I’m not quite as glib about the subject. I wrote a column about it for the Colorado Daily, and I thought it was worth reprinting in light of some of the jokes I’ve read already about the Princeton situation.

Disarming Situation

It was all so innocent.

Saturday afternoon I was in Denver working with my partner Gil Asakawa on the introduction to a book we’re writing about toys of the fifties and sixties. After a couple hours, we decided to take a break and go out to a local antique store to look for the real thing—research purposes, you know.

I came away with a treasure from my childhood: a Fanner Fifty pistol. Mattel’s signature gun from my adolescence and the inspiration for my part of the Western gun-and-holster section of the book. The Fanner Fifty trademark was an elongated hammer that allowed you to “fan” off a series of caps with a staccato motion of your other hand.

I seem to remember about half my childhood spent in the crouch you had to take to fire off the Fanner. Besides being a fine specimen of toy workmanship, it had a special place in my heart (and often , under my pillow, next to my head at night).

So Saturday we were in front of Gil’s apartment, he carrying the other games we had bought and I walking behind him with the Fanner, aiming out ahead at the wall of the building and pouring off rounds against the same imaginary Black Bart I battled in my imagination as a kid.

At the same time, a Denver police officer was passing by in a cruiser. When I turned around after seeing him out of the corner of my eye, the Fanner in my hand, I found myself face-to-face with a police car as it slipped over the curb and   came right at me.

Officer Dennis Moon came out of the car with his gun drawn, now aimed directly at me. “Drop the weapon.” Both of us were wearing sunglasses; neither could see the other’s eyes.

“It’s a toy, it’s a toy,” I yelled, kind of laughing and playfully holding the gun up for the officer to see.

“Throw the gun down and raise your hands,” he ordered.

I threw the gun down and raised my hands heavenward. He told me to turn around. I did, kind of grinning incredulously at Gil, who looked as amazed as I at the sudden turn of events.

I couldn’t believe what was happening. Thoughts leapt crazily around in my head — but the main one that took over was that I had just thrown down one of my favorite childhood memories into the grass, and in exchange a real pistol was aimed directly at my heart.

I’d never had a gun drawn on me before. My obsession with guns ended with my Fanner; I’ve only handled a real gun once or twice and never shot off a round of real ammunition in my life. I never even had a BB gun. I have no problem with the constitutional right to own a gun, but I am disturbed at how easy it is to purchase a deadly weapon in the United States.

And I’ve read all those stories in the papers about a police officer accidentally shooting some idiot brandishing his little brother’s toy assault rifle. But I never thought of it as being anything that would ever be of concern in my life.

That changed forever in an instant. As Moon realized the situation and lowered the gun, my first reaction was of anger at being singled out for such a minor thing. After all, goddam it, it was a toy. What flashed through my mind was that I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

It was his first reaction, too. “It’s shit like this that can get people killed,” Moon said, in a flush of anger. For all he knew, it could have been a hostage situation, the way I was playing with the gun behind Gil’s back.

I couldn’t argue with that. The Fanner looks authentic enough, especially from a distance, and we were in an area where there is a lot of police traffic.

And my anger turned to complete embarrassment as the overwhelming reality of the situation crept up on me. What was I doing waving this gun around like a fool? How could I be so stupid?

I think Officer Moon felt the same way. He asked for our I.D.s and called in on his radio. He seemed relieved, and in what seemed like less than a minute, several other cruisers arrived at the intersection.

“We’re writing a book about toys,” I said in a deliberate a voice as I could muster. He laughed, and the other officers engaged in some good-natured police banter at his expense about the incident.

We promised him a copy of the book, and he replied that he hoped he didn’t ruin our day and added that he was really thankful we didn’t ruin his.

Gil and I went upstairs to his apartment, and for a while we were kind of hysterical. It was funny, we kept telling ourselves. What a great story, we thought. It was, to use our own journalistic catch-phrase, good copy.

But then reality crept in, this time the fearful, fitful kind that takes awhile to settle in your brain. It almost wasn’t a good story, I keep reminding myself each time I think of what might have happened if I had innocently pointed my cap pistol at the officer while telling him it was only a toy. Or if he hadn’t kept his cool with the finger on the trigger.

I’m thankful he maintained his composure. The entire situation wound up being nothing more than an embarrassing mistake. So why was I still uneasy? The line between fantasy and reality, which had always been clear in my mind, grew fuzzier in those seconds.

I’m sure Dennis Moon has thought about that more than once since then, too. We were bonded together irrevocably in those moments when I was in his sights, my future in the twitch of his fingers.

I drove back to Boulder with the Fanner in a paper bag. I’m going to keep it down here in my office in the basement with my other toys from now on.

Colorado Daily
August 29, 1989

The view of the board at KGNU studios, Boulder, Colorado.

I host a program called “Roots & Branches” some Sunday mornings 9-11 a.m. on our local community radio station KGNU. The program is loosely based around American music, which I interpret as all recorded music in America that is blues, folk, country, gospel, soul, rock or bluegrass-based and whenever possible, played on acoustic instruments.

It’s a pretty big area from which to choose, but as one who is still amazed by the incredible depth and breadth of American music, it’s territory that I love exploring for program ideas.

This Sunday’s program was titled “History Lessons,” and it includes only songs that concern historical events or periods in U.S. history. After introducing the concept in the first set, the show follows a period the period from World War II to the fall of Saigon, with the songs interspersed with original audio clips of current events of the time.

As usual in this type of endeavor, I left off a batch of good songs that I forgot, couldn’t fit into the concept or the time frame. I received lots of good calls reminded me of songs I left off or forgot about, which means there is a chance I’ll get around to a Part Two sometime.

You can stream the program for a couple of weeks here.

“History Lessons” Set List

“Everett Ruess,” Dave Alvin, Ashgrove
“Sailing To Philadelphia,” Mark Knopfler, Sailing to Philadelphia
“Galveston Flood,” Tom Rush, Take a Little Walk With Me
“When That Great Ship Went Down?”, William & Versey Smith, Anthology Of American Folk Music
“True Story Of Amelia Earhart,” Plainsong, In Search Of Amelia Earhart
“Franklin D. Roosevelt, Poor Man’s Friend,” Willie Eason, Sacred Steel
“New Orleans Wins The War,” Randy Newman, Land of Dreams
“Eisenhower Blues,” J.B. Lenoir, Martin Scorsese Presents: The Blues
“The Great Atomic Power,” The Louvin Brothers, Hillbilly Music…Thank God!
“The Merry Minuet,” Kingston Trio, The Kingston Trio at the Hungry i
“On Beatniks,” Carl Sandburg, The Beat Generation
“Little Boxes,” Malvina Reynolds, Washington Square Memoirs: Urban Folk (1950-1970)
“Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” Bob Dylan, The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 : Rare And Unreleased
“I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” Phil Ochs, Washington Square Memoirs : The Great Urban Folk Boom 1950-1970
“Fortunate Son,” Todd Snider, Long May You Run : 15 Tracks In The Key Of Neil
“Tears Of Rage,” The Band, Music From Big Pink
“Vietnam Blues,” Cassandra Wilson, Martin Scorsese Presents: The Best Of The Blues
“Okie from Muskogee,”  Merle Haggard, Vintage Collections Series
“What Is Truth,” Johnny Cash, The Legend
“Armstrong,” 2:40, John Stewart, American Originals
“Find The Cost Of Freedom,” Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Single
“Galveston,” Jimmy Webb, Ten Easy Pieces
“Lord God Bird,” Sufjan Stevens, Single
“Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight,” Plainsong, In Search Of Amelia Earhart
“Sail Away,” Randy Newman, Sail Away
“Talking Green Beret New Super Yellow Hydraulic Banana Teeny Bopper Blues,” Jaime Brockett, Remember The Wind And The Rain
“An Account Of Haley’s Comet,” John Stewart, Sunstorm

Here’s a good one.

An Associated Press story carried by major news outlets announces that a few Bob Dylan items are for sale, including a high school yearbook with his inscription and a lyric sheet with a poem, “Little Buddy,” that he wrote about a dead dog at summer camp when he was sixteen years old. Go to Google and you’ll find the story repeated in at least 39 different publications.

The lyric sheet in question, which the story says Christie’s auction house hopes will bring upwards of $10,000 – “the earliest example of Dylan’s lyric genius,” enthuses the Guardian’s headline — makes you wonder whether the infamous auction house or media outlets actually check their items for authenticity.

From the A.P. story: A spokesman for Christie’s auction house marveled at the poem’s genius. ‘It’s a very early example of [Dylan's] brilliance,’ Simeon Lipman gushed. ‘It comes from the mind of a teenager [with] some very interesting thoughts … percolating in his brain.’

That might be — if it came from his brain. Even a simple blogger could have done a Google search and find that “Little Buddy,” the lyric in question, was written and recorded by Hank Snow. It’s a sentimental tearjerker that apparently Dylan copied in his own script and should have made any Christie’s expert, or journalist, suspicious. But apparently it didn’t, and even the Washington Post and Rolling Stone, along with many other organizations, fell for it.

Watch the YouTube clip of the song here.

Broken hearted and so sad, golden curls all wet with tears, ’twas a picture of sorrow to see
Kneeling close to the side of his pal and only pride,
A little lad these words he told me
He was such a lovely doggie and to me he was such fun
But today as we played by the way
A drunken man got mad at him because he barked in joy
He beat him and he’s dying here today.

Now I ask: Does that sound even remotely like Bob Dylan, even at age 16? Doesn’t it make you even a little suspicious? And one more question: And media wonder why we don’t trust them anymore? As Dylan actually did write: When you gonna wake up?