SMRC: 21st Annual Chocolate Lovers’ Fling

The “Roaring Twenties.”

The term does not refer to millennials with their hair on fire.

Think flapper.

The most enduring symbol of America in the 1920s, “The Roaring Twenties,” a decade of dramatic social and political change, is the flapper, a young woman with bobbed hair and short skirts who drank, smoked, and said what might be termed “unladylike” things, in addition to being more sexually louche.

America in the 1920s was described as “roaring” because of the exuberant, freewheeling popular culture of the decade, a time when many defied Prohibition, indulged in new styles of dancing and dressing, and rejected traditional moral standards.

The Roaring Twenties was also known as the Jazz Age. Post World War I, Jazz bands played at dance halls like New York’s Savoy and Chicago’s Aragon, where young people danced the Charleston, the cake walk, the black bottom and the flea hop. Radio stations and phonograph records (100 million of which were sold in 1927 alone) carried their tunes to listeners across the nation. Some older people objected to jazz music’s “vulgarity” and “depravity” (and the “moral disasters” it supposedly inspired), but many in the younger generation loved the freedom they felt on the dance floor.

The 1920s, the liquor trade went underground to speakeasies rather than ordinary bars and bootleggers, racketeers and other organized crime figures such as Al Capone became anti-heroes. (Capone reportedly had 1,000 gunmen and half of Chicago’s police force on his payroll.)

And, in the 1920s, President Wilson and Congress passed the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote.

Pull those flapper dresses and fedoras out of mothballs: The San Miguel Resource Center’s 21st Annual Chocolate Lovers’ Fling celebrates the Roaring Twenties, the good, the bad, the ugly. The event takes place Saturday, February 6, 7:30 – 11:30 p.m., at the Telluride Conference Center in Mountain Village.

The Fling is an all-out bash and the nonprofit’s biggest public fundraiser featuring the region’s best professional chefs from venues as diverse as The Peaks, Bijou at Lumiere, Alpine Infusions, Steamies, Bon Vivant, competing to create the most decadent chocolate desserts, prizes for Best Dressed and Amateur Chocolate, a silent auction, the popular wine toss, a 50/50 cash raffle, and dancing.

The Fling is the warm up to Valentine’s Day, the High Holy for lovers. How are the two events linked? Valentine’s Day is all about celebrating healthy relationships. Eliminating abusive relationships and promoting healthy relationships are twin goals of the Resource Center.

It doesn’t matter where.

It doesn’t matter who.

Sexual assault and domestic violence ignore cultural boundaries, race, even gender – although women are more often victims than men. Fact is those twin horrors are equal opportunity offenders. And it turns out intimate partner violence is the most common form of abuse in women’s lives – much more than assault or rape by strangers or even acquaintances. So women – and yes, victims are most often women, not men, and children too – are more at risk at home than on the streets.

Interpersonal violence is a global plague  – read many of Nick Kristof’s Op Eds in The New York Times. He is one among many outstanding journalists who consistently rails against such horrors all over the world – but abuse is not acceptable anywhere.

It is not acceptable in the Telluride region. In fact, the goal of the San Miguel Resource Center is to become so effective in our neck of the woods, its services will no longer be needed.

Now celebrating 22 years of community service, the Resource Center is the Telluride region’s only nonprofit dealing with interpersonal violence. The organization is all about eliminating domestic violence and sexual assault in our backyard through crisis intervention, education, and social change. The Resource Center defines abuse as anything from a vague feeling something is wrong to battering and worse – much worse.

Proceeds from the Fling, which, with all its moving parts, demands hundred of man hours to cobble together, represent a big chunk of the Resource Center’s annual budget. Funds raised at the party, one of the biggest bashes of the winter season, are particularly important because they are unrestricted.

Unrestricted funds – as opposed to restricted funds through grants from government entities, which come with strings – allow the nonprofit to meet the ever-changing needs involved in crisis response.

Because of funds from the Fling, The Resource Center is able to offer such programs as support groups for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. Discretionary funds clearly help the nonprofit meet such needs and provide better ongoing healing and empowerment opportunities for its clients.

More about the San Miguel Resource Center:

The Resource Center was called Tomboy House when it was first formed in 1992 by a group of locals, including Bev McTigue, Dr. Marshall Whiting, Dr. Susannah Smith, and Marsha Ewell. By 1994, Tomboy House had established a 24-hour hotline to help victims through crisis intervention and referrals. That year, the nonprofit served 28 clients. Last year that number was nearly 10x higher: in 2015, the San Miguel Resource Center served 219 clients.

These days, in addition to crisis intervention and a hotline for Telluride, Norwood, Nucla/Naturita, the SMRC provides a wide range of programs/services in English and in Spanish, including cultural outreach, advocacy to help clients with court and medical services, safe housing, preventative community education, and awareness initiatives.

Ways you can help:

Attend the Fling Saturday, February 6, 2016.

Volunteer. Become a certified advocate or simply help with the many events that take place throughout the year such as the Fling. Learn about domestic violence and sexual assault. Education is the key to dispelling myths, ending the blaming of victims and preventing future violence.

Visit www.sanmiguelresourcecenter.org to learn more about how you can help and to buy tickets to the Chocolate Lovers’ Fling.