I had heard on the news about Walgreens putting in electric car charging stations. Believe me, those watching on video, charging your electric car ain't what they're watching out for. Right here, just last year, I saw a handful of guys standing around a mountain bike. One gets on, begins riding in circles, and rides right into a pole. And falls off in front of me. I elected not to ask if he had sustained any injuries. I knew what was coming next. "Got any spare change?"
Yesterday I had the day off. I went to purchase stamps, a small AM/FM radio to listen to at work, and a new shirt to wear for work. I just read somewhere that, if you work in the service industry, your occupation can not be digitized. After the post office, I had an early lunch, after which I called a friend on a gas station pay phone. It was a low tech kind of day, and was about to get lower. Next to the pay phone I was using is a second one. Up to that one walks a homeless guy. He had sunglasses on and was carrying a coat or bag or something I didn't notice. He was looking in my direction, yet half-grinning at something in the distance. He was fumbling with whatever he was carrying, but I never saw him use the phone. That corner is popular with panhandlers. Sitting on the curb was a younger guy. On my way to lunch, he said to me "Hey." I said "Hey." He said "Hey." I said "Hey." When I came back from lunch, a grey-haired woman was sitting in his spot.
It's an early bus to work. On the bus are a couple of regulars, two middle aged women. The one with the hat and small shopping cart does all the talking, and the silent one listens. Having listened to her previously myself, she gave me the impression that she worked for a vet's office, or a clinic. This morning, it sounds as though she works on the phone. I'm trying to hear what she says over a rattling bus and heater fan. "They call up, and they're all single parents. I tell them that the good news is, they don't have to pay taxes this year. So, take the money you were going to spend on taxes and make your payments for each of the next three months. Then she gets mad at me. I tell her she's an angry bitch. "Well, the government doesn't have any right to take my money.' Oh yes they do. You borrowed money from the government. You didn't pay it back, and they don't care that it's an inconvenience to you. Who is the financial officer in your family?" Wherever she works, I doubt that I will hear her mentioned during the upcoming campaign season as the next Joe the Plumber.
Life in the ghettos is governed by...extremely high insurance rates (...past riots, vandalism, pilferage, and shoplifting)... Substandard merchandise is palmed off on the poor because...they keep shopping in their own neighborhoods. As for the rat-and vermin-infested housing, landlords...charge what traffic will bear. - Tad Szulc, "Innocents Abroad" I left my neighborhood an hour ago, with its small businesses and its bilingual signs. I'm now speeding past bank buildings, the Mariott, a huge shopping mall with showroom after showroom, such as The Container Store. A showroom which I can only imagine must be large enough for every kind of contemporary container. An office park, a small airport. I transfer to a bus which snakes past a million square foot office space for rent, through a community of multi-million dollar homes and its own hospital, long terraced flower gardens and a spectacular view of the Front Range. Is that a megachurch or a performing arts complex? If this is an example of income inequality, I don't feel unequal. I wouldn't want to live down here. After work, I'm sitting on the sidewalk waiting for the bus home. I've read that the homeless put cardboard down before sleeping on cold concrete, which acts like a heat sink, draining the warmth from your body. That's death from exposure, in the big city. A school bus stops at the corner. A teenaged kid says "hi" to me through an open window. I see him waving at me. Printed on the side of the bus is, "Learn today. Lead tomorrow." I watch teenagers being driven home from school by parents. Some of them are watching me. This past summer, I was here at this stop with a woman who works at a deathburger. I spoke with her in Spanish about her job, the heat in the kitchen. I tried to explain this neighborhood to her in my vastly incomplete Spanish. "Big houses, multiple cars..." When the bus comes this afternoon, one of the riders is a white kid who looks like a teenaged Tom Cruise. He has dyed honey blonde hair.
Another predawn Saturday. This one with two feet of snow on the ground. I'm at my usual bus stop. At the bus stop across the street, someone is pacing back and forth, coughing, singing like Tom Waits. On the bus is a young guy talking about his job taking donations. Over the phone? "It's almost too chill for me. Is this Walmart? I didn't even know where the train station was." Denver, an integral part of the fabulous growth of the state of Colorado... The new America of the second half of the twentieth century is the huge suburban fringe. It offers extraordinary concentrations of wealth and power, as well as a wholly new culture, and new mercantilism and lifestyle. The suburbs can be a virtually self-sufficient fortress. - Szulc At work, I am listening to the only AM station on the weekend which doesn't broadcast informercials. One talk show is hosted by a guest host. The topic? This guest host had taken his family downtown for shopping and dinner, where and when he "was accosted" by a homeless man, asking for money. When he offered his leftovers from dinner, the homeless man told him, "No, I want money." The host says that he hasn't been there in years, and has never seen so many homeless in his life. He says that feels unsafe downtown. He doesn't mention, and there is no clue as to whether or not he is aware of, the different series of attacks on downtown patrons over the past couple of years; attacks of which there is no evidence of homeless perpetrators. One caller to the show complains that the homeless pay no taxes. It sounds like remarkably detached and uninformed stuff. Another caller claims that the homeless don't like the rules required of attending a shelter, that they only want to smoke pot. It sounds as though the host is unfamiliar with what I have read, about the homeless' adverseness to the personal dangers of being in shelters. Neither the host nor the callers sound concerned about the welfare of the homeless. "I want to eat, and I have very simple needs," the host says about his social role as a downtown patron, of which he strikes me as sure. This may explain his lack of interest in a social sub-group of which he sounds mystified. While he was downtown among this sub-group, in a 'teachable moment' he remarked of them to his kids, "This is why you do homework." As if the homeless never did homework, never had families, never went shopping. The audience call and email the host, and suggest that he is less than compassionate. "People getting upset (with me). I don't know why. I want to shop and eat," he says. This appears to be a restricted perspective which extends beyond downtown. One caller suggests that the vast number of homeless are left over from an environment before the downtown area was renovated. The host is baffled as to why anyone would want to pay good money to own residences downtown, or why the city doesn't help the homeless with their troubles. "Force them to go to classes," he suggests. "Get them away from downtown," he warns, for the loss of " lot of tax dollars." The host speculates that the homeless "probably make more than my sixteen-year-old son." The host goes on to warn that the downtown area's loss of his patronage will result in it's transformation into a place of empty store fronts. It's an ironic suggestion; that by doing almost nothing according to any kind of apparent plan, such a powerless population can eliminate a shopping district's economy, with all its marketing resources. "What in the world can be done to stop" the homeless downtown asks the host. A caller suggests that the "police make it uncomfortable for them. Put pressure on our politicians." It's a suggestion from another era...or a suggestion with historical context which crosses eons. One of the last callers says that "The people who are generous (about giving money to the homeless who ask for it) are not careful who they give it to." The needs of the homeless may be more complex than those the host claims are his own. Yet I have my own convictions, one of which is that, it's the homeless' attempt to stay alive which appears to interfere with downtown patronage. That is, to the extent that the lives of others are a 'problem'.
I'm at a lightrail station in the hour just before dawn. Snow has been falling through the night. A light, steady snow. I'm watching a white pickup with a plow on the front. It's making straight passes down the long parking lot before backing up just as straight. Where the metal plow makes contact with the concrete, orange sparks percolate along its bottom edge. At mid-week at my usual bus stop, the air is crisp and clear. Seventeen degrees F. The moon is out and full. I see a guy strolling through the crosswalk. I don't recognize him, but his gait catches my attention. When I look back, he's stopped in the middle of this crosswalk, talking through the passenger side window to the driver of a car stopped at the light. I hear him say, "Can I get a ride? Can I get a ride?" Does he know the driver?
The...phenomenon of "singles bars" has cropped up in the suburbs..."massage parlors,"...have appeared in droves in the suburbs... They make the point that there is almost nothing unique left in the cities to attract the suburbanite. ...the building boom began to turn into a bust at the end of 1973 and early 1974. ...in early 1973, Oregon's Governor Tom McCall said, "We find a process we now call 'condomania.' - Szulc
There's a guy I've seen on a connecting bus to work. Has it been longer than a year? He appears to me, someone formally untrained in psychology, to have mental health issues. And really bad teeth. I've seen him make what appear as involuntary head and body movements, make faces, randomly make statements. In the past few weeks, I've seen him with a bicycle, and a kind of dolly which appears to be designed to carry an oxygen tank. He uses it to carry a small bag. This past week or two, I've heard him speak for the first time. He talks to another recent regular rider. They both came running from the train to the bus. He didn't have his tank dolly or bike, but was waving an umbrella. On the bus, he was telling his friend that someone tied to choke him on the train, tried to steal his boots, tried to steal his coat, pointed a cell phone at him. He uses the F word in his tale and the driver asks him to refrain. At one stop, a middle-aged guy with shoulder length grey hair gets on and appears to be fumbling with his fare. I don't hear him utter a sound. After he sits down, I hear the driver tell someone, I can't tell if it's this guy or the guy who claims to have been choked, "Watch your language or you're off the bus now. You don't call me no names." The grey-haired guy is fumbling with a cassette player, putting ear buds in. In a couple of stops, he leaves.
The multi-purpose room at Fox Ridge Middle School was packed last night with caucus voters. The school is in the southern suburbs of Arapahoe County... But when you ask where people live, they tell you the name of their housing subdivision. Tuscany, Tuscany South, "Greenfield". That's where Mary Marx and her husband live. They own a computer company. - All Things Considered, 2/8/12 A few days ago, I heard on the radio that Mitt Romney was in town. He spoke at Arapahoe High School, down the street from the place where I usually work. I've driven past the school when in session. I remember a few years ago, waiting for the bus home across the street, where I used to occasionally work. I think it was shortly before one Christmas, I was watching three or four students have a friendly snowball fight. It made me think about being 17 again. I had heard on the radio an author who wrote a biography about Romney, who described him as a man who loved data. (Like Howard Hughes?) He once protested anti-Vietnam War protesters. As a leader in his Latter Day Saints community, he told a single mother in the church to give up her baby for adoption. The church believes, according to the author, that a child in a single parent home has fewer opportunities in life. Instead, the mother gave the church up. All very logical. Howard Hughes without the passion.
So how did the kids of Arapahoe High dig this guy? I've seen them crossing the street for lunch in groups of twenty or thirty, long lines of groovy-looking teenaged white kids. (Any single moms among them?) I bet they relate to him. He one modern son of a gun. (AP) DENVER- The Colorado Senate has fired an unpaid intern, accused of "glitterbombing"...Mitt Romney after the Colorado caucuses. ...a student at the University of Colorado Denver... The Senate majority office Chief of Staff...said student interns are not chosen by the Senate president... He could not say whether the student would lose course credit.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is far more than a form of Sunday worship. It is a code of ethics... ...Mitt Romney was, the man whose kids Hays used to watch, was a bishop of her ward, her church elder. ...Romney said something about the church adoption agency. Hayes was unmarried. Hayes initially thought she must have misunderstood. ...he was urging her to give up her soon-to-be-born son for adoption, saying that was what the church wanted. ...where "a successful marriage is unlikely." Hays decided she was finished with the Mormon Church. The decision was easy, yet she made it with a heavy heart. She shudders at what they were asking her to do....especially when she pulls out pictures of her grown son. Another woman facing a pregnancy discovered she had a serious blood clot in her pelvis. She decided to have an abortion. Romney showed up at her bedside. "As your bishop," she said he told her, "my concern is with the child." She told Romney that another church leader, a doctor, supported her decision. Romney, she said, fired back, "I don't believe you. He wouldn't say that. I'm going to call him." And then he left. Another woman came to visit the temple outside Washington to take out endowments, a sacred rite... Romney told her, "...I don't understand why you stay in the church. ...but I also don't...you're not my kind of Mormon." - Vanity Fair, 2/12
Ron Paul is so extraordinarily attractive to young people... But the Republican Party is not dominated by 22-year-old college students reading The Fountainhead for the first time and finally understanding what it is they've always hated about their ex-hippie parents. No, the party is dominated by middle-aged white suburbanites... Our oligarchy has thrown a rod. One of the characters in this scene is Mitt Romney. This experienced national politician...had run a superbly organized campaign for president in 2008, a man whose very trademark is inoffensiveness and caution. He's a hypernervous control freak...like a walking OCD diagnosis... ...the messy chaos of South Carolina was a phobic horror. ...South Carolina - a nest of upright country church folk proud of their...distrust of...stem cells and Hollywood relativism... At the debate in Charleston... By a curious accident, both Romney and Gingrich had scheduled 10:45 a.m. campaign stops on primary day at a roadside restaurant called Tommy's Ham House in Greenville. Romney showed up 45 minutes early, darted through...and was back in his campaign bus 20 minutes before Gingrich even arrived. When Newt finally showed up, his supporters greeted him like a Roman emperor... As he strode into the Ham House, his supporters mocked Romney by erupting in clucking chicken noises. ...at that moment in the driving rain and slop of Greenville on primary day. Newt...stood on a beer cooler and crowed, "I have a question. Where's Mitt?" "He left!" someone in the crowd shouted, "He ran!" Romney's event, at the South Carolina fairgrounds, was a mogrue. The floor was half-empty...you had to pay three bucks for a drink, and all they had was soda. Across town, meanwhile, in a Hilton ballroom...the crowd slobbered over visiting dignitaries like Mrs. South Carolina. "It's like free admission to Wrestlemania," chirped one attendee. - Rolling Stone, 2/16/12
I'm at a train station after a closing shift. A guy on the train platform is pacing back and forth looking down the track for the train, back and forth looking down the track for the train. His mannerisms appear agitated, but expression is calm. He strikes me as from some other country. He's wearing one of those British caps, a lime green corduroy sport coat, and a yellow and red bow tie. On the train, he's snapping his head around, looking through every window. The door opens at a stop and he whips his head around to look at it.
I get off at a station to catch a bus home. There are white couples standing around the platform, waiting to catch a train downtown for dinner and drinks on a Friday night. I'm usually asleep now, and not part of this scene. I'm usually here long before these folks, waiting with guys carrying their lunch. It's twilight as a couple of drifters wander by. I see a college kid with his iPod on. The temperature has dropped, the wind has picked up, and he appears to be busting out moves to keep warm. A haze has descended upon the roofs of the buildings downtown in the distance, and snow is threatening. I'm up against the back of one of two lightrail ticket machines next to each other. Around at the front one are a pair of young white couples. They are having fun trying to figure out how to get tickets out of it. Three of them are in designer down parkas. "That's cool," I hear one say. "You don't have a ticket? Didn't you go to school?" Standing a yard away is a woman in a hoodie speaking Spanish on her cell, trying to keep warm. "This machine is evil." The four erupt in laughter at something the screen presents, perhaps telling them it can't provide what they want. "Let's try the other one." A kid in a hoodie comes up to them. He delivers a monotone statement about a fight with his "old lady" and he needs change to get to his dad's house. Their united front is that, 'hey, we're as broke as you are.' They appear to have their tickets and stand with the rest of the crowd headed for Friday night downtown frivolity.
The following morning is a frosty one, with a drizzle of flakes. After five and a half hours of sleep, I am back at my usual bus stop. I hear a guy at the stop across the street hacking and coughing. I see the dull orange glow of a cigarette. His sound echoes in the chilly predawn air. A car pulls up to the red light. The driver looks both ways, then runs the light. A minivan behind it is also at the light. It honks at the other car, continuing to honk while the other car is halfway to the next light. At the train station, day laborers are shovelling the platform. I know the office they came from. I went there a couple of years ago when I was alerted by my then boss that my hours at my regular job my decrease. I never did seek employment through the day labor. I was talking to a guy who ran the office. He told me that, before the recession, they were all living in apartments. After the recession hit, work dropped, and the employees who were back living under a bridge. Some were collecting government checks, sitting home, getting high, watching cartoons all day.
The next day is the day I do my grocery shopping. I'm at the bus stop right outside where I live. A car pulls into the parking lot of a deathburger next to the stop. A nice young woman in a black suit gets out and comes up to ask me if I want a copy of The Watchtower she shows me. She tells me that the particular issue she shows me is not a warning of the wrath of God. I tell her the truth, that earlier this year, at this very bus stop, someone else showed me this very issue and also told me that it was not a warning about the wrath of God. I should have asked her what God was thinking while he watched this.
For at least five centuries...variants of essentially the same narrative core represented distinct interpretations, of which new meanings include obstacles to "progress," or to the realization of "the American dream" as measured by economic growth...innovation, production, consumption. ...cultural formations have, so to speak, their own internal, quasi-autonomous history... ...ideas only aquire determinative power when adhered to by significant social groups...a group's thinking is revealed as clearly by its discourse practicies, its stylistic habits, and the figurative forms it favors... All this suggests that the various manifestations of cultural conflict are related to each other like a nest of Chinese boxes. The slave and hero exemplify the egalitarian community of Whitman's manipulation. It's the same sort of community that Mark Twain sets up aboard a Mississippi raft. Here is the core of the American vernacular. It's not simply a style, but a vehicle for the affirmation of an egalitarian faith so radical that we can scarcely credit it today. It sweeps aside received notions of class and status and of literature. - The Pilot and the Passenger, Leo Marx, 1988
Up the street from my bus stop early in the morning is a programmed construction sign, asking drivers to "support local businesses during construction." I'm on an early train to work, listening to a couple of guys talking about working at their job sites, about getting bonuses for living in on site housing, about tools, equipment, "CNC lathes", job security, "laser CNCs", "2 million dollar machines." On a connecting bus this morning is the guy who claimed to have been choked on a train, as well as the driver who asked him not to use the F word. A car pulls out of a side street in the dark, and almost hits us. The guy who got choked exclaims "Shit! Asshole." On this morning, the driver responds with laughter.
Like Whitman's hero, Huck(leberry Finn) is a rebellious, democratic barbarian. He lies, he steals, he prefers magic to religion, he identifies his interests with those of escaped slaves, and above all he speaks the vernacular. ...its capacity to take on the dignity of art... In Whitman and Twain...criticism was based on egalitarian standards. It came from a comparison of an actual America with an idealized democratic vision of the nation's destiny. When the style first emerged it was nourished by a political faith that we can scarcely imagine nowadays. ...the history of the vernacular has been a history of its fragmentation. The technique has been separated from the belief... - L. Marx
American vernacular? I stop into the gas station across the street before heading to the bus stop up the street, to catch the 5:20 AM bus Eastbound on another Saturday. There's a guy in a wheelchair, not motorized, with one tooth, a weatherbeaten face, addressing humanity as "bro", and using the store's cordless phone. He asks me the number for the city's transit system. I suggest that he try information. I hear him mention something about no buses running. As I'm across the parking lot, he comes outside to ask me if I have a cigarette. When a woman removes her hajib, she is revealed as a person. The homeless are somehow the opposite. They have the same dirt on all of their faces, the same long scraggy hair. And they all have the very same vernacular. Everyone they address as "bro, brother, honey". Their actions are regimented. To get your "hustle on" you must act naturally. To successfully be homeless, you must appear other than homeless.
Abandoned mattresses and empty liquor bottles sometimes sometimes line the streets...adding to the piles of trash... It's an example of one of the plights...that 35 local high schoolers have spent the past six months documenting through photographs and video-cameras. Their work will be featured at an exhibit called "Shattered Dreams"... The event will mark another chapter in the student' PhotoVoice exhibit, a project they've working on since the summer of 2011. About 200 event invitations were sent to community leaders and law-makers. Of a high school junior, One of her favorite photographs is of an empty beer bottle in front of her high school. "The image...says we have these things in our community that are good for us and then we have this litter... ...people do take notice of their community..." PhotoVoice is led by Maisha Pollard..."...it really shows that we weren't doing this to point the fingers at city government or school boards, but the youth have really begun to take ownership about it and say "This is my community," Pollard said. - Aurora Sentinel, 2/16/2012
After work, I am walking the short distance to the bus stop. I'm wondering where another week, where the first month and a half of the year went. I hear a tiny bird complaining in a tree. Just as I spot him, a huge falcon or hawk launches out from hiding and flies to the top of a telephone pole.
Midweek is my day off. I was notified by voicemail. This is the swingin' life of a service industry professional. I'm across the street at a Mexican restaurant. Lunchtime around this place is when the white faces show up, out numbering the others who fill the place on weekends. I'm sitting next to three of these white faces. The youngest is talking to the others about coming from out of town to accept a 9th grade teaching position at a high school somewhere. (The one down the street, where the president spoke a few months ago?) She described being asked how she felt about being coached, given a tour of different classes, told them that she preferred to teach math, is fluent in Spanish, and was subsequently told that her services were requested immediately. I've seen a 60 Minutes broadcast, listened to radio reports about organizations attempting to help former six-figure professionals, out of work for four years, find some kind of work. Is her list of qualifications some kind of secret "skill set mix"?
A couple of days later, I am downtown after work, at the bus terminal. I'm here for next month's bus pass. I'm in line behind a young guy who has been here since late last night. He got off a plane at the airport and boarded a transit service bus home. He has his climbing shoes and chalk bag secured to the outside of his pack. You don't have to go up into the mountains to find great climbing. Some of the nest are at the base, among the large boulders. For reasons known only to himself, and then only possibly, he placed his wallet on the seat and then his pack on top of his wallet. Okay, it was late, perhaps he was tired. Just recently, I left a winter hat, a gator, and an old pair of gloves behind. ...but not my wallet. And this is really the end of the story. The rest is detail. He grabbed his pack and got off, realized it was left behind, chased the bus, flagged a police cruiser, police dispatch contacted the transit company dispatch, who told the young man this; your best chance of getting your wallet back is to come here at 1 PM today and speak to a supervisor. Here he is. It's well after 1 PM. He would like to speak to a supervisor. The woman he is speaking to is enclosed behind glass, and replies to him through a speaker which makes her voice sound as that of an imagined character from 1984. At first she questions whether he was on the route he says he was. Surely she is familiar with Kafka, or rather more appropriately has never heard of him. Upon being convinced that this man did indeed fly in to town, she lets him know that the driver, upon finishing his route, should have searched his bus. If the wallet slipped between the seats, it's up to housekeeping to find it, which may take a couple of days. Someone behind me is making noises as though they are impatient. A second transit company customer service person comes out of a door to let the young man know where the supervisors congregate, a short distance away. The mechanized voice responds, "But that wont help him..." Now a human voice is discussing the situation with a mechanized voice. Someone behind me continues to make noises of impatience, involuntary or otherwise. The mechanized voice lets the young man know that all he can do is return tomorrow. He has yet to go anywhere else.
On Sunday, I'm at a supermarket where I haven't shopped in a while. It's been so long, that an old apartment building in which the tenants were drunks has been torn down. A brand new one has replaced it, complete with a "Cop Shop" in the lobby. Just as I thought the old tenants were long gone, a white haired guy in slippers shuffled out with a lit cigarette. He told me that he just moved in, but he can't smoke inside. I ignore him. He asks me if I told him that I have a cast on my foot. It's obvious that I don't, and I answered no. He tells me that he needs more sleep, and slowly gets up and shuffles back inside. The bidding wars of the early 2000s where housing prices in North Denver tripled may not be back, but...home buyers are finding themselves once again in competition for houses. "North Denver homes are currently selling faster than the average Denver home." Proximity to downtown, restaurants, and the walkiablity of the neighborhood draws buyers wishing to live the urban lifestyle. "Although we don't have any specific data to review... It's clear...schools are no longer the 'objection' they once were." "Vintage inventory has an edge...this buyer can still get in at under $300,000 with ease." ...the urban lifestyle is ultimately more important than the architecture. "They also want to live among like-minded folks." - North Denver Tribune, 2/16-29/2012 Brand New & NOW LEASING! Live the city life in the middle of the great outdoors. There's a community where the city meets the mountains, and the Colorado spirit prevails. Conveniently blending retail, dining, office centers, cultural centers, parks, and hundreds of acres of open space. Miramont is everything you want in luxurious living - striking design, sophisticated amenities inside and out... Stylish kitchens with wood-style floors, granite counters, islands, stainless appliances & 42" custom cabinets* *In select units Community Conveniences: Latte Lounge & Cyber Cafe' Game lounge with Wii TM... Fully-equipped business conference room Heated infinity-edge pool... Beautiful nature garden - bookmark-sized brouchure
Expanding equal rights to the GLBT community and all Denver residents is a core value of my administration and I am committed to delivering a world-class city where everyone matters. - OutFront Colorado
Yet another new week has somehow begun. It's the morning after the Oscars. At the intersection in front of my usual bus stop, five vehicles have pulled up. In one of them, someone has a bullhorn, or a soundboard, or something. I hear a series of mostly unintelligible announcements, except for this: "Muhammad, Muhammad pull over." At the train station where I get a connecting bus is a new tweaker. He's wearing a desert army coat and walking around looking up at something, saying "Fuck!" As the bus approaches, he mentions something about being cold. After we get on the bus, I see that he has dirty hands, a small cut to the right of his eye, and appears to alternate between exhaustion and agitation. He's sitting across from the guy who says he got choked. His oxygen tank dolly has been replaced with a collapsible shopping cart to carry his bag, along with a couple of 4 foot long stocks with duct tape on the ends.
It's one thing to repudiate the workaday world...to clear the ground for concentrated perception; but... In the end, Thoreau's doctrine...renounced...virtually all social institutions... ...we are invited to...dismiss as trivial most of the everyday preoccupations of mankind: wealth, status, power, social institutions, politics, family relations, sex... In the absence of a revelation, he renounced too much.
Mid-week, first day of a new month. I stop into a bagel place for breakfast before a closing shift at work. When I open the door, I am hit by a wave of unmistakable voices. They are professional, white, executive voices all going at once. Not a cacophony, but organized. Not too loud, but tightly packed and humming. I don't remember the last time I was among this crowd, tall middle aged white women with scarves. It has to have been decades. Among the smaller booths and tables are large tables, which appear to provide meeting space. My breakfast is handed to me by someone who understands Spanish. I sit behind someone talking about Olympia Snowe. He says that if the president gets elected for a second term, he won't feel obligated to care about the wishes of the nation, and he's not speaking about G. W. Bush. I hear him say nothing about the current Republican primary race. He's talking about the House and Senate, population growth, chasing capitalism out of the country, sprinkler systems, mice. "We're going to rehabilitate them so they don't bomb us?" He's flanked by a guy and a woman. With his sport coat and button down shirt and manicured hair, he appears as though he may be a local radio personality or author. Is he being interviewed? It didn't sound like it.
