My view is that the awareness of the Machine Revolution has been vital to our literature since the eighteen thirties. Between 1830 and 1860 the image of the machine, and the idea of a capitalist society founded upon machine power suddenly took hold of the public imagination. ...images of industrialism and particularly images associated with the power of steam, were widely employed as emblems of America's future. - The Pilot and the Passenger, L. Marx, 1988
Through the centuries people have...been searching the night sky for answers. ...what I'd been thinking... "That's not really my sky." ...from the then-foreign sky that I was born under as I was torn from my parents' culture. I wasn't here, but I wasn't there. ...everything I was surrounded by was the antithesis of what I was being told...at home. ...neither felt mine. Life in the U.S. only made my parents wary...(no slumber parties, no PB&Js, no boyfriends...) I had...no sense of community...bewildered at the concept of team spirit...or hometown pride. - Out Front Colorado, 2/29/12 For decades, change was not a problem. Most original owners stayed in Arapahoe Acres...built between 1949 and 1957 and reflects Hawkins' passion for Usonian Architecture. The artistic vision came from Edward Hawkins who studied firsthand the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. Most original owners began to move out in the early '90s... But...Arapahoe Acres became hip. Trophy homes replaced a common interest in historic preservation. - The Denver Post, 3/5/12 Charlie Busch oversaw extensive research on the limitations of current zoning to adequately protect the neighborhood... "What we've discovered over time is that these small communities like West wash Park really are more like small towns where people spend their lives. ...what makes a house look like it's part of our neighborhood. And we also found that these big, new duplexes turned over very quickly. They were bought very often for investment property." - Washington Park Profile, 3/2012 ..."Where am I living in consciousness? Where am I inclusive? Where am I caring? Where am I judgemental?" ...we can choose to bring our awareness to a place where we give the world what we want to get. People are wanting a shift, and we're dealing with the old paradigm of judgement and hierarchy. ...a new culture, a new way of being, a new humanity... ...the problem we humans have is we get attached to everything. We don't know how to enjoy something 100 percent, to be completely present. If you really, truly enjoy...even for a few seconds, you'll be so fulfilled. "What is the meaning of USA?" It's not United States of America. It's ultimate state of awareness. - Nexus, March/April/2012
Chinese Evangelical Church of Denver understands discovering one's identity can be a struggle for those caught between cultures. At Avalokteshvara Buddhist Center, one teacher says, "Our goal is to help the community achieve a state of mental peace." In Disciple Mission Church of Denver, TVs throughout the church are synched together in highlight important information or live feeds of services. At Queen of Vietnamese Martyrs Parish, a youth group leader explains, "Religion is important for youth because it helps them to find people like themselves who believe in the same thing,"... She said that being Catholic isn't any harder than being a Buddhist or atheist. She makes the sign of the cross before she eats... At the Denver Buddhist Cultural Society, the kung fu instructor describes, "In the praying ceremony, we...bow three times and...invite thousands of Buddhas to bless the new year for...a stable economy..." An Aurora-area high school senior remarked, "I've noticed more American people coming to pray at the temple. It shows how people are becoming more understanding of different cultures and beliefs." - Asian Avenue, 3/2012
For many people who live on the street or those in housing without a disposable income, sometimes all they want is the opportunity to "splurge" on being a customer. They want to sit at a table, enjoy a meal or cup of coffee, just like those of us with a disposable income can do regularly...
Of the majority of those...on the 16th St Mall, Most of us hadn't "been young" in many years. We did not come out to Colorado "to hang out..." as the Mayor stated in his article. They came seeking work, and because Denver has food for the homeless. Not all other states do.
"...we were thinking of other people to be in communication with as educators,"...Dr. Richard Goode, professor of History at...Nashville's...Lipscomb University...said. "I was just kind of imagining other types of people in our community who are often overlooked or underserved and trying to find a way to be part of our community." ...of the Street Law class...30 percent of students have experienced varying degrees of homelessness. The students partake in conversations about...the current political climate, how 9/11 changed our society forever, racial profiling, immigration laws, and the practices of global corporations. ...how the laws and climate of society can harm the homeless population. ...teacher Preston Shipp speculated, "You get the sense that there are certain people at Lipscomb who seem to understand that if you're going to call yourself a Christian university and claim it as part of your vocation, that's going to require more of you than a no-drinking clause. - Denver Voice, 3/2012
After a six-month search for the best crew of friends in the country, four guys took home the Band of Buds crown. The search was extensive. Thousands of crews...completed all sorts of insane challenges...converted their friends into fans...and shared it all with the world. ...took home the title, $100,000 cold hard cash and got their friendship validated, commemorated and celebrated with a photo shoot by Rolling Stone photographer, Danny Christensen. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! For four days and nights the crews battled their way through larger than life challenges, from the tables, to the track, to the VIP suites. - Rolling Stone, 3/15/2012
It's . . . yet another Saturday, 5 AM. Somehow, another week, another month, coming up on another season. I'm at a bus stop across the street from my place. There's a couple sitting on a bench in the shelter, huddling in the cold. A guy with an unlit cigarette in his mouth is talking about getting "reported" for riding the lightrail back and forth. "In New York or Chicago, the train goes in a circle. They don't have shit out here." Exactly one week later, I am headed to the same bus stop. As I pass the gas station next to it, I see a woman at a pump get out of her car. She's wearing what look like pajama bottoms, standing on the floor of her car and looking over her car roof and yelling at her teenaged son, on crutches by the curb. The following Monday, I go into the store. During a brief conversation, the clerk tells me about the drunks who come in and ask to use the restroom. "They do drugs in there, they write all over everything." A girl, who he wouldn't let use the restroom, pulled down her pants and went in the parking lot.
A sign spinner is watching an approaching bus load of kids. The smaller they are, the more likely they are to launch litter. ...he pulls up...at 10 a.m. five days a week, he is given coffee, a costume and a bottle of Febreeze, should he require it. Sign spinners are officially known as human directionals. ...some of the other sign bosses...troll the streets in the morning, pick up day laborers, hand them signs and then drop them off at a business after just a few instructions. Medical marijuana dispensaries hire spinners who they can pay 'in trade'. Denver municipal code prohibits panhandlers from coming within a certain distance of ATMs, community toilets, buses, outdoor patios, and other public spaces. And...panhandling is completely prohibited after dark. - Westword, 3/15-21/12 Across the street from me is a dispensary. My boulevard is a corridor for a concentration of dispensaries. Last summer, on my corner, one of a pair of sign spinners for the dispensary asked me if I had my medical marijuana card.
Where I live and work, I see fewer white people than I can remember. On a day off, I am in a neighborhood Mexican restaurant. On either side of the counter, English is rare. Weekdays are when I see a sudden appearance of white faces, and all of them in this eatery. I wonder what I don't know about their desire for traditional Mexican food without the typical American frills. I like the way the place does eggs, they know how to do a burger, and they got strawberries and cream, not to mention the fine service. This afternoon is the first time I've heard them playing music in English. The conversation of a pair of white women immediately jumps out at me. "What did I tell you? For six bucks (for a meal), this place is the bomb."
The past two weeks at work, someone quit, my boss forgot to schedule someone at one of our stores, someone had mandatory high school choir practice, and today, I began covering for a sick employee when my boss called to tell me to drop everything. Someone else was sick, and I had to cover their shift. In that order. I'm always saying, I can't be everywhere. This translates to twelve hour shifts; fast food and no sleep. I return home as I left, in the dark. I'm back at the same dark train platform I was early this morning. I see the same distant street lights underneath the separate line of lights capping the foothills, the same yellow and red Denny's sign as I sit and wait for one of the last buses home.
A homebody... is that what I am? I'm writing an awful lot of this place. Is this where the action is? The only time when I can be caught downtown past the afternoon is when I am out to dinner with my Mom and sister. They go to plays, operas, and tonight is the symphony. Dinner tonight is at an oyster bar, a place where one can get beer on tap, instead of from a shoplifted 40 oz bottle. We are seated at the one table which has no overhead lamp. It's so dark at this table we can't read the menus. I ask the hostess for a flash light. We appear to be seated in the afterthought section. (Because one of us is in a wheelchair?) The ladies say that they don't mind being out of the way. I'm out of my element, and again I'm not. This place is full of young urban white people at happy hour. This is a nation founded upon the happy hour, this time and place an example of the celebration of Mad Men, and the culture I am dining in this evening is one which runs in a different gear than the one in my own neighborhood. I am familiar with the people of this culture. They make up a kind of collective group, with a kind of collective style and taste. To visit this place is to step into an atmosphere designed to cater to them. The red-haired bartender briskly shaking a covered class in each hand in synch over each shoulder The cute little girl behind the bar in her black vest and button down blouse. The waitress who fills a glass with a tap on a hose and tips it over by accident. That's my cue to laugh, right? This is the stuff which Superbowl commercials are made of. Sophisticated bar patrons know exactly what their bartenders are making by shaking it as it it were in a paint mixer. Culture identifies itself with the experience. Harry Shearer once theorized that, during the 1980s, art became too difficult for the upper middle class to personally understand. Therefore, those who would otherwise be discussing art made a decision to instead begin discussing furniture. I wonder if this decade's furniture is the mixed drink.
In 2010, dating site OK Cupid took a snapshot of its users, gay and straight. The top interests that gay guys had but straight guys didn't have were: The Devil Wears Prada, Mean Girls, Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, Project Runway and Drop Dead Gorgeous. ...stories about young women...hoping to look classy and important... ...we'd all rather live under the authority of a powerful woman - who lives in the city and has a gay best friend - than a powerful homophobic bro. Perhaps there are two personalities in all of us. ...book smart, and innocent, desperate to live up to...expectations of meticulous, cutthroat and condescending... We are Anne Hathaway in high school; we are Meryl Streep when we get jobs. We are Anne Hathaway in the morning and Meryl Streep after a cocktail. - Out front Colorado, 3/14/12
After dinner, I am at the stop downtown for my bus back home. It's the evening before St. Patrick's Day. Any holiday which this nation celebrates by drinking is a hot one for the voracious downtown area. I would hear a radio DJ the following day mention that the drinking began this evening. He would bring up the advantages of moderation. A collection of young loud white guys come meandering down the sidewalk across the street, all speaking excitedly at once. One of them excitedly mentions one of the area's oxygen bars. Are they high on oxygen? As they are passed by one guy on a skateboard, they all stop and turn their heads together in excited anticipation. The skater does one, single, simple trick, and they all erupt in appreciation. A couple walks up to the stop. The next day, I would later see the man walking up my street, wearing the same rolled up watch cap. He asks me if I know what time it is. He continues to ask everyone who walks by. Families are coming out of a restaurant, all wearing big green and white felt hats. The DJ would mention the hats, wondering about the inclusion of orange and other less 'traditional' colors. A mom runs across the street, leaving her son on the other side. She tells him "there's no bathroom in there" where they were eating. He goes back inside in his big felt hat. I don't know where she's going, there's nothing but a closed office building on this side of the street. At the corner, someone steps on the gas, quickly moving ahead of the rest of traffic before backfiring. The guy who wants to know what time it is says, "He probably blew his engine out."
At least once a week my friends and I gather around bottles of good wine and play counselor for one another. That is: we unravel the ins and out of life. We have all had these moments. They make us...a little more authentically us. There is the implicit understanding that adversity is best faced in relationships... - Out Front Colorado, 3/14/12
An intrinsic feeling of "unrelatedness" to nature and society has often been ascribed to the very historical forces which Hawthorne had observed in 1838. Discussing the intellectual climate of that era, Emerson once remarked...of the pervasive "war between intellect and affection." He called it "detachment," and found it reflected everywhere in the age: in Kant, Goethe's Faust, and in the consequences of the new capitalist power. "Instead of the social existence which all shared," he wrote was "detachment" or "alienation" (Karl Marx), or "anomie" (Emile Durkheim) or "dissociation of sensibility" (T. S. Eliot). ...each of these terms refers to...an individual cut off from a...source of life's meaning. ...the responsible agent...science or industrial technology. Francis D. Klingender had indicated that industrial imagery was being used in illustrations of Milton's Hell... Satan is identified with industrialism... - L. Marx
On a couple of recent bus rides home, during one of them I sat with a Spanish-speaking family who appeared to have come in from the airport. As we passed the marijuana dispensary which I wait for the bus in front of each morning, one of them pointed to it as he explained to the rest what it was. On another ride, I stood next to a guy who was complaining about how stupid sounding were the students sitting in the back. Within shouting distance from the dispensary was a day labor place. At one point during the recession, I thought that I would need their services and applied, though it turned out that I never did. I remember one of the guys in the office telling me that, prior to the recession, he had all of his regular employees living in apartments. They were now back living under a bridge. My first month in this town, 20 years ago, I worked temp jobs. This entire day labor building is now painted green. It has its own sign, as well as the original day labor sign. Either is is now a combination day labor office/ marijuana dispensary, or the day labor service is gone.
Around 1840, there were alienated writers who consciously attempted to arouse fear of machines, we find them deliberately choosing the same images. ...each subordinate unit of the society builds itself to a similar standard of success. Each state, city, village, and neighborhood; each...merchant ...each ethnic group, family, and child...should, ideally speaking, strive for growth.
I'm on a bus home after work with a guy in a motorized wheelchair. He's on his cell speaking to his significant other. He's telling her that he has gang green. His left hand is bandaged and missing fingers. He's missing his lower right leg and his left one above the knee. He tells here that he will send her money.
One referent of the word "science" is a way of behaving in society... Can the technological consequences of scientific discovery be assimilated, for example, to a more just, healthful, and peaceful social order? The scientific style of mind, devoted as it is to "objective knowing," is the radical flaw in the culture of urban industrialism. According to Roszak, an ideology was handed down to us from our ancestors of the Enlightenment as part of a total cultural and political program. Tied to that ideology is an aggressive dedication to the urban-industrialization of the world... And tied to the global urban industrialization is an unavoidable technocratic elitism." - L. Marx
Occasionally a leading magazine in the interwar years would publish an article such as James R. Randolph's "Can We Go To Mars? (Scientific American: 139, August 1928) and would editorially conclude that "the plan is theoretically sound"... ...the editors...first submitted Randolph's article to several laymen...they voted against it. Then it was sent to several physicists, who favored publication. Even that early, the natural sciences and "the humanities" may have been crystallizing into the mutual incomprehension and hostility of which Sir Charles Snow was to write in The Two Cultures (1959). When Orson Wells panicked the nation with his famous "invasion from Mars" radio broadcast in 1938, Science Service...announced that interplanetary travel is impossible... By then...Wernher von Braun was hard at work in Peenemunde. In the mind of the general public, space travel was the expressly reserved for extraterrestrials. - The Creation of Tomorrow, Paul A. Carter, 1977
Every day, newspaper headlines warn us of shortages...of food in the Third World, of arable farmland, of energy. No shortage of information however. In science, perhaps more...the impact of the information explosion has been strongly felt. We are rapidly becoming what Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell calls the "information society." As Andrew Molnar of the National Science Foundation points out, "Information has become a national commodity and a national resource, and has altered the very nature of work." Important findings may go undiscovered for several months or years, and in a nation whose technological growth is spurred by scientific innovation as a result of information overload. As Molnar explains... "In an information society," he writes, "a computer-literate populace is as important as energy or raw materials are to an industrial society." - OMNI Magazine, 2/1979
I'm downtown after work on a Saturday. State and Federal refunds in the bank, along with a few rare hours of overtime. I just put next month's bus pass in my wallet. It's one of the first nice spring days and I'm waiting for a train the hell out of here. I'm surrounded by bruskers, derelicts, and those for whom downtown is the place to go... In front of me appears a kid with a beard and a watch cap. He looks to be missing his right arm, and he is hustling a young white couple. They are both avoiding his gaze. He sheepishly delivers his pitch, "I just got my arm amputated and I can't even work and I'm trying to get six dollars together..." The couple walks off.
I began my work week for the second time on a mid-morning. I'm on my usual route at an unusual time. A guy comes by on a mountain bike which has an engine attached to the frame. Above the back wheel, somehow attached to the frame in a way which isn't immediately obvious, is a slat from a white picket fence. On the slat is a plastic purple basket which reads "waste management." He is checking trash cans for aluminum cans. The next morning, I grab breakfast at a deathburger. A senior male is having coffee, talking to someone next to him about how he was told not to leave his cigarette butts on the table, but to deposit them in the trash. (This happened in here perhaps?) He says, "I don't need a Dad. I don't like being bossed." I grab the next bus and sit next to a guy who makes a call on his cell. It turns out, this young guy is opening a place that sells "coffee and we are trying to decide what kind of food." He and his partners are waiting for their final inspection. He tells the person on the other end that he needs to do some community service for a DUI he got a couple of years ago. A middle aged woman gets on in a low cut blouse, which reveals a tattoo below her neck. It reads, "RIP Timothy Theile, 10-31-67 - 1-23-11." Whoever he was, he was the age of one of my brothers.
What we have then, in our classic American literature, is not a single, fixed attitude to the city, but rather a kind of semantic or ideological field...bounded on one side by representations of...industrial capitalism. On the other..intense demands and expectations of a restless, journeying American self... American classic literature of the nineteenth century lent expression to the egalitarian, self-assertive, well-nigh anarchic energy released by the American system... ...emphasis upon the contradictions rather than the harmonics of meaning, value, and purpose, mark an important turning point in American studies. It signaled the virtual disappearance of the older, complacent idea of our national culture as an essentially homogeneous, unified whole. - L. Marx At one of our stores, this one in an opulent neighborhood, we have just hired a new manager and a new counter person. Both have commented independently on the residents' class perspective. The new manager, it turns out, lives in my neighborhood. She asked me why it takes so long to hire a part time kid around where the store is. I told her that wealthy kids are perhaps less motivated to look for a part time job. They may also have plenty of other activities, school related and otherwise. Moms come in and keep each other updated on their children's college careers. As someone with a couple of college degrees, I'm not sure what to say. I usually give my congratulations. My immediate supervisor wouldn't know college from corn cobs, and wouldn't care. The new manager remarked that "they would be lost where we live." This store's new counter person is a high school senior, happy to even find a job. She lives here in the opulence. Both her friends and her "boyfriend's mom" suggested that she negotiate her wage, leaving her thoroughly baffled and believing that they are out of touch with the rest of the world. I enjoyed listening to her talk about her days as a thirteen year old working at an adult comic store in Las Vegas. She was paid in store credit, and used it to buy superhero comics. My bus ride home this evening is later than usual. The passengers on this route at this hour often include parents with young children, going to or coming from I know not where. On this trip, sitting up front, is a young guy playing his guitar. He isn't very good. The bus takes me to a train, which takes me to another bus. I see a guy get off a train after mine. He's wearing a long black leather coat over tan overalls, and carrying a black plastic bag. After I get on my bus, a middle aged guy comes walking up wearing socks without shoes. He climbs the steps, he says nothing at all as he checks his pockets for a fare or a pass. In his left hand is a wire which appears as though it should be connected to some ear buds, but doen't appear to go anywhere. When he finds nothing, he silently turns, steps off, and slowly walks away in his socks.
There is a gas station at one end of a building where I work much of the time. The owners of this gas station are from Iran. They both have been following the events of the Arab Spring, and I continue to joke with her about the late Colonel Khadafi. The concrete around their pumps is being torn up because something under it needs replacing. They also have ordered new gas pumps to replace the originals, which are thirty years old they tell me. The decision to replace the pumps came during the past year. During the winter, customers would desire their gas to pump quickly in the cold air. When it didn't, they would do nothing but complain, one after the other. I left work just as the sun had set. It's a balmy March. For the first time since I can remember, perhaps since the days of my youth, I laid down on the grassy slope at the bus stop. The next morning, I grab breakfast from a convenience store. The usual clerk listens to hip hop. This morning, the clerk is listening to what may be pop music from Africa. I should have asked him who he was listening to. He is careful as he counts back my change to me. Suddenly, something in back begin beeping. He says to me "I sorry" before he runs to the back. If I was paying less close attention, it was easy to misconstrue "I sorry" for "asshole." Close to twelve hours later, on the short trip back down this street, I'm on a bus for a few minutes with a guy who has what looks like scooter without any motor. He uses it to kneel on with his right leg as he pushes it along with his other. I've never seen anything like it.
It's a Friday, and for perhaps the first time ever I am working a four hour shift. I head down to a bus stop which I rarely frequent. I see the waste management bike rider go by. A small car pulls up in front of me, and three middle aged white women get out. They each begin going house to house. Today is recycle day for this side of my street. Out of one recycle bin has fallen onto the sidewalk a law journal for a nearby private college. Someone on my street is an alumnus, like my sister. After work, I am back at the same train station. The kind of guy waiting for my bus, a grey haired white guy in a pink knit Polo shirt and a nice gold watch, appears completely out of place. I pay no special attention to him until a woman with a young son is about to step on t the bus. He runs up to her and puts his hands out to motion for her to stop, telling her that he was "first." He then gets on ahead of her and sits in the back, where he exhibits no other odd outbursts. The woman enters into conversation with the driver, eventually giving him her phone number.
I'm waiting for a bus after work at the end of a crazy week. The past couple of weeks, I have been alternating between opening and closing shifts, and the sleep has been less than generous. Today should be the last day for a while when I am dragging. I'm sitting in the shade on a record 83 degree F March day. On one side of me is an Acura dealership, where I am observing a collection of white guys closing a purhcase. They are all in white button down shirts and slacks. In front of me is a popular gas station, always busy, expensive gas price or not. A guy in suspenders is filling a red plastic 2 gallon gas can. There are seniors driving Caddys, someone in a Jaguar, motorcycles suddenly everywhere as quick as buds on the trees with the warmer weather. Guys in hunting caps, one guy in an Aussie hat with his son, a guy in a veteran cap with his white haired wife.
In Robert Bellah's essay, "Civil Religion in America" (1966), he suggests that America has a body of beliefs, symbols, and rituals which provides a religious dimension for the whole fabric of American life, including the political realm. In 1911...George Santayana...called attention to the discrepancy in America between an earthly, native viewpoint, grounded in particulars, and...abstract, largely imported ideals. - L. Marx "...compared to out local transit here in town...when I tried to go five to six miles across town took over two hours. So for me to be on a bus, I want buses that come frequently, and I want buses that get you there quickly. Our transit system goes from the north end of town to a hub in downtown. Then you have to transfer buses... And that's just not gonna work." "You look at a bus map and every single route looks, not only incomprehensible, but, um, exactly the same." - "Talk of the Nation", NPR, 3/29/12
On the way home, I made a stop downtown, and caught a bus home which stops at a transfer station. The station has a supervisor who hangs out and chats with the drivers as the pull up, asking if all is well. She's thin and blonde, in hoop earrings, slacks and heels. She's the stylin' Super. "...compared to our local transit here in town...when I tried to go five to six miles across town took over two hours. So for me to be on a bus, I want buses that come frequently, and I want buses that get you there quickly. Our transit system goes from the north end of town to a hub in downtown. Then you have to transfer buses... And that's just not gonna work." "You look at a bus map and every single route looks, not only incomprehensible, but, um, exactly the same." - NPR 3/29/12
