...we have tried an amazing array of practices, workshops, retreats and teachers, dipped our toes in many philosophies, religions, businesses and roles and have learned that there's a shoe for every foot... From relationships with others and a Higher Power, to finances, entertainment, food,exercise, environment, family...well, there's no end to the list. - Natural Awakenings, 11/12
...we have come to speak of the poor or underdeveloped countries in general, or the anticolonial or postcolonial states, and of the colored or Afro-Asian nations. Just what will be the influence of these states upon the interests of the West...? ...at a conference of Prime Ministers of India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Burma, and Indonesia...at Bangor Indonesia was considered their part in the creation of world peace. It included Asian members of SEATO as well as...China and North Vietnam. Sukarno set the tone..."This is the first intercontinental conference of colored people in the history of mankind..." Mr. Dulles denounced neutrality as..."a nation can buy safety for itself by being indifferent to the fate of others." The policy of bringing new states into alliance met, however, with limited success. Dean Rusk spoke of the newer states..."But the test is whether they are determined to be independent, whether they are trying to live out their lives in the way in which their own peoples would like to have them shape it." - Neutralism and Nonalignment, ed. by Lawrence W. Martin, 1962
...in 1960, the Ecumenical (Federal) Council of Churches in the Czechoslovak Republic published a declaration...which...stated: "We are more and more convinced that our state is carrying on the work of great social and welfare activities on behalf of our workers and...the struggle for peace and...the interests of the entire society and...for the individual to realize his hopes and aspirations." ...further...that the socialist classless society "is close to the Christian concept of a healthy society order. ...Christianity is not bound to any given form of society... ...Professor Jones Hromadka...as early as 1929, was very critical of the "so called Christian civilization" which he saw represented in American democracy. It worried him to see that Christianity separated itself from the basis of its faith and was slowly developing into a program for liberal democracy. "The so-called Christian nations of Europe and America have lost, spiritually speaking, the right to consider themselves the firstborn among the Christian nations. They have played out their role as political leaders in international affairs. The era of the hegemony of the Christian civilization is past. The historical philosophy...based on...the superiority...self-glorification...a claim to be arbiters of all moral, cultural, social and international situations. ...self-righteous feeling of superiority, from its sterility and from all claims to be the judge of what is right and wrong, just or unjust, and what is freedom and righteousness." - Hutten
...Communists had no adequate doctrine to deal with the success of national movements in colonial areas. ...the banner of anti-imperialism might be taken over by a force independent of Communism... The modern state...has several attributes. These relate to the precision of boundaries. The completeness of its jurisdiction within these boundaries. The cohesiveness of its population, and the capacity of its government...to maintain order...to formulate and execute policy for the welfare of the national community. There may be no such thing as a "logical" boundary to demarcate a modern state in a heterogeneous, traditional society. Democracy is based upon restraints on the exercise of power. Democracy demands a sense...of some larger interest than that of class or action. ...the first requirement of operational independence - the creation of rough equilibrium among foreign influences... Only a foreign policy dogmatic and totalitarian to the utmost degree conceivable would want to wipe out all diversity... The policy-maker works at understanding the world from a base consisting of the essences of his own society's character... - Martin
The Denver Municipal Code recognizes neighborhood associations as the primary vehicle for communication and dialogue about issues affecting neighborhoods and residents.
I typically get a bit...nostalgic in...our neighborhood, with its 100 year plus history... The seeming fury of the pace of change in our society is juxtaposed against our quiet streets and quaint homes... ...back when Platt Park was a working man's town...a few kids and probably a grandparent or two lived in our bungalows... How an entire family's clothes fit into two three-by-three foot closets. I wonder how they'd be amazed by...the light rail...$5 dollar lattes (what's a latte?), modern duplexes, marijuana dispensaries... Yep, seems the only constant is...more or less in a positive direction. - Platt Park Post, Dec. 2012/Jan. 2013
On a Sunday, after purchasing a timer for the Christmas lights, later on I head across the street to a Mexican restaurant. A slew of 1980s Cadillacs turns the corner. Outside the front door, a cook recognizes me, so does a waiter inside. The place is warm and inviting. As I am reading an article about the Loch Ness Monster from 1979, four men come in to play Mexican music. A couple of days later, I am on a bus home. It's a bus which comes a couple of hours later than I usually catch it. I sit in the back, a couple of seats away from a guy with thinning salt and pepper hair. His hair and his beard are both perhaps a couple of feet long. Across from me is a forlorn looking woman with a damaged left nostril. Next to me is a kid with a paperback copy of Wuthering Heights. Sitting at the front is a guy tapping his ring finger, with ring, against one of the handholds, tap tap tap.
Thursday morning. I'm at the bus stop across the street from my place. 5 AM. A young woman in Capri pants and pantihose is waiting for the bus. When I get up the street, I head for the deathburger. Coming behind me is a wandering homeless zombie. I go in and order. He comes in and goes into the men's room, and then leaves. The following day, I am on a bus in the early afternoon. A derelict guy is in the seat next to me. As another passenger gets on, he recognizes her, grabbing her arm instead of saying something. She recognizes him as well, and tells him that she is sorry about the passing of his sister. Two other passengers are behind her, and tell him the same thing.
On the bus home from the train station, a passenger asks the driver how long it will be before we will leave. The passenger says he has to pee. He comes back on and sits next to me, asking me to read a phone number somewhere on a jury duty notice which he has. I ask him where the number is on the form. He replies, "That's okay, I will read it with my reading glasses." I expect him to put them on. Instead, he says, "I have them at home." He says to me, "You've never been called for jury duty, have you?" I reply that I have, more than once. He claims that he was a jury foreman. A guy sticks his head in the door and asks for a transfer. He says with a heavy accent that he's from "out of town." The jury duty guy says to no one in particular, "He's authentic. You can tell when they're not."
The next morning I'm up early the next morning for work. I'm flipping through the channels before I leave. CSPAN has an interview with someone named conservative black chick, with file footage of her arguing with Al Sharpton. On the Comedy Channel, Chris Rock was doing a stand-up routine about national pundits "always trying to make us scared. I'm from Brooklyn; I don't care about Al Qeida. Motherfuck Al Qeida. I'm concerned about Al Cracker." When I get up the street, I step into the deathburger. There's a customer inside, asking the difference between the old and the new breakfast burritos. On Sunday, I'm picking up a Christmas gift from the drug store. The drunk who comes in is known by the employees, and treated as a friend. He's in and out. One of the employees tells me that, when the store opened some five years ago, he was their "first drunk". After a year or two, he got a job, and since then he doesn't come by so often. The next drunk to come in after the first one leaves is one Mr. Richard Spotted Bird. I believe that he considers himself sociable. He is in fact obnoxious. "Hey, brother!..." He stands in front of the cashier as if he had fallen asleep. She asks the manager to tell him to go kick rocks. The manager complies, and Mr. Bird quickly walks out
It's a little after 7 PM, the middle of the week. I waiting for a bus home on a suburban stretch of East Denver called Smoky Hill Road. Sports bars and condominium apartments. The sun is down. From behind the bus shelter appear a male in a two piece suit and tie, and a female in a dress. The male is holding in his hand a copy of The Watchtower magazine, which I have already read. Nothing unusual so far. Except this; both of them appear to be in grade school. An hour later, I am at a train station, waiting for a connecting bus home. Four young adults in hip hop gear and a grey-haired guy approach the ticket kiosk. The older guy is staring at the screen as I hear them speaking Spanish. It's as if the walked off a TV program on Telefutura. Then, another grade school-aged kid appears in front of me. Why the hell are these kids not home watching TV? The kid is holding the biggest bar of chocolate which I have ever seen. He's selling it for some kind of cause or school group which I can't make out. When my bus arrives, I get on board with the unwashed. Right before we depart, a white guy gets on. He's in a light jacket with goddamned fucking reindeer all over it. From the Martha Stewart collection perhaps?
...Americans have had to think of themselves as a people with a mission, although without a clear formula for performing it. ...the American image as it appealed to Clay and Watson, for example, seems scarcely adequate to cope with exigencies in the present. To a people whose independence was based on generalizations as wide as ours and whose founders declared "a new order of the ages," this is disconcerting. - Martin
...from the small and dusty office...of Denver Urban Ministry and o the tables of the catholic Worker Soup Kitchen. We created a mechanism to work together for...access to places to put our things, public safety for the homeless and a place to rest. ...the Denver VOICE stood for meaning, an anchor, a place, a sense of the pulse of us as people. ...from the survival guides we put in the paper... ...a link between a people who had lost everything. ...glimpses into the torn, fragile and brutal world of a person...dying in misery and squalor... We may have been a burden to the establishment. - Denver VOICE, 12/2012
THE DENVER POST 12/10/2012
Two University of Colorado at Boulder students are facing multiple felony charges after they allegedly fed marijuana laced brownies to their...class. The professor...was taken to a hospital... ...a student...was in the hospital after having a panic attack. The brownies were brought as part of a "bring food to class" day. Police said the brownies...were the only items brought to class. The campus will not ban food from classrooms... Police said they had never experienced a case like this before.
Macerich Co. ...isn't usually in the business of hosting religious processions in its mall parking lots. ...hundreds of shoppers turned out from the heavily Hispanic community... "It's a bunch of guys trying to build for a (white) world that's no longer growing." ...using bilingual staff, sending out direct mail in both English and Spanish and hosting events like Mexican Independence Day. Not just dim sum and chimichangas "We're in the build-it-to-improve-it-because-they're-already-here mentality." Because Latino families tend to be larger, developers broaden the corridors and make common areas bigger;...such families tend to be younger... No such thing as a Chinese tie "...there's really no such thing as a Chinese necktie..."
Dr. Adulbert Huclak...wrote, "The state is not merely a state in the secular sense of the word. It's doctrine is not an autonomous doctrine and its secularism is not merely a liberation from, but at the same time a turning toward, the great idols of our century." - Hutten
Federal Boulevard is one of the most interesting stretches of pavement in the entire United States. ..you can drive past looming Victorian mansions, the playground of the Denver broncos, llanteros selling retread tires, Vietnamese seafood markets, strip clubs, and seemingly more medical marijuana outlets than traffic lights without ever hitting your turn signal. ...a seemingly endless construction zone of shifting lanes, cruising lowriders, school buses and delivery trucks. Why do so many people on this street - male and female - wear pajama pants in public? And what's the deal with those Buchanan Scotch whisky Spanish-language billboards, anyway? - Westword, 12/20-26/2012
...the Commonwealth. As a halfway house between independence and tutelage...it was first a projected federation, then a free association...expected to act together, even going to war as one, the merely a consultative group and, lately, a tenuous link with the "colored races." - Martin
The medical marijuana place across the street from where I live is now a shoe store. On a morning at ten minutes after five, four transient-looking guys show up at the door to the deathburger, ten minutes after they are supposed to be open. Someone opens the door for them. Without ordering anything, they go in and sit down. The door locks behind them. A day or two later I am downtown after work, to grab next month's bus pass. On the pedestrian mall shuttle are a couple of guys talking about their prison time. "I'm 45 years old," one says to the other. "The last seven years of my life I've spent in and out of prison."
...the cardinal was said to have had a secret meeting with the Archduke Otto... They allegedly agreed that after World War III...a federated kingdom of central Europe...should be set up. ...the cardinal had been starved in prison for 24 days...with tablets and injections...and was condemned to life imprisonment...and loss of civil rights. Others...did not agree with the political methods which the Catholic Church was using in her fight against Communism. ...the church should not consider the battle between East and West as a battle between evil and good men... - Hutten
The week before Christmas, I've seen a familiar white van slow to a stop in front of the gas station across the street from where I live. All week, I've watched it drop a single passenger, who then ambles into the gas station. On Saturday, he was dropped off by an SUV. On the bottom corner of one of the front windows of the gas station is a 'no soliciting' sign, a couple of yards from where a handful of panhandlers make their careers. It's above a sign at least twice as large warning about products in the station which contain artificial sweetner. I don't remember seeing these signs before during the five years during which I have been passing these windows.
The train home is full of hollow-eyed people. They have long, sagging, worn out faces. A woman with a hacking laugh. Before the train comes an imbecile on the train platform is wandering in circles. He picks up a crumpled kleenex and carries it in one hand. In his other are his keys. There's a middle-aged guy with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. He's holding a small dog on a leash. When the train gets a few stops ahead, I get off with the imbecile. He walks away, picking up every piece of trash he sees on the ground.
It's Christmas Eve. Early. 3:30 AM. After my ride dropped me off at an intersection, it is as a result a much shorter walk to the train station. I'm headed down the sidewalk. Halfway to the next light is a guy standing silently, having a smoke. He's in plain sight, but I don't see him until I am upon him. He's in work boots and insulated bib overalls on an early morning of 32 degrees F. Over his head and upper body is a blanket. As I pass by him, he's on his way.
The day after Christmas, I have ten minutes before I head out to work. It's 2:30 AM. I turn on the TV. The channel which is on has what appears to be something like a very old episode of COPS, but somehow it seems to be something else. The police are called to a barber shop, where a break-in has been reported. For a full minute, two officers are inside taking cover. Outside the front door are kids standing around, staring at the camera. Outside the back door is the shop owner, yelling "Shoot him!" over and over. Then a completely nude man bursts through the back door, and is tackled.
The next day, after work, I stop into a deli to grab some potato salad. I'm sitting next to an investor who purchases houses for cash. He's looking at a laptop while he is on the phone with someone, asking them if they have spoken "to the real estate agent? Get them involved. Then maybe do your little pitch. Are there any telephone poles? (for flyers) Our marketing plan is for 60% direct marketing. What about Craigslist? Some towns have "for rent" newspapers. I'd like to do two or three-line classifieds. Find out how much they are. They should be $15 to $20.
The following day after work, I am downtown at my bank. I head over to the stop for my bus home. A sign is posted, letting everyone know that today, this stop is closed and a new one is now open just down the street. I don't yet know if today is the date on the sign. I attempt to buttonhole someone. Only the third person will acknowledge me. I realize why. I have on a long winter jacket, hat, hood, have a beard and a large duffel bag, and I am standing next to someone asleep on a bench at a closed bus stop who can be smelled from several feet away. I also appear homeless.
It's after work on a Saturday afternoon. I am waiting for a bus in my neighborhood for the short ride down the street. On one corner is a woman flying a sign which says something about needing "money for booze." On an opposite corner is a guy with his own sign, becoming agitated, and gesturing with his cane and pointing at cars. He sticks his sign up to a passenger window and says, "Come on! Two dollars!" The next day, I am at a deatyburger, when a drunk comes running in. "Can you open the men's room?" "There's someone in there." "Can you open the men's room?" "There's someone in there." "How about the ladies room?" "No." He goes in there anyway. When he comes out, he wants free coffee. He may or may not be from a trailer park, next to my supermarket, just down the street. At the checkout is a woman telling the cashier that her husband wants her to get him all the tabloid newspapers. She tries to tell him that the stories are all the same in every tabloid.
Sunday, I have lunch downtown with the mom and sister. I catch a bus home on a day when the city's football is playing a home game. On the bus is a big guy on his phone. He sounds like a burnout. As we go past the stadium, he starts yelling about an old quarterback who has "four Superbowl rings!" He's trying to tell a kid sitting across from him about his trivia knowledge. The kid isn't interested. The kid's girlfriend is laughing at the guy. Another guy, who also sounds as though he may be a burnout, mentions the Pittsburgh Steelers during the 1970's. We pull into a transfer station right next to the stadium. The station is scheduled to close in April, after the lightrail station opens next door. I get off and get in line to board a connecting bus. The second burnout is behind me. He says out loud that he hopes our team will "kick some asssss." He gets on for a minute before he gets off again. We leave as soon as he does.
It's the end of a week plus one day, of working an earlier than usual shift. I didn't plan on coming downtown after work. The train took me there long before I got to a stop for a bus home. I'm sitting at the front window of a bagel place, on a bleak New Year's Eve afternoon. The sun is peeking through a veiled sky spitting snow. A guy shuffles by wrapped in a blanket. I give my name for my order. After I am called, I get up to get it, and an employee at a table asks me by name if I want to sit there. Outside, a guy with a shopping bag is pumping his fist, a derelict has a limp, four guys walking together all have sunglasses on. They are the only pedestrians I notice with sunglasses. It's the last afternoon of a year of, yet again, multiple massacres motivated by mental illness capping what one could make a case was a mental illness-induced election contest.
...a plan of transforming a once dangerous abandoned trailer park and bar...into the City's newest and first park in 30 years in West Denver. The theme of the new park will honor the diversity and rich cultures of Westwood/Barnum through the medicine wheel... iViva District 3!, Winter 2012
"...we do not exist as separate selves..." A Mindful Nation, by Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan... "Mindfulness...can...enhance our emotional intelligence and our ability to act with clarity and wisdom... A peaceful revolution is being led by ordinary citizens across our nation,"... ...The Shift Network...empowers a global movement of...creating an evolutionary shift in consciousness... Thousands of individuals are now working in collective hubs across the United States...for the Planetary Birth Day celebration. - Natural Awakenings, 12/2012
Make sure to seek out our cultural experiences while you're here too - whether art, history, music, theater or one of our wacky local traditions... ...scenic tours as well as "an old-fashioned dinner experience" featuring a homemade meal in addition to the sleigh ride. The vaulted-ceiling lobby features...a giant stone fireplace, bedecked with an antlered moose head. Decorations evoke Colorado lifestyle. ...most opt for a Colorado flair for utilizing old ski photos, Western art and so forth. ...it's not necessary to leave the resort at all - with its...arcade-style activity center, private heaters, fitness center, private theatres, fitness center, full service salon and even a spa with a cave-like grotto and indoor waterfall. Very much the fun and fearless counterpart to its straight-laced sibling, Vail... In a town with a calendar packed...Ullr Fest...has the unique effect of drawing together a town of visitors, second homeowners... - Explore Summit, Winter 2013
