The first people to crest the hill each day are those who sleep under the highway bridges and railroad trestles that cross the South Platte. ...kids as young as thirteen from Denver and everywhere else, lugging bungee-corded bags and heavy layers. They don't sleep here...they avoid downtown, too... By noon the hilltop is a sunny bazaar, merry with talk of...survival tactics. Someone turns on music, and a few people spin poi spheres on chains to the rhythm. Others lie with their dogs, read, craft jewelry or share a bong with friends. ..tourists and construction workers can buy blowtorched rips of marijuana for a dollar. The hill is the central gathering point for the city's street youth... ...twenty-year-old Nachi...moved from Belgium to Denver when he was seventeen. ...they love their lives...that they have no interest in the mainstream, in stability or a job. Just as many hope for stability, and have least have found community here. Some on the hill...refuse public services, seeing themselves as independent because they ask for spare change instead. "...you can't help but love the people up here." ...someone had stripped the irrigation system of parts. "But probably where the queasiness happens for most park users - it's that sense of gathering. That can be intimidating, and it does make people uncomfortable." "It's always going to be within a certain distance of where they can survive, which is downtown. They need to be close to downtown. They need each other." "Honestly, if they took a higher degree of civic ownership there, I could see a path to, you know, a very reasonable co-existence. But in the main, they're mostly anti-social. There's definitely a bristling at authority; it's like, 'Well, this is my constitutional right.' You know, when anybody gets their chest puffed up like that, already there's a sense of aggression and not ownership. It's the difference between ownership and entitlement. As a resident, we take ownership of wanting to keep our park well. These people, they feel they're entitled to it." "Pick up your damn trash!" a kid called Nobody shouts to everyone one day. ...it's not that simple for his friends to just rejoin society. There's a "fear," he says. "to go go back into that system, the routine - all of that.. But society out there, they don't understand it, or they choose not to. They turn a blind eye - and that's why we have invisible children." ...bad weather. The summer's travelers peel off for California and Florida... ...reality...becomes apparent. ...a young woman named Sapphire asks why this is happening again. - Westword, 12/3-9/2015
...these men on skid row...society has...given up on them and turned its eyes and resources in another direction... Skid row is now a place where a single man at the end of his rope can get...companionship of others who will not look down on him... This real estate is usually located near the city center and could well be used for...residential redevelopment. ...is thus an obstacle to healthier urban development and it poisons an extensive surrounding area because of its nature and because even drunkards can walk. ...slum residents have...feelings of being "out," of having no control over their own lives or their surroundings, of isolation and alienation... ...the breakdown of norms and standards that govern the aspirations of individuals. ..."the lack of identification...of the primary ego of the individual with a 'self' that includes others. ...modern man appeared to be suffering from psychic isolation. He felt alone, cut off, unwanted, unloved, unvalued."
1. ...community leaders are detached from and indifferent to his needs.
2. ...the social order is essentially fickle and unpredictable.
3. "...the lot of the average man is getting worse, not better."
4. The belief that life is meaningless...
5. ...his immediate circle of relationships is not comfortable and supportive...
...the sum of these feelings "one of the most pervasive and potentially dangerous aspects of Western society, namely the deterioration in the social and moral ties that bind, sustain and free us. - Hunter
Denver City Council will hold a half-day Homelessness Retreat next month to evaluate the city's homelessness policy, nearly seven weeks after homeless rights activists disrupted its Oct. 24 meeting. ...two days after police broke up a "Tiny House" homelessness encampment in Sustainability Park and arrested 10 people. The retreat was scheduled well before the incident... The retreat, protest, and Sustainability Park incident are the latest roadside attractions along...a...plan...to end homelessness in the city by this year. ...in an April 2015 Performance Audit. The audit found that the program had not...consistently gathered data...not had it analyzed... ...its Commission to End Homelessness advisory group was not structured or managed to help the city policymakers develop solutions to homelessness. - Life On Capitol Hill, 12/2015
...trying to be an authority on the outdoors here where everyone climbs, hikes, skis, CrossFits and crow-poses better than you.
...public lands...serve as the physical representation of American democracy... You don't have to be into politics. - ELEVATION outdoors, 12/2015
Will a beard up my game in a ski town? What about a goatee/soul patch?
Unless you can fix your own truck, bag and tag an elk, effectively wield a chainsaw and a drill, or just generally be...useful...to have around in the Apocalypse, you have no...styling of Real Men.
At what age do I technically become a cougar?
Where did all these yuppies come from. And since when did tacos cost 13
bucks?
Does smiling in line on a powder day make you less hardcore? If she asked you to take a break from holding hands with your bros in Gnarly Town, would you? Would you secretly resent her for it? Was she ever actually ever your girlfriend? None of that applies, you say? ...maybe you're just a really shitty lay. - powder, 9/2015
I...wasn't helping the community I claimed to be aligned with. I wasn't talking to...people about what they needed. I stopped calling myself an ally. I became dedicated to the principle of standing in solidarity with the...community. I became an accomplice. I reached out beyond my uber-educated friends who lived in suburbia with super-supportive parents. I needed to listen to...how the intersection...contributes to further marginality - especially for those for whom...living an authentic life is a revolutionary act. It can be very easy to...do...harm...by choosing tactics or methods that reinforce my own privilege. Sometimes I take up too much space, or reinforce...norms, or even use the wrong pronoun. - Out Front, 12/15/2015
Tuesday. The first day in a handful of days with no flurries turning into snow. I decide to chance the trail. Turns out, it's been plowed. But I don't see another bike either going to work or coming home. I did see a sign, alerting me to a marathon on the trail December 12th, from 9 AM to 1 PM. I'll be at work. The following evening, I am out of work and on my bike, looking for the detour I found this afternoon around the snow-covered short final trail. Before I track down the correct side street, I'm rolling through a wealthy neighborhood with the occasional tree decked out in a sophisticated string of lights, or fifty-foot pines with a string of lights winging around from top to bottom. It's a neighborhood with street names such as Chestnut and Maplewood. I cruise past a mansion with a garage which , at a glance, may hold three or four cars. Out on the trail, enough snow has melted to where I am once again flying along. Having begun to ride the bike after just about a seven-year hiatus, I am once again comfortable with riding on the snow. On the last part of the trail home, Orion hangs low over a golf course to the east. As I come over the last bridge across the Platte River, a police helicopter on patrol shines a spotlight down onto the bridge. The light then wobbles away, just like in the movies. Welcome home, son, you did well... Thursday. On the way to work, on an early sunny afternoon on the trail, I am passed by a line of seniors on ten-speeds. As we round a traffic circle at a golf course, the four signs alerting us to an approaching traffic circle have each been spray-painted with a black anarchy symbol. Haven't seen one of those in just about thirty years. Saturdays I'm out on the trail before sunrise. This morning, Orion dives behind the Rockies, his head and shoulders already buried.
Sunday evening. I am out of a movie around a quarter to 7 PM. Out into a downtown street of fear and trepidation, and resignation to a futile future and the inevitability of fate. A sign of the times perhaps. 'Sick and tired of being sick and tired...' I catch a train and a couple of buses back to my boulevard, where by 8 PM I decide to walk home. I think that the buses on this street have simply given up running on Sunday nights, chased away by the clone army of street racers. I decide to walk the last fifteen minutes home. I pass a fire truck, ambulance, and police cruiser all parked in front of a house on a side street. Next to the house is a separate shed. The door is standing open and it's dark inside. Rock music is blaring through the entrance. A spotlight illuminates the tops of bare trees in the dark for the next two streets. Monday. At the end of a long bike trail to work, I come out into a neighborhood both zoned for horses and with older mansions. At one curb is a portable basketball hoop, and not far from there a horse drawn cart. The past week or so I have been avoiding the wide horse trail, the last little part of my ride, as it has been covered in trodden snow and difficult to ride through. The slight detour is a couple of residential streets which follow the horse trail. The view of the homes from the trail is of backyards, of neighbors paying a visit. From the streets, though, I can see coming out of front doors to clean windows, or movers. I wonder if any of this contracted help lives in my neighborhood.
Tuesday at work, I hear on the radio about a stolen SUV pulled over by the police, some 40 blocks north of where I live. Someone inside the vehicle shot the officer and filled his car full of holes. On the way home, close to the end of the trail, I stop to look at street lights reflecting off the frozen surface of a pond. There closest to the bank is a part which is unfrozen. I can see Orion reflected like a mirror. The following afternoon, I am back out on the trail. On a part which follows a golf course on one side, and the Platte River on the other, a couple of down and out guys are slouching my direction. Two or three riders have to weave between them, myself, and a grey-haired guy slowly walking in front of me. The one guy bringing up the rear appears to be dragging a bedroll. The one in front is dragging along a big plastic sheet. At the next bridge is a grey-haired woman dressed up in some kind of ranger outfit. She appears to be taking photos of the river. Further along the trail is a girl walking with a duffel bag. Thursday evening. Around 7:30 PM, I am headed under the lightrail bridge on the bike trail. There is a guy stopped on the path, holding a small dog on a leash. I see people stopped on the trail, holding their dogs on a leash, all the time. I saw at least one this afternoon, as I was headed to work. There's a dog park not far away. I do see some in the evening as well. But this guy is exhibiting odd signs. He has a coat and knit cap on during an unseasonably warm evening. He's hauling a backpack. And he is taking small steps. As I pass him, he is conversing with his dog. "See, I told you," he admonishes the dog. Not far beyond man and dog, I cross a bridge over the river, connecting one trail with another. There at the intersection is a bench, off to the side of the trail. Seated on the bench are two black figures silently silhouetted against a light over a field behind them. An hour later, I am cruising through a park down the street from where I live. It's something of a lovers' lane/gang banger hangout. At some benches and tables are three men with their bicycles parked. They are singing together in Spanish in the dark. It must be what they do when they get away from their wives.
The time on the train...demarcated by odd scenes...a headless fish in a closet; rabbits in a cardboard box; a dead fawn in a bag... We went seven hours without a stop. ...into a cafe...a group of belligerent Russians immediately harassed us. ..next door...a woman was sitting upright, passed out with a pack of Marlboros and a half empty plastic cup of beer in front of her. Two empty 40-ouncers sat on the floor... "First you build something, then you figure out how to make it legal. ...it's the only way." ...a 25-year-old lawyer from Irkutsk...asked, "you want a drink?" then unscrewed the handle of her ski pole... "Martini," she said. I clinked poles with her... - powder, 9/2015
...the most basic step which has paved the way for later successes... ...the...people...on one side, and the...traitors on the other...has developed into a real people's war... ...from the...countryside and even in the towns...the people's war...drawing millions of people to the frontline to wage a political and armed struggle... ...the...people, starting from scratch have succeeded in founding a powerful political army...of different ages, with the great contingent of women at its core...now controls territory inhabited by more than 10 million people. For the...people...completely liberated, really independent and democratic is no longer a dream and a matter of conviction, but has become a living truth: a new and really democratic society of the people is taking shape in the liberated area.
"...if only to avoid estranging the peasants and villagers on whom they depend for food and shelter. They will kill...a Government official, but they generally pick an unpopular and corrupt victim whose death is welcomed by the peasants." U.S. and Government troops in the countryside, on the other hand, feel themselves lost in an enemy sea... It was unusual for U.S....teams to be accompanied by U.S. reporters... ...Secretary of the Navy...publicly supported the burning of villages as "a natural and inevitable adjunct" to defence of U.S. bases in their vicinity. "Where neither...forces can maintian continuous occupancy, it is necessary to destroy those facilities." "Marines do not burn houses or villages unless those houses or villages are fortified." ...the great majority of...villages were fortified in one way or another, the spokesman said simply, "I know it." The...peasant... If he stays in his village he may die under U.S. fire, if he flees the advancing troops he may be...shot on the spot... Most American soldiers...do not question the orders that lead them to raze villages and wipe out men, women, and children for...living in...infiltrated areas. Extermination of the (non-white) enemy is to them a...necessary job... - Raskin and Fall
...they had mapped and catalogued information about every village...to 'cleanse' such areas of their inhabitants. ...this way...would expand the 'irreducible minimum' which the UN had granted them, and make their state as large...as possible before the...armies could stop them, and before it dawned on the UN that its Partition Plan was unworkable. They went over to the offensive because, in spite of the relentless harassment...the civilian population, or its great majority, was determined to stay put; and because the United States, moving spirit behind partition, was now going back on it...
The violence was supposed to be limited and selective, confined to...obstacles...in [the]
legitimate path. ...theorists sought to establish a kind of mathematical relationship between "attack" and "reprisal." The message was...fighters...were rising against the self-same oppressor from whom...American Revolutionaries had won their freedom. ...the same patriotic war that the Irish had fought, and the Boers of South Africa. Eleanor Roosevelt put herself in the forefront of the fund-raising campaign. British protests to the state department about what amounted to an incitement to murder British officials and soldiers...achieved nothing. "In the past fifteen hundred years, every nation in Europe has taken a crack... This time the British are at bat. You are the first answer that makes sense - to the New World. Every time you blow up a British arsenal, or wreck a British jail, or send a British railroad train sky high, or rob a British bank, or let go with your guns and bombs at the British betrayers and murderers..." American was but the most important of sixty-four countries in which [they]
operated. "Govern or Get Out," screams a "Sunday Express" headline the morning after sixteen synchronized terrorist actions...had left a score of armoured vehicles destroyed... In the House of Commons, Winston Churchill, now the leader of the Opposition, conceded...'lay our mandate at the feet of the United Nations Organization and thereafter evacuate a country with which we have no connection or tradition and...no sovereignty as in India and no treaty as in Egypt...' ...they blew up bridges, mined roads, derailed trains and sunk patrol boats. day after day they attacked barracks...raided armouries and robbed pay vans. They blew up twenty warplanes...in a single night. ...were ready to do anything, anywhere. They blew up the British embassy in Rome. They dispatched letter-bombs to British ministers. They planned to sink a British passenger ship in Shanghai and a destroyer in Portsmith. They killed soldiers in their sleep. They captured and flogged officers...hanged two sergeants from a tree and bobby-trapped their corpses..." ...saw 'a man shoot a bullet into the neck of my sister...who was nine months pregnant.' Then he cut her stomach open... ...saw a man...'slash my neighbor..from head to toe...' ...a young girl was literally torn in two. "...the country...seized with limitless panic and started to flee for their lives. ...it was the appearance of...the Arab threat...that counted. The unpreparedness of the Palestinian community was pathetic. The British had smashed their military potential in the 1930s; they had kept them disarmed ever sinse. They had prevented the re-emergence of...effective political leadership... ...the Palestinians...operated...subject to the vageries of remote and often divided political control. "
...the Syrian President assured him...'...we even have an atomic bomb', seeing...expression of incredulity, he went on, 'yes, it was made locally, we fortunately found a very clever fellow, a tinsmith...'" A series of Arab towns - Tiberias, Haifa, Acre, Jaffa...all fell... ...refugees, sometimes attacked and stripped of their remaining possessions on the way...inhabitants of coastal towns were 'driven into the sea'... Of the 1,300,000 Arab inhabitants, they had displaced nearly 900,000. ...farms and factories, animals and machinery, fine houses and furniture, carpets, clothes and works of art...all the family heirlooms of an ancient people - were theirs for the taking. Ten thousand shops, businesses and stores...fell into their hands. ...the UN appointed a Mediator... ...a member of the Swedish royal family, cousin to the King. ...to whom wealth and high station had bred to serve his fellow man. So had his deep Protestant connections. ...he had, on his own personal initiative, succeeded in rescuing...Jews...some 30,000 from the concentration camps. ...'Fighters for the Freedom of Israel'...killed him. ...the assassins identified themselves as...(Fatherland Front)... In a letter...they declared that 'in our opinion all United Nations Observers in Palestine are members of foreign occupation forces...' The two...arrested...claimed that their...organization was not a terrorist one, nor had they themselves been party to terrorist acts... - Hirst
...his voice...lands like velvet...softer than what we're used to here in the states. His olive skin is radiant and impeccable...beneath his thick, dark mane. He is beautiful and exotic... ...'blood brings blood'... His husband...is a fit, youthful, Richard Branson-type who'd look perfectly natural on a surfboard or striding up The Incline, as he does so often. ...thrown in prison for "carnal relations against the order of nature." ...all because he refused to sleep with a man in a position of significant power. "He has a family that I don't want to shame... He burned to death in the war." As an Arab man without a beard, his face had a more feminized look... After three months...he was released. ...he was subsequently disowned...beaten by his brothers and an uncle - an intended honor killing. ...his sisters and aunts...helped him outside to escape. The Syrian government's military...instituted a draft that was now overlooking sexual preferences. ...and potential death at the hands of his own comrades... he learned now that his home was destroyed and members of his family were killed. "Neighbor hates neighbor,"...speaking to the nature of civil war. "Many Lebanese made gay Syrians feel unwelcome." He spent nine months in a land that wanted his bribe money more than it wanted him. "...I...thought...Lawrence could...ask Homeland Security for asylum based on his sexual orientation." Beirut was getting more and more dangerous for...gay...Syrian refugees. In Turkey, Lawrence registered at the UN as an LGBT refugee. There was a significant community of gay and trans people from Syria and Iraq established at Taksim... ...thousands of...Syrian refugees...entire families preferring the cold sidewalks of Taksim to...war at home... Almost like war...there were brief periods of intense, bureaucratic activity separated by long periods of simply waiting. ...George...suggested to Lawrence that they apply to a K-1 "fiance'" visa. The landscape of Ankara...was...a departure from the ancient cities, some of which had been reduced to rubble and chaos,... ...chic office buildings...and luxury hotels with expensive shoes crossing their thresholds. ...highways, like arteries pulsing with vitality...Western characteristics... "I'm sad for the new generation. At least I have...memories... The mountains, the sea... The new generation sees nothing but blood, sadness, hunger." He says many Syrians...are quite comfortable with the Middle Eastern way of life, and would most likely return. - Out Front, 12/2/2015
Democracy calls for all people having a voice in the process of government. If some people do not have an effective voice in government, or if they are not equipped...of if they are disinterested, democracy is weakened. democracy is based on the principles of justice and equality. ...the ones who do not have justice and equality...are less inclined to get out and vote for the best man and the best policies with the idealism teachers of civics would like to promote. This doesn't mean that the slums are hotbeds of revolution. They are not. Jistory tells us that most revolutions are made by middle class intellectuals. But...inequality and restricted opportunities are...fuel for...demagoguery such as...the Black Muslim movement. - Hunter
Saturday. Ten to six AM. I am headed to the bus stop, just a few blocks down a dark and silent street. The weather forecast was for rain yesterday and snow today. So I did not ride my bike. No rain, no snow. I walk past a home with Christmas lights strung along a chain link fence. There are two signs posted under the lights. One reads, "beware of dog." The other reads, "Bernie 2016." O my neighborhood social network, I've read about significant support for Senator Sanders. This must be a neighborhood which fails to respond to Hillary's likability campaign. Her 2008 campaign signs read "Hillary!" This season, it's "Bernie." I wonder if he has a position on street racing.
Fear and Loathing in Suburbia: School Shootings
David McWilliam
...on April 20, 1999, school shooters became the popular image of seemingly random, chaotic violence in American suburbia. Debates about...nihilistic rage...seek to find individuals or groups whose blame can absolve society of collective responsibility. ...the sense of impasse that dogs their representation across media. ...a...shooting...around which a moral panic has formed. Michael Rocque highlights... "What matters in these instances...is to make a statement with violence - it may not matter who the ultimate victims are." Glenn W. Muschert...notes...a "widespread public perception of school shootings as an emergent and increasing social problem." ...Columbine...has come to stand for a category of offense, the school shooting, and Harris and Klebold for a type of criminal, the school shooter, in American popular culture. ...school shootings have been presented as "...without an ideological core," very difficult to predict or understand. ...Sara Ahmed identifies...the more access subjects have to public resources, the more access they may have to the capacity to mobilise [sic]
narratives of injury within the public domain. ...allowed the communities in which these crimes took place to demand sympathy, rather than the condemnation that others are often subjected to. .
..Stanley Cohen...notes that a successful moral panic requires "a soft target, easily denounced, with little power and preferably without even access to the battlefields of cultural politics..." ...to those battlefields...the persona of the Antichrist from the Book of Revelation, which, as Robert Fuller argues, has been identified with different anti-authoritarian figures throughout American history. "The Antichrist is most vividly present...when otherwise faithful persons abandon unquestioning commitment to group orthodoxy." - Violence in American Popular Culture, vol. 1, ed. by D. Schmid, 2016
"Each person has a completely unique journey designed flawlessly for their soul's evolution." Through the use of ancient numerology...Sue helps clients understand where they are and where they need to go...to fulfill their soul's purpose. "When we stray from our authentic path, it seems nothing goes well. But when we're on our purpose, in alignment with our soul's great mission, miracles happen." While she was feeding her spirituality, Sue acquired her undergraduate degree in psychology and early childhood development... In addition to her work as a best-selling author and grief intuitive coach...Sue has trained more than 500 coaches around the world. She was also...a creative certified arts therapist and a high-level corporate executive and magazine editor. - Her Life 12/2015
...I had camped out in an abandoned church somewhere near 38th and Lawrence with some other people who were homeless too. ...staying sometimes at a friend's place when we could...at Samaritan House, Crossroads, and the Denver Rescue Mission. There were soup kitchens, and if you were in a program, the shelter had a dining area where everyone could eat. ...we sang songs, went to church services... He gave me some bus passes. Other people shared cigarettes and marijuana. Sharing what they had was the only way they could give gifts. We just did the usual; we tried our best to celebrate any traditions we grew up with. Nobody treated us differently at the shelters... Some...were broken and depressed, but by then, this was normal. She was staying in Section 8 housing, so she could have visitors, but they couldn't stay overnight. She told us it would take about two years to get housing, and she was right. We were all together...with our sadness...in the shelter...the emotional pressure we all felt.
The privilege of establishing the human connection with all of these great souls I can only attribute to...a benevolent countenance. ...only...perceived through the mercy of the Lord. I have written previous letter expressing my gratitude for...food and gift cards, which allow me to pay it forward, and the inspiration, motivation, and encouragement...from the highly evolved, spiritually inclined people... ...I find it easy to be out here, enduring the winter months (though I don't do rain). - Denver Voice, 12/2015
Now we must fashion "narratives." There might be "counternarratives" to a "false narrative" that feed a "meta-narrative." ...mass shootings "Destroy Leftist Narrative After Leftist Narrative." ...a political "narrative" is a stand-in for some conventional wisdom or indiser consensus. A critical mass of narrators...arrives at a certain truth and a momentum builds around it. The narrative is born. - The New York Times Magazine, 12/13/2015
Tuesday. The snow flies with small flakes, but overnight has gathered up to a foot. And it's rising. Local TV news refers to it as "record snow levels for a 24-hour period." I will, later this evening, watch a public works spokesperson explaining the decision to include residential streets in its plans to plow. She looks young enough to be in high school. Around twenty to noon, a truck goes past me as I make my way over the drifts, toward the bus stop. It's driver-side window is cracked so that I can hear the beats pumpin'. The forecast, 26 degrees F. and hip hop... The bus comes and whisks me off to the train. I get out at a private university and snag a shelter. I hear a distant voice say, "Want some help?" I look up to see a kind soul headed to help a young woman, who has a car stuck in the snow. In the shelter next to me is a guy in a wool coat and a baseball cap, and horn-rimmed specs. He looks a little like a heavier J. J. Abrams. He leaves the confines of the shelter to tromp over drifts to assist in this cause. A third guy also joins the effort as they meet with success. The entire episode strikes me as extremely well coordinated for a random event, employing self-motivated people. Go-getters, if you will. I sit on a dry space reading. Another bus whisks me to work, where I find out that the morning guy called be forty minutes after I left to tell me to stay home. I stick around to clean up some stuff left behind before I head back out to the bus stop. When I do, I immediately see my bus and must hop through foot-deep snow to reach the stop.
Wednesday. The sun is out, and it's melting the snow. But it's cold. I always liked the snow. But this season, in a flash, snow means that I can't ride my bike to work. To aquire health care is to instantly experience nature as an influence on your agenda. I realize that I have some rare free time, and decide to head downtown to do some Christmas shopping for myself. I'm on a pedestrian mall shuttle with a guy in a seat who has his fly open. He is greeting women, who thank him for his greeting. To which he has the same reply. "Sure, 'cause that's what we do. And I'm not homeless, and it's Christmas." Out on the mall itself are a couple of guys in winter coats, knit caps, beards, and each holding a small piece of cardboard. Actually, one guy is wearing an insulated jumpsuit and pushing a shopping cart which is piled to the top with I know not what. He walks along with the other guy, who is inscribing his sign with a marker. He's doing the talking. "This is the worst town for homeless I've seen." His voice begins to rise. "They have no [public] bathrooms. Hey! Anybody got any bathrooms? Where's your bathrooms!" he shouts. Some nine hours later, I am out of work and sitting on the bus stop bench. Across the boulevard, illuminated by the light of a snall strip mall, a guy on an ATV with a plow on the front is joy riding. He's making a loop from the sidewalk, into the parking lot, and back on to the sidewalk.
...a Ballpark Neighborhood Association board member, said that he doesn't want to push homeless people away - but... LoDo [the Lower Downtown residential and business district]
has the largest concentration of services for homeless people in the metro area, he said, and to add more would be an unfair burden. "You get essence of urine throughout the neighborhood, and that's increasing. You get people hanging out on people's lawns. ...it just puts a lot of pressure on the neighborhood." The Denver Rescue Mission...new building... The heated courtyard will fill the daytime gap when overnight shelters are closed, and shelter he lines of people waiting for a meal... "St. Francis Center... They've got a dinky shower there and it's just way too crowded for the amount of guys that want to get cleaned up." ...people don't have the money or physical ability to travel long distances between different types of services. The association's lawsuit asked the courts to nullify the city's approval of the project... "This is a community center for the homeless. You're not going to see community events in this so-called community center." The Ballpark Neighborhood Association hasn't decided whether it will take further legal action... - Denver Voice, 12/2015
The slum is...the sediment of society...of evictions and evaded rents...illegitimacy...an area of pawn shops and second hand stores, of gangs, of "flops' where every bed is a vote. The life of the slum is lived almost entirely without the conventional world. The social agency is looked upon as a sort of legitimate graft...and the law, symbolized by the "copper,' the "bull," the "flivver," and the "wagon" is...a source of interference and oppression, a cause of interrupted incomes, a natural enemy. ...youth in the slums as "social dynamite." ...could as well have said political dynamite. Slums are a threat to democracy... ...slum children...will be influenced by ignorance, passions of the moment, and narrow or local interests... ...if a substantial part of the demos is ill equipped, or is isolated from or hostile to the established channels of political expression. This is a problem for our entire society. For these, society will have to find its ways of accommodation, as it has since the city began. ...the results can only be festering decay or explosion, or both. - Hunter
Housing and Jobs Reasons to be Thankful
...according to CoreLogic, a leading provider of consumer, financial, and property information. Home prices, including distressed sales, rose 6.4 percent in September 2015... The October Jobs Report shined with 221,000 jobs created, well above expectations. The unemployment rate also dropped to 5 percent.
What "Business casual" Really Means
One career roadblock...in almost every line of work: inappropriate dress...and at work-related events. You may...still be disqualified or dismissed... ...from formal, to "smart casual," to "casual Friday." There doesn't seem to be a firm consensus... - YOU magazine, December 2015
Thursday. 11:30 AM. It's icy and slippery. I'm out at the stop for the bus to work. Across the boulevard, I watch a couple of guys with grey beards. They both are leaning forward to take the weight off of their backs as they wait for the light to change. Each one is carrying an enormous ruck sack on shoulder straps. One walks with a cane. Nine hours later, I'm at my last train station on the way home, waiting for the bus. In a few minutes, I will be on a bus, whisking past a time and temperature sign. It's 9 degrees F. The local weather will put it at 2 with the wind chill. I notice a couple of guys wandering the platform, and my homeless alarm goes off. They wander into the bus shelter. One says to the other, "It's broke. It's broke! IT"S BROKE!" I look out from behind a brick wall where I am sheltered from the wind. He appears to be attempting to zip up his coat, telling the other guy that his zipper doesn't work. A man and woman come shuffling along. I wait for it...and then the four greet each other. All homeless in this city appear somehow to know each other. The lady's companion is yet another guy with a grey beard, and appears to have over his shoulder a cheap child's bright blue backpack. As it is too tiny for his shoulder, he's having trouble keeping in on. When the bus comes, he asks the driver which direction this bus goes. I know this driver from both this route and another, both of which he regularly runs. We all get on and the driver asks me, "It's cold tonight, huh?" The grey-bearded guy shows the driver some kind of ID and sits down. The driver asks him for either fare or a transfer. "I told you the lady told me I didn't need one," he responds. "What lady?" the driver answers. "Next time, you pay." He knows. What he can't know is when they shall all blow back this direction, and a female voice like the sound of sub-zero gusts shall again whisper in his ear, that all fares are fleeting. From New Year's Eve, until some time during January 2nd, passage upon local transit system routes at least will be free of charge. Then the fare goes up, when it shall surely be passengers who are fleeting.
The next morning, same time, same corner. I'm watching the drivers of vehicles which turn the corner at the intersection. Here comes an orange truck. Inside are a couple of young guys with long hair and beards. On the back window is a single sticker for the NRA. A brand new Chevy Camero, solid black, accelerates after a turn. Inside is a lone driver in a buttoned down shirt and horn-rimmed glasses. On the way here, I passed a Vietnamese shopping center, the windows full of photos of Vietnamese models and celebrities. Some of the pictures are faded by the sun. The windows have bars on them. One photo of a young woman has the shadow of the bars burned into it.
From my bus stop to the train station, and a couple of stops down the line. On the platform where I get out, a young woman slowly paces up and down. On the breast of her sweater is a sticker, like a name tag, perhaps for a conference. Slowly she paces. Along comes a middle-aged guy in a wool coat and a knit cap. He is speaking into his phone, telling someone not to raise their voice. He asks me, "Hey, bro, they got a bathroom around here? I'm gonna go piss in someone's back yard or some shit." He heads off, and the young woman finally takes a seat on a bench. The bus is late. I watch piss man come hurrying back. He runs over to a waiting cab. The bus comes, and after we get on board, the driver gets off to have speaks with a transit system supervisor. The driver gets back on with a different supervisor. A young guy gets on, and asks this supervisor, "A bus hit another one?" "We're not talking about it," she replies. A young couple gets on with a stroller. The guy is wearing a fishing hat with lures and feathers and pins. The guy who inquired about the accident gets on his phone to complain to the transit system, telling someone that the driver and supervisors were "taking a break" before getting back on the route. He then calls his work, and tells someone that he will be late because he "has the most incompetent driver." The driver replies, "For your information, we had a hit and run." There's his answer to his question. He says, "You still have a schedule to keep." The supervisor is silent. The hat guy is texting his sister, to the derision of his significant other. She is asking him to stop. "She got herself involved," he tells her. A guy in a sportcoat, with a huge afro, gets on.
Saturday. I'm out of work shortly before 6 PM. I'm at a sandwich place which I frequent. I grab some chips. A father is there shepherding his two young daughters. He's tall and lanky, in a black nylon sport top, and has short, blond hair moussed into spikes, and dimples. He's somebody's dream from a decade far, far away. He asks me if he can buy me a sandwich for Christmas. I wonder if he thinks that I'm homeless. I'm wearing my snow boots and carrying a bag. I tell him that my doctor has me on a diet (i.e. healthcare = 'probably not homeless'.) He still wants to buy me a muffin. I don't mention that I have a job only several doors away, or that I don't have time to wait to get rung up as I have a bus to catch. Not that the bus has been punctual as of late. An hour later, I'm off my last bus and walking toward home. Coming down my street is a guy first pushing, then pulling a shopping cart. Over snow and slush, in the dark.
Sunday. Closing in on 7:30 PM. I just got out of Star Wars, The Force Awakens. I'm at a bus stop, waiting on any of a couple of different buses, each on a different route. I spy one on a third route, headed the way opposite which I am travelling. Any of these will get me home. I need to find where to catch the third, which turns down a street other than the one I'm on, in case it comes first and I need to run for it. I head down the sidewalk, down which are approaching three girls. They're Japanese? Chinese? I spot the other stop and head back to the first, where the three girls are waiting. I start laughing. At this stop are a couple of places to sit, which appear as low stone walls. I was sitting on one. The girls are now all standing where I was sitting. They are talking to each other and also laughing. From the distinctive consonants of their conversation, I can tell that they are Vietnamese. At one point, one says "Hello," and they all start laughing. It's funny to watch. I have a paperback with me which I was reading before they came by. It's a collection of essays, official statements, and articles about the Vietnam War, published in 1968. Perhaps these girls are the grandchildren of those who were around during the war. They have no paperbacks. They have a phone on which they are watching a movie. Back in my own neighborhood, I'm on an icy sidewalk. I don't like these road conditions. I hope the trail is safe to ride to work tomorrow.
Monday. I'm back out on the trail, and it's almost snow free. The trail is an entirely different experience than the transit system. There are no signs, for instance, of any of the holidays. There are no iPods or phones, or advertisements or voices. I can see why some come out here to 'get away from' the great urban cultural temples. On my way to work, on a bridge over the Platte River is a guy who, at first, I suspect is a nature photographer. He has something in his hand which I expect to be a camera. It turns out to be a flask, from which he takes a long swig. I wonder if he is pondering suicide. That's one of the dangers of the trail. With fewer audio distractions, it gives you time to think. As the wind rushes past your ears and the geese honk. I come home in the dark these days. It's a reversal of what I was doing for the ten previous years with the company I've been working for. I used to go to work in the dark. It was a time before the world woke up or the sun rose. I used to laugh about the impression it gave, that some cataclysm happened overnight and the population had perished. I would be at work by 7 AM, before the traffic accidents would come on the radio. The dark was the beginning to the day back then. Coming home on the trail tonight, It's just me, and the trail, and the stars. The trail closer to work has the residents who come to the parks I ride through. On the way home, a man stands motionless with his dog, waiting silently for me to pass by on the way up a hill. The next trail home is empty. Tuesday. Great news. The guy who I thought was going to jump off the bridge is back. I don't think he is the slightest bit suicidal. Toward the end of my ride, I'm pedaling through an opulent neighborhood. A young woman is walking her dog, holding it as it digs around a bush. She is strikingly beautiful, with blonde hair down to her waist, sweater, slacks and boots. She looks like she walked out of a catalog. 24 hours later, I am on this same street as I watch a pickup truck hauling a flatbed turn a corner. It makes a U-turn through someone's snow-covered yard and proceeds back the way it came. Happy Solstice.
After the following day, I have the next four days off for the first time in 25 years, which is as long as I have been in this business. At least both the company I work for, as well as our largest competitor, are closed for most of this time. I don't know why this season is different, but I've never been on the ownership side. Put it in the 'I don't get it' file. Saturday is the day after Christmas. I decide to catch a movie and do some shopping. If, after being on call for the past decade to be anywhere, anytime in the company, I am now in one place all the time, I've decided to put a bit of style in my wardrobe. I feel like the Great freaking Gatsby, stocking up on pastel shirts to toss around the bedroom. Around 11 AM, I am up the street at my old deathburger. I say hi to an employee I know. Outside, a couple of dogs are tied up next to a big backpack. It's 14 degrees F outside. Sitting outside one of two entrances is a local homeless Vietnamese guy, huddling in the frigid air and having a smoke. Inside, a young woman with long golden dreadlocks, wearing insulated overalls, sits at a booth enjoying breakfast. In the opposite seat is another backpack. I assume that the dogs are hers. I head up to my usual bus stop, where a guy comes along wearing the same insulated Dickies, same color. He has a down coat, grey hair, and a cane. Leaning against the bus shelter, he sees another guy there, with spectacles and a long white beard. He says to him, "Long night, Santa? Well, I got my Christmas wish: a room at the Motel 6. I got coffee! I got a TV! You know how long it's been since I watched TV?" Wow. Who watches TV anymore? That long huh? To be homeless is to somehow be timeless. The bus comes along and I get to my movie. The theatre is on an avenue called Broadway. It's not dreams which lay broken here, but pieces of a past. That's how it feels. Antique shops, liquor stores, small restaurants, some of the few remaining used bookstores on any street, my theatre. Places which feel old. I used to take this avenue south of here to work, five days a week including every Saturday. When the movie lets out, the street looks good out here this afternoon, in the sun and fresh melting snow. This street is a crossroads with young Caucasian hipsters. Of the broke kind, not the ones living north of here, in the brand spanking new condos next to the brand spanking new Sprouts. As I head back down the sidewalk to the bus stop, a guy is coming toward me pulling a shopping cart full of stuff, including a big white pail on the front. "Spare anything?" he asks me on the day after Christmas. He asks the same of someone behind me. Has he been asking this all day? Avenue of the broke and the broken. Taking shelter from the wind in the doorway of a liquor store, under a big sign which reads "LIQUOR," is a little guy with a cigarette in his mouth. There is a droll frown on his bedraggled face. He appears as if he would fit right in this scene even forty years past.
And then it's off...a demographic-sized world way from the dusty haunts of Broadway, to the mall. Not just any mall mind you. But the very exclusive Cherry Creek Mall. Jewel in the crown of the imperial city. This afternoon, I am on a mission to change my wardrobe to fit what is a new job description. Customer service is no longer a small part of my job at work. My role after the purchase of the company where I've been a jack of all trades for the past decade has shaken out, and it appears as if customer service is now my only job. This is the first neighborhood where I lived upon moving here, and I stayed in it for sixteen years. During the 1990s, I used to have blind dates at this mall. It's the easiest place to find in this part of town. I stop at the customer desk during a shift change, when stacks of international bills are being counted. It looks like an American Express office. I was always amused by this place. Okay. I used to make fun of this entire neighborhood of exclusive shops, and the marketing of its privilege. To shop here has, for 25 years, been advertised as an experience of sophistication. Clearly people come here from all over the world, yet this mall has always been clean of any politics. Security guards double as the sanitation crew. Or is it vice versa? Is something about this place an example of globalism? Spare any taste? A quarter century ago, I walked down here from up the street after I had been promoted to assistant manager, with a whopping hourly wage of $5.05/hour. The first ties I saw at this mall cost $100 each. This afternoon, there are Polo shirts at $185 apiece. I feel as though I am unsure whether I should even be touching these. I'm not sure I am globalist enough. Everyone I see here this afternoon, no matter what their race, appear to be upper class. Privilege here appears to transcend the international diversity of races. I do find some great deals on dress socks before I grab some Greek food to go. And when my shopping trip is through, I am surprised by an unfamiliar result. If it's the critics' choice for taste which I was after, I came to the right place at the right time. More than that, however, I had fun...shopping here. Really? I had so much fun, that I want to come back. Unlike members of my family, I enjoy the crowd. They look like animatronic toys from every nation. Here at the Cherry Creek shopping mall, the whole world is privileged. It's like a Reaganomic Disneyland. I was walking around this place smiling and saying thank you to clerks. Even the one, the hetrosexual female, who struck me as almost annoyed when I said Feliz Navidad. And I've had fun before when I've been on a mission to get new clothes, which is almost never. But this happy go lucky shopper trip just isn't me. Perhaps it's a good thing I left so that I could regain my identity, be it at odds with polished humanity. Be it at odds with designer insanity. This is not the only mall I have visited on my quest for my bargain wardrobe. But I think there is holiday cheer in the air here. Then as evening falls and the temperature drops even lower, I walk out to a stop for the bus home. This is a bus stop where I used to catch a bus at five minutes to 5 AM, six days a week. That was twenty years ago. Now I live on the side of town where I used to have to take a bus to go to work. On this evening, I have a fifty minute wait for the weekend bus. I sit and eat my food away from the glittering crowds. Individual residents quickly walk past the bus shelter, back home to their half million dollar homes. I've lived at four different addresses in this neighborhood, at the last one for 13 years. They both came complete with a view of the Rockies. The last two places were owned by a guy who put them on the market over 2006/07, and closed a deal for a cool million clams. Best landlord I ever had actually. The last three at least were 'scraped' as they say for new and bigger digs, along with a place here as well, where my sister lived for just as long. Before the great "R," rent got too high for a world famous independent bookstore across the street from the mall. I watched a long abandoned elementary school get demolished for the high rise apartments in front of me. With one wall knocked down I remember the word "Celebrate" still on the chalkboard. When I'm done eating, the temperature has dropped into the single digits. I must switch from my knit gloves to ski mittens. This long wait for the bus is not unlike the bike trail. Too much time for too many memories. "This dollar not to be used to corrupt democracy." Was it Jefferson who left instructions, should this democracy fail, to build another "a little further west"? He couldn't have guessed, could he, that this part of the nation would be referred to as "the new west." Look, the new democracy is here.
The following day, I head across the street for a late lunch. About this time of each year, I go into this traditional Mexican eatery with my gorilla mask. In the past, I've had a Santa hat on my head with the mask on. This year, I have a grey top hat with a garnish of holly. A couple of kids in little two piece suits, complete with ties, both ponder my get up. "Look, look," their father tells them. They both ask each other in Spanish what I could be before running back to their table. I believe they enjoyed it. Later on that afternoon, a little boy rings my bell. He asks me in Spanish where his mom is. I assume that the man at a car a few steps away is his dad, and I direct him in Spanish to him. Later on, I head behind my place to have Vietnamese for dinner. I come here to eat and read, not to collect more words for this blog. But the place this evening is full of Caucasian couples who all appear as if they are college types. What the hell. There are plenty of places to eat between here and the nearest campus. I listen to one young guy speaking to a young woman. "You're in a five year program?" he asks her. "Then that's a masters degree." Is he kidding? I watch one guy get up and hug another guy when the two recognize each other. Sometimes switching between the separate class dynamics as I pass from one neighborhood to the next makes me feel as if I am the only one who even recognizes any difference at all.
Monday. Yesterday, I was supposed to go work out with my sister in the morning. But her car battery won't start her car. It has been in the single digits overnight. I check online, and there is a bus which goes right to the gym. But I discover this too late to make it there before it closes on Sunday. And the online map is not interactive, and I can't see any detail other than the gym is between two streets. This morning, I am out the door and down the street to catch a bus to the gym. I disembark at one of the streets next to the gym, and I begin walking down the sidewalk. It's 5 degrees F at 6 AM, and it's dark. All I can do is follow this street which I have never been on before as it curves in a direction away from the gym. This is a neighborhood of well kept homes sectioned off by long, tall fences. It looks likes a fine place to retire, and I can understand why so many retired folks who I see at the gym live here. As the sidewalk reaches the crest of a hill, with a beautiful view of the metro area lit up, I run into a retired guy walking his poodle in the frigid air. Though hard of hearing, and his cigarette in a holder which falls from his mouth, he is kind enough to give me directions there. Directions to a hidden path which I never would have correctly guessed on my own. The directions could not be more accurate. Not bad for a hard of hearing retired guy. After my workout, I take a bus back to my own street. Where change buses, I stop into a deathburger. I notice the manager and another employee walk over to the men's room. I ask her if a drunk has fallen asleep in there. She tells me, no, the employee smelled marijuana coming out from behind the door. Later that evening, I'm approaching the trail head on my bike, down a dead end street. There's a swath of collected snow which I attempt to cross. It slows me down before it stops me, throwing me off my bike like a bucking mule. I land in the snow. That was a sudden bit of fun at the end of an insane year. The company I worked for during the past ten years was purchased by owners who couldn't be less interested in actually running it. That's insane. After ten years as a floater, one of only two people at the time who knew how to operate all five drycleaning machines at our four plants at the time, I'm now just another counter person. That's insane. I'm working 34 hours a week now, earning almost as much as I did for a decade at 40 hours a week, and after far more than a decade of going into work at 7 AM, I now cruise in after 1 PM. I've spent ten years getting to know people in the entire company, watching employees come and go, and having 25 years in this business and ten here coming to an understanding of how it all works, these new owners appear not to care less about any of this. I had the first regular doctor I've ever had, who is the only reason I am losing weight for the first time in my life, and I end up filing a complaint against her for an injury from a recommendation unrelated to the diet, the last thing I ever expected or wanted to do, and a complaint which she probably was notified of just before Christmas. That's all insane. Or could it simply be life in 2015? I don't know anymore. But the shopping trip and dropping into the snow, that was fun. And the guy with the poodle.
The Rebirth of Cherry Creek
The blocks of shops and restaurants between First and Third avenues east of York Street saw their heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s... But lean years hit... For the better part of the years between 2009 and 2014, the once-glitzy zone was seen as fusty and outdated - a place where mink coats go to curl up and die. - Westword, 12/31/2015 - 1/6/2016
