Operating with a jarring combination of Marx and the Mafia, the Huks blackmail...buy up...officials or police, slaughtering...to make an example. ...known...by presenting the legs of an enemy to his wife and the head (wearing sunglasses) to his mother. On the other hand...no man steals..or rapes a girl. Their...force has been supported by...peasants ignored by government, beaten by corrupt police, and robbed by landowners. - Bloodworth
Monday. Groundhog Day. My sister's birthday. I am at the train station where, every morning about this time of a quarter to five AM, a small white pickup comes driving up. It's just small enough to fit on the train platform. A couple of guys get out to power wash the concrete and change the trash bags. On this illustrious pre-dawn, one trash can is on fire. It is the first one I can remember running into. The plastic bag is being slowly consumed and a small but steady stream of smoke and cyanide is wafting out. The truck comes right on time, stops a few yards away for a moment, then pulls right next to the can as usual. Still the driver does not see the fire, until a guy in a big cowboy hat comes walking along to point it out to him. Just then, my train shows up. The last thing I see is a guy in a cowboy hat grabbing a double-handed scoop of snow off the ground.
...through this stone jungle...with...Western correspondents, Indian, Polish, and Canadian diplomats and generals of the International Control Commission, Chinese merchants and shopkeepers...doctors and lawyers with sophisticated tastes, taxi girls, street hawkers, Corsican entrepreneurs...who were sticking their ground, even a complete Filipino cabaret orchestra. - Bloodworth
THE LAST HAND
Future looks bright for gaming towns
Can you imagine what our mining towns will look like 100 years from now? Modern day casinos will be the center of activity. ...young and old...playing...for profit and loss 24 hours a day. The cities will have professional sports teams... There will be at least a dozen large hotels...a rapid transit system...many housing subdivisions. ...an overhead rail train... Some of the mines will reopen...bringing back the mining business across Colorado. There will be...a state-of-the-art hospital where gamblers can get their implanted chip checked...by a computer that will dispense...super pills that will treat and cure most diseases. ...what is important for growth. The most visible answer is the construction of hotels. When the gaming towns become a destination...everyone benefits. ...we'll have more stores, antiques, novelties, special restaurants, and arcade areas for children and adults. I'm going to make my reservation for 100 years from now at a local hotel. Those computer chips are going to keep us alive a whole lotlonnger and there is no better medicine than a "21" at a blackjack tale, today or tomorrow. - The Colorado Gambler, 2/3-16/2015
Communism is poverty's child...until the day arrives, if ever, that it makes its own million. Half the shop fronts were coffined up with wooden boards, and the other half had the impersonal, empty look of the dying. It was always Sunday, it seemed. ...traffic was orderly, for there was no traffic. ...central cooperatives were filling little retail shops with cheap goods from China - tumblers and matches and pictures of Mao and Ho, vacuum flasks and vodka, shoddy shoes and exercise books and plastic air-travel bags - an odd miscellany of bric-a-brac upon which it might be possible to create a new and strange way of living. ...Hanoi had once been a smiling little place. But in December 1955 it seemed inconsolably mournful. - Bloodworth
Sunday morning my neighbor heard a loud bang... (My basement window had been) kicked so hard that the entire frame of the window landed all the way across the room... - Nextdoor Westwood, 2/5/2015
Saturday evening. I worked a closing shift at a store in the heart of one of the city's largest and wealthiest neighborhoods. It's twilight now, and lights are coming on in enormous windows of mansions stacked together like desert macrobiotic soil. These mansions tower over long fences, a fraction of their height. This is the land of the mega-church and eco-friendly supermarket. There are nail salons, stores which buy gold, fast food, pet food, Whole Foods, ice cream shops, and orthodontists. Before my shift, I stopped into a bagel place for lunch. I sat next to a larger table, around which at least one family was gathered. Everyone appears to be dressed up. The father unit is asking a teenaged guy how life is treating him. The father, a grandfather, and the guy are all wearing suits. The guy has on a bow tie. Everyone at the table besides the father and teenager is quiet, even the grandfather. It appears to be a traditional practice of deference to the head of a family. Beyond that, I am not sure what this scene is all about. This evening, we are rolling along the winding road. It's dark now. At one stop, a middle-aged guy gets on. He has with him a bad transfer and a 30-can case of beer. The driver asks him not to step out n front of the moving bus to get her attention. She then asks him if he has the fare. He tells her that he has a transfer. When he shows it to her, she informs him that he can not use a transfer from the same route back the other way. This is, in fact, a transit system no-no. She then reminds him that this is the second time that she has mentioned this. Then, she asks him to pay the fare. He claims that he has only one more fare left on him. She lets him know that, should he again attempt to use a fare from the same route, she "will have to call it in," and the proper authorities shall then track him down and issue a $100 ticket. He responds that he will soon be back to driving. After he departs, I tell the driver that she should have let him on for the price of a beer. She tells me that, during the previous week, he brought along his 90-year-old mother in her wheelchair. She was along for the ride to draw out money for him to purchase beer. She mentions that, on this route, the number of people trying to come on her bus without proper fare is nothing compared with those who do so on the route she drives...on my very own boulevard. Out my way, she describes this hustle as happening, "All day, every day." When you meet those without bus fare, it must be a small city.
Sunday morning. I am at the bus stop in front of the supermarket I go to. Someone has buried some enormous rocks next to the trees and bus shelter, perhaps to sit on. I elect to put my grocery bags next to one of the huge rocks. Along comes a guy who sounds as though he is drunk. He says to me, "The rock is taking care of your bags..."
Monday. The paradigm hasn't shifted so much as it does not appear to be operating this morning before 5AM. The bus that everyone complains about missing, this morning we have made it on board. But for the first time since I have been riding it, it's crawling along the highway bridge instead of customarily hauling ass to the train station. And here's the twist: no a single rider is complaining. We get to the station late. The only response I hear is a single woman in front of me, who watches as her train passes by, and whispers, "shit." ...that's the entire protest from anyone on the bus? THAT'S IT? Not to worry too much about the paradigm. It's alive and well at the deathburger. Here comes Mr. "Fuckin' ass bitch" sauntering across the lot. He finds the front door locked, and he yells "FUCK YOU!" at the employee inside. A minute after this protest, we are all standing inside the lobby. Another guy sits down at the booth next to the front counter. He turns to a stranger standing next to him, to begin discussing the law supposedly coming down on the side of his ex-girlfriend. She broke into his house a year after their breakup. The stranger begins asking him questions about the situation. The guy then mentions, "So, the bus made me late. My boss says, 'OK, so you're sick.'" (As in, 'take a sick day'?) On my way out, I spot the guy standing behind the employee, asking, "Where's the girl I see on the weekends?" Looking over her shoulder, he acts surprised at the cost of a breakfast sandwich. An hour later, I am on my last connecting bus to work with a couple of guys who are talking about one particular bus route. One of them claims that, "It's always late. How can the first bus (at the beginning of the day's schedule) be late?" He says that, one morning, it never came at all. Another guy mentions one of the routes on my boulevard, about how it's always late. That bus, he says, is the one which he takes to go to work at the bar.
Radical Self-Care for Men:
Men - Are you ready to move forward into your life with clarity of purpose, renewed passion, and authentic power? ...join other men willing to work from the inside out. Through...movement, co-created ritual and council, we will affirm the true strength of our clear, generative masculine nature. As a community of men, we will explore what it means to face, uncertainties, distractions... - Shambhala Mountain Center, Spring/Summer 2015
"...now, more than ever, our youth are totally at a loss of...how to keep themselves safe. Our youth are afraid of cops... ...the intersections between racism , homophobia, and police violence." Protesters held signs including..."Denver Police Hands Off Queer Youth Of Color." - Out Front, 2/4/2015
Denver is the perfect mix of small town friendliness with big city amenities. Being the world-class city that we are, residents and visitors should feel safe walking in all parts of the city. As the city changes, so do our communities. The rest of the nation is looking at Denver as a model of social freedom. - Washington Park Profile, 2/2015
...the Lao...is not afraid of death... The Lao word for death is the same as for Nirvana... It is dangerous to mourn, for mourning may bind the spirit of the dead to this illusory world. However, a man must be sure what he is dying for, the Laos would say. Buddhists believe that fate should not be tempted lightly. You do not play chicken with God. - Bloodworth
Tuesday. I am working a closing shift. I'm on a bus when a guy gets on. He has a long, white beard and a cane, and is wearing a striped polo shirt and Velcro sneakers with no socks. The skin on his ankles are dry and chapped. He's telling a story, about getting into an argument with a bus driver, to a guy in a wheelchair with no legs below the knee. Another passenger's phone goes off, to the tune of "Sweet Child of Mine." The guy with the cane says, "Turn it down...Jesus." Wednesday. 5 AM. Rain and snow mix. I'm at the bus stop across the street from where I live. I watch a guy in sweat pants and a hoodie come across the middle of the street. He's tall and lanky, and in his gear he looks like a sprinter. He goes over to the gas station before he comes by the bus shelter. He asks me for a cigarette. I tell him that I don't smoke. "Right on, brother," he replies, before disappearing back across the middle of the boulevard. An hour later, I'm on a train to work with a couple of other guys. They both mentions how nice it is to be working again. One has been employed for a year and a half. He mentions a halfway house, and says that he has a union meeting that night. Thursday. I am working a closing shift. I'm at my old bus stop at a quarter to nine AM. A middle-aged guy has dropped by. He's in black sneakers with no laces and red socks, and black and grey-striped spandex pants. He's wearing an open, long camel-hair coat, and has a bike with him. He reaches into a trash can, and he pulls out a tall, empty beer can. From the floor of the bus shelter, he grabs an empty plastic grocery bag. He puts the can into the bag, and hangs the bag on a handlebar.
An hour later, I am on a bus some miles away from this scene. Under light filtered through a hazy February sky, I am rolling past clusters of mansions lining the crests of valleys as far as the eye can see. In front of this backdrop, we come to a stop for a young woman with a grin on her face for the driver, who she recognizes. The entire scene is some kind of idealized vision. She brings on board an iced tea in a covered plastic tumbler, complete with ice and tea bag. At first, I think that she has a nicotine patch on the back of her hand. It turns out to be the label on the end of her tea bag string. I can't hear over the noise of the bus engine, but I can see her speaking into her phone. I can tell, watching her lips move, that she is speaking Spanish. Later, on a bus home, the guy who takes his wheelchair-bound 90-year-old mother with him to purchase beer gets on. She is with him. He tells the driver, "Last time I gave you a five, so are we good?" She informs him that he still has to pay fare to get a transfer. I wonder if she is aware of what goes on around her? Is she good?
Valentines Day Is For Families And Roadies
Saturday is Valentines Day, and the morning finds me at my old deathburger before a shift at work. The place id full of guys in suits. At a table next to a large, dressed up family is Tom, the loud mental guy. At one point, he stands up and yells across to the front counter, "Heeey caaan I haave two break fast sand wich es?" In comes a lesbian couple. One is in a grey sweatshirt, and the other is in a camouflaged coat. They join everyone in suits. A trio of guys come in. One has a T-shirt under his coat which reads "I'm Hot Stuff." At my old bus stop is a mom and her two teenaged kids. The boy has a Chihuahua in his hoodie. The girl has another in her bag. A larger family waits in front of the bus shelter. One of the kids, probably bored waiting for the bus, says, "Oh my god the bus driver is gonna kill us all." The mom admonishes one of her brood, "She didn't do shit, she's just standing next to Lily." The bus comes and we and the two dogs all get on. One of her young sons is wearing a hoodie covered with green skulls. A teenaged daughter says something about "playing chicken with cars." We get to a blocked-off corner of the avenue, next to some train tracks. A backhoe is digging next to the stoplight. About the construction, she says, "It's about time." The mom says, "The train tracks are broke." A guy with his arm around her has a tattoo on his neck and a long goatee.
We reach the train station about 9:15 AM. On the platform, I watch a skinny, grey-haired guy with shades on his phone, asking directions to downtown's new transportation hub. He is gesturing with his arm. He's in a Pink Floyd T-shirt and a leather jacket, and he's with a younger guy who remains silent. The guy with the phone stiffly approaches a woman with red hair, and Camelback pack with a bike helmet attached. "Hey do you know where the bus station is?" She ignores him. "Excuse me, can I ask you a question," he poses. She waves him off. He turns to his pal and begins gesturing as he appears to map out their course of action. Perhaps his valentine is downtown.
Monday. 4:30 AM. The streets are covered with unplowed snow. The bus comes out of nowhere. If I hadn't waved it down, I would have missed it. At a stoplight, it begins to fishtail, and at the green light, has trouble going again. I make it to the train, and to a bus at the end of the train line by 6 AM. A guy on the bus mentions being out on work release. A woman, who sound as if she is familiar with a work release lunch, asks him if he has a sack lunch. He describes some meat and a cookie being wrapped up in something, so that is does not get soggy. Tax dollars at work. I wonder how early he gets out of his facility to be here at 6? Tuesday morning. I am working late shifts until Saturday, when I work all day, and will have to walk the last half hour to get to work and then back to the bus stop. The crosstown buses don't run this far south on the weekend. I am back at my old deathburger, sitting across from a guy with a long, grey beard. He has a few scraps of paper on his table. I watch him as he comes slowly back from the front counter. As he carefully sits down, I can see how thin his legs are through his jeans. His hands are brown with grime, and he carries a shiny chain of keys on his belt. A few hours later, I am on a bus with a woman who I usually see talking to the driver. She says that she will soon be out of her halfway house. A half an hour later I am in the neighborhood where I've been working. I have lunch at my first ever Chick-Fil-A. I made it in just before a small crowd of wealthy Caucasian high school students. It's something of an odd gig, especially for fast food. The woman behind the counter carries my tray to my table for me. She won't put it down until a skinny girl cleans the table. A middle-aged guy comes out to ask me how my meal is. The Caucasian, middle-aged crew appear to all wear black knit nylon, as if they are locally hip. As if they may be of the world rather than in the world. Yet I expect nothing here such as the late Dr. Leary called any "unauthorized thought." Everyone appears as if they could all belong to the same church.
...the cloistered Therevada monk who withdraws from the world...avoids taking sides, for fear of becoming the victim of rage and ambition. He sees capitalism and Communism as crazy...obsessions with matter. ...he...thinks he can be master of both. He does not ask for an affluent society or a welfare state. ...not necessarily...final bliss through nationalization - the economic Nirvana in which the egoist personal initiative merges into the Oneness of the state. American prejudice...for capital, property, and...initiative...can only see the politician who may best reflect the modest dreams of backwards millions as a dangerous radical... - Bloodworth
Wednesday. I am back at my old bus stop, with a young guy on his phone. He is talking about being "charged with a first degree. How can I be charged with something that is no longer constitutional?" Three hours later, I'm at a bagel place. I am sitting next to a young man and an elderly woman. She is non-stop talking to the man about his accomplishments. I hear him acknowledge that she is his mentor for student teaching. Among her copious advice are some job interview tips. She suggests that, in interviews, he lean forward and then back again. Tell the interviewer why he is excited about the school to which he is applying. Overall, she suggests that he be somewhat less intense. And intense this dude is. He has a buzz cut, a goatee, and a serious overbite. Too often, the description "on LSD" is used to describe any manner of mundane behavior. In his case, it's perfect. He responds to each of his mentor's points with "oh!" and "yes." It's as if he has an uncontrollable cauldron of emotion which he can barely contain, as if she is zapping him with powerful flashes of insight after insight. He tells her that everything she says is correct, that he's grown, that his intensity is something that he is working on. Yet he can hardly control his expression as he tells her, "That is the spectrum!" When she gets up to refill her beverage, a guy at another table asks him if he is involved in film production. He tells him that he is working on a short film here, because "so much of this area is cinema graphic."
Thursday. I am back in the neighborhood where I've been working. I stop into a sandwich place for an early lunch. It has a couple of flat screen TVs tuned to ESPN. A handful of tough-looking blue collar guys are munching pickle spears. On TV is an anchor who is a dead ringer for ICE T, along with a woman in a red dress who appears ready to give birth. On the train home after sundown, I listen to a couple of guys. One tells the other that he has been on probation since he was fourteen. The other tells him that he did ten years in a Colorado town called Lymon. "They wanted to give me 25, they gave me 15. I did ten." He doesn't "sell dope or stick up kids anymore."
...owners who wanted...exacting care afforded their siding panels as...applied to their patios. Atop the snug, weather-protective HardieWrap skin...a high-quality...half-inch Rigid insulation board. The home's expansive skirt was hemmed with a thick course or dry-laid stone, creating a strong visual foundation for the handsome jacket of virtually indestructible Hardie fiber cement siding... Completing the exterior picture with a striking triple-stacked fascia. ...with a warm and woody knotty-pine front entrance. "Even the inspector complimented us on it." - Lifestyles, an advertising section of Evergreen newspapers, 2/2015
I took way to big a hit. I'd just cleaned my bowl after roughly 4,000 years and almost sucked the entire nugget...into my face. (Tokers know the feels.) "The-e-e-e-ere it goes," I remember saying... The familiar shift of a changing headspace lit up the mush between my ears... ...the length of a sitcom, which means four seconds in pot time. ...like I was watching through a pinhole in another dimension. I was way too high. (Awesome.) - Out Front, 2/18/2015
This session will also include life paths, changing past lives and interaction with parallel universes. ...we gather and experience a psychic sound offering... - Body Mind Spirit Celebration
Friday. I'm at the train station, on my way to work a short late shift. I watch a blonde on crutches, with her hair in two small tails on each side of the top of her head, swing her cast across the northbound tracks. It's the same spot, at the same station, where I saw the woman wave away a couple of guys looking for the bus station on Valentines Day. She is wearing some kind of mohair-lined coat over a green summer dress. She appears as if she may work at an Irish pancake house. Just as he train shows up, she asks me if this train goes to a particular station. She's asking about the very next station south, which is visible from this one. Every train both goes to and comes from there through here. Top o' the mornin' to you, las.
Swat team & police were just shooting at a house.. Happen right in front of me & my kids. I even gave some young lady a ride home..she was all scared & shakey.. - Westwood Residents Association FB page, 2/20/2015
Saturday. I have a nine-hour day ahead of me. I'm at the train station with a guy who is pacing around in circles. He is holding a bundle of papers to his chest with both arms. We get on the train, and he sit down and looks around, bewildered. We both get off at a stop in a private university. He walks to the street corner as he looks around, over to a posted bus schedule, and then heads my way. He wants to know which direction he may proceed to get to the other side of the interstate highway we are next to. He has a five o' clock shadow, and his jacket is unzipped, exposing an unbuttoned shirt collar and chest hair. He's like some absent-minded retro '70s guy. Eleven hours later, I leave work in a blizzard. After a half-hour hike to the end of the bus line, the bus picks me up. It's having transmission problems as we lurch back and forth on the snow-covered avenue. We pick up a guy in his fifties or sixties with a Mongolian hat and a stupid grin. When he tries to put his fare in the box, the driver waves him away. He tries to grab any railing he can, and the driver impatiently tells him to sit down.
Monday. I does not appear that the streets have been plowed for a couple of days. Either this, or the snow has simply continued to fall. From the train station, I follow Mr. Tina Turner Hair halfway to the deathburger before he stops, pauses, and retraces his steps. Upon retracing my own, back at the station, I make it ahead of him. He comes by, and says, "Snow for two days. No weather report?" I don't understand the question. From across the street comes a grey-haired guy on his bike. It's 18 degrees F out here at 5 AM, and this guy is not wearing his hood, just a ball cap. He is literally coughing non-stop. We get on a train, and several stops down the line, I watch him disembark. He has an unlit cigarette in his mouth. The next morning, around 8 AM, I head across the street to the bus stop. A slobbering little guy with missing teeth in his grin asks me if I have 75 cents. When I tell him that I have no change but instead use a bus pass, he tells me that I "at least" answered him "respectful. How about a cigarette?" I tell yet another street person that I don't smoke. "Dang, dude, you got it good." "Yeah, I guess," I reply. He takes his leave of me as soon as the bus shows up, telling me, "Well, god bless." Forty-five minutes later, I'm on a connecting bus shortly before nine in the morning. A couple of guys with tattoos are sharing their woes. The younger one appears to be in his twenties, and he has a tattoo on the left side of his face. I hear them discussing being picked up for outstanding warrants. The older one was in jail for eight days. "I made it up to population. My homeboy is the sheriff. I was working in the kitchen. I brought something back. He didn't want to search me." A girl who he knows mentioned about someone, "I boned him." He tells the other guy, "I got her name tatted. She asked me, 'Why is it so big?'" He talks about "stomping" a guy after "smashing" him, when he was with some others at one point. Did I hear him say that they were in an Arby's? "We had our rags on and shit. The customers were screaming. The manager tells me, 'You can't do that in here.'" I suspect that screaming customers are an occupational hazard. He says something else about being on Facebook.
Wednesday. On the bus up the street, I listen to half of a conversation between a woman and her phone. "Does he know Social Services were there? Does he know that Social Services is coming to his house? Is she depressed?" I head over to my old deathburger. I follow a guy who is a regular there and at my old bus stop around this time. He has long grey hair and a grey beard, and he strikes me as something of an intellectual. As we pass my old bus stop along the way, he sets down what appears to be a plastic shopping bag full of frozen dinners inside. He puts it down in the snow next to a wall before proceeding. Parked outside the deathburger is a shopping cart full of I don't know what, and a walking cane hanging on one side. Inside, it's none other than Mr. Footlong Goatee. All the hair is gone from his face. A couple of days later. I wake up. I don't want to get out of bed. 5 1/2 hours of sleep, and I have a 12-hour day ahead of me. At 4 AM it's 6 degrees F. Out in the freezing dark, all I see are people without hoods, gloves, or even knit hats. They have on ball caps or hoodies, or leather jackets. A couple of hours later, I make it to my last connecting bus to work. The driver is talking to a passenger about the monthly employee meeting. "Don't exceed your capabilities," they are told. "You see this face," she wants to reply. She worked last night until nine, and then had to be at work today at 5 AM. Mentioned at the meeting was something about the company having some extra funds from somewhere. "What should we do with this extra money?" the company asked. The driver suggests to us, "How about an ice machine (in the break room) that works? There's a big mural, of a bus, on the (break room) wall. How much did that cost? It isn't doing anything for me." A passenger asks, "How about more money for buses that (won't) break down?" to which she concurs. The next day is Saturday. My first Saturday off in 24 years. And, that's all folks...
The watchwords of the government were "discipline," "survival," and "rugged society." On TV...pretty little speakerines...warned the public weekly against dirt, dodging the draft, bad driving, too many babies. - Bloodworth
...the place is busy...with...an LGBTQ square-dancing troupe. Most of the congregants...are white, middle-class college graduates. "And that speaks to privilege, in terms of class and race..." - Westword, 2/26 - 3/4/2015
This...Denver police Lt. ...lives downtown and walks his labradoodle to brunch on weekends. "This is our city," he said. - Denver Post, 2/22/2015
