November 2016, "We're like horse crap. We're all over the place."

     The evening after Halloween, the side streets close to my neighborhood are quiet around 8:30 PM.  Another bike ride home from work.  This autumn has seen no precipitation and the trail has been clear of anything except fallen leaves.  Down the street, a police cruiser is parked with its lights on, at a corner dive bar called King's Court.  Overhead, the police helicopter turns its customary circles, it's light shining toward the scene.  The following evening, the helicopter must be tired of flying over my own neighborhood (and what police helicopter wouldn't get tired of my neighborhood), floating overhead before I am off the trail.  When I do approach the trailhead, I notice a couple of figures in the dark.  They are on the edge of the trail next to the river bank.  At first, I assume that they are fishing, though I see no fishing poles.  When I get up on the bridge, I'm down wind of who are actually three people who appear to be staring motionless at the river.  It's then I smell marijuana.  Thursday.  I'm up too early, and I don't have the energy to get out on the bike.  So I'm out the door to the bus.  At the newly renovated apartments across the street from where I live, two police cars are parked on the street and one is in the apartment parking lot.  The only thing missing is the police helicopter, perhaps on the roof.  The bus comes along and I get on.  The driver goes to the back, where he wakes a sleeping passenger who has missed his stop, apparently again.  After work, I am at a train station going on 8:30 PM.  A transit system security officer got a call from dispatch, who told him that a couple of people at the station were spotted on camera smoking marijuana.  he asks them if something on the ground belongs to them, and he checks their IDs before letting them proceed on their way.

     ...197 affordable new apartments in [my neighborhood]...  The $40 million project...replaces two mobile home parks that were at risk of condemnation.  All of the apartments will be available to households earning up to $33,660...  Del Corazon, "from the heart" in Spanish...will include vegetable gardens, a futsal soccer court...fitness center, computer center and car sharing services.  ...expected to open in Spring 2018.  Del Corazon is the latest development to be created under the Mayor's...challenge...  Announced in mid-2013...for the development, rehabilitation, or preservation of 3,000 affordable housing units over five years.  Recently, the city also created the city's first-ever dedicated...$15 million...source of annual funding to build and preserve...affordable housing.  - Denver Herald Dispatch, 10/27/2016

     ...Project Homeless Connect, a one-day event to...offer homeless people...medical checkups, clothing...a Homeless Court to help them clear up petty offenses...  ...a new city facility will soon open (north of where I live)  "Make sure they have a place to store their belongings."  (The council person for my district) hopes part of a new multi-million dollar affordable housing fund...will be used for homeless housing.  - the profile, 11/2016

     ...closed...after 40 years...  Famous for its Mexican food...burgers...and rabid Broncos fans, it's also the place where I first fell in love with my beautiful wife.  There's a lot of change occurring in Colorado right now, with neighborhood Italian and Mexican restaurants, friendly pet stores and entire blocks being bulldozed...  ...all the pot panhandlers hitting you up for a bud...on 16th Street.    - Elevation Outdoors, 11/2016

     "...the potential to be transformative, even in an area that's already vastly transformed."  I wanted a...market where people could do their gourmet shopping.  ...I wanted it to look like it had been there for a while.  In places like Highland, you have neighborhoods that were run down back in the '80s and became gentrified.  Here, we're creating a neighborhood...  ...I watched as...things changed.  After Work & Class came in, everything was different.  You can get tacos, ramen, sushi and pizza at Cart-Driver.  The RiNo district, and how it is developing, is representative of what should be happening if Denver is going to be up there as a major arts and foods city.  Younger people are a little more carefree, with more disposable income; they're enjoying the moment...dining out.  So the casual level is on the rise...going from fine dining to tacos and burritos. People have a short attention span.  People are more traveled.  They want things that are not here that are the norm elsewhere.  "A short attention span seems to bode well for a market concept."  - Westword, 11/3-9/2016

     As it has drawn more and more fundogs, the once sleepy town keeps evolving.  Over the Edge Sports...has been an institution here for over two decades...  It's hard not to end up headed for New-freaking-Jersey-style pizza at the Hot Tomato Café...  Buena Vista is hot.  ...things have been moving fast recently here with the...local paddler turned sustainable development sensei.  ...won a Wright Award...for...the free whitewater park, trails, homes, shops and eats by the river, as well as launch the new Vertex festival...which brought headliners like Trey Anastasio and Alabama Shakes...  ...a 43-year-old father of three from Chicago...tells me his wife issued him a hall pass to attend "Dad Camp."  "I've plateaued, man.  During the winter, I hang out at the terrain park with my daughters and see the things the kids can do these days.  I'm like 'I gotta try that!'"  ...landing new tricks...in-air bodywork and muscle memory training...   - Elevation Outdoors, 11/2016

     Friday.  I'm headed over a bridge late in the morning, on the way to work.  Walking toward me is someone I recognize from the bus in my neighborhood.  He's balding with white hair and white stubble on his weathered face.  I usually see him once in a blue moon.  He's usually in some kind of Jesus T-shirt, and he carries a dog-eared bible.  This morning, he's in an insulated jumpsuit and walking with a cane.  As I stop to write this, he has come back over to this side of the bridge.  he looks at me quizzically before looking around.  Further along the trek to work, down a connecting trail, I am traversing an underpass when an elderly man comes along.  He is carrying a snow shovel and another tool in one hand, and in his other he has a bicycle frame without any wheels.  At work, a customer comes in and spots my bike in back.  A fellow bike rider.  He inquires where and how far I ride, and mentions that he rides himself in favorable weather.  He will do 40 miles at one time.  I may do 50 in a round trip to and from work.  Asks where I live, and when I mention my street, he immediately knows the trail I take.  He strikes me as more of a loner, not one of our wealthy customers, not one of the lycra-clad cyclists who pass me in groups.  There do not appear to be many of us loners out there on the trail.  Some seven hours later, I am on the way home after work.  I am approaching my final turn off the trail before home.  Sitting there off to the side, under a streetlamp, is a woman next to a collapsible shopping cart.  She tells me, referring to my headlamp, "At least you have lights."  Yes, yes I do.

     'I know these African tribes,' wrote Trotha, the general entrusted with the task of putting down the Herero and the Nama: "They are all the same.  They respect nothing but force.  To exercise this force with brute terror and even with ferocity...was and is my policy.  I wipe out...rebellion tribes with streams of blood and streams of money.  Only by sowing in this way can anything be grown, anything that is stable.'  ...European production...led to a continual disintegration of traditional systems of community life, law and self-respect.  ...1954 an official inquiry into...Kenya African workers found...wages...'generally insufficient...even for their own needs...one half of the workers in private industry, and...one quarter of those on the public services, are in receipt of wages insufficient to provide for their...health, decency, and working efficiency,' a fairly bleak memorial to the benefits of sixty years of colonial rule.  ...colonial...trading and mining companies...played a key part in fixing the terms of trade: the prices...which African growers could realize and...were obliged to pay for European goods...  ...general...non-commercial investment remained very low...  - Davidson

     ...most...of Africa...is...still under colonial rule, and...that is not likely to be upset for many years to come.  Sensible Europeans know that the price of peaceable European survival on the continent is reform.  Are Africans capable of self-government?  Of course not in many areas.  ...an African in the Congo bush...is nowhere nearly as advanced as...a Negro in Harlem.  - Gunther

     Monday is the day before Election Day.  By the time I leave the house late in the morning, it's warm enough to ride in shorts.  I'm headed toward an underpass when I notice a couple with their dog walking in the distance.  When I pass them, I notice that the woman has no shoes on.   Around some more bends, I happen upon a small class of grade school children, all in their uniforms.  They are with their teacher walking along the trail.  This is the first class of school children I have ever run into on the trail.  I get to the shopping center where I work and Irun into a sandwich place for lunch.  There is an avuncular gentleman in line with his adult granddaughter.  He's in the standard tweed cap and flannel shirt, and a big Trump button.  When they get over to the soda dispenser, he tells her, "You know, I'm votin' for Trump for you guys."  She informs him that they will discuss this when they sit down.  I don't stay for their heart to heart.  The following day is Election Day.  It's late in the morning and I am back out on the trail through my neighborhood.  I spot who at first I think is a dad with a stroller.  As I approach him, I see it's actually a young guy in a shirt with a smiley face on the front, pushing a shopping cart loaded with crap.  I get out onto the next trail.  Just over the first bridge on the way to work, I see the same guy from yesterday who I recognize from the bus on my street.  This morning he carries a yellow plastic bag full of something in his hand.  Up ahead, another guy is sitting on a dirt path next to the trail, and appears to be tying or untying a cord.  He sits next to a bicycle and another shopping cart full of crap, and he's wearing a T-shirt with a grey skull on the front.  I pass as he sings along to his I pod. From there, I head out onto another trail.  I pass a couple of moms.  One has a stroller and the other two small dogs.  The one with the dogs asks the other, "Now who's the one who's crazy?"  The other replies, "I just think there's the ultimate conspiracy..."  Wednesday.  From the beginning of October 2015 until the end of last May, and beginning again last month, I have been taking the same route to and from work on these bike trails.  This month I have seen some firsts along this path.  Today are three more.  Along one trail, from across the river, a rotating tornado siren begins blasting for perhaps a minute.  A bit further along, I run into construction guys directing traffic for bicycles.  And down an adjoining bike trail, the concrete has just been shaved along the raised end of a slab, eliminating a bump I have been slowing down for since first running into it a year ago.  I arrive at my strip mall where I head for my favorite lunch place.  The waiter asks me if my phone is the latest 'something something.'  I reply that it is not.  He then says, "Oh, squirrel." (?)  Another eight hours later, I am out on the trail home, approaching the bridge I took toward the store where I worked this past summer.  Here in the dark, I immediately recognize what I thought, some weeks ago, was a tandem bicycle.  It has a distinctive pattern of lights on the frame.  Instead of a tandem bike, it is in fact a cargo bike. I let the rider turn in front of me onto this trail.  As soon as the bike rounds the bend up ahead I see it stopped to the side.  Further along is a guy on foot with a couple of dogs.  I slow down as not to startle the dogs.  He says, "Don't worry, they're friendly."

     Trump Protest Rally, 4:30 pm, (up the street from where I live).  Let's come together and channel our anger and fear into...peaceful action.  Now is not the time to be alone, now is not the time to be silent!  - Nextdoor Westwood, 11/9/2016

     ...I'd be leaving my very own doorstep on a long distance bicycle tour.  ...to...Burning Man.  Riding on the shoulder of I-80 was like navigating tire-popping landmines.  ...coming out of Carlin...  The next thing I remember...  We were splayed out on the side of the highway.  Dana lay buckled over in pain while I scampered around to get our bikes off the road.  ...'you broke your collarbone."  ...to the Battle Mountain Emergency Room.  ..they managed to X-ray the wrong side of her body...  ...the doctor barely spoke English...  - Elevation Outdoors, 11/2016

     Thursday.  I am on my way home through a neighborhood of opulence.  In the dark, a truck turns the corner and does not accelerate right away.  When the driver sees me, I scare the hell out of them. An hour later, I am on the last stretch of a long trail home in the dark.  Right next to the trail, someone has parked their bike where the bundle on the back sticks out in to the traffic. I barely see it in time to miss it.  The rider is listening to a radio.  Friday.  I get a message late yesterday that the sister can't workout on Sunday.  And I have to be to work early.   So, I am out the door at 6:04 AM and headed for a bus to the gym.  In the parking lot of the Chinese restaurant across the avenue, in the dark are three police cars which have a big pickup truck boxed in.  After my workout, the bus drops me off back on my boulevard.  I cross the street to the bus stop, where the shelter smells strongly of model glue.  The bus takes me home to get the bike, which I take to the train on the way to work.  Off the train, I am approaching a bridge over a creek.  At the close end is a middle-aged guy dismounted from his cruiser bike.  he is on his phone as his daughter waits for him on her own bike.  I wonder why she is not in school.  Eight and a half hours later, I am just across the street from work, headed back to the train station.  Right next to the curb, a homeowner is using a grinder on I can't see what in the dark, sending sparks into the air right next to me.  I return to the train, and to another station from where I proceed along a long sidewalk next to a busy avenue.  I refer to it as the bicycle superhighway, for its use by bicycles as the most direct way to and fro the train station.  Some distance along this sidewalk, I pass an auto accident which has just happen before I happen upon two drunk adult men with a child or two.  All are wearing sideways baseball caps.  I watch one of the adults put down a couple of aluminium cans.  The other tells myself and another cyclist behind me, "We have a situation here.  Sorry folks.  We saw an accident back there."  He mentions to the other drunk, "She's only seven."  The two of us must come off the sidewalk into the avenue to circumvent this sideshow.  A fire truck, police car, and ambulance rush past with sirens blaring.  A pair of drunks with a pair of children saw an accident back there.
     Saturday.  Closing in on 7 AM.  I'm back where I was yesterday morning, riding through the last neighborhood to work.  Yesterday and today, I am working at a store other than my own.  This neighborhood is right up against the interstate.  When developers advertise a dwelling next to the lightrail line, I don't believe that this is what they have in mind.  The bungalows are small, like the ones I go past in my own neighborhood.  Here, I pas one in serious need of paint.  These homes are decades old, and in between them are occasional brand new ones.  There's an American flag on a pole, secures against the house for the evening.  Another has sports wind spinners lining an overhang above the garage.  Yet another is displaying a 1st Infantry flag for the U.S. Army.  The Big Red One.  It's hung across a railing on the porch, giving the illusion that it's almost as large as the home.  Almost 12 hours later, I am a bit further past where the drunk guys and two kids were last night.  I'm headed down the alley behind the motor vehicle building and a Mexican shopping center.  Halfway to the exit are a small group of caballeros and women dressed in what otherwise appear to be white wedding dresses.  They are all dancing, facing the empty cinder block wall of the back of the center, next to a tractor trailer.  What they are doing there must be determined by someone tuned in to this gig far more than myself.  A short time later, I am at the Chinese place across my street.  There is a homeless individual inside, and one outside.  They each appear to be surrounded by some kind of zone of empty space.

     They hung out at the Lido, a bar for serious drinkers on Sherman Street, and at half a dozen other places in Denver's sketchy uptown and unregenerate downtown: : The Truckers Bar, the Green Spider, Café Les Tarots and, much later, a place called Muddy's.  Some got involved running art galleries or used bookshops or combinations of both.  ...always seemed to be a mere half-step ahead of the bill-collectors.  "Sometimes they paid the rent with food stamps.  They kept the place open to stay stoned and make art - and occasionally sell a book."  - Westword, 11/10-16/2016

     Anyone else hear something going off that sounds like a cannon?  I heard it around 3 am and several times today as well.  - Nextdoor Westwood, 11/13/2016

     A small pig is being picked up by the animal shelter (employees)...  If anyone has lost a pig come by...  - Nextdoor Westwood, 11/16/2016

     "This takes you to a place you've never been."  ...the longtime member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band...multi-instrumentalist Grammy winner.  Originating from Comcast's Westworks Studios In Centennial, "The Joey Canyon Show" is an intentional countrified throwback...in an era of...internet-stalled attention spans.  "I wanted to bring back the old variety-type television shows of yesteryear...  Now in its second season and in a newly-expanded hour format...available to 65 million homes on RFD-TV, a rural-country-formatted cable network...  "We're like horse crap.  We're all over the place."  The host is no fan of ...pop-dance music...on contemporary radio.  "It's not happening.  What they're doing now is just not country.  Country is a thing in the heart, traditional values.  It's patriotic.  It's love."  "I had a date with a set of twins the other night."  ...the Blstered Keesters house band, launch into the late Warren Zevon's..."Dirty Life and Times."  In this crowd, it won't take long to hear...quips about a  "controversial" collaboration with the Dixie Chicks...  Just randomly dropping the name Beyoncé is good for grins and giggles.  - Denver Herald Dispatch, 11/17 2016

     Hey, pre-gay, small-town Chris.  This is you in a decade or so.  You're...a full-blown homo now.  You look terrible in drag, and shaving is the worst.  ...you don't say "yes" anymore - it's now..."YAHHSS."  You're going to use gay apps...  Guys will randomly send their d+cks to you...order a blowjob if you want one.  ...they're your dad's age and want to cuddle...  - Out Front, 11/16/2016

Stolen Ford Explorer
Please call me if you see this vehicle, even if the plates don't match the above.  - Nextdoor Westwood, 11/19/2016

     Wednesday.  I must work open to close this day, as well as the day after Thanksgiving.  I am the nice one.  My boulevard is quiet this morning at 4:30 AM.  The bus takes me up the street, where I see that the former raided/shut down/Columbian drug lord money laundering medical marijuana place is done with its renovation.  It appears as if it may be a bank.  If only the Columbian drug lord waited to launder money through this new business.  On the floor of the shelter, at my bus stop old, is the guy who sleeps there each night.  When my connecting bus comes along, he is awake and watching it from under a blanket as he coughs.  On the bus I get to the train station, where I hop a train along with a transit system security officer to the next station down.  We disembark as the officer makes his way over to a guy asleep on a bench, with his feet on his skateboard.  The officer checks on him, and ten minutes later, he's awake and rolling along.

     For the majority...colonial education...had no meaning...  ...anti-colonial struggles...little of it owed anything to...school.  ...anti-colonial prophets...of African religion or separatist Christianity...Messianic teachings...  Although the period of full colonial installation had scarcely begun, and the last wars of pacification were still in progress, the year 1920 saw a meeting...and the formation of a National Congress of British West Africa.  'We desire, as the intelligentsia of our people, to promote unity among our people.'  During the weary years after 1920 more Africans escaped from stagnation at home...  Some went to western Europe where they could compare their own situation and struggles with those of other 'depressed classes.'  Others...to the United States, where they could learn from the teachings of Afro-American thinkers...  Still others reached the newly founded Soviet Union...  By the early 1930s...  What now mattered most was no longer what happened in the mission schools, but what happened in a host of little centres of political discussion...  In Egypt...Tunisia and Algeria, national movements became largely the work of middle-class intellectuals acting within the Islamic tradition...  ...challenging the right of the Caliphate...  ...Muslims...had seen the invading French army in the light of Christian power...  But they advanced to a more directly political ground in 1930...  ...breaking from Christian church community seen as dominated by Europeans for their own ends.  - Davidson

     Monsignor Claudio Celoi...informed me that Najib had requested that the pope mediate...between his regime and the Mujahidin.  Celoi was rightly skeptical that Muslims would accept the pope as a mediator.  - Tomsen

     There are four independent countries in Africa today, run by Africans...  A fifth...is...not run by Africans.  ...one of the richest colonies in the world, has an African prime minister and cabinet and a largely African legislature...  No fewer than six African colonies, as well as Somalia are..."trust" territories of the United Nations.  Each is administered by a European power...  ...the European rulers...have to the UN...particularly sensitive to their responsibilities.  ...Article 73 of the UN Charter...recognize that the interests of the native inhabitants are "paramount."  ...44 per cent of African Africa is free or almost free...  Five European powers rule the rest.  French policy is...to make Africans...Frenchmen.  ...the British...are giving Africans serious political responsibilities.  ...every British colony of consequence have by this time...Africans...taking part in their own government.  If Communism is ever let loose on the great mass of black illiterates...a development might arise like that in China.  - Gunther

     Thursday.  I have to fill in for another employee, who is under the weather.  It's open to close today.  Which is why I am out of the door at a quarter after 4 AM.  Across the street, at the gas station, a middle-aged guy with a backpack is digging in the dumpster.  I'm at the bus stop as the old guy with the cane comes along.  When the bus pulls up and the door opens, he is hesitant about crossing the distance between the curb and the doorway.  He goes to pull a handle to let down a seat which is in an upright position, and it falls down into place.  In a seat behind be is a young guy asleep, curled up in his Vans, his knit pants, and his hoodie.   get out at the corner.  In the quiet dark, a rooster crows somewhere.  An unmarked police car waits at the light.  Across the street, at my bus shelter of old, is the guy with a walker who lives there.  He's curled up in a corner, under his blanket.  Around the corner of a big drug store behind the bus stop comes a big black cat.  The bus comes along and whisks me to the train.  I take it to the next station, where I get out with a guy in red shoes, red sweat pants, and a red hoodie.  He asks me slowly if one of the "tracks" goes one particular direction.  I answer, "Yeah."  He asks if he may catch "an-y train...on...this...side?"  I answer, "Yeah."  He proceeds to watch a video on his phone.  He's easier to answer questions of than the guys here last month registering voters.
     The following morning, I am downtown on my way to the Denver Public Library Winter Used Booksale.  Earlier this week, I looked it up online to see which week it was and found out it was the end of this one.  Around 10 AM, I am coming from the bank and walking into the deathburger on the pedestrian mall.  This place is homeless central, a gathering place for those downtown without an abode.  As soon as I walk in, the first person I see is the current company mechanic of the business for which I am employed.  Work has just creeped into this narrative.  Sometime after the sale of my place of employment to new owners, the long time company mechanic was let go, along with most everyone else.  We then hired a guy who was living out of one of our stores.  Used to be our flagship store.  One of the new owners invited him to move in.  He was eventually dispatched for our current guy.  When I met him, he told me that he went to school to study HVAC, or air conditioning and heating.  Here he sits, and looks just like everyone else in here who has no place to go.  Like them, he's sitting at a small table not having ordered anything, talking to other homeless.  In his forties, his girlfriend appears to be one of our new employees, who is 26.  I assumed that she lived with him, but perhaps it's the other way around.  I watched him pick her up from work one evening last month, from the store where I was training her.  At the same time, a couple of drivers for the company made a delivery, and the four of them hung out outside for a little while, having a good time.  The drivers look like heavy rock fans.  The following week, I will come to find out that one of the deposit drop boxes for another store disappeared.  When questioned about it, our mechanic put the blame on one of the two other drivers, supposedly his friend, who was then fired.  The drop box was later found in a van they shared, as other money disappears at three stores, and the company realized that it was him instead.
     On Sunday, I went to see a very sad movie about a local Florida TV news anchor woman, who committed suicide on air in 1974.  ON the way there, the bike path comes out from under a bridge, where someone has placed a makeshift memorial to who I am sure is someone homeless.  It's next to the path along the river.  The movie is showing at a kind of art film center, and began at 4:30 PM when the place was relatively empty as it usually is for a Sunday matinee.  When I came out of this tragic film a couple of hours later, the lobby was filled with twenty- and thirty-somethings attending some kind of event or party.  It felt like a very odd scene.  On Monday, I worked our store up against the foothills, and an hour bike ride to or from the train.  On the way home after sundown, I find myself at the crest of a hill, overlooking every light of the west and south metro area.  It's quite a beautiful sight.  Another hour later and I am riding alongside a busy avenue in my neighborhood.  Two guys each have shopping carts full of crap.  Two families are also on the sidewalk, with rolling luggage.  A woman stands in the entrance to the parking lot of a strip mall, swaying back and forth, lighting a cigarette.

     "The Trinity Table...creates a celestial star gate...  The table rotates...four turns per minute.  Many attain Alpha, Theta and even a Delta state, within minutes..."  ...years of exploration into the "realms of the unexplained"...the esoteric intangible...  Variety of gifts and healing modalities...foot baths...sound healing...  We call in sacred space, pull angel cards...  ...a channelled vibrational language of light presence...  - natural awakenings, 11/2016

     ...of being in school in Fort Collins.  "I was part of Black Student Services on the CSU campus, because at the time, of the 25,000 students going there, only 400 of them were black.  There was a KKK group, like, ten miles from campus.  They would come to campus and hand out pamphlets and Bibles.  They tried to hand me one, and I was like, "You know I'm black, right?"  ...Kayla Marque's...debut, "Live & Die Like This...  The cover photo...captures a familiar scene.  A plastic chair rests on a cement porch strewn with discarded 40s, hollow Coors cardboard boxes and empty thirty-racks of PBR.  The front porch of a house like this used to be a familiar sight in Denver's Capitol Hill neighborhood, back when a group of friends could easily cover the rent in a dilapidated Victorian mansion and still get by.  "...it was a huge three-bedroom house for $1,200 a month...in 2011," Marque says, a fat sigh lamenting the rent prices of Denver's most recent past.  Dubbed the "House of 22 Moons" after an astrological reference shared by its inhabitants, the place became a 24/7 blowout.   - Westword, 11/24-30/2016

     As Denver gets busier and more crowded...we are even more sure that people are happy to be part of a community they can enjoy.
     That's the beauty of our urban village, a unique shopping area that grew out of the original enclave of independent entrepreneurs who started it all decades ago by building a retail neighborhood with superior products and outstanding service.  From clothing to edibles - today, it's better than ever.
     We all know about the chain stores-selling coffee by the paper cup.  Been there, done that.  (...writes...about arts, culture and the West.  A Denver native with a second career in design...)
     Think about which pieces [of clothing] can take you from the car to your next meeting, and finally, to cocktail hour...  ...your upcoming black tie event. 
     Find a professional to help with style advice.  The beard should enhance your features.  ...Famous Beard Oil Company Beard and Body wash.  - cherry creek now, holiday 2016  (I lived in Cherry Creek from 1991 to 2005.  I never did buttonhole a professional...)

     I love...ornament exchanges...  ...letters summarizing the year's highlights.  It's all so happy.  And beautiful.  "Nobody...wishes she were in Africa building schools rather than driving a...minivan filled with candy wrappers and dog hair."  ...the holidays are...  A time to appreciate the good and the beautiful.  - Colorado Parent, 12/2016

     Tuesday.  The cosmos is actually controlled by small business owners.  I bet you didn't even know this, did you?  For the decade between 2005 and 2015, I worked a 40-hour week of five days.  I had every Sunday off, and I had another day off during the week which usually was Friday but not always.  Since the beginning of last year, I have been working six days a week with most of my mornings off.  And I've been enjoying not having to get up at 3:30 AM every day for the past ten years.  But I digress.  This is to say that today, due to a fluke in the cosmic schedule, I have a weekday off which is not a holiday for the first time in at least a year.  And what do I do with this day off?  Get out on the bike, of course.  The back tire needs air.  The morning sees the second snow of the season.  I leave around 10:30 AM in a light drizzle.  Just past the interstate, I turn up a street past a new condominium next to the train.  There in the parking lot is a woman who appears soaked and miserably cold.  Her head is without any hat and her hair is wet.  She holds her coat closed with a fist as she grimaces.  She waits for traffic to clear, to push a big shopping cart full of stuff across the street.  I head to the bike shop and the tire gets air, and several blocks later I happen upon a diner where I have never been.  A sign in the window announces that "Dine and dashers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."  At the entrance, a homeless guy opens the door for me.
     The following morning, I am out on the trail through my side of town sometime around 5 AM.  From the weeds to the side of the trail, a coyote jumps out in the frigid dark and runs across the trail ahead of me.  The next day, Thanksgiving Day, is cold and sunny.  It's a beautiful day.  I'm headed across the street for an authentic Mexican breakfast.  On the corner is a pinion nut stand.  As it's not open as yet, it's missing it's canvas roof, the roaster, and any nuts.  Under the bare frame are a couple of cozy chairs.  I can see who I think is a woman in one of the chairs, and I hear someone yelling at who I think is her.  When I get close, I can see that it's a homeless young guy who is randomly yelling at the traffic.  He's in a hoodie with "Just Do It" on the front, in rainbow letters.  Saturday.  I'm on a train to work around 6:30 AM.  I got on with a couple of middle-aged down and out-looking guys.  They take a seat behind another one.  The train takes off, and the one already on the train begins yelling that the train is going too fast.  He gets out at the next stop. After work, I am on a train downtown to purchase a Christmas present.  It's around 5:30 PM.  I am sitting across from a middle-aged woman who is dressed like everyone else on this train.  But there are deep lines in her face.  And I get the sense that she is most comfortable not having to respond to the people or the environment.  When the train gets downtown, she either jumps or stumbles off the steps.  As I head down the platform to the pedestrian mall shuttle, I approach a guy with a grey beard in a leather bomber jacket and jeans.  Once again, he looks like everyone else.  But he is staring at the crowd apprehensively.  And he standing in the middle of everything, as if he has absolutely nowhere to go.  As I approach, he asks me if I "have a ticket that" I am "not going to use any more..."  The following morning, I have breakfast with my sister, who tells me that there are 10,000 homeless in the city.

     The victim of a two-car crash [a few yards from my home] died after sustaining a gunshot wound...  ...deceased at approximately 4 p.m..  - thedenverchannel.com, 11/26/2016

     A couple of days later, a local news website reports that the "perp" was in his car behind the victim at a red light.  He honked at the victim after seven seconds.  The guy in front flipped him off.  So he drove around him and shot him.  He claims that his intent was not to hit him, but to "prove his point."  He has tattoos on parts of his face.  His eyebrows are shaved and tattooed.  He has the standard tear drop tattoo at a corner of his eye, as well as a rosary tattoo.  The criminal fascination with both Christ and Mary has been one particular oddity in the mystery to me in this life on my neighborhood streets.  I suppose that it's official.  You can be shot and killed for stopping too long at an intersection on my street.  On Tuesday, I am down the trail to work on one of the chilly but otherwise beautiful waning days of November.  On this leg of the trail, spread into the distance are fields, gravel yards, and junk yards.  Around noon, I am coming across a bridge over a tributary of the Platte river.  Standing on the bridge and looking out upon the river are a couple of guys.  One is in a camouflaged coat, and the other is wearing a pale green blanket over his clothes, which includes a pair of bright red sweat pants.  The pair appear as if they walked out of an episode of The Waltons.  Some eight hours later, on the way home, further up from here is someone inside a sleeping bag.  They are under a bridge, on the side of the trail, with their roll away luggage at one end of their bedroll.
     The following morning, I am out on the trail early.  If I can make it to work in time, I can pick up my paycheck and cash it, and then make it back to work on time.  I pass under the bridge where someone was inside their sleeping bag for the night.  They're gone this morning.  By 10:30 PM, I am down a connecting trail through a series of parks.  I come up behind someone walking their bike.  It's a guy in skinny black jeans with a bandana in the back left pocket, a designer motorcycle jacket, horn rimmed jacket, and has his hair greased back.  As I pass him, he pulls out his phone.  When I get to work, my paycheck isn't there.  I decide to have lunch at my favorite place in this shopping center.  One woman tells another, both at another table, that she is part of a $10 million deal at work, and something about a new CFO.  "My husband does work down here" in the center, she mentions to her lunch companion, "and he recommended this place."  That's a positive note upon which to end this month, and a sign of the Age of Moloch...