...hasn't opened a taco joint... Hasn't ventured into an abandoned warehouse in RiNo or joined the crowd on Tennyson Street, and he doesn't grow his own produce on a farm. I showed up early on a Saturday night, knowing ho quickly waits can develop...at hotspots across suburbia. Like many of you, I've endured long waits at the likes of P.F. Chang's... Around us, multi-generational families filed in, some with a birthday to celebrate. Groups of plaid-shirted guys in trucker hats downed gravy-cheese fries. Chatty women of a certain age ate dessert and nursed mugs of coffee. The crowd skewed both older and younger tha in Uptown, with fewer millennials... - Westword, 12/1-7/2016
...any sultan - is a pope, because he is the supreme religious head of the community. ...he must be anointed...by...a congregation of Moslem holy men... The Sultan is a puppet... ...France wanted, (1) an "old" man...not...inclined to absorb nationalist ideas, and (2) one completely docile. Whether the new Sultan can read or write is doubtful... The Sultan gets...around $850,000...a year... I asked...Resident General...where all the money came from. "From the people. From the soil. ...if it rains. If it doesn't rain enough, there isn't any money." ...the French...to build up the...Sultan's prestige...even call him a "nationalist" (of the moderate wing) as a sop to nationalist sentiment. Nobody has any future anywhere in Africa these days unless he is some sort of nationalist, even the Sultan... The deposed Sultan... ...the Berber leader... Late in 1950 he called angrily on the...ex-Sultan...and accused him of being responsible for nationalist unrest in...Berber villages. ...that he, the Sultan, a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed ought to be ashamed...for dealing with reactionaries and Communists. This played directly into the French hand. His masters were, moreover, uneasy about...his children. ...the two elder daughters...twenty-two and twenty respectively. They were allowed to go shopping unescorted....wore western dress without veils...hanging around milk bars and listening to...music. They had their photographs taken and put on display, and...made talks on the radio. The French "colons" (settlers) were now determined to get rid of him. ...the conservative pashas and caids...turned against him, because of his association with the nationalists, the "Lumpen-proletariat" of the towns. The feudal pashas hated the "riffraff" of urban agitators, who, if they ever came to power, would certainly take away their own feudal privileges. The caids do not like the big cities. It was a revolt of the country bishops against the pope. Who and what run French North Africa? (1) The French government. (2) Islam. (3) A Moslem feudal class that lives off the land. (4) French "colons (settlers). But even if French administration was beneficial plenty...fought against it for years. "Not one of the native tribes came over to us. Not one submitted without a fight. Not one of them accepted us without having been conquered by arms." ..roads are of three catagories, those without restriction at any time, those open only by day, and those which may not be traversed at all without military authorization. ...Fez and Marakesh are in restricted areas... More than half the country...is..."zone d'insecurite'. ...French Morocco... American GI's...saunter down streets traversed by Moslem women so heavily veiled that they look like tall white thumbs. Arabs are forbidden to assemble in the streets, even in groups of two or three, and the police watch everybody. ...the European community is on edge. I never succeeded in seeing a single conspicuous nationalist... ...primitive, vivacious color. ...indigo...black as blindness. ...mahogany, bronze, chocolate, beige, russet, tar-paper. ...a prancing white stallion...heaps of camel meat... ...lambent pools of ultramarine and scarlet. This kaleidoscopic , spectrum-colored market reaches climax, comes to a boil...and spews out and over...a half dozen...city blocks... ...the snake charmers, the fire eaters, the scribes taking down letters, the storytellers...the magicians with their live doves. ...the chain of blind beggars that cuts its way through the throbbing crowds.. "Islam...is not a religion with profound thoughts on God and the world. . . . It has preserved all the instincts of the primitive religious mind and is...able to offer itself to the uncivilized and half-civilized peoples...in the form on monotheism most easily accessible to them . . . ." - Gunther
Saturday. 8 AM. I have a rare Saturday shift where I am only closing. I am at a deathburger down the street from where I live. I'm here to grab breakfast before a run into the supermarket and then deposit my paycheck at the bank. It was a week or two ago when I saw a young homeless guy sitting at a closed pinion nut stand, yelling at traffic. He's here this morning, in his "Just Do It" shirt. This has been a freezing cold week. He appears to be eating a slice of pizza from the gas station across the street. Thirteen and a half hours later, I am out of a long day at work and walking to the platform of the train station nearby. In front of an elevator to the train platform, in a tunnel underneath the interstate, are a well dressed elderly couple. The husband is pacing and checking his watch. In front of the elevator entrance is a big puddle of urine. I cross into and up the great urine elevator to the platform, where upper class people are waiting for a train downtown. Half of them are dressed in green, as if we are playing the Packers in some kind of night game. I pile on the train with the families. I hear one guy mention going to see The Nutcracker this evening. I hop off the train and onto a bus. I listen to a couple of guys in back talking about how high they were. "I can't believe you were that high." "I was high, but not that high." When I get home, I head over to get a pizza for dinner at a place behind where I live. Along the way, I pass the Vietnamese place where I usually have dinner on Sundays. Looking inside, I see it's full of Caucasians, the only ones I ever see in my neighborhood. And the place is full. Here's a couple who appear as if they are out on a high school date. Here's some kind of bohemian group. Between the pizza place and here is a tiny Vietnamese strip mall. Outside, having a smoke, is a Caucasian woman. In this mall are two Vietnamese restaurants, full of Caucasian customers. At the pizza place is the first Caucasian employee I've seen there, a manager of all of three days. She's the first one there to ever ask me my name. If she doesn't, she tells me, the computer will make up a name. So every pizza I've ever carried out from here must have been under some made up name which I never asked about and no one has ever told me. I get the impression that she is the only one who knows this, who has ever worked here or ever will. I have someone on the inside now, just like that. She looks like she's my age, and I don't notice that she's short until I see her jump every time she has to look at a screen with the times that each pizza is done. She's also the first one to ever tell me when my pizza will be ready, which is why she is jumping. What is someone like her doing in this tiny place with no new furnishings since the late 1970s? There's even a disco song coming out of the speakers.
Moors make faithful servants in European households, but they are hard to train... ...because they have been brought up in tents... They find it difficult to move a chair through a door, or put a bottle on a shelf. ...they do not understand instinctively the dimensions of a fixed, solid universe. ...a good Moslem is...to answer the call...for a jihad... But...the call has not sounded for a brace of centuries. Many Mohammedans ...believe...in assorted spooks, spirits, and superstitions...and avoid the Evil Eye. ...of Islam... This superiority, this consciousness of...an elite class, is a powerful cement binding Islamic communities together. For several generations after Mohammed, the outstanding fact about Islam was its inflammatory militancy. ...the Moslems had, by and large, comparatively little political sense. They had small interest in stable administration or the evolution of sound governmental procedures. Europeans...isolated specialists in Arab Culture. ...converted to Islam...are often homosexual. The unifying factor in Arab nationalism is religion. The French...try not to...give the nationalists opportunity to make political protest on religious grounds... Even sweepers in mosques are...getting salaries from the French administration. "If we could only abolish Islam, our task would be infinitely easier." Communist infiltration into the Moslem world is an increasingly dangerous problem.
This...chieftain...is a kind of Oriental Charles the Bold, who fought 121 pitched battles in his youth, has been wounded thirty-two times, and is proud of the number of men he has killed by his own hand. ...and has the sophistication of a really first-rate cardinal. ...his private "army' of Berber warriors...numbers about 300,000. Probably...the last feudal lord on earth... ...he has always played the French side. ...is...a French associate... ...is a devout Moslem... He has never touched alcohol...but has no objection to serving it...to European guests. He plays good golf, and his private course...is...the best in North Africa. ...Winston Churchill...has several times visited him... This is not primitive Africa. This is feudal Africa. I do not think that anywhere else in the world could a feudal baron, living in a castle...summon...two hundred women...members of the harem [and] principals in a "corps de ballet." Until France came most of the noblemen...were...at war with one another. Family fought against family, tribe fought tribe, as in Europe in the twelfth century. The serfs are...free to go; but where would they go? ...this is changing. People do want money. They want to buy Coca-Cola and chewing gum... ...a groping movement... I left...with two...impressions: (a0 these are the Middle ages; (b) they are over. - Gunther
Najib's collapse...marked the end of the era of Western imperialism in South Asia dating back to the eighteenth century. The Soviet Union had vanished. The ideological contest between communism and Islam was no longer relevant. Inside Afghanistan, the extremist versions of Islam exported to Afghanistan from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran now competed with each other and with the mild, indigenous Afghan Hanafi order. The Islamic sects gaining beachheads in war-racked Afghanistan during the 1980s and 1990s were in agreement that the country should be...governed by an ultraconservative version of Sharia, not constitutions and elections. The volatile mix...threatened...a trembling linchpin of diverse tribes, ethnic and religious groups.. Beginning in May and through the summer and fall of 1992, tough Iranian-trained Wahdat Shia based in Kabul's western suburbs fought... In May and June the death toll...climbed into hundreds of combatants and civilians. ...some 800 were being held hostage. Ethnic and sectarian factions carved Kabul's neighborhoods into heavily guarded enclaves. Large posters of Ayatollah Khomeini were posted in...West Kabul.. ...Mujahidin wandered the streets conducting home invasions, robberies, murders, and rapes... ...sporadic shelling of the open city added to the mayhem. By August, ...bombardments had killed more than 1,800 civilians...destroyed whole residential areas, and sent some 500,000 people fleeing from the capital in all directions. ...about Soviet POWs. Over half of the POWs were from the Muslim-populated Central Asian Republics. The Mujahidin accepted them as fellow Muslims. Most of the Soviet POWs had married Afghans and melded into the local communities. All had converted to Islam. - Tomsen
The total American forces in Morocco number 7,500. The [U.S.] Air Force wanted 32,000...so that...anti-aircraft defences would always be completely manned, but the French refused... ...a Moroccan truck driver gets about half what a French truck driver gets, who in turn gets half what an American gets... ...GIs will not eat French bread...and so bakeries had to be built... The Americans broadcast a daily program on Radio-Moor...and for the first time in their lives hear American music, talks, and entertainment. Perhaps...at some date now remote, we can support the growth of nationalist sentiment... It may lose us Africa, the greatest of all prizes in the cold war. ...parts of Africa may be in a position to make their own policy in the future, and they may not choose us. - Gunther
...someone might sit atop our own ruins and wonder whatever happened to the Americans. Located on the edge of Baghdad, Falcon was...in what used to be called the "Sunni Triangle of Death" (Army and Embassy PR people ordered the term embargoed once they wanted us to seem like we were winning). FOB Falcon was a cement factory before the Army arrived uninvited in 2003. ...they had won the war that month. ...the things they appropriated had belonged to someone else...the Army held elaborate ceremonies to "gift" the places back to ungrateful Iraqis... FOB Falcon was something from a "Mad Max" movie, run-down, apocalyptic. ...our American garbage...picked over by the Iraqis, who fought with feral dogs and scavenger birds... The assembled houses of the Iraqis...with...large discarded placards reading "deadly Force Authorized" as roofs. On the FOB itself, the Army cleaned things up like teenagers tidied their rooms, pushing refuse aside only enough to make room for new stuff. - We Meant Well, by P. Van Buren, 2011
We have looked at the lack of diversity as a problem for years in the outdoor industry, with little forward progress. Have we also forgotten how to speak to people who don't buy $5,000 mountain bikes or care about new GoPro mounts or the latest waterproof/breathable fabric? ...backpacking trips with solar panels and wifi.
After...a week in Alaska...heliskiing and splitboarding...weekend trips to the backcountry were no longer going to cut it. "When I was a teenager [in] Morth Carolina, I saw...big mountain snowboarder Victoria Jealouse riding a big Alaska spine in the magazine 'Teen.' I...set my sights on someday following in Jealouse's footsteps. ...climbing...Mt. Baker and Mt. Shukshan... My Mind focused on the essentials: warmth, food and sleep. ...made me appreciate the simplicity of life, especially after our group witnessed a huge D4 avalanche. ..it's important to recognize how the snowpack is reacting, and then managing and assessing line selection based on hazards. ...after Liz Daley died in an avalanche in 2014. Liz...rode for...Karakoram BC...and...was one of my influences... I inquired with the company... They offered to bring me on... - Elevation Outdoors, 12/2016
Sunday. 1 PM. I am in between coming from a workout and grocery shopping, and having dinner with the family. I'm on my way to pick up some medicine at the supermarket pharmacy, pedalling down a residential street. I pass a parked car missing, once again, the right front corner of the body as well as the front grill. Demolition derby is the new street racing. Just wait until there is ice on the roads. After collecting my medicine, I grab lunch at a deathburger not far from the supermarket. On the corner is a laundry, and behind it is some kind of small hobo encampment. The following Monday night, shortly after 8 PM. I step off the bus back onto my street. At the stop on the corner is a guy wrapped in a sleeping bag, standing as if he is waiting for someone or something. When I get home and go to bed, I am so tired that I forget to set my alarm. The following morning, I awake six minutes before I would otherwise catch my connecting bus, all the way up the street. I have no choice but to get on the bike. The good news is, I've had a decent sleep, the first one in days. So feel like riding the bike, I do. Close to a half hour after leaving home, I am on an underpass beneath the train. Headed toward me on the walkway is a guy wrapped in a sleeping bag. Is he the same one from last night? The following morning, I am expecting a ride to work, from my boss no less. Snow and cold. This evening is forecast to be -7 degrees F overnight. Due to road conditions, we may not have time to grab breakfast. I head across the street to the gas station before she arrives, to grab a burrito. Inside, along with the construction guys filling up on energy drinks, cigarettes, and scratch tickets, is a lone grandmother. I'm in insulated pants and a winter coat. I watch her shuffle out of her car and inside wearing an open sweater, pajama bottoms, and crocs.
He detests...nationalists... "You have to be for us or against us," he kept saying. And this, of course, is why he lost his job since...nationalism "has" to be dealt with as a legitimate force, and some distinction made between moderates and terrorists. The French...are so proud of their "misson civilsatrice" that they...assume that this alone justifies their presence in Morocco. ...they do not accept "the dogma that the only way to make a country evolve is to grant it sovereignty." And what would independence...produce? ...feudal chaos, or exploitation by...Moors, or the Communists? ...the French say...one must define "people." Are the Moroccans a "people?" ...that a handful of conspirators in Cairo should dare to speak for "human rights"... Half a dozen factors, they say, tend to make Morocco "safe." ...it is so far west, isolated from the rest of the revolutionary Arab world by the Sahara and Algeria. ...Moroccans are...so "incompetent." ...the...majority is still loyal. - Gunther
Of the various armed groups that had pitched up...many were little more than neighborhood self-defense committees...only a bunch of opportunists and cowards. "Most of them were just guys from the neighborhood who'd managed to get their hands on some guns. ...I'd grown up with them... But more and more were coming in from the outside... ...a lot of the fighters were on drugs... "...most of the"...Free Syrian Army..."in Weir... If another group came into the area, they would turn around and join that group." ...in...Libya... Within weeks, the number of "revolutionaries"...20,000...had mushroomed to some 250,000. ...the structure of the compensation...the Transitional National Council, announced...stipends to all...who had fought...the Qaddafi regime...created an incentive for new armed groups...to form but to remain independent of any central command... ...by the close of 2012, Libyan militias - some...no more than tribal or criminal gangs - had begun carving the country into rival feifs...bankrolled by the very central government that they were undermining. ...in Syria...so many new militias competing with the plethora of already existing ones, it was quite impossible to keep track of them all. For sheer daring and cruelty, however, one group stood out: the Islamic State... ISIS had used rape and sexual slavery as a weapon of war to destroy the fabric of Yazidi society... I met two teenaged girls who had escaped from ISIS after one month, along with a relative I took to be her mother - she looked perhaps 45 years old...sunken cheeks, missing teeth, greying hair - who had been held for eight months. Except this woman wasn't their mother, she was their older sister, and she was only 24. ...she had feigned deafness, which is seen by ISIS as a sign of mental illness... "You see? ...Daesh controlled this village, and the people living here had no problem with them, they stayed throughout. ...I would erase this place. This was their message to Daesh. 'Spare us, we are with you, we aren't Kurds.' And...the Arabs stayed throughout." As we continued across Sinjar mountain, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "This is our time now. Iraq is gone. Syria is gone. Now it is our time." - The New York Times Magazine, 8/14/2016
"The police department depends on you to be its eyes and ears," Denver Police District Six Commander...has been telling citizens worried about increased numbers of homeless people in their neighborhoods. Many residents voiced concerns on Nextdoor.com, the neighborhood social media site. "I have a homeless man, sometimes multiple, who has made his home in a shaded corner of my property... ...creating a total mess around my garage, doing drugs on my driveway...with his friends and snarling at my roommates... ...becoming increasingly more aggressive... Frustration was the common theme...with the failure of the city, personified by Denver's police (DPD), to stop homeless people from using both public and private property to sleep, urinate, defecate and often abuse drugs and alcohol. ...there's been an overall increase in the homeless... ...police from all over the western region...said the top problems...were mental illness and homelessness. "The only one who didn't have the problem was...Cherry Hills." Denver has spent millions of dollars, but homelessness [keeps] growing faster than resources. - the profile, 12/2016
This was literally a desert. There's no water here. Things seemed insurmountable. Inverness was using aquiferrs for long time. They were among the first to recycle their water for their golf course. There were a lot of creative deals made with Denver Water, so they got what they needed by going outside of the way things are usually done. The state-of-these-art electronics that the Tech Center had were probably the first fiber-optic cables ever laid in the country. - Denver-Herald Dispatch, 12/8/2016
I yell at the cops. I scream at them because I am passionate. I am fighting. There is no one out there fighting for us. You see a crane over there building a building. You see new businesses opening. You see the city growing. The mayor, he is trying to build something to bring up more businesses. But they're not building affordable housing for people like us. We aren't part of the city's plan. We try to work. We go to work for Ready Man or for a tip agency or day labor and we make nickels and dimes, pieces of crumbs. We can't get out of here We can't get our own place.
We sleep out here and live out here. This is the end of the road. We aren't here because we want to be... It feels like (the police) come here to make war. All you're doing when you move us from downtown is we move to the suburbs. We move to the parks. We move to the alleys. Then when it's all clear we move back.
I stayed in a shelter the first two weeks, but I was eaten up by bed bugs. You can wait for an hour or longer for a bus to come by with an opening for a handicapped person. ...there is no place to go. We work hard to make these sidewalks work. We wake up every morning and sweep the sidewalks clear. ...enough of us do it to make it work. We care about it being clean. We care about Mother Earth.
Let tonight by my last night in the shelter
Tomorrow when I wake
Let me cook in my kitchen
Use my bathroom
No bugs in my bed
Let tonight
Be the last night in the shelter
This is my prayer - Denver Voice, 12/2016
Thursday. In the late afternoon, I am up the street at the drug store to get some Christmas cards made. Outside of the store are a couple of homeless guys. One is wrapped in a blanket, and the temperature is not far above 0 degrees F. I'm inside, scrolling through photo Christmas card designs on a monitor, and these guys are outside in the below freezing cold. One claims he hasn't any socks on. I wonder if they are going to stay awake all night just to stay alive. If memory serves, this is the first week during my working life, excluding previous vacations, when I've had more than a single day off. Thursday and Saturday. On Friday evening, the ride home is one of the first this season over icy streets. In the ambient street light I take it slow, slow. On Sunday, I'm at a copy place on the other side of the interstate, where after an hour and a half I drop $83. I run across the street to a deathburger. Next to the rack where I lock up my bike is a homeless guy. He's sitting in the sun reading or looking at something with his walker parked next to him. As I go inside, he gets up to leave. From my seat, I watch a skinny, middle-aged guy, dressed as a woman, come across the parking lot and inside.
We are the first generation that didn't inherit religious identity like we do a hometown. The globe right now is like a map of the teenage brain, prone to recklessness and destruction in places... So many are relentless in telling the story of destruction that it seriously colors how we tell the story of our time. The pain and fear alive in the world surface as anger and violence, and some of us are called to be calmers of fear. - Natural Awakenings, 12/2016
...many of the jobs created since the economy started recovering from the recession were in service industries, located primarily in large metropolitan areas - not in small towns and rural areas... ...median household income outside of metropolitan areas fell 2 percent. Metropolitan areas...where most Hispanics, blacks, and Asians live. The low-end service jobs there...offer a more hopeful future than a shrinking employment base. "It has been a good decade for metropolitan America. ...you can't underestimate the economic and social pain across the rural tier." ...such clear divisions - less educated whites living in depressed rural areas... - The New York Times, 12/14/2016
....hundreds of thousands of Moroccans have no land at all, must work on white farms and are...underpaid. ..."colons" talk on occasion about making a revolt against Paris, and founding their own republic in Morocco. They despise men like Mendes-France...and want Moroccan nationalism wiped out forcibly once and for all. Few Frenchmen would refuse an invitation to dinner with the Pasha of Marakesh, or...a prominent caid...if a Moor is rich enough, prominent enough, ad culturally acceptable he may be admitted to the periphery of French society. Their hope is to make "Frenchmen" out of educated Moors...deflected out of the nationalist movement... The fact the India, Ceylon, Pakistan, Burma and so on have become free serves...to make France doubly tenacious about holding what parts of Africa it has. What the political scientists call "responsible" government does not exist, that is government by a cabinet and legislature responsible in some measure to the people. Civil liberties do not exist. There is no freedom of the press, or of speech, or of assembly. The country has been in a state of siege...martial law - for more than thirty years. There is no penal code or code of civil law. Freedom of movement is severely restricted... Even the Moroccan Boy Scout organization has been disbanded. Political expression and organization are forbidden. The number of Moroccan nationalists in concentration camps...probably runs into the thousands. ...in Marakesh a schoolteacher asked members of her class what they would like for Christmas. One little girl piped up, "A machine gun!" Probably she meant this as a joke, but her father was arrested the next day. - Gunther
In Peshawar, Abdul Haq's angry comments reflected the general sentiments of moderate Afghans I met. I included their views in my reporting to Washington... "...you gave military resources only to kill communists. Your withdrawal is...not proving that you care about democracy here. ...people here in Afghanistan...want peace and security and democracy. ...they are the ones you are abandoning. Your withdrawal is strengthening the radicals. ...Pakistani and Arab...monsters are turning on the Afghan people, but they will turn on you, too. If they come to power..." - Tomsen
...looking for the head of democracy and human rights...and found some 21-year-old
political appointee who had no idea what was going on. It was insane. I was looking for guidance on Iraqi law and was met by a 22-year-old American in charge of the Ministry of Justice who said, "Don't worry about that, I'm pretty sure we're going to rewrite that constitution anyway." A cleric...called..."a woman on the town council...the driving force for the women's group...a Baathist and a Zionist, etc. ... My brain is on overdrive... It's like you're on the verge of something explosive and just trying to contain it." The elite secular Iraqi women who had recently returned from exile were unnerved... Conservative women...resented [a local conference on women's empowerment] and its dubious teachings. "Basra, my home... You find Hezbullah offices... Hamas offices in Nasiriya. The political parties are controlling their minds..." Although...the kidnappings and beheadings would not begin for another month, the us-versus-them atmosphere had already begun to take over the Shiite world. ...so many Iraqis these days wouldn't dare speak English in [one's] cell phone...on the street. - The New York Times Magazine, 9/19/2004
...the scattershot nature of the Arab spring...one pattern does emerge, and it is striking. The six most profoundly affected - Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen - are all republics, rather than monarchies. And of these six, the three that have disintegrated so completely as to raise doubt that they will ever again exist as functioning states - Iraq, Syria and Libya - are all...created by Western imperial powers in the early 20th century. In each, little thought was given to national coherence, and even less to tribal or sectarian divisions. In October 2002...I asked...Qaddafi...who would benefit [from the] Iraq invasion... "Bin Laden," he said. "...if the Saddam government collapses...actions against Americans will be considered jihad." ...Qaddifi's rule...bore...resemblance...more to...the Baathist regimes of. Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Hafez al-Assad in Syria. ...the dictators developed elaborate personality cults...and aligned themselves with the "anti-imperialist" bloc of Arab nations...deepening ties with the Soviet Union. True to the Baathist credo of "Arab socialism" and Qaddifi's third universal theory, all three countries embarked on ambitious public works projects... At the same time, the states established extravagantly bloated governmental structures...that...quickly became the main pillars of the economy... "Everybody was connected to the state somehow. For their housing, for their job. It was impossible to exist outside of it." For all their revolutionary rhetoric, the dictators of Libya, Iraq, and Syria remained ever mindful that their...subjects' primary loyalty lay...to their ethnic group or religious sect. ...all three...entered into elaborate and labyrinthine alliances with various tribes and clans. ..Saddam Hussein...endeavored to sprinkle just enough Sunnis and Kurds through his administration to lend it an ecumenical sheen. ...Hafez al-Assad's...de facto alliance with the nation's Christian community... ...in Libya...what developed there over the millenniums was essentially a series of semiautonomous city-states that resisted central rule. And...Libya, Iraq and Syria erected some of the most brutal security apparatuses to be found in the world. "In the last few days of Mubarak, when we could see what was coming, I and some of the other independents, we tried to talk to all the different political factions. 'Seize power. Don't wait for permission. Just seize power now before the military steps in.'" - The New York Times Magazine, 8/14/2016
Saturday. So much for having three days off. At 5:30 AM, it's 3 degrees F with the forecast high of 8. A dusting of snow is coming down on a covered city. I "run"' over to the gas station across the street before marching down a sidewalk underneath drifts. As I pass the stop nest to the gas station, a guy stands in the shelter. Like so many I will see this early morning, he is wearing only a hoodie. I'm in my warmest coat and longjohns under lined pants. He isn't shivering. In fact, he stares motionless out into the snowy dark like some kind of hypnotized zombie. When I get up to my Saturday bus stop, the bus scoops me up and takes me to the train. Many here are in nothing more than hoodies. One kid stands with his hands inside his sleeves. A middle-aged guy comes along in his hoodie, coffee in hand. He doesn't even appear chilly. After some minutes, he says to me, "I think the snow will really take some people by surprise." (Really? It's only been on the news all week, complete with a play-by-play of its approach.) "I had my weather radio set last night, and it woke me up at 1:30 this morning. So I knew something was up." No, I don't wtf a "weather radio" is.
...before more people die on my block. [At a middle school on my street, the] campus is the hub for transporting kids, yet...there is a lot of speeding and drunk cars. There were 12 hit and run accidents on this block alone (my car has been hit three times). Last spring, we met with the traffic manager and DPS security... There were promises... No actions were taken. And now the situation is far worse,as we have construction... (...neither the school nor residents were notified...) ...12/16/2016, [a few streets away from my home] another adult was harmed. Earlier this year, a student was hit. On November 26, someone was shot due to... {...the driver behind...the victim...did not see the stop sign and shot the victim). - Nextdoor Westwood, 12/18/2016
Sunday. It's minus one degree F. At 8 AM I'm out at the stop for the bus I take to go grocery shopping. I am joined by an elderly guy on his phone. He's complaining that the bus should have been here fifteen minutes ago. That sounds wrong, this bus only comes every half an hour this early on a Sunday. In a few minutes, the bus comes over the hill, and he begins waving his arms. Perhaps a couple of hours later, I am outside of the supermarket. The temperature has warmed up considerably and a couple is sitting at an outdoor table, having a smoke. Along come a young, tall guy of Asian descent. He's in a T-shirt and basketball shorts. He wants to know if they can spare a cigarette. I see him in his car, driving away with his window cracked, cigarette hanging out the window.
Monday evening. 8:30 PM. I arrive from work at a station where I step out just in time to watch my bus home pulling away. I turn around and get back on the train to the next stop. There is another bus I can take home. At the start of last week I came down with a cold, and I haven't been out on the bike. This evening, I begin to feel shaky and very tired. I step out at this station and just miss another bus, but I know from experience that it won't hook me up with a final connecting bus any faster than the next one. So I use plan C. I head to the gate and sit on the bench for a brief wait. I feel as though I have a slight fever. Though there is still snow on the ground from a few days ago, for the first time in days, it's not freezing cold in the evening. Yet I am shivering inside my coat. A guy comes along who appears to be smoking a Vape pen. In the dark, it looks like a pipe. With his goatee, he almost looks like a university professor. He asks me if I am waiting for the number three. He tells me, "seven minutes." He compliments my snow boots. I tell him that I've had them for a couple of decades and he says he can't believe how new they look. On one side of the bench is a bus shelter, where two or three men are speaking Spanish. One of them comes around to a trash can on the other side of the bench, and begins looking through it. Professor Vape asks him in English what he's looking for. He's searching for a discarded bus transfer. The trash guy asks the professor where the best trash cabs are for locating used transfers. He thinks and points to another, and then recommends a better train station.
Tuesday. At 10:30 AM, I am out the door and headed to met the sister for lunch. ON a bus up the street, there is a young Caucasian woman witting toward the back. She's in sunglasses and headphones, and she is pontificating on the conflict between the Lord and civilization. "Is it God's art, or is it Satan's art?" she orates, emphasizing the t in the last "art." Her diction is precise and clear, and she sounds like anyone but a mental case. I pull out my digital video camera, which I've had for six months but for which I just recently got a memory card. When I point it at her, she stops, changes seats, and continues. After lunch, I do a bit of shopping before returning to spend the late afternoon with her. For an hour or two, I have a chance to see part of her day as she went from one of her jobs doing legal work for the state, to a couple of libraries for her job teaching a community college mythology class, to finally picking up the Christmas turkey. It was a combination of state statutes, Agamemnon, and A Christmas Carroll. Look well upon these children. For their names; one will be Quiet, I'll be Peace. The next day, I am just out of work, and waiting for the 7:48 PM bus to the train. This particular stop, in front of the place where I have worked more often than any other location over the past two years, is extremely dark after sundown. I must carry a battery operated lantern with a flashing mode. I put it on when the bus comes over the hill, and I turn it off when I see the bus signal go on. When it pulls up this evening, I step on and the driver suggests that I keep it on until he comes to a stop. I notice that this driver is wearing big glasses with yellow-tinted lenses as large as ski goggles. He lets me know that the fare box is not working. This being the case, I don't need a transfer, but he gives me one anyway. Thursday morning. I am across the street at the bus stop shortly before 4:30 AM. Along with a guy with the cane who is usually here, there are a couple of twenty-something Caucasians in the bus shelter. One of them has an enormous backpack. Standing away from all of us is a young woman who is dressed as if she belongs at a holiday party at a dance club or a bar. The bus comes along and scoops us up. The young guys head to the back of the bus. The one with the pack has put on a ski mask and sunglasses. At 4:24 in the morning.
...the left hand is not supposed to touch food... ...there are no knives, forks, spoons, plates, or other implements. Fingers are not supposed to touch the mouth. Women of the household are never present... Each dish, if anything is left, is passed on down to the women...of the castle or dwelling. When the wives and concubines have finished, it goes...to male servants...female servants...retainers, hangers-on, or slaves. ...the high sibilant whistle...made by the long files of women from the town, who line the castle walls, and...begin to oscillate in a slow rhythmic dance... We entered a small room with maroon-striped settees, green curtains, and a flaming yellow carpet - Moslems love clashing colors... - Gunther
A couple in a black Subaru Forrester with no plate just stole an Amazon package from our front door and replaced it with an empty one.
...recycle bins...ours was stolen... - Nextdoor Westwood, 12/22/2016
Sunday is Christmas this year. I have yesterday, today, and tomorrow off. It's been quite a month. I re-enrolled in my same health insurance policy almost two months ago. This week, a letter came in the mail telling me that my insurance has been cancelled 'per my request.' I haven't been on my bike in two weeks, and missed my workout for the first time in over a year, thanks to a cold. At work, I found out that only one of our three drycleaning machines is currently working, that one has been broken down for three months, and the working one is overheating. I finally got my presents wrapped yesterday. I'm not marching toward Christmas, I'm tumbling toward it. All I can say is, 2017 is going to be quite a year. Ho ho ho. This morning, I am out on my bike after recovering from a fortnight of mucus in my nose and chest. I'm headed to my old deathburger on the chance that it is open for breakfast. Turns out that it ain't. It's a quiet morning. But it is Christmas morning. And though the single-digit air has moved out, and the promised forecast of three inches of snow is nowhere to be seen save for some menacing grey clouds, there are a couple of dishevelled guys at the corner of the drug store across from the deathurger. As there is no one else here but myself and they, they look singularly alone. The drug store turns out to be open. But this corner of the lot is empty. These guys don't appear dirty, or drunk. They appear thoroughly alone and abandoned. They have nothing but the rumpled clothes on their backs. One has a hat which makes him appear as a immigrant fresh from Ellis Island, our just off the train from Dickens' London. They appear as if their home is anyplace but this grey windswept neighborhood.
Tuesday is my first day back to work. Yesterday was the first day I was on my bike after a two-week cold. It's good to be back out on the trail. I am headed along the river trail around 11 AM as I approach a middle-aged guy in a Nepalese knit hat. He's parked on a BMX bike. As I go past him, he wants to know if I passed a "guy on a skateboard goin' that way?" He points behind me. Sure. A perfectly usual question. A middle-aged guy is on a BMX bike looking for another guy on a skateboard at 11 AM on a weekday. Between Christmas and New Year's. When I answer no, he replies, "Oh." There was a kid on a skateboard, but that was in the bike lane of an avenue I took to the trail. I don't know if he's an avenue guy as well as a trail guy. Or maybe he's just a guy. A half hour later, I am onto a connecting trail and headed through a park. At a big tower holding power lines is a young guy with a small dog. He has a big backpack standing up, and to the top of it, he is tying a folded sun shade for a car windshield. I wonder if he knows the bike guy, and/or his skateboard guy, and/or the skateboard guy I saw who may or may not be the one who the bike guy is looking for. I venture to guess that none of them know the lady around the bend of the trail, who is walking three little dogs. Together, their leashes stretch across the entire trail. She is yet another pedestrian who does not notice me come up from behind, until I tell her for the second time, "I guess I'm on your left." And I am positive that the BMX bike guy and his as yet undetermined friend couldn't possibly know the kid riding up and down his street, in the neighborhood of opulence between the trailhead and work. He's in a yellow T-shirt and surf shorts. He rides up to and over a boulder in a corner of someone's front yard.
The following morning, I am headed down the street around 10:30 AM. Within yards of each other along one residential block are three vehicles with damage (due to street racing?) One small car parked on the street has its front bumper and grill completely smashed off. In the driveway is another small car with big dents in the doors on one side, typical of other cars I've seen along this stretch of neighborhood. The third one is a minivan missing the front bumper. I've seen almost every kind of vehicle street racing, except a minivan. Perhaps this one is passive victim. There is a "for sale" sign in one window. Further along, I am on the first short trail through my side of town. Again, on the path is someone with a couple of dogs, the leashes of which are straddling the entire trail. The owner is bending over one of the dogs, and does not even notice me as I pass by. A good hour later, I am almost off the last trail to work. Yet again, another woman has a pair of dogs whose leashes stretch across the trail. She does not notice me until she appears to hear the sound of my wheels on the grass next to the trail. The following two days I am scheduled to work at a store far to the south, which I can reach by bus or bike. I forget to set the correct time on my clock radio, and I awake without enough time to catch the bus. But rested enough to get out on the bike. I make it to the train station, only to get on the wrong train. Back to the same station, I catch the correct one and in fourteen minutes am out on the street. Onto the trail, I take a wrong turn in the dark, double back, back out onto the street and up many a hill before I get inside the store, only to find I must restart the hard drive before I can clock in. Which I manage to do right on time.
The next morning is New Year's Eve. I have to say that my year began with a degree of uncertainty, including what little I could decipher from the owners about the future of their company for which I work. I met my new doctor under my new insurance, had my first prostate exam, my first colonoscopy, got my first nutritionist, had a wonderful summer swimming almost every day, and the year is ending on a comparatively more secure note on all fronts. Not everyone feels the same way. I am someone who ponders the existence of incompetence, familiar though I am with it, as well as counts his blessings. This morning, I am on my way to work a short Saturday shift at a store far to the south. To make the connections, I must catch a weekend bus earlier than usual. So I am headed up an alley closing in on 5 AM. I'm coming out of the alley to cross the street when a little car is accelerating toward me. On the other side, from behind comes a pickup, accelerating where it can through the alley...instead of the street. (?) Across the street from my Saturday bus stop is a Vietnamese insurance office. In an unlit corner of the back is a homeless Vietnamese guy. I can hear him talking to himself under his blanket. Perhaps he is an appropriate note upon which to end this year. May Orion look down upon him through this morning's broken clouds.
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