...the sponsors who used to line up by the dozens...to be a part of the Snow Angels issue stopped lining up. What was once our biggest and most profitable issue has since shrivelled up. ...one too many regular advertisers asked "not" to be in the Snow Angels issue. About a year ago, we nixed our long-running "Girl in Your Corner" feature. ...it was Snow Angels...that...put Mile High Sports on the map. - Mile High Sports, 12/2016 (I have never heard of the Snow Angels.)
Being a mom, school/nonprofit volunteer, and owning my own business... ...(my business partner) and I recently went to Italy with our husbands to celebrate our 10th anniversary in business. ...eating exquisite food, drinking great wine, and walking for miles on winding cobblestone streets - seeing the most beautiful sights... ...it puts all your worries in perspective - Am I a good mom? Am I a good wife? Am I doing my best at my job? "We will someday be sending human beings out into the world." ...started with a list of 50 positive qualities taken from a book... ...joy, worship, cleanliness and order, loyalty, respect, courage, lifelong learning, healthy confrontation, and uniqueness. ...set up a "drop zone"...with...bins against the wall. ...used for school paperwork... A portable bin...to easily move to another part of the house when referencing paperwork. A...plastic folder in the bin contains general information on school policies, that don't need to be referenced all the time. When the...family built a new home...they wanted a space that would allow the rest of the house to seem a little cleaner. ...the...mudroom... A separate locker for each family member, designed by Canyon Creek Cabinet Company, is located in the mudroom.. Each locker also contains a charging station for smart phones. - Colorado Parent, 1/2017
Onarzazate is...an important French military outpost controlling the roads down into the Sahara. The last resistance was not stamped out in the nearby mountain range known as Black Djebel, or Sarro, until...when Hitler seized power in Germany. Villages rise...like sculptures by Gutzon Borglum. The "kasbahs"...each houses a family group, say a hundred people. We saw tall women in blue veils, smeared with indigo. The children wear topknots...makes it easier for Mohammed to reach out and carry them aloft to heaven. As always in a Moslem city, women add a sharp colorless note of color. Most that you see in Tangier are so heavily muffled in white veils that they look like wads of Kleenex. A woman walking alone with a man on the street is actually subject to arrest...Tangerine women are forbidden to go to movies. Eight nations sit on the Committee of Control which administers Tangier... ...the Spaniards moved in on the International Zone in 1941... ...in Tetuan...430 caids presented a petition...repudiating the new Sultan..."imposed arbitrarily in France"...and refusing to accept him as ruler. ...Generalissimo Franco...expressed his "utmost satisfaction" at this anti-French demonstration. Many Moroccan nationalists and even Communists, who have always thought of Franco as Mephistopheles...now praise him warmly...as the "defender" of the Arab world... The Spanairds are pushing hard to get Gibraltar, and would like...to reacquire Tangier. Franco apparently fears that French Morocco faces a long period of instability, and he wants to keep his own zone sterilized away from this. The Generalissimo wants to cultivate as good and close relations as possible with all Arab states, particularly those in the Mediterranean basin. - Gunther
During the second half of June and throughout July 1992, I...worked on restaffing the American embassy in Kabul. On August 10...a massive three-week bombardment of Kabul. ...the Bulgarian ambassador was wounded, and two Russians were killed. ...Russia, France, and Italy...evacuated their citizens. This was, of course...to drive out the foreign presence and isolate the fledgling Afghan government from the international community. ...U.S. weapons and cash...empowered America's worst enemies...radical Arab and Pakistani allies. The Iran-Contra scandal involved many of the same actors... On October 22...my election to be the next U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. ...in November, the State Department decided not to reopen the U.S. embassy in Kabul. ...rocket attacks, later to be continued by the Taliban, made a...diplomatic presence...untenable. ...until after...9/11... The Pakistani ISI...unholy alliance on Pakistan's Frontier...was composed of...thousands of international jihadis from...Uzbekistan, China's Xinjiang Province, Burma, the Philippines, and the West. ...it had evolved into a loose network...and...pursued the twin goals of converting Afghanistan into a radical Islamist state and...a base for exporting messianic Sunni extremism... The Taliban emphasized the former. Al-Qaeda...to organize Islamist revolutions in their countries of origin, and Pakistani religious militias stressed international jihad. The ISI emphasized both. ...Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Robin Raphel...rejected...warnings about the Taliban. "...the Taliban appear to us to be Afghan nationalists rather than radical Islamists with an international agenda." ...Randy Beers, head of the State Department's narcotics and law-enforcement office. ...said: "You're basically asking for the overthrow of the Taliban. . . . I'm not sure the government is prepared to do that." - Tomsen
The plant was in the custody of a single engineer. ...spinning stories about...picking up Russian women with the lure of...Iraqi denars to be exchanged on the black market for rubles. He told us of...saying he was away on vacation...sneaking in to work at night...as a way of staying alive amidst the anarchy unleashed by our invasion. ...most of the Iraqi companies bidding were fronts for Turkish construction firms, who would bring in Arabic-speaking engineers from Jordan. He needed 228 people to run his 1963 plant, had 75 in 2003, and after the sectarian deaths was now making do with only 28. Of course, the plant was not currently operative, thus reducing his personnel needs. - Van Buren
Monday. Today is recognized as New Year's Day. I am wondering where both the 4:24 AM and 4:45 AM buses are, until I realize that the transit system is on a holiday schedule. My first mistake is assuming that this schedule is the same as the system's Sunday schedule. I believe that I am going to be late to work, and that the last bus home from work will show up before we are closed. I text someone for a ride home, and then I call a cab to work. When I see a bus show up which is not on the Sunday schedule, I realize that the transit system holiday schedule follows its Saturday schedule, not its Sunday one. I text someone back that I do not need a ride home, as a bus will be along after we close, and I call and cancel my cab as another should be here to pick me up. Along the way, I get out at one train station and watch as a guy in a camouflaged coat and pants with a spring in his step walk over to the condominium. He stops at a spot where the homeless hang out before heading over to a set of metal stairs in shadow. One of my customers today pulls up in a Jeep with a winch on the front. He's a Caucasian guy in his forties with sunglasses, brown lenses, Patagonia sweater and a keffiyeh around his neck. A man of few words, he leaves with a repressed upbeat outlook.
Last night about 8:45pm we had a truck plow into 4-5 cars [in a nearby neighborhood.] The guy broke his axle...so driver and passenger took off running. Three people brought the driver back on his toes, drunk as can be!!! ...911...was shocked [that neighbors] brought the driver back... ...we have invigiles that live on site.
They run because the cars likely not registered to them.
The key to making this entire neighborhood is in getting to know...which...neighbors...are worth knowing...
Last night just before 8pm, someone drove by 9in the same neighborhood0 and threw eggs at cars and homes. - Nextdoor Westwood, 1/3/2017
One...taken into custody after shots were fired into a burning home. ...located [in my neighborhood] on Sunday night. Fire crews waited for police... One person treated for smoke inhalation and taken into custody. - Denver (CBS4), 1/9/2017
Tuesday evening. Sometime after 8:30 PM, I am headed up a residential street in a neighborhood next to my own. A couple of police cruisers are parked next to each other. I turn down a street to the next block, across the street from the DMV. In the parking lot, a small car enters, does a couple of doughnuts, and speeds out in the dark. I get to my own corner. I watch another little car turn the corner and speed away down my street. To my right is the gas station. Two other police cruisers are parked in this lot. A third police car is a block away with its lights on. As I turn into my own parking lot, I spy an ambulance turn into the gas station. Wednesday. I'm downtown headed to the bank. Big snowflakes are slowly wafting down from a white sky. I get on a mall shuttle before a stop where a couple of homeless guys step on board. One is wearing a sleeping bag, for which he gets a compliment from the other one. The other tells the first that he is "having a good time." I assume that he means since relocating here to Denver. He also mentions that he has a couple of court dates this month. The first tells him that those dates are the 9th and the 23rd of this month. "They have homeless court now," he tells the first. After my trip to the bank, I step off the mall shuttle. A trio of transit system security officers are in line for coffee at an outdoor stand. I put down my bag to snap a shot of a banner on a light pole. A little homeless guy quickly comes across the way. He's in a long winter coat and his bearded face peeks out of his hood. He looks like some kind of munchkin. "I got joints for a dollar," he lets me know before he moves along to the next pedestrian. Thursday morning there is a foot of snow on the ground. A quick call to work results in no answer ten minutes after we are supposed to be open. I'm on a bus up the street around 7:30 AM when we stop for a passenger. The driver honks to alert him that we are here. He waves and comes on board. He's in a winter coat with a big rip in the skin, halfway around the left sleeve. He stumbles to his seat before getting up to get some paper towels from the front. Another bus and a short train ride later, I am on my last bus to work headed out of a private university. I'm listening to a couple of students, one with a horn, discussing her horn section getting "flipped,", class schedule changes, engineering class, choices of a new skateboard, and lazy computer science teaching assistants. For one brief shining moment, I have stepped out of my daily discomfort zone.
I'd love to see an increase in the number of family-run ethnic restaurants. ...Denver diners need to rally... ...higher expectations from sophisticated diners...
Hospitality with the joy of the casualization of restaurants. ...we had this crazy high from how good the mechanics were in a casual bar setting. ...if you took the formal white waiter's jackets off and put them in a blue chambray shirt and a Hadley & Bennett apron, it would be even more startling.
...Denver needs better Indian food.
...still not enough - or good enough - fast-casual prepared-food options for LoDo workers and residents. There are plenty of cool new sit-down, full service concepts, and...old remaining local spots that get busy because there's nowhere else to go. We're psyched to bring positive change...
I am hoping - and I genuinely think it is happening - that we will see more and creatively varied BBQ options here in Denver. We are a great beef-centric city, with adventurous eaters...
"What do you hope goes away?"
There's too much technology in the form of cameras, phones, screens, survey devices and other distractions in our dining rooms and bars... Unfortunately, with the labor shortage and increased costs, I believe the industry will continue to look toward technology to replace the human factor.
Out-of-town big shots thinking that they have a handle on Denver's needs.
The idea of "trends." If someone makes a great kale salad, then fuck, yeah! I someone is killing it with tiki drinks, word!
Fried Brussels sprouts and sliders.
The need to "define" new concepts.
Beverage snobbery.
Fermented foods are going to continue to evolve...
Squid and really good vermouth.
I've been watching drink prices slowly flirt with the $15 mark on cocktail menus. ...the magic number...enough financial cover for a bar to do whatever the fuck it wants to. It creates an R&D budget...
VEGETABLES! - Westword, 1/5-11/2017
Friday. Shortly after 10 AM. I'm at a bus stop just up the street from where I live. On a bench is the elderly guy I encountered last month. On a Sunday, at the stop for my bus to go grocery shopping, he was complaining that the bus was late just before it came over the hill, when be began waving his arms to attract the driver's attention. This morning, he's on the bench before he gets up and crosses the street to the stop directly on the other side. This stop is for a bus headed one direction. The other stop is for the same bus headed the opposite direction. (?) An hour later, I am sitting on a dry patch of concrete at a train station. Waiting for my last bus to work, I'm on the phone with three different people, one after the other, from work. I'm trying to find someone who will speak to our overnight driver to find out where he took 3 missing orders. When I finally hang up, a middle-aged geek comes along to ask me if I am okay. I as him who he is. Instead of answering me, he tells me that he is someone who cares "about people." He wants to know if I ant either a drink or a burrito. I decline the drink at 11 AM. "How about a burrito?" he asks. I decline this as well before he tells me that he is "someone who cares about dogs." He wishes me well before he heads over to someone else and strikes up a positive-affirming conversation. A train pulls up, and he holds the door open as he finishes his sermonizing. He gets on board and vanishes from the scene. Nine hours later, I'm out of work and on a train home for a short couple of stops. As soon as I get on, I hear four loud Caucasian male 20-year-olds and a couple of girlfriends. And I smell a lot of cologne. They have "college" written all over them. An hour after this, I step onto a bus and around a guy who has his legs sticking out across the aisle. He's in an insulated jumpsuit, and after the cast on his leg and crutches next to him, the very next thing I notice is that he is drooling. He appears more than ten years younger than myself. He begins to dig though a canvass bag with "Prudential" printed on the side. Under his seat are what appear to be a few vitamins which have fallen here. He pulls out a zip lock bag full of assorted necklaces and earrings. He drops it on the seat and some of them begin to spill out as it lands. He pulls out a pen with a plastic spoon taped to it, a yellow glove, and a sock all spill onto his lap as he fishes out a stick of beef jerky. He pulls off a bite with his teeth..
Early the next morning, I'm standing on a corner of my street. I'm at the next light up from my own corner. I am staring at the line of headlights extending ahead on the boulevard for perhaps a mile or so. Traffic is already rolling out at 5:30 AM. Around the corner is the stop for my bus to work on Saturdays. The time and temperature sign flashes three degrees F. At the stop are a couple of women in winter coats. And there is a guy leaning against the bus shelter. He's in a hoodie, and there is a cane at his side. Forty-five minutes later, I'm on a train for a short couple of stops. I got on with a guy who has a bike and a safety helmet. When the train pulled up, he hesitated for a second before locating the door at the end of the car, either end of which is used by passengers with bikes. At the next stop, someone else with a bike gets on the same end. The pair appear to know each other, the first digging in the second one's backpack before the two share a plastic gallon jug of water. When Monday morning comes along, I am up to head to work early to work an open to close shift. Instead of watching the Golden Globes, I got to bed early enough to get enough sleep, to feel rested enough to get out on the bike for the first time in almost a week. Last week saw snow and single-digit days. Which makes it all the more surprising when I stick my head out of my front door to find what my computer tells me is 46 degrees F. The high is supposed to be 61. The trail is, with the exception of some stubborn ice spots, is clear. It's a spooky morning before sunrise. There's a wind from the south strong enough to blow me into the other bike lane. The second half of my ride to work is through forested parks. One wood is full of trees creaking in the wind. Along another, I hear a branch fall to the ground.
Suppose, let us say, a Frenchman sells his family estates; he may prefer to have his proceeds is Tangier in gold rather in paper francs at home. Tangier is an attractive haven for fugitive gold...because it is under both British and American protection. ...its older banking houses have a nice reputation for discretion. Tangier...is famous for spies, smugglers, and pirates... It is a major haven for expatriated homosexuals and other outcasts in their wanderings around the world.... Tangier has 20,000 Jews, who have their own representation in the legislature... There are three types of Jew - the old stock...those...from Spain in medieval times, and contemporary refugees from Central Europe. ...a flat 12 1/2 percent duty charged on all imports... ...the Arab population...the poorest as well as the most numerous, pay for the European rich. ...the Arabs have to buy...imported staples... It's the "indigenes"...who support the international community. Expatriated millionaires live in dilapidated Arab palaces...fig trees surrounded by shiny aluminum modern furniture. ...theirs was the first country in the world to recognize the independence of the United States. ...Tangier, with Gibraltar, corks the Mediterranean. Lord Nelson once said, "Tangier must always remain in hands of a neutral power..." In 1945...a...conference confirmed the organization and powers of the multi-nation Committee of Control that runs Tangier today... There has never been an election in Tangier, and there are no political parties or independent press. The Control Committee can veto any measure passed by the legislature. Public opinion has no way to express itself... MENDOUB OF TANGIER The bleached-out old gentleman...is the personal representative of the Sultan in the International zone, a sub-lieutenant of God, and a dutiful French puppet. He is...not particularly stimulating intellectually. ...a long ragged line of retainers...of shabbiness and splendor. I aid to our escort, "They look like slaves," and our escort replied dryly, "That's what they are." - Gunther
...the reconstruction program was hampered by Iraq's difficulty sustaining new and renovated infrastructure projects. ...in the absence of a responsive bureaucracy nothing was ever done. ...the Army spent $3 million to but twenty-five...trailer-mounted, solar-powered reverse=osmosis water filtration machine(s). The first choked on the salty water. The locals used it as a source of electricity, pulling some current from the solar panels until they broke. The second unit was stolen...and reinstalled at a sheik's home. ...managed the low volume water use there just fine... The third unit... Local thugs took possession and started charging people for the water... The Sheiks controlled the territory like Mafia dons... The United States...set about...using the sheiks as conduits to push reconstruction money into local communities. Boring Iraqi district offices morphed into smoke-filled backrooms. "Our district council chair was the Tony Soprano for the area. ...he'd say, 'You will use my contractor or your work will not get done.' It was all about money." Iraq's Shiite government inherited the "sahwa" program because we got tired of funding it and because "transition" was a theme that month. ...that the faster we could transition our programs to...Iraq, the sooner we could go home. The sheik...reported that no one had...provided...his men...with full-time jobs as promised. ...they were getting solid offers from al Qaeda... - Van Buren
In a worst-case scenario, when the United States disengages from Afghanistan...after the withdrawal of combat troops scheduled to be completed in 2014. The disastrous results could severely test the constitutional obligation required of all U.S. administrations to protect the United States and its people. ...on the heels of a Taliban victory; al-Qaeda, the...Haqqani network...Pakistani religious militias...will strike the American homeland again and again. ...with the flow of Afghan history and culture...focus on geostrategic diplomatic reinforcement of global and regional forces to achieve...de-Americanization...and...a fundamental change in Pakistan's policy... During the two Clinton administrations - and the George W. Bush administration up to September 11, 2001... The United States outsourced American Afghan policy to Pakistan. ...one of the greatest diplomatic blunders in American history, continued even after al-Qaeda blew up two U.S. embassies in Africa and attacked an American warship off the Yemini coast. ...from 2002 to 2005 marked the first time in almost a quarter century that Afghanistan enjoyed relative peace. Afghan elites forged a working consensus and with international assistance developed a political structure for Afghanistan's future. ...the United States switched its focus and resources to Iraq. The ISI regrouped and rearmed the Taliban inside Pakistan. - Tomsen
...the great Moorish chieftain Abdel Krim rose in the early 1920's and fought both Spanish and French to a standstill until...1926. ...the French could not afford to have Spanish Morocco beaten... {...his views on American foreign policy: "At the end of the [World] war [II] there was a superb opportunity for the United States, basing itself upon the . . . . Atlantic Charter, to rally all the colonial and oppressed peoples to a new organization of human society. ...American power chose instead to support colonial empires everywhere... The colonial and oppressed peoples now find that the only power which professes itself in their ability to rise is Soviet Russia. The partition of Palestine...introduced Russia to the Mediterranean. A period of...unnecessary struggle, with unpredictable results, is now inevitable." "Virginia Quarterly Review", Winter, 1951}. ...Spain has promised its Moors eventual self-rule. The Spanish Zone...is not only a feudal backwater, but the walled-off preserve of a grossly totalitarian dictatorship. The secret police are everywhere. To sum up, the Spanish policy, in contradistinction to the French, seeks to make use of local nationalism... The strings of control...are wrapped up in the silk of "co-operation." "We...cannot last forever here, but we intend to last as long as possible." - Gunther
...our US military colleague...started out declaring himself "but a simple soldier" and then wound up into a long speech about the American democratic experiment... I had no idea what he was saying. Our translator kept right up, however... ...explaining how we all were now brothers fighting a common enemy. This was where I would have given a cornea to understand Arabic...even our stalwart Iraqi translator was having a hard time figuring out who this common enemy was. Considering the men in the room controlled militias and could order revenge killings, I guessed their definition and ours were different. The youngest of the...soldiers...was not yet nineteen. He'd been eleven years old when this war started, just a little older than the kids to whom Bush read "My Pet Goat" while New York burned. WMDs, 9/11, Colin Powell at the UN, Mission Accomplished, and torture at Abu Ghraib were events in history... Chances were good that many of the insurgents were no older than the boys... ...they had grown up with this war as a fact, their daily life. The Americans had always been here ... ...this was Mesopotamia, the biblical Eden - yet nothing mattered but this moment. This war had been going on for years now, plus one more day. - Van Buren
Thursday. On a short trail through my side of town. It's about mid-morning. Sitting out on the brown grass, surrounded by open field with geese, is a young guy in a camouflaged coat. I don't think he is a hunter. He's sitting alone and apparently doing nothing more than listening to music. When I get on and down the long trail, and onto the connecting trail for the last half of my ride to work, the trail is full of foot traffic. This section of my ride travels through an endless series of beautiful forested parks. As snow is forecast for this evening, I believe that many are taking advantage of the clear part of the day. I approach a tunnel under a street where I slow down, as it is a blind spot in the view to the other side. Right after I slow down, a parade of seniors, all with hiking canes, comes slowly marching through. Out the opposite side, I run into a group all walking their dogs together. Past this are countless individuals all walking their dogs on the trail. Toward the trailhead at the end, down by a creek are four high school kind playing with an abandoned shopping cart. Or, in homeless rhetoric, a "buggy."
The following morning, I am out at the bus stop, headed for a workout before work. On the bench is a mom smoking a cigarette in a plastic holder. Her child is busting out dance moves for the traffic. Three hours later, after breakfast and a workout, I'm out at a bus stop for a couple of different routes. First, the Route 100 bus comes by and drops off a couple of middle-aged guys who appear to be wearing hand-me-down outfits. One says to the other, "Sometimes, if I'm twenty cents short, they (the bus driver) won't even let me on." The Route 21 bus shows up and we all get on board. In a seat is a young high school kid who, at 11 AM, is not in class. He's chubby with a natural blonde afro. The kid tells Mr. Twenty Cents and his sidekick that he's looking for Garrison St., where he hopes to catch the Route 76 bus. That bus goes down Wadsworth Boulevard, not Garrison. But it becomes apparent that in fact I digress. I tell the kid that Garrison is the next stop, but he is so busy talking that Garrison goes past without his noticing, which of course matters not anyway. The kid explains that he must "drop off a back pack" to an undisclosed person before keeping "an appointment. I'm starving," he changes gears, as he has been doing throughout his recitation. "And I had a really good breakfast..." he questions the fates. Well, son, it is close to lunch time. He gets out...at Wadsworth. Someone else gets out at the next stop, dropping a pack of Marlburos. At yet the next stop, someone else gets on and picks them up.
The bus arrives at a train station before it is immediately on its way. We approach a part of town much closer to downtown. We pick up someone, and then at the next stop we pick up somebody with a brain affliction interfering with their speech, who recognizes the other passenger who just came on. He begins speaking to her very slowly. Out of nowhere, Mr. Twenty Cents asks the woman behind him if there is a DMV in the immediate area. She appears not to know. He looks at the guy speaking slowly, directly across from him. "This neighborhood looks familiar, is there a DMV around here?" he asks him. If the slowly-speaking guy heard him, he doesn't respond. The neighborhood is familiar to myself as well. It's refereed to as the University District, and the bus which runs up and down University Boulevard is my last connecting one to work. The surrounding streets are in proximity to a private college called the University of Denver. On this corner is a place I have passed by for years, but never entered. It's a sandwich place called Mustard's Last Stand. I go inside and grab a diet soda from a grey-haired guy with a big moustache. He looks like a cross between a mechanic and an aging surfer. I ask him for a lid to put on my diet soda and he directs me to one wall. I believe that I just met Colonel Mustard, and that it was Col. Mustard in the kitchen with the plastic lid.
The bus sweeps up myself my drink and I and drops me on the corner where I work, where I stop for the first time into a Mediterranean restaurant. Both myself and the customer after me are each directed to one of the tables in the center, instead of one of the booths along the walls. I can only wonder for what diabolical geoglobal purpose this could be. After lunch, my last stop before work is a café, where an employee asks a woman, "(Do) you want something to drink?" She replies yes, and he directs, "Okay, talk to me..." On my walk to work, I pass a couple of property mechanical guys are taking down the giant decorative holiday illuminated snowflakes. One of them belches. Coming out of a hardware store are a couple of guys. One is in a hoodie with "God loves ugly" on the back.
The smells...cigarette smoke from the always present knots of soldiers smoking. ...mud if it rained overnight... ...rotted tobacco from...a steel ammunition box... Iraq was not Sudan or Haiti...overall few were starving. ...a bag with one or two meals in it was not going to make any difference. The Colonel...waited in vain for the ground swell of happiness... This time the Colonel was wrong. ...we were not going to be adopted into anybody's tribe. ...we tried to give away fruit tree seedlings. "You killed my son and now you are giving me a tree?" But you just couldn't stop the Army when it was on a roll. One of the difficult parts about counterinsurgency was that it was hard to tell when you had one. You measured success more by what did not happen...the silence that defined the music. ...we located women who, for our money, [we wanted to] form NGOs and attend a nearly endless round of conferences and seminars we paid for. ...little was expected other than they pose for photos. These conferences were perfect for Embassy speakers. They could dart out...in armoured Suburbans, make quick speeches composed of the words "freedom-liberation-empowerment-women" randomly rearranged several times and then rocket back to Planet Embassy...
...Baghdad International Airport... A year ago I had passed through...but I was damned if I could ever remember being here. We were all here, soldiers...contractors, Southeast Asians...Sri Lankans...Bangladeshis... ...the contractors with the Harley-Davidson T-shirts...and big belt buckles...the Embassy people...in insanely out-of-place getups like white pants and Panama hats or...safari gear...$120 sunglasses... One of the Embassy guys had an American Tourister travel bag.... American Tourister? He was in the wrong war by about forty years. ...a Ugandan security contract security guard... He had mastered that Third World art of looking at nothing... - Van Buren
City Council...want(s) to pass...Tax Increment Funding...to finance a "portion" of...affordable housing. gee. didn't we just vote on money for affordable housing??? ...it is recommended by DURA...also putting up HIGH end property... ...they call this area "BLIGHTED". - Nextdoor Westwood, 1/13/2017
The city...was in the center of migration...and already black Africa's largest capital - a collapsed metropolis, unable to assure even the survival of its nine million people. But still the dispossessed came in floods from the villages. And the two- and three-story buildings stained with long black stripes: algae, rising from within the cement and blooming in the open. The city seemed to be falling apart, building by building - structures...seemed almost to melt. The statue of the Belgian king had long been toppled... Lining the roads were heaps of garbage, glowing like embers and giving off black smoke. A Belgian king committed genocide..to pillage...for rubber... ...the...state initiated a war over...copper, to wire the world... ...recent conflicts were heightened by the world's growing demand for tin...used in almost every electronic circuit. The world now needs...tantalum. ...Lumumba...tried...expelling the white man and gaining independence from Belgium: then Mobutu...reviving...kingship; and finally...Kabila, with his half-Marxist ideas of liberation. Partice Lamumba, the fiery politician who united the Congolese and remains the country's only true hero. ...Joseph Mobutu, ruled as dictator for more than thirty years, with western help, after having Lamumba assassinated in 1961, just six months after Congo's independence. The rebel Laurent Kabila...in 1997 toppled the cancer-afflicted Mobutu.
The sides of our bus began to be thumped. Children's wide-eyed faces pressed against my window. "Give me money," said the shapes of their lips... ...our windows were fixed and they could not even sell us their cool drinks, shoe shine or melting candy. (In Congo, there was no middle class: there was sprawling bungalows and the serviced apartments with their maids and armed guards...) It felt impossible to belong to this place. The houses, the paint, even the brilliant goldwork of new villas appeared to announce the coming of a jaded future. The war in Congo was the world's worst in half a century. ..."Africa's World War," to convey...the number of armies it had drawn in... ...the city had swamped the senses with its movement and noise, but the countryside had an intellectual, less accessible capacity... It would be from the city outward that I would grasp the Congo. ...back home... At the bars, the corner shop, and around the kiosks the discussions centered on the new wave of government reprisals... ...the...currency inflated by 5 percent...had been attributed to rumors. ...now the elections were suspected. [In] our neighborhood [there was] a rampage of purchases... Common sense was lost: vendors sold goods by auction. Exchanges were set up between parts of the city to profit from arbitrage. The city's most credible bank...required a ten-thousand-dollar minimum to open an account. The bank catered to diamond dealers - and reputedly to...an Israeli notorious for dirty dealings. - Stringer, by A. Sundaram, 2014
Sunday. I'm headed across the street for lunch. On the corner is a middle-aged Vietnamese woman on her phone. She hands it to me, assuming I speak better English. The guy on the other end just needs to know where she is. After lunch, I go to the gas station for a pre-packaged dessert. I'm in line behind a guy who, when it comes his turn, makes a payment of just under $880. I see him take no product, or even a scratch ticket. I ask the clerk what he purchased. He tells me the guy was paying his rent. Monday. More snow. Mid-morning, I am downtown at the transit station hub for, what else, more transit system ride coupons. When I come out, I sit my bag down. A young guy with curly long hair asks me, 'Hey, my man, you wouldn't know what I can do about someone helping me out with a bus ticket home, would you? Social services?" He doesn't appear to have been out on the street long enough to collect grime on his skin. It sounds as if he is without any family or friends he can call for help. Wednesday. This damned cold keeps me off the bike and relegated to the bus. Around 8 PM I am at the train station after work, on the campus of a private university. Across the tracks comes a young girl in a hoodie on a cold evening, with a cigarette in hand. She asks me for a light; I tell her I don't smoke. She begins waving both arms like an octopus.
Handmade Burritos and Wine
Friday. I am still with a cold and I decide against either working out or taking the bike. After 3 shifts open to close I take the time to get some things done around the house. I'm finally on a bus up the street around 10:30 AM. Sitting in a seat for the handicapped is a woman using oxygen. She asks if I want to purchase a handmade burrito from one of two insulated handbags. I believe it's a violation, possibly of state law, to operate a business without displaying a permit. We both get out at the corner, where a painter works on the base of a sign for the remodeled former medical marijuana dispensary, shut down for laundering foreign drug lord money. One of President Trump's "tombstones" and perhaps the strangest marker of the Great Recession. While thousands prepare to fill the park between the capitol and the legislature, where a year ago the same space was filled with fans of the city's Superbowl championship football team, a woman using oxygen asks a painter if he wants a handmade burrito. I head across the street to the bus stop, where I recognize a mental guy in a hat with ear flaps. He asks me what time it is and I take my best guess. The bus pulls up and we form a line in front of the entrance. I notice a young woman who hangs back behind the rear. She climbs aboard behind me. As I put my bag in a seat, I hear her asking the driver in Spanish if this bus goes to the train station. He has no clue what she's saying. I go up to do a brief translation, and when I turn around, the mental guy is in my seat next to my bag. Perhaps a half hour later, I'm at the shopping center where I work, having a last lunch at one of my favorite lunch places. My boss, both to solve scheduling problems and because she wants me to work with her at a particular location, is moving me away from this luxurious neighborhood. Perhaps as soon as Monday. At the bar is a wine salesman conversing with a buyer. At his feet is a case full of wine. I listen as he goes on about Italian villages and production history.
The street...operated like...an urban clan or village or city, of associated languages, religions and cultures... All this had coalesced into a doughnut society, with the family at the center, and the clan (the street) as the ring. Outside this ring, the world was...without clear rules or enforcers. At the center it was much the same... But the clan was society's best organized unit... I told him my phone was stolen. "...they have to call you...this president. Get your phone... Pay the boy off. ...that's how it works in Congo, you pay twice, sometimes three times for your own things." Nana tried to dissuade me.
"Those boys are fetish." It meant they had connections to dark powers. "At least talk to the boy at the grocery store. He'll tell you what's what."
"I used to live on the street," the...shop boy...said. "You'll see. It's a place God doesn't visit." Patrick slammed Guy in the chest. ...he laughed, then punched Patrick. ...their laughter...transformed into cries and screams. ...the boys seemed unhinged. Patrick...hit him on the back so hard that his head hit his knees. Patrick punched the air. He punched like a madman. He would not stop. ...Sylvia said something to the boys...properly enunciating... The boys mostly communicated with motions of their heads... Sylvia...told me to ignore him, saying he had lost his mind during the war. "Do you live [here] in the cemetery?" I asked. "I live with the boys," she said. "And sometimes with white people." After some time Guy crawled over and lay on her lap. This was the city that had rejected the children - and in turn the children had rejected it. ...Nana...began to behave as if she needed to prove that evil lurked in the children. ...she had...a nurse's training. But this belief in evil seemed to be something Nana was taught not to reason with and in which she believed so powerfully that even having a child did not change her. Nana took me aside and told me tales...children could grow large at night...and come and eat us. I asked questions - she answered excitedly, s though hoping I would agree with her. ...troublesome children often confessed. The evangelists recommended it on the radio... The sermons were screamed... The pastor would wheeze hallelujahs. His anger would seem unending. ...children related how the pastors had beaten them, deprived them of food, water and sleep...until they had confessed to working for the devil.. ...the child was beaten more by the family...and then...left in a place far from home. The child knew not to return. - Sundaram
...the number of [homeless] camps in...Pueblo...have been growing steadily since January 2014, according to...executive director of Posada...which offers...housing for families and youth, among other supportive services... "...rural communities for the first time are experiencing homelessness."
...people experiencing homelessness...used to bring...the carts holding all of their belongings...inside the...Denver Public Library's Central Branch...but as of April 2016 they are only allowed to bring in three bags. ...if they leave their things outside, they could be...put in lost and found. ...unanswerable questions [were] coming from patrons...how to find housing, how to apply for food stamps, and even how to go about recovering from identity theft. ...a man...came in to leave a bus ticket...for safekeeping. ...working two jobs in-between naps on the streets. ...they've lost...the essence of who they are. "Sleeping outside itself is trauma." ...to start asking what happened to them and not what's wrong with them. "And people are just yelling, 'where can I sleep in this city?'" When days get really cold...anxieties and tensions run high and there is a significant increase in mental health symptoms.
...an island in the middle of the Colorado River...was easy to get [to] by wading in the river. I was made to work... If I did not...I paid for it. No matter what...a lunatic...beat me and raped me every day. There was another couple at the camp; they knew...and didn't care. The two...people...were on the run; I dared not ask why. - Denver Voice, 1/2017
Monday night. I get out of a bus from work back on my boulevard. The stop where I disembark is right next to a relatively new bank. In the parking lot are a couple of police cars and an ambulance. Rather than a lot full of flashing lights visible as far as the eye can see, this scene is remarkably quiet as these vehicles huddle together. The following day, my doctor's medical assistant answers a question over the phone, letting me know that I should wait one to two weeks before getting back on my bike. Wednesday. I'm having lunch across the street before work. It's a fish place with a mixed crowd including some guys in suits. One of those is sitting at the table next to me. He's a middle-aged guy speaking to an elderly guy. At first, I wonder if it's a father and son. The younger one is decrying the treatment of "the liberal media" toward Trump. He also thinks that the musical The Book of Mormon is "a real slam against" the Mormon church. He reads Tom Clancy. The other guy asks him if he's read any Bill O'Reilly. "No. My mother-in-law is a big fan." It turns out that this is a financial advisor at lunch with a client. Funny thing is, I saw Trump/Pence signs in yards throughout my journey to work through this neighborhood during the election. I thought, 'Well, this could be a place which likes Trump.' At the next table I hear a fan of Hillary. She mentions "the sixth great extinction," and she refers to Trump as a dictator. I decide against desert and get my check before any consternation ensues.
Thursday. I'm on the 11:19 AM bus to work. Along the way, a drunk passenger comes on board. He sounds familiar. I think that I have seen him on this bus last year as I was on the way home from work. He has a hat, a hoodie underneath a coat, and a big backpack all in the colors and name of the city's football team. He asks someone next to him where he works, before I see him pull out an unopened aluminum can. I can't tell if it's beer. He then asks the guy if it's cold where he works. We pull into the train station, where he slowly gets out of the bus. He takes a seat on a bench, at a stop for a bus on this same route, headed the opposite direction. The train comes along and takes me to the station from where I will catch my last bus to work. Seated on the cement at my bus gate is a young guy with big prescription glasses and a long beard. He is cross-legged and his palms are together in front of his chest. The next morning, I'm back at my old bus stop. The mental guy who was here the last time I was is back. Again, he asks me the time. This time...I don't know what time it is. The following afternoon, I have a rare Saturday off. For just over a month I have had one cold after another, and for the first time in at least a couple of weeks I am headed to the gym. I'm down the street at a stop for a crosstown bus. Sitting on the ground is a couple next to a shopping cart filled to the top with at least one guitar case, as well as a sleeping bag and assorted belongings. The pair bums a couple of transit system "ride coupons" to get on the bus. When the bus arrives, they haul all of their stuff on board. The lady strikes up a conversation with a guy reading the newspaper, who kept his eye on them as they took a seat. She tells him that they were both "assaulted and robbed," and are seeking safer digs. Is where we are headed more safe than where we all got on, she would like to know. We all caught the bus on the boulevard where I live. He mentions my boulevard to them, describing it as "pretty rough." I wonder if this means I am a rough guy?
He advised me to...more like the locals and discuss the issues that mattered to them. "You are the High Representative of the little man." ...the office receptionist...said, "I am not aware of your appointment." She wore a dress with a picture of the president printed on her stomach. Around the image were inscribed the words "My Husband Is Capable." She looked at me sternly; I stopped reading her belly. Africa has a history of using geography as symbols: cities are named Freetown, Liberville...countries are named and renamed Democratic and Free with each revolution, coup...and election. The nostalgia was...the "correct" attitude to have... The abuses...were only awkwardly acknowledged... So the two were kept separate... And this is what crushed society: this constant need to switch between two worlds, the impulse to deny what had happened. The...capricious, lawless world...had possibility: it had a future. The Congolese, having learned to distrust the future, retreated to their families and clans. The society that resulted seemed intellectually stagnant, half emerged from its history and only reluctantly moving forward. ...I recognized...a certain aquiescence, a cloistering within small ambitions...and an utter belief in the power of one man. - Sundaram
One of the other night's featured attractions is a deep-trance medium..."Bud"...from Santa Anna... "I was an auto racing mechanic... ...during the off-season, I started talking in my sleep in some foreign language I didn't know anything about. ...a linguistics professor we know. He said it was a dialect of ancient Arabic." Bud then goes into a trance...grimacing... Assisting is someone who helps run there Know Thy Self Fellowship. After a few minutes Bud announces, "I am Paul, born of Arabic descent in the year of four A.D." In a halting, mechanical voice he proceeds to answer...about the Other Side, where he is a teacher at one of the twelve universities that instruct...souls...to choose suitable parents for their next reincarnations. No modern, postindustrial society has ever experienced anything like this occult explosion. Harvard University's hip, activist chaplain...says unworriedly about the occult explosion, "Our tight, bureaucratic, and instrumental society is fascinated with the slippery stuff that never found a place in it: astrology, madness, witches, drugs, non-Western religions, palmistry, and mysticism..." But Yale's equally hip, activist chaplain...fears...occultism is a "beautiful example of the lobotomized passivity that results from the alienating influence of modern technological society." - The Occult Explosion, by N. Freedland, 1972
Monday. After being off the bike for two solid weeks, due to a second cold, I endeavored to ride it today. Alas, it decided to lose air in its front tire just in time. I'm back at my old bus stop this morning, across the street from an infamous ex- medical marijuana dispensary. Raided and shut down for laundering money from a Columbian drug lord. Recently remodeled to appear, at least, as a bank branch. A sign observed from across the street appears to announce a tattoo parlor coming soon. The following day is the end of the month. How shall I end this month's entry? Well...I am out at the bus stop across the street around mid-morning. 'Tis a relatively mild winter morning, and a quiet one for this racetrack of a boulevard. A grey-haired guy shuffles across the street between the stopped traffic. A new muscle car comes to a stop. The driver's window is down in order to share the message of love via his sound system. Could pray tell he be fresh from the Women's March? "I'm outta here. Bitch. 'Cause I ain't got time..." his speakers pronounce. The bus comes and collects me, and as we head up the street, a street racer blows past us. While we are parked at another stop, another racer loudly races the engine. I disembark at the station for the train downtown. I'm headed there to purchase more transit system discount coupons, go to my bank to get change for work, and get the tire on the wheel I am carrying topped off with air. Outside the bus, I catch a whiff of marijuana. At the top of the long stairs down to the train is a guy with his face covered in tattoos and an expression of sorrow. I catch a glimpse of his face and he appears as if perhaps he was beat up. Coming across the street is another guy. This one, in an olive hoodie and knit cap, got my attention when I heard him yell, "Fuck! Fuckin' fascists!" He continues past the bus shelter and stops briefly to pick up a cigarette off the ground, which he puts in his mouth.
I get to the platform for the downtown train where I take a seat next to a guy with a small tattoo under his left eye. He moved to the other side of the tracks to catch the train going the other way. The train whips me downtown, where I grab a shuttle down the pedestrian mall. I jump out to grab a copy of the city's homeless newspaper before I jump on the next mall shuttle. I sit next to yet another guy with a tattoo next to his eye, this one a teardrop. At the next stop, another guy gets on. He asks the first one something about another part of town. The first mentions the name of an enormous neighborhood where he is headed. Row after row of multi-million dollar mansions and pastoral meadows. The highest income by far of any neighborhood in the metro area. He says he is going there "where it's peaceful." Before he gets out, the second guy asks him if he knew him in prison.
A person is dead...in a three vehicle crash [on my corner] Sunday afternoon. - Denver 7, Facebook, 1/29/2017
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