...the Catholic Church... By the second quarter of the twentieth century...had reduced Southern Shunsi to...structured decay, chronic violence, and recurring famine which has few parallels in history [and] had...rendered...the country of which is was a part all but incapable of effective defense against...the warlords of Japan. ...the leading gentry...often found that they had more in common with the invaders than they had with their own tenants. ...the Japanese officers shared their own respect for private property, the sanctity of land rents, and...orthodox religious worship. - Hinton
The deaf guy, the stripper and the church ladies, and my great hat
Tuesday. I have the day off. Around 9 AM, I stop into a diner for breakfast before going to the gym. Outside is a grey-haired guy having a smoke. He strikes me as without a roof over his head. I go inside, take a seat and order. A guy in a fleece vest and plaid shirt comes in. He knows he wants eggs over easy and steak medium. The waitress asks if he wants pancakes or toast. "What's that?" he replies. He asks, "Is there jelly for the toast?" three times. She points out that the jelly is on the table. Just like every other table at every other diner. I watch him eat slowly. He picks up a bottle of Tapatio sauce and bewilderedly turns it upside down. At the gym, next to the free weights are a trio of middle-aged ladies working with small weights. Next to them, on a bench, a twentysomething woman, with blue hair and tattoos everywhere, is lifting a 25 pound (or more) weight behind her head. In her 2 piece outfit, she looks great. I'm unimpressed by tattoos, but I like her simple designs arranged on her back and shoulders. She may be a dancer in a club. When I get over to the mat, the trio is there. One tells the others about a friend who told her she was possessed by Jesus, and how it feels. "It's like, all you can do is sit there not moving, and it just goes on and on and on." A second one replies, "You nailed it." By 11 AM, I am back at the corner with the diner. In the shelter for the bus home is a guy in camouflaged pants. He points at my hat I bought at the gas station and tells me, "That's a great hat." He leaves the shelter and joins a couple on the corner, who appear to have a single bicycle. The woman is making a sing with which to panhandle. The guy is already flying his sign.
The League of Women Voters is taking a closer look at gentrification...people want "walkable communities"... Neighborhoods become less diverse. How do we keep a great city if the people that work in the city cannot live in the city?
...we have trained and deployed hundreds of adults 50+ into the community as health navigators and community health workers... We...help people overcome barriers to good health, such as poverty, hunger, literacy, transportation and other factors. - Prime Time For Seniors, 4/2017
The Denver 'home tour movement" has grown in the last several years. ...neighborhoods...have started their own domicile displays. ...as the city becomes more gentrified... The purpose of these free excursions is to "provide a social, cultural and architectural history of the neighborhood... ...a tour that includes..."sensate remodels"... - the profile, 5/2017
[A fifteen-year-old girl was] killed after shots were fired into a fourplex unit early Wednesday morning [within walking distance from my home.] The girl was inside with several friends... At least one shot hit another unit... - kdvr.com, 5/3/2017
...was a sweet and quiet soul, she loved all her family...was her mother's only daughter. ...her mom and dad...just lost a son 11 months ago. - GOFUNDME.COM, 5/4/2017
A man who shot two teens last week in North Aurora - killing one and wounding the other ...shot in the arm, leg and stomach... accused them of speeding through his neighborhood moments before he opened fire on them... ...about 8:45 a.m. April 28... man walking nearby made an obscene gesture at them. ...accused them of speeding through the neighborhood and doing burn-outs in the alley. The teens...told the man it wasn't them, and that the car wasn't even capable of doing that. The man told them to drive into the alley and he would show them the tire marks. After [they] pulled into the alley, [the man] fired... He said, "You got to help me, those guys are trying to kill me. I just shot one of them." ...neither teen was armed. - Aurora Sentinel, 5/4-5/10/2017
...for students enrolled in Ready for American Hospitality...launched in 2012...refugee resettlement organizations, helps identify candidates for the class...often days into their new lives in the United States... Kayba Djama...came...from..Djibouti. She was in college there when her father...arranged a marriage. ...she...fled the country, knowing that...would mean...possibly death if she refused the marriage. ...in Maine (...she says she was treated with open hostility and prejudice)... - Westword, 5/4-10/2017
As Denver continues to grow, many neighborhoods are struggling. DPS is creating the Strengthening Neighborhoods Initiative...to address racial and socioeconomic diversity in the schools and...school consolidation in neighborhoods that are loosing the highest number of school-aged children. Denver official sent a letter to the local Acting Field Office Director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) requesting ICE agents respect "sensitive locations" when carrying out their duties, especially at...Denver schools... Superintendent Tom Boasberg responded to Secretary DeVos criticism which highlights significant policy differences between the Trump administration and DPS' focus on high-quality public school... - the profile, 5/2017
There are plenty of examples of Asian-Americans who do not want to assimilate, and thereby reduce their chances of economic, social, or professional success. ...too many Caucasians, mot enough Asian culture, and not enough diversity. Seeing my own mother put down...is why I feel so strongly about assimilation. Even today, my mother wins at bingo, others make derogatory and racial comments. She just grins and waves her cash at them. Flashing a smile is often not enough.
"...passionate about developing Asian American leaders... Not enough Asian Americans are filling the roles of CEOs and high executives. He wants to make sure that cultural norms are recognized and refined so everyone has the same chance of making it to the top in the professional world." - Asian avenue magazine, 5/2017
...looks as if it had been dropped piecemeal from an airplane carrying trash. Our chauffeur drove a jeep in the Korean War... We passed...Haile Selassie Imperial University... We saw barefoot men outside many public offices, dictating to scribes. We saw The Opera House, which was built by The Italians, and has never housed an opera. People swore...the United State Bank [has] goats wandering about inside. Outside the United States Information Service sat a really choice leper... ...the most eminent prostitute of the town, who [accepts] as clients nobody under the rank of vice-minister. ...despite the curfew. - Gunther
Thursday. Another 12-hour shift is done. Around 7:30 PM I step out of the train. At the gate for my bus is a bald guy in his thirties, in a tank top. His head and arms are covered in tattoos. He wanders across the drive, over to where I sit. In a whisper he asks me for a smoke. I still don't smoke. My bus pulls into its gate We head over there and the driver steps out for a break on his layover. I get on and I see through the window that the tattooed guy got a smoke from the driver. The following day I have off. I get out on a corner with a diner, around 9 AM. After breakfast I will be off to the gym. I wait at the light with a middle-aged guy leaning on a cane. He has a cap which reads "Los Angeles" and has a camouflaged bill. He carries a backpack with "State Farm Insurance" on the back. Cane or not, he makes good time through the intersection. Two and a half hours later, the same corner has a woman at a booth. She's distributing free phones. She asks me if I have, "SSI? Social Security? Medicaid?" I tell her that I have healthcare and a mortgage. Instead of complimenting my hat, she tells me that she likes my shirt, and congratulates me on my mortgage. I never get to tell her that I already have a phone... I rarely have a Friday off. Which means I rarely get to bed on time to get enough sleep and still get up early enough to have had enough sleep to feel like riding my bike. This is not the case today. I get to bed early and get up Saturday ready to hit the bike trail on a beautiful morning. I go through an underpass where, on my way home, I've seen a guy asleep in a sleeping bag, next to a shopping cart full of stuff. Once I saw him having jus arrived for the evening. This morning, around 5:30 AM, I see him before he has left. I'm on the way home after work, around 6 PM. On the bike trail I pass a guy with grey hair down his back, using a cane. On the back of his T-shirt, it reads, "TiVo: TV the way you like it."
...Denver's latest hope when it comes to...homelessness...his department, the Office of HOPE (Housing and Opportunity for People Everywhere)... In January...was selected...after the HOPE office was announced by Mayor Michael Hancock... ...aims to roll out a number of programs... "You see...inspiration...particularly in places like Globeville and Elyria-Swansea, where families are working hard...and it's a struggle, and there's a lot of change going on in the community," he says. ...the Mayor's Commission to End Homelessness...it's members aren't receiving proper notifications of consultation around policing actions like the homeless sweeps. [He] testified against the Right to Rest Act, which aimed to end anti-homeless ordinances throughout Colorado. "...we need to ensure that localities have the authority to ensure public health and safety," [he] explains... "...the issue is not the time of rest; it's how do we turn that rest into a home?" Rather than change controversial laws, like the camping ban, [he] says that he is trying to build...affordable units... ...he hopes to introduce...a peer-to-peer outreach program..."rather than just well-trained government agents..." - Westword, 5/4-10/2017
"I don't see how the hell I missed him"
"Cause he's fast, so fast. His nervous system's jacked up. He's factory custom. He's the best, number one, top dollar, state of the art." Where do you go when the world's wealthiest criminal order is feeling for you with calm, distant fingers? ...so powerful that it owns comsats and three shuttles? "The stored data are fed in through a modified series of microsurgical contraautism prostheses. Superconducting quantum interference detectors. Even the primitive models could measure a magnetic field a billionth the strength of geomagnetic force; it's like pulling a whisper out of a cheering stadium." He was a surplus from the last war. A cyborg. Twin deformities on either side of his skull had been engineered to house sensor units. - Johnny Mnemonic, by W. Gibson, OMNI Magazine, 5/1981
Sunday. I'm on my way to see a movie. I'm on a bridge over Interstate 25. On a wide sidewalk, I come up behind a derelict guy ambling along. I'm behind him to his right. A couple of other riders are approaching to his left. We both pass him respectively on each side. I get to a light at the corner. He makes it to the corner and looks at me with a kind of desperation. He moves his left hand back and forth with the fingers and thumb together. I move my head back and forth watching his hand. The light turns green and I am on my way. I head to the train and ride it to a station down from the theatre. I get out and ride through a neighborhood where I worked, went swimming, and went to a gym last summer. Around 1 PM, I head over to a shopping center with a pizza buffet, a bagel place, and a burger joint. A year ago, I would have had my choice. This year, I'm on a new diet. I spot a place called Asian Fusion. I look inside. The only people seated who are not employees are a young man and an elderly woman. The man is in a suit, the woman in a dress, and both are head to toe in black. They look like Dutch missionaries. I order and sit at a booth with a battery powered candle. ...and this is where my ridicule comes to an end. I thought Vietnamese food was delicious. My order arrived and I take a bite. It's magnificent. As the hour advances, the place begins to fill up. I head to the movie, and when I come out, it's raining. Back to the train, and after a short ride I exit. Back to a designated path through construction under the train bridge, this end of the path is marked by a plastic orange fence suspended with metal rods placed in buckets of dirt. It has fallen over, blocking the way. I have to "dismount" and walk through the mud to pick it up. The buckets have "just do it" printed on them. If I must.
Monday. 7 AM. I've been messaging my boss since yesterday. She usually gives me a ride to work whenever I open during the week. I fear that she is still asleep. This weekend was Cinco de Mayo and she like to cruise. So, instead of being at work now, I am up at my old bus stop. In the bus shelter is a guy on the ground with a blanket up to his chin. This is not unusual, except that it appears to be a different guy than the one who I usually see here. He looks at me with tired eyes. The following day I have off. Coming back from the gym, I am back at the same corner with the same woman passing out free phones. She asks me if I have my "EBT?" before she recognizes me. "You're overqualified, have a mortgage, congratulations..." After a decade living on this boulevard, I am recognized at last. After I get home, only then do I realize that I have a money order to cash, and I get on my bike and turn around back toward the same corner. First, I stop for lunch next to a gas station which is frequented by homeless. There are a couple of homeless out front. A car pulls up to the light, driven by a teenager. In the back seat is a middle-aged local homeless guy. He yells out the window at the first two. I cross the street to eat a hot dog I got from the gas station. A trio of homeless are coming the same way. One guy has on an afro wig, and appears to be busting out moves. When he's done he takes off the wig. On the way back from the bank, I'm headed through a neighborhood where a guy who sounds drunk is coughing and talking to himself on his front lawn. I pass a parked car with a bumper sticker which reads, "I'm not speeding, I'm qualifying."
The whole collaboration apparatus... The Kuomintang...the gentry...the...peasants...was made up of Catholics. ...a coldly Catholic administration under the dictatorship... This...was only the continuation of...the methods through which these Catholic missions spread...and established... ...the tone for collaboration was set by the highest Church authorities... [Those village members who did not accept an invitation to join the Catholic Church] were scolded and told, "If the Japanese return in force you will not be allowed into the Church, and if you are killed that is your fault. We shall not care and we shall not come to your rescue." [With the Japanese defeat, Catholic fathers were apprehended and accused by villagers of mistreating the people.] "You preach suffering and hardship for the people. You say the poor should eat plain food and endure cold, never get angry and never say bad things. Then why should you eat meat and...if the taste doesn't suit you...order...it over again. And every single night you sleep with the nuns." "I have been a Catholic...and all I ever got from it was beatings." ...beaten for joining the Buddhist rites. - Hinton
...Lij Yasa offended the priestly [Coptic] hierarchy by embracing Islam, which is as if the King of England should suddenly become a Buddhist... Came a palace revolution (1916) made mostly by the church,...in collaboration with the British and French played a hand. Three forces favored Haile Selassie...the church, his imperial lineage, and one wing of the army. ...civil war took place... A decade of subterranean struggle took place... Halie Selassie, Elect of God, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, King of Zion, "Negusa Nagost" (King of Kings), and Emperor of Ethiopia...negotiated Ethiopia's entrance into the League of Nations... ...Yasa...was...a prisoner in chains...until his death in 1935. [When Italy invaded Ethiopia in WW II, the Ethiopians fought and lost, so] the Emperor abandoned his capital... He went to Jerusalem...where Abyssinian monks live in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre... - Gunther
...I can't imagine spending eternity with a bunch of boring straight people talking about Costco, minivans, and Golden Doodles.
Buddhism is more interested in asking questions about suffering. ...in what you're daily life is like, rather than worrying about blame or guilt... It's geared toward personal responsibility...engagement on how your mind works...encourages people to...make peace with how things are. - Outfront Magazine, 5/3/2017
...working to dispel rumors and is emphatic that the International Church of Cannabis is a place of worship for people who use cannabis. ...the church is firstly a gathering place for people who use cannabis as a sacrament. ...the church will closely follow all city regulations. ....the church is...for Elevationists, or people who use cannabis during religious practice to achieve a deepened place of spirituality. "[t]rough ritual...church members use the sacred flower to reveal the best version of self, discover a creative voice and enrich their community with the fruits of that creativity. ...a tradition meant to augment or deepen existing spiritual practices. - the profile, 5/2017
...long-time cannabis advocate, will host her popular "Elevation Ceremony" that involves the intentional use of cannabis...in Cherry Creek North. ...ancestral wisdom and personal renewal in a safe, legal and sacred environment...with the (always optional) use of cannabis as an 'awareness amplifier'... Ceremonies are followed with an optional tea service and consciousness conversation. ...two ceremonies per month in Denver, as well as private ceremonies. - natural awakenings, 5/2017
A near death experience...a small percentage include frightening or distressing aspects, the great majority contain...an intense feeling of unconditional love...a spiritual realm or world...spiritual beings, and/or...deceased loved ones...
Create a cohesive heart-mind energy field by breathing in/out from your heart and touching heart gently. In this space discover the truth arising. Chasing after external illusions manipulates our energy and creates separateness. - natural awakenings, 6/2017
Friday. It's been a long week. I alternated 12-hour shifts with days off, and today I got called in to work. Tomorrow will be another double shift. I stepped off the train and am down the street and on the bike trail around 9 AM. I am headed toward a neighborhood of opulence, along the way to work and off the trail. I'm not there yet. I am still thinking about my shirt. It's bright yellow, the color of warning signs. I imagine that I am the only one with any shirt this color. A cyclist enters the trail...wearing a T-shirt the exact same color as mine. And then, I'm there. Neighborhood of opulence, or NOO. I turn down a side street which has a line of SUVs parked along the curb. Traffic must go around me now as I am forced into the street. The cars appear to belong to a group of middle-aged woman doing yoga out on a front lawn. The things I miss getting called into work later in the morning...
...Denver Neighborhood Association, Inc., a pro-development organization...considers..."that Denver is trying to...enhance the pedestrian and bicycle experience ... [which] is a...anti-elderly campaign"...noting that many older people simply cannot conduct day-to-day business on foot or by bicycle. "...traffic is going to increase until people stop moving to Denver." - the profile, 5/2017
In...2016...Colfax Ave Business Improvement District (Colfax Ave BID) was using..its budget to fund extra patrols on Colfax...by off duty Denver Police Department (DPD) officers and private security... DPD appears committed tp maintaining a healthy bike patrol force. ...prior to the purchase...of 45 Specialized Pitch Sport mountain bikes...they were on bikes purchased for the Democratic National Convention in 2008. "They were almost like Frankenstein bikes, where we would piece them together with parts from different bikes." - Capitol Hill Life, 5/2017
If you aren't yet familiar with the phenomenon that is Outerbike, get ready to be blown away. ...ride some of the best bikes currently on the market while simultaneously soaking in all...this mountain biking nirvana... Outerbike was started...as a laid-back way for people to...try out a wide variety of bikes... ...Outerbike has become...anything but subdued. Every spring and fall, biker nerds from around the world...descend... ...an almost cult-like following or riders... The same vibe that was born in the high desert of Moab... The Full Demo package is $200... - Elevation Outdoors, 5/2017
The next great addition to...the creation of the 40 West Arts District...will be...a community-envisioned walking and bicycling experience for northeast Lakewood marked by innovative art...reversing the long decline of what has been Lakewood's "main street." ...the momentum is really rolling. New residents are moving to the area... We will begin to see the results of a housing study... ...this year I'm focused on listening to our children and youth. As I emphasized in my Stare of the City speech, I want to hear directly from our kids about what they think of Lakewood. - Looking@Lakewood, 5/2017
Others say Wheat Ridge is trying to mimic the hip urbanism of Denver's Highland neighborhood or Tennyson Street, without much success. ...the issue [:] what sort of community [do] the residents of Wheat Ridge want to live in. The place has always bee an outlier among Denver's western burbs, the get-off-my-lawn grandpa of the bunch...less fixated on [moving up.] ...a lack of annexation opportunities as an inner-ring suburb... {In the past was} "a no-growth bunch. They didn't want sidewalks. They didn't want asphalt.. They wanted natural drainage." ...in 2005... Wheat Ridge was falling behind other western suburbs. Its housing values were lower, its population was grayer, with less income... Other 'burbs had Belmar, Flatiron Crossing, Old-Towne Arvada, and other "destination shopping" sites. Wheat Ridge had outdated strip malls and...big box stores... Worse, the city had no main street, in the sense of a community gathering place that could also be a retail destination..."A pedestrian-oriented place with character as differentiated from other places." "If we continue to be a bedroom community [then we won't] have the sales taxes to support services for people sleeping here."
The miles of Colfax Avenue stretching from the city center past the Denver-Aurora line maintain a certain character: Automobiles jam together in packs while pedestrians shuffle...many without apparent destinations. Businesses...built from aging mansions, low-slung shopping strips...and layers of paint and grime. Restaurants wedge themselves in between head shops, dive bars , secondhand stores and ethnic markets, interrupted by used-car lots and sprawling motels. There's plenty of commerce, but most of it seems quotidian, and special destinations are few and far between. - Westword, 5/18-24/2017
Saturday is indeed another double shift. Around 6:15 PM, I am walking from the stop on my street for the bus from work. I'm in front of the Chinese food place across the street from where I live. I watch what I think is a brand new Corvette slowly pull into the parking lot. The driver floors the accelerator and immediately slams on the brakes, sliding on his tires into a parking space. Instead of Burt Reynolds exiting the vehicle, and entire fucking family disembarks, including three small children. When I get to the parking lot of my home, upon a concrete slab sits a guy who appears homeless. As I check the mailbox, he smiles at me. Monday. It's after work, around 8:30 PM. I'm just off the bike trail, coming through a neighborhood adjacent to my own. Street racers slowly cruise through in the twilight. "Parked" on a curb are a couple of small cars. The front end of one is smashed up against the rear end of the other. Both vehicles have their rear ends smashed in. There are no tickets visible anyplace. They are just sitting there in the dark as unobtrusive as a statue of the Virgin Mary. Further down the street is a guy standing on front of his open garage. He has no shirt on as he stares out into the dark. I guess summer has arrived.
Tuesday. Day off. I'm on a corner to catch a bus to the gym, around a quarter to 9 AM. I watch as new Camero rumbles past. It has flames painted on the hood. The driver has long grey hair, and appears exactly like an 80-year-old woman. Yo go girl. The bus whisks me to the gym, which is located on the edge of suburbia and full of retirees. One of them is coming down the sidewalk to the gym. I'm wearing my new emergency neon yellow shirt. This guy, in a running suit and carrying an umbrella on a cloudless morning, lifts his umbrella in mock fear. He tells me, "Okay, it's bright enough." On the bus back home is a guy who appears to work directing traffic in a construction zone. he has two signs with him, slow and stop. He's wearing a fireman's coat with reflective stripes, and a bandanna with digital camouflage. I get out back at the same corner and head to the stop for a connecting bus home. In the shelter is a woman with multi-colored hair, drawn eyebrows, heart-shaped sunglasses and mesh hose. I hear her on her phone, upon which she mentions having lived in California. From across the street comes a young guy carrying a bedroll. When he gets to she shelter, he is smiling at me. He enters the shelter where the woman tells him that his bedroll is in her way.
I get home and get on my bike to take it to the bike shop. The chain has begun to skip just enough, and I'm not sure about my brake shoes. Weather appears to be blowing in and I left my poncho at home. I arrive at an underpass beneath a train bridge. In the space of the yards between one side and the other, I pass a homeless guy with a shopping cart piled to the top. He moves it out of my way so I can enter the sidewalk. The first person to pass me from the other direction is a young guy on a BMX bike. He's coasting downhill, dressed from head to toe in black, and has a cigarette in his mouth. He's followed by a young woman holding a sleeve of her jacket over her nose and mouth as she walks along. When I reach the other side, I watch another guy race his own empty shopping cart across the intersection. In short order, I am cruising past a hospital Patients who appear to all be addict picking up prescriptions are exiting the place in a bottleneck. As I get to the drive for the emergency room, I notice a parked security vehicle. Outside is a guy with several trash bags. I assume that he is a maintenance guy changing the trash can. As I roll past, I notice that he has socks and no shoes on. He appears to be searching the bags for anything he can use. He whips an empty bag around, and it catches on a chain holding his wallet to his pants, dislodging the chain from his pants. "Fuck man," he says, "my wallet chain and..." I see the real security vehicle driver come out of a door. I wheel around a panhandler with a sign standing on a thoroughfare, and I arrive at the bike shop. The tech tells me I'm overdue for a new chain and I have no brakes left. For what it will cost to replace, he suggests that I might as well get a tune up. For $245, it will be ready June 2nd. I wonder if I should make my own panhandling sign...
Homeless and derelicts are everywhere. I hop on a bus to get into downtown proper for lunch. The are a couple of guys on board with walkers. They appear too young to need them. Out of a window I watch a passing parade of apparently unassociated transients. A quatrain of people with knap sacks cluster together inside an opening of a building. I step out grab a pedestrian mall shuttle to a restaurant. Out on the median, with benches and tables, one middle-guy sits with a leg up on the edge of a planter. He's bald with a long beard and a grimy T-shirt, and a skateboard which sits inside the empty planter. He's yelling at the downtown pedestrians, advertising some kind of nondescript "autographs," or at least I can't make out what the hell they are. He appears to have a tiny piece of paper and a phone. (?) I get inside the restaurant and get a seat, from which I listen to the hostess talking with a waitress. The hostess mentions a woman asking the patrons on the patio for money. The waitress says that, yesterday, some guy was picking flowers out of the restaurant planters. After lunch, I head to a train station. I watch a woman at a ticket kiosk. She appears to be asking instructions in Spanish on her phone. I don't have time to help her as my train is coming.
All too frequently, car thieves drive dangerously while getting away...putting numerous motorists in danger of injury. Criminals often cause extensive internal, external and mechanical damage. - Looking@Lakewood, 5/2017
Thursday. Another day off. Spring snow in huge flakes. In the evening, I decide to head over to the Vietnamese place right behind my home. I always see more Caucasians in there than I ever do anyplace else in my neighborhood. Three twenty-somethings are seated next to me. As I wait for my diet soda I listen to the two women and a man recount their day at the office. They sound as if they work for the city prosecutor's office. The guy does all the talking. He speaks quickly, the mark of a good district attorney no doubt. I wonder how many words he can get out before I my beverage shows up. He mentions an insurance case, a new DA from out of state, a favorite happy hour place. His boss asked everyone in the office to take one of the prosecutors out to happy hour, as the guy is leaving. I suspect someone asked if the prosecutor wanted to have drinks, because his boss replied to a question with, "What kind of district attorney doesn't drink?"
Saturday. Somehow, I get enough sleep and am ready to get out on the bike. Or a bike. Tuesday I took in to the shop the bike I ride to work and back. Apparently every part which has not completely work out (such as the brakes) needs a bath. That night I removed a back rack from the last bike I had put it on, one of many "department store" bikes I rode until they broke down. The description comes from a (at the time) 40-year-old bike shop owner with frosted hair who wouldn't repair my bike on the way home. Because it was a "department store-quality" bike. Sometime during the previous decade. I hung onto them because I thought that I could have a shop swap out any working parts that wore out on whatever current bike I was riding. Now I think that most of the parts on these old bikes are inferior to any new ones which I can purchase. If I ever have the time, I will take off the reflectors and perhaps the rims and tires and toss everything else. I take the rack off for the first time in about a decade and put it on the bike I ride on the weekends. The bike cost $100 and it has $60 in new tires on it. Today is my chance to test my rack assembly work. It appears to work just fine as I head down the street to the train station. After a couple of turns, I pass a tiny bungalow. It's 5:45 AM, and out of the front door comes a no-longer so rare Caucasian on this side of town. He's carrying the first snowboard I've seen during my 12 years in the 'hood. I'm convinced he's headed up to the newly snow-covered mountains for a final ride of the season. I remember one high school kid I worked with during the same decade ago. As soon as he would close, he jumped in his car and raced off up to the mountains for a night ride on his snowboard. Some fifteen or twenty minutes later, I jump on a train. A few stops south and I am in the neighborhood where I worked last summer. Where I went swimming every day. I did this here in 2016, and it occurs to me I also did this here in 2006. During the latter summer I worked, where I will today, covering for someone's maternity leave over the summer. She never did return. We then hired a woman who I would spend the rest of her time employed with us trying to go out with. I ride down the street, across a short bridge over a swollen creek, and around another corner. Coming up the last hill, I'm on a street lined with old bungalows, beginning alongside an interstate highway. Small siding-covered homes. Many with carport and garage additions. Some with solar cells on the roof. One has a Clinton/Kane yard sign defiantly in a window. Another has a monster-sized pickup truck with no front grill, parked behind another car. As I approach a busy avenue, the bungalows begin to give way to newer, comparative mansion-sized homes with stonework.
The following morning I am on a bus to the supermarket. I watch out the window as a young guy on a mountain bike comes up the sidewalk. Up to now, during the 12 years I've spent in this neighborhood, I've only ever seen middle-aged guys on bikes, some of them homeless. This is the first young guy. With an unlit cigarette in his mouth he pops a wheelie. The day before, at work, I watched for the first time that I can remember someone on a motorcycle pop a wheelie. Later on, I am across the street from where I live, at a Mexican place for lunch. The Caucasians I've seen in here have been few and far between. This afternoon there are a couple of them here, thirtysomething guys. One of them has tattoos down his neck and arms. When they are finished, they both exit and get into a big new white van. When I am done I head over to the corner. There is a young Caucasian guy. He sees me, waves, and says, "Hi." (?) He appears almost as if he is in a uniform for work, but I see no business name on his Polo shirt. Waiting to make a left at the light are a pack of seven motorcycles. For dinner I head to the Chinese place across the other street. A young guy pulls up on his high speed motorcycle. He appears as a kind of 1950s biker updated by six decades. On the back of his riding jacket, it reads, "My motorcycle is my weapon." It's an interesting take on the admonition of the courts toward drivers who injure or kill with their vehicles. A badge of pride? So much for needing 'no stinking badges.' He comes in to use the men's room. From outside I hear him whistling. When he comes out he heads next door to the gas station before hopping on his techno-hog, and rides to the parking lot across the street. It's a lot for a small auto mechanic shop, where youthful drivers of bikes, new Camaros and Mustangs, and pickups gather on Sundays.
Derelict Noir
The following morning I am up at my old bus stop. A vehicle is parked next to the stop and someone is preparing to clean up the place. Each time traffic turns onto the avenue, the vehicle causes bottleneck. A couple comes shuffling up the sidewalk. The guy is bald and has many small tattoos all over his head and arms. Traffic turning onto the boulevard must wait for the couple to shuffle through the crosswalk. About ten hours later, the rain has been coming down since 6 PM. I'm inside the shelter at a stop for a bus back to my boulevard. I'm not there long before a couple of weirdo lethargic guys come along, in knit caps and coats. One with long dreadlocks is staring at the schedule posted on the wall of the shelter. He lights up a cigarette. The other steps out and stands in the rain. He asks me how long I've been here and if I know the time. He wanders off out of sight. They have put some bags down on the shelter floor. The other one then wanders away, leaving the bags. A third person comes along, a short woman, and also lights up a cigarette under the shelter. In the dark and almost from behind, I think I see dark circles around her red-rimmed eyes, and wisps of bangs stick out from a hood. She strikes me as some kind character from a German children's fable on a smoke break. Her hand comes ever so slowly up to her mouth for a puff, before pneumatically lowering again. After some puffs she tosses the spent butt into the rain. The dreadlock guy comes back before a middle-aged guy comes cruising past on a ten speed. As he passes us in the rain he is speaking vague profanities. He's wearing earbuds and sunglasses at 8:30 PM.
The bus pulls up and the two guys get on with the rest of us. A couple of stops later we pick up a few more, including a guy who has something wrong with his right eye. I listen to him tells someone next to him, "I use a different method every time I get busted. It's worked for seven years. The DA said, 'Sixty days.'" We arrive at my boulevard, and I disembark with the eye guy and his pal. We all head over to the stop for my last bus home. I'm under a roof, out of the rain. The pair is at the bench, out in the rain. A young guy come up the sidewalk. He has no coat or umbrella, just a back and grey tie-dyed T-shirt. He has glasses and a lot of curly hair, like Napoleon Dynamite. In one hand is what I presume to be a couple more cans in a plastic bag of what he has in his other hand, a big tall can of Bud ICE. He asks me if I want a beer. I've been asked many times out on this street if I smoke. This is the first time I've been asked if I want a beer. And yet I decline. In the street but not of the street? He hangs out in the rain with the other two guys. I remember what Edgar Snow wrote in Red Star Over China, about Mao exclaiming with revolutionary exuberance that he was taking a "rain bath." I don't smoke, I don't want a beer, and I don't appear to stand in the rain with everyone else. The bus comes and Napoleon gets on ahead of me. The driver tells him that his transfer is a day old. "Fuck," he says, "I threw away the wrong one." That's why the date is on it. The driver lets him on, along with myself and the other two guys. The three of us get out on my street, and we walk the same direction to my home. Along the way I hear the eye guy say that he was taken down by his neck. The pair continue on their way, into the night and the rain. I wonder if they are my neighbors?
The following morning, I am out on the bike trail to answer an early call in to work. The sun is out. Some time after 9 AM, I am headed for the train station. I watch a homeless guy who has perhaps just awoken. He's tall with long greasy hair, a weather beaten face, and skin tanned dark from the sun and the street. In pants which appear to be too short for him, he limps along as he carries a sleeping bag in a bundle through the parking lot of a warehouse. When I pull into the station, I see him without the bag. I assume that he stored it someplace. He heads to the platform and begins digging in trash cans. When I get to work I have lunch before I'm due there. I head over to a pancake place. I eat out on the patio where I can keep an eye on my bike. I'm the only one out there except a chef and two owners of the place.
...off-the-gird residents who hold "sovereign" beliefs. ...who believe that they are subject only to common law, and therefore not subject to all the statuary laws o the U.S. government at its various levels... Sometimes calling themselves "constitutionalists" or "freemen"...because the U.S. government has been corrupted... The FBI considers "sovereign citizens" part of a terrorist movement...at odds with elected officials across Colorado...threatening and harassing elected officials with their own versions of subpoenas, arrest warrants and liens issued through a group called "The People's Grand Jury of Colorado." ...in the case of liens, can negatively affect a victim's credit score. "...the claim that I owed close to a billion dollars. ...delivered around the cul-de-sac where I live..." ...off-gridders in the San Luis Valley...three broad groups: ...building sustainable and eco-based communities, retired or poor folks...and...sovereign beliefs. "...people who said, 'This is our opportunity to really create this sovereign world.' ...it was hard to get work done when they were around." "Locals...were derisively called "Mexicans' by the 'desert dwellers.' [Someone} associated with the 'patriot' movement...described himself to neighbors as a door-kicker and a trigger-puller... ...into no-man's-land... "People show up every day that we've never met and never seen on properties that were vacant yesterday." "You've got to go! Go!" yelled a boy. "This is a public road!" "Well , my parents say you can't be here right now!" "Well, I'm not on your private property!" ...a...voice shouted from the shack. "Get inside," and the two children suddenly disappeared from view. The movement [has] roots in the Posse Comitatus movement that emerged during the American farm crisis of the '70s and '80s... - Westword, 5/25-31/2017
"The Somalis are independent people unused to . . . central government....direct taxation, and intensely suspicious of the foreigner, the white man, and the Christian." Most are Muslims of ancient Hamitic stock. "French Somaliland"...sends one deputy and one senator to Paris. "British Somaliland"...is run...as a protectorate. ...mostly Muslim nomads, who live by grazing. Somalia has one of the most radical...nationalist movements in all Africa, the Somali Youth League. ...the chief is a combination of local boss, family counselor, and tax collector. He cannot easily be a dictator, because the elders of the tribe (and witch doctors) will not permit it. District Commissioners usually have a nicely paternal attitude toward their clients. It is a delicious experience to hear a chief expound his plans to throw the British out of Africa, immediately after a communal tea with him at the DC's house. The DC's...are miracles of tact. Often a witch doctor has more influence than the chief of a tribe because he has access to...spirits. A Belgian anthropologist has gone so far as to define a tribe as a "community of the living and the dead"... ...the land...is...held...by the tribe as a whole, and cattle. ...the sacredness of the land... Livingston wrote..."Fire is their only clothing at night"... - Gunther
On Tuesday evening, I rode to the train and took a faster ride home when I didn't have to. I don't know why. Wednesday evening, there is something about today. I decide to do the entire ride home. The temperature was in the eighties today. The sun is throwing the long shadows again at the approach of another season when the living is easy. I brings memories of every such season before it. Shortly after leaving work I turn onto a horse trail. I stopped taking it one winter when it was covered in snow. It's actually a faster way home. A short distance down this trail, I think I hear noise from a nearby high school football field. In fact, the noise is coming from a sprawling back yard off the trail through this neighborhood of opulence. There is a graduation party going on, complete with music which sounds as if it's from the 1980s and young women in long white dresses. I suddenly flash on perhaps the only Robert Altman film I've ever seen titled O.C. and Stigs, released 30 years ago to the year. I have it on tape and recently watched it, perhaps for the first time since I recorded it from a pay TV channel three decades ago. The trail follows a creek, where I pace a couple of mallards paddling in the setting sun. At the exit where I turn off the trail are a grey-haired, spandex-clad couple on bikes. The Mrs. is consulting a posted trail map. She's in a tie-dyed top. Power to the opulence.
A short ride through another neighborhood takes me to another trailhead, and from there through an endless series of parks to a connecting trail. Everyone is out this evening. A picnic area is full, a huge park is completely full of kids, a couple of them playing in the creek. I watch one girl is the setting sun. She's walking in the creek and moving a branch through the water as if it's a kayak paddle. At the end of the park is a bottleneck on the trail, of bikers and pedestrians. Which I never see on these trails. The sun is throwing beautiful shadows all over these parks. I get to the intersection of two trails and have to stop for another biking couple approaching. I've never had to stop for anyone here in two years. A ways up this other trail, either the same biking couple or yet another pair have stopped at a construction detour. The guy is using the port-o-john behind a chain link fence. I arrive where the trail goes under one particular bridge where I always see a homeless guy, next to his shopping cart and under his blanket. I see him just as he is rolling out his mat. The last stretch of this trail home swings around one of two golf courses. It's hardly an unpopular section of the trail, but tonight there's an adult, a teen, and a kid who appear to be related and all on BMX bikes. They act as if they are chasing a fourth person as first the trio races past me as fast as they can in the oncoming direction. I hear the adult mention something about "She went the other way!" They lost Mom? Immediately they all come racing past me headed back the way they came. Bringing up the rear is the teen. I watch him accelerate as he stands on the pedals. When he sits down to coast the seat rides so low it looks like the BMX version of a low rider. I don't wonder how many moms have been lost out on this trail, because I've never seen a family do this before. They race past an overweight woman running with a stroller. Her spandex pants have a pattern which, in the twilight, appear as if there are huge holes all over them. I maneuver around her to make it under another bridge and to the trail head back on my own side of town.
The Community Table
Residents have lawnmowers out for the first time this year. The smell of cut grass is in the air. It's one of those evenings, it feels good out here. I do something which I never ever do when I ride. Ever. I take off my helmet. When I come to the last turn toward my street, it's a corner with a van with a trailer behind it parked in a driveway. The roof of the van has a rack and the trailer is an open bed with sides. Both the rack and the trailer are piled full of children's bicycles. I wonder if they are stolen? A couple of days later I am called in to work earlier than scheduled. At twenty to 10 AM, I am at a pancake place in the shopping center where I am working today. It's one of several places here where I eat before work. I've seen it packed on a regular basis. Today is crazier then usual. The place is full of kids. It's as if every single school in the neighborhood has graduated today. Every table both inside and on the patio is taken. I was just here earlier this week and I was the only one on the patio, with the exception of the owners and an employee. The only empty table is big. They refer to it as the "community table." I am the first one to have a seat. I don't recall the last time I sat at a table to eat with strangers. Perhaps it was the mid-1980s, a place in Oklahoma called the Lovelight. I am soon joined at the other end by a mom and her four kids. I hear her mention to the waiter something about "everyone graduated from the fifth grade." All of the people in here look like my customers. 've seen a couple of my customers in here last week, Lembke and Pelz. One a man almost as wide as he is tall, the other a pragmatic and attractive woman of Hispanic descent. A grey-haired guy in a plaid shirt sits next to me. After quietly examining his menu, he quietly turns to his phone. I never hear him say a word. He's probably the do-it-yourself type, having installed a security system in his home slowly and methodically by himself. He's here without any wife, possibly a bachelor. Although just this week, one of my customers volunteered that he was a 91-year-old widower who lost his wife two years ago, and still misses her. Something about this guy's phone, however. After working with so many women who prefer colorful designs to their phone cases, his is a flat red, the color of tool grips at the hardware store. Perhaps he's looking up instructions for installing solar panels, or he could be checking in on his security camera, monitoring the details of an empty home.
Everyone else at the community table has ordered a hot beverage, and each has a kiln-fired mug with the restaurant crest on the side. The mom's two middle daughters are seated together in matching powder blue tie-dyed tank tops. My attention keeps turning toward the eldest daughter, who is listening to the other two almost as if she was the mom. She looks like a character out of a Disney movie from the 1970s. She has long straight hair, braces, freckles, and eyes that look like they sparkle from miles away. The youngest is a boy, engrossed in a video game. A thin white-haired guy takes a seat on the other side of the quiet one. I eventually recognize him as another one of my customers. He tells the mom and her kids that he has three granddaughters. One has graduated, and the other is continuing. He just got back from both ceremonies. It turns out that he's retired from teaching after 31 years. The mom tells him that she also did some teaching for kindergarten. The two discuss the merits of principals and AP classes. When I look up to see her she is now holding her son. She's cute. When I next see the boy, he's back in his seat and stabbing a stack of pancakes with a toothpick. Before I head to work, I hear mom tell the two middle girls that they "need to be nice to" someone named Cooper. After work I arrive at the train station around 7:30 PM in an attempt to shave some time off the commute home, and get as much sleep as possible before I turn around and do this all over again tomorrow. Memorial Day weekend or no. I notice a guy down by the bus stop. As I validate a transit system ticket, I turn around to see him next to me. He has shaggy black hair under a cap, prescription sunglasses, a black moustache and stubble, and brown teeth. He mumbles a question, how long it takes to get to a nearby town. It has a cemetery. I tell him I don't know where it is. "You've never been there?" he asks. "It's the biggest cemetery there is." I'm not quite ready for the cemetery yet. Onto the train and off at my stop. On the way home I pass a bar and grill. Outside on the patio are a group of loud patrons standing together. A grey-haired guy in an undershirt is sticking his phone in someone else's face. "Lookit that lookit that!" he says. "He's got a hardon!" The group roars.
The Saturday before Memorial Day. I'm out of the house shortly before 6 AM. In spite of this being a rainy week, I have been able to ride to and from work every day, and I haven't been dumped on yet. And my good bike is in the shop for a major cleaning. Once again I feel as though I have beaten the odds. Headed for the train, I pass the bar I came by yesterday evening, the patio empty now save for a no smoking sign. Yesterday and today, and perhaps the day before yesterday, the gear assembly on my standby bike has been having trouble shifting into gear, especially the lowest. It isn't until I get to work that I discover...a bungee cord hook has been impeding one of the shifter wires. 'Operator error,' as the first guy I worked for used to say. The neighborhood I'm working in today, not the old money one I've been at all week, is one where I see kids ride bikes through she shopping center along with families all on bikes. This morning I watch a couple with a young daughter all on bikes come past. The dad has a toddler in a bike trailer. Mom is yelling at the daughter not to race past the doors of the shops. She tells a shopper she's worried her daughter will run into someone opening a door. "We might be on our way to the emergency room."
...folks living adjacent to...the vast scheme devised by the Colorado Department of Transportation to expand I-70 through ...northeast Denver and Aurora, at a projected total cost of around $1.8 billion...have long felt...overwhelmed by the fleets of consultants, media coordinators, community liaisons...employed by government agencies to win support for the highway makeover. "We just don't...trust the city, EPA of CDOT to look out for us. We're being spoonfed the information they want us to have." ...emails dating back to 2015, requesting aid from city officials...to help the neighborhood groups deal with the onslaught of so many construction projects in what Mayor Michael Hancock has dubbed "the Corridor of Opportunity." "...we concluded there was nothing the city was going to do to help residents on a grassroots, community representation/planning level." - Westword, 5/25-31/2017
The Memorial Weekend Festival...and the floor pumps
It's Memorial Day. I'm at a small street fair. After pooping out on Cinco de Mayo, this is the first outdoor fest of the season for me. The Memorial Weekend Festival. I haven't heard of it before. Along the way I can see a storm brewing behind me, and fast. On the train and bike it's a short way, but it's a world away from my own diesel injected boulevard. Instead of post-war bungalows, this place is chock full of big brownstones with solar panels and hanging wicker baskets full of flowers. I know I'm getting close when I see a line of parked cars as far as I can see. A pair of women come along with race numbers on their spandex. A trio of residents stroll through the alley. I circumnavigate the block before I turn a corner, and I wonder if I will burst out laughing. The street looks like a TV show. There are flags on the homes and chairs and big tables on the lawns. Kids in sporting gear are running around. At the entrance are a couple of metal bike stands, and they are completely full of kids' and adults' bikes, some locked up sideways. Other bikes and even a skateboard are piled around trees. The bike may have a smaller carbon footprint for the Earth, but it's an outsized one for this bike parking. There are residents in patriotic T-shirts here with gay and lesbian couples. I like the shirt with the rebel flag which reads, "Don't put down my heritage." Hey, fella, got any statues of Jefferson Davis?
I step into a bike shop off the street. I notice "a small floor pump," it says on the packaging. I ask a young guy with a manicured moustache how much his small floor pumps are. He climbs a ladder where the full size pumps are. I point the opposite direction, toward the one I saw. He tells me, "Uh, you said floor pumps..." An older guy, apparently the boss, asks a young woman with her hair in a pair of braids to help me out. I feel like I'm on Walton's Mountain. I direct her attention toward the pump labeled small floor pump. "Small floor pump," she says. "Huh, weird." I step into a sports bar for lunch. There are perhaps ten flat screens. One has some kind of direct NBC channel with women's tennis. My waitress is an outgoing girl named Charlie who is helping out here today from another restaurant. A couple of police officers stop in and shake hands with a father who is effusively grateful. After lunch I witness the rest of the fest. On my way out more and more residents are on their way in, my foot and bicycle and moped. It takes me less time it seems to ride home than to take the train. I'm almost home when the rain starts. As the drops get bigger, I stop under a tree to put on my poncho. Then it begins coming down. Then I'm in my first hailstorm. I'm home shortly before the squall passes. I imagine the majority of the festival attendees got it worse.
Otherwise willfully making disruptively loud sounds. Taking any animal...within a paid fare zone unless...intended and trained to assist [or] the animal is in training [or] in an appropriate carrier... Lying on the floor, platform, stairway, landing, ground or conveyance. ...on RTD property while...impaired by the consumption of alcohol or...drugs. Camping. Occupying any facility for more than 2 hours in a 24-hour period unless...due to delay in transit service. Unauthorized use of an electrical or data outlet. Bathing or washing clothing in RTD restrooms. Walking in a vehicle while barefoot. Engaging in public nudity... - RTD Code of Conduct, Effective December 20, 2016
Practically all black Africans are undernourished. "...the break-up of the home...going to work for a white master often entails." Most villages have no shops at all... ...few Africans could afford to buy meat... Cattl...to an African. They are...the means of buying brides. Natives are strictly forbidden in most of Bantu Africa to possess or use firearms... - Gunther
Tuesday. Early evening. I leave work and roll out into residential streets full of bicycle riders. Before I get to the main trailhead, some guy blows by me on a ten speed, faster that I could even with my good bike which has two inches more on its wheel base. Forget about this evening. The trail makes its way through a series of parks. Along a creek running through a big stretch of green are seated four teens. Dressed all in black, they appear perhaps to be vaping. The dog park is full, including a young woman with long magenta hair to match her magenta sweater. Shortly after I turn onto another trail, I approach a point where the trail goes under a bridge. There I suddenly converge upon two oncoming bicycle riders, an oncoming dog-walker, a dog walker approaching them, and a runner. I maneuver through this logjam and journey on toward the end of the trail. Along the way, I watch a small cloud growing in the light of the setting sun. When I do arrive at trail's end, there is a kind of open metal shelter at one end of the last bridge. At this bridge are a couple who appear as if they are homeless. Each has a bicycle. The one in the shelter with the woman is sitting upside down without a front wheel. The shelter itself appears to be full of stacked duffel bags. After another 15 minutes or so I arrive at my corner. In that time, the thundercloud had mushroomed into a big thunderhead. A bolt of lightning flashes at its base. The following day, I get a message to go into work ASAP. At 9:05 AM I am standing inside a deathburger at the shopping center where I will be spending the next ten hours. In a booth are a couple of guys engaged in conversation. One has a blonde crew cut and a sleeveless shirt with gold stars.
At some point today, a tractor trailer hauling fuel dumped its load on the interstate, which caught fire between a couple of exits. The passenger train track next to the interstate also burned. I was planning to ride all the way home anyway. Around 7:30 PM I turn onto a residential street on the way home. I immediately see a pair of teenagers, each with a basketball stand and hoop in the street. Further down the street is a Mexican landscaper and his wife, both in T-shirts over their long-sleeved shirts. The T-shirts have their company name on the front. The husband is explaining to a Caucasian homeowner about a corner of her deteriorating driveway. An so ends another month.
