My Life As An R. Crumb Character/The OMNI Magazine File: July 2017

Which TV mom would you add to your mom squad?
     Frankie Heck from "The Middle."
     Ree Drummond, "The Pioneer Woman"
     Joanna Gaines from "Fixer Upper!"
     Aunt Vivian from "The Fresh Prince"
     Pam Beasley from "the Office,"...a working mom and...would be a fun person to have around and share mom stories with.
     Hands down, Claire Dunphy from "Modern Family." She has goals, is a high-achiever, and she's married to a lovable man-child...she'd be a fun mom to unwind with over a glass of wine. Like so many of us, she just wants to be everything to everyone. ...she gets stuff done. - Colorado Parent, 7/2017

     Welcome to the new quarterly "Englewood [, Colorado] Magazine!" This consolidates our multiple publications... We have a wonderfully unique story...    Please joins us...the last Friday of every month for..."Final Friday" art, food and music night. ...a..."Signature Event"... We also plan...to develop better identity...
     "In our neighborhood, there are generations that live near each other. Neighbors get together and have block parties." - Englewood Citizen, summer 2017

     Brazzaville, capitol of...French Equatorial Africa...businesslike, packed with bourgeois wealth, proud of its bustle, and almost totally devoid of grace. Brazzaville is still an African city, loosely constructed, colorful, relaxed...everybody smiles. "Gabon." Among early explorers was...the...English lady Mary H. Kingsley, who - in Victorian petticoats - made in this region one of the most dangerous expeditions ever known. It cost her her life eventually... - Gunther

     The person shot to death [at a park a few blocks from where I live] on Sunday night was a 26-year-old woman. Another man was shot...in critical condition. The pair was [sic] found in a car... ...the first report of the shooting came at 7:41 p.m.. - 9news.com, 7/17/2017

     Sunday. I'm on a bike ride out to a festival, for which I have the date wrong. I won't discover this until I get to the particular park where it's supposed to be. This has happened to me before with this particular outdoor festival. The park is there, but the festival won't be fro another week or two. This will result in a decision to see a movie I was debating to see, and my spending the entire afternoon riding back and forth across the north end of downtown. Before this however, I am still on my own side of town. I slip onto the bike trail just long enough to get under and onto the other side of the avenue. In the darkness, on the trail under the avenue, a guy crosses the path right in front of an oncoming bike. As I pass through I smell marijuana. I get downtown and am headed for a street with a bike lane which will take me directly to the park with the non-existent festival. In a neighborhood surrounding the state capitol I happen upon some kind of groovy dive diner. The more I ride in proximity to downtown, the more I stumble upon these places. The bike, part of the diet and exercise plan, is bringing me to new places to eat. It's up to me to see to it that the two end up congruent. I lock the bike up next to a flyer demanding freedom for a large collection of anarchists. Their mug shots cover the handbill. The place has salads, eggs, tofu, and lots of waffle plates. But no bacon or sausage. Everyone in here appears to be in their twenties, young enough to be my children. There's a seat available at the bar, which is also "full menu." I'm sitting next to a guy n a crew cut, a twelve-inch goatee, and a bowling shirt. The place has no diet soda and I have a specially-flavored iced tea. I'm going with flow of the Caucasian hipster. The bar has dim lamps with big shades, making it hard to read. Fortunately, I'm next to an open back door. The bartender has a perm and is in a striped tank top. "Hey, barkeep, 1985 just called. It wants it's wardrobe back."
     After lunch, I get to the park and all is revealed. With 2 hours before the movie, I ride to the library to put a hold on a DVD before returning to the theatre. The African-American families, young couples, and gay men are out for a stroll. The homeless asleep out on the lawn of the capitol. The homeless are everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. As many as there appear to be in proximity to the capitol, I never hear the mayor mention them in any of his ablutions to the city, and his beloved "creative class."  I don't know how you can be homeless without being creative, they must be the most creative ones around. On my ride home after the movie, I pass them, there in the shade of trees on lawns next to apartment complexes. A drunk in an alley sits in a parking space, mumbling to himself. On a street with turn-of-the-century homes is an empty parking lot, grass coming up through its cracks. A big camping trailer sits in the lot. A family is outside of it, and it's obvious that they live there. The following day is the day before the Fourth of July, and the beginning of another work week. At least for me. At 9 AM, I am at the stoplight of an intersection with a busy avenue and an even busier highway. Standing just to my right is a panhandler flying a small cardboard sign. He's stepping with his cane and holding it toward the traffic on the highway, the majority of which is unlikely to slowdown anywhere near enough to hand him change. He may not even be in his forties yet, some fifteen younger than myself. What is a guy this young doing with a cane, out here standing next to a highway? He's in a hat with the name of a town in the mountains and a T-shirt for the World Wildlife Fund. As he stapes around the corner, it sounds as if he is mumbling bible verses.

     The aim...is to perpetuate colonial rule forever. The press is censored, the secret police are proficient, and elections do not mean anything... ...no faintest idea exists of development toward...self-government. ...gradual economic betterment. "It takes a long time to change human beings. You cannot enter the social patterns of a people by legislation." "Three things run the Congo: Belgium...the Roman Catholic Church; and big business. The Belgian Governor General...has no local Legislative Council or...assembly to check on his powers, because representative government does not exist in the Congo. Belgian District Commissioners in the hinterland...keep every element of rule under their fingertips. The essence of the Belgian system is to buy off African discontent by giving economic opportunity...social services, and a...high standard of living. If you have a healthy economy...other problems will...solve themselves. ...that it is madness for the British to let the Africans vote [while still] economically submerged, and worse...for the French to...try to fit the African into...an elaborate abstract political system... A Congolese Negro can become a first-class carpenter or mechanic, but not an engineer. He can be a bishop, a journalist...a civil servant, or a pharmacist, but not an architect of attorney. ...the Belgians do not want...Congolese...to see how Europeans live in Europe. ...to become dissatisfied. "We have a duty to these people. We want to treat them like human beings. ...it would be a disfavor...to communicate the achievements of European civilization 'before they are ready.' Will it not ruin them...?" ...of an African middle class. Belgians do not want Negroes at their dinner tables...but...to have economic opportunity. This serves the national purpose. It increases purchasing power.   Why not let unmitigated colonial rule proceed indefinitely? "If we ever do have to go, at least we [shall be] leaving [behind] a rich country." ...the people will sooner or later be in a position to demand change. Once a certain standard of living is reached... "...discontent is the price of progress." "Industrial revolution is fast pushing the Congo into new economic patterns . . For industrialism in the Congo...lifts thousands or Africans out of...poverty, out of...their ruined tribalism... Africans in the Congo begin...to be 'people like everyone else," [in the eyes] of the Europeans for whom they work. The ethnic medley is so inordinately complex over such a wide area with such hopelessly bad communications that a cohesive nationalist expression is impossible. The idea of assimilation must...result...in the creation of a mixed society... Let the next generation worry about it. The French know that they have to bring Negroes into the functioning of the state "somehow." - Gunther

     ...water-treatment plant engineer...blames the UN sanctions committee... The amount of drinking water...to the public is half what it needs. any villages...depend on brackish wells. ...victims of an arbitrary system...party loyalists, tribes, and the military. I wander through the mass of people... ...as I pass by some whisper..."My son, gone twelve years." "My husband, eight years." "Where are they?" Within seconds...the police...hustle me away. ...in the West Bank I often resorted to Russian... And...in Israel...Russian is more useful than Hebrew in many neighborhoods. [As it is in Iraq.] A CNN reporter who speaks Arabic balks when I ask for help. She can't afford to be seen assisting me. Thugs try to block photographers' cameras. They infiltrate the group shouting pro-government slogans. Some Western news [reporters don't cover] the event, fearing they could jeapordize their visas... Television [journalists] have...money...large staffs, and...make a lot of noise wherever they go. ...concern here over a possible war [is] taking its toll on the country's small private sector. Many Iraqis have stopped purchasing... ...young people are frustrate with no jobs, no money... ...these young people who have grown up knowing only war and sanctions, feel they have been condemned...by the United States. If left alone...Iraq will get rid of Saddam in as little as a year. Most in Iraq...search for...the BBC, Radio Monte Carlo, or the Voice of America. The Iraqis...jam VOA's...Arabic language source...forcing it to jump frequencies... Some reporters...buy officials expensive gifts. "...revolution after revolution have brought us to destruction." Many of Iraq's best and brightest have fled the country. [A] Forty-one-year-old...professor of political science...says...a war in which Iraq could be dismembered or dissolve into ethnic or religious conflict..."would be a terrible mistake." ...her third...child ..says she identifies with Palestinian children who...are suffering...just as she is... ...Islam has come to play [an] important part here...result...of despair. [With oil revenue during the 1970s,] Iraq appeared to be joining the rest of the world. The departure ritual [for visitors to Iraq] requires...shopping bags...of...dinars [to the hotel] and...sums of dollars in...fees to the Information Ministry... The process takes hours...    ...in Afghanistan...Geraldo Rivera...recast himself as a war correspondent... He was catered to by an obsequious entourage...also surrounded by a contingent of armed guards he had hired. He had not yet announced that he...was packing heat... ...he was playing by...rules that blurred the lines between journalist and combatant. ...and I didn't want to be in his playpen. I didn't tell anyone in the hotel about my plans because...about the Afghans...hanging around the lobby. It was impossible to know...where their sympathies lay. [Of] Amer... Ahmed is jealous... Amer says he...could lose his commissions. ...he doesn't have the protection of close relatives in the Information Ministry and can't risk moving into Ahmed's territory. The manager [of] the "National Restaurant'...offers me some red wine...with a can of Pepsi next to it for camouflage. Under Saddam's current rules...booze is only to be imbibed at home. ...he hates the regime, but he is scared to death that what might follow could be even worse. Iraq is afraid of the aftermath, assuming the country will fragment and dissolve into a vicious civil war. After...he murdered or resettled restive ethnic groups, Saddam feels the need to woo them with...perks, money, and goods if they behave. ...there is an Iraqi identity...they have aspirations to regional leadership. Again and again they indicate that they feel they are an ungovernable mixture of peoples... - Garrels

     July 4th. I'm in the town of Golden to get breakfast with the sister before we head up to a natural cold springs. We eat with some local residents before I stop into a coffee place. The shop is packed. A woman sits at an outdoor table. She has Botox in her upper lip. The place is full of cyclists, neo-hippies, and hipsters. A woman in a Lycra shirt is in pigtails, another in a colonial skirt. A guy with white trimmed stubble is in a black tank top and a necklace. At the pool, we are waiting to pull into a parking spot. There is a line at the entrance and almost no parking. A middle-aged guy in a brimmed hat and buttoned down shirt is holding a coffee mug. We wait for him to let us pass. He lets up park and when we get out he asks us if we think he should have stayed home. At the pool, one guy has a tattoo on his chest of a schooner in a storm, and a lighthouse breaking in half. It looks like a bad painting. Later in the evening, I walk out into my parking lot around a quarter to ten, and I spend an hour watching fireworks in every direction.
     Wednesday. I'm headed into work early, around 9 AM. I'm down the street from where I live, at a residential intersection. On the corner is an elderly guy in a straw sun hat. He has a big dog on a leash. The pair begin crossing the street in front of an oncoming vehicle. After I am some distance down the trail, I happen upon a guy standing with a cane in the other lane. He has a long bushy grey beard and is looking out across the Platte River. He's in a faded T-shirt with "America" across the front. I believe that he is America. Around a bend and across a couple of bridges, and I am rolling past the open river out of the woods. Bike after bike after bike goes past me, coming and going. Since the last week of June, this trail has been full of bicycle traffic out of nowhere. Half of the bicycles on this trail today are reclining ones. One of those comes along, this one with what at first appears to be the first 1/4 of a U.S. flag mounted on a mast on the back. It must actually be some kind of short U.S. flag banner. Just past the guy on the bike is someone on this hot morning in a flannel shirt, pushing a bike. The bike has two full enormous trash bags attached to a rack on the back. The bike is being pushed by someone with a the face of a seventy-year-old woman. As I pass, she says hello. Just down the hill from her are two other women and a guy, all three dressed as if they work in an office. The trio, the women in colorful print dresses, are out for a stroll. I turn onto the connecting trail, past a sign which reads "Rid Safe," I come upon another "cyclist." Either that or dehydration is causing hallucinations. This one is riding what appears to be a gymnasium stair machine somehow assembled into a kind of bicycle.
     I leave work at 7 PM and travers a couple of opulent residential streets before I arrive at a horse trail. There are kids out on bikes. Then, from around the bend, comes a group of four or five twentysomethings and both parents, all on bikes, in a pack. The ladies are in halters and have long straight hair., and everyone leisurely pedals along. It a scene straight out of some '70s TV show. I wonder if they will have some Jello when they get home.  From here, I hit the trailhead, switch trails, and am halfway home from there when I pass yet another stair machine bike. Someone must be advertising these. When I come pedaling up to my own parking lot. I spot the guy I've been seeing lurking around here since the end of last month, a big guy in his thirties. He's sitting in a lawn chair in front of a carport. I park the bike and he says, "Let me ask you something. I see you riding aaaaall over the place. How far do you do?" I mention the corner where I work. He's never heard of it. I tell him it's south of the nearest highway. He introduces himself, and tells me his name again when he goes back inside. I can't remember it. (Evan? Don?) The first thing he asks me is if I've heard that his wife called the police on him three times for a domestic dispute. I tell him that I don't recall the last police car I've seen in out lot. He tells me that he's been living here for 2 years, and he "can't believe" that he hasn't met me before. This may be, but the first time I've seen him sitting outside on summer days was a few weeks ago. He asks me if I have a "problem with bugs?" I haven't. "Really?" he replies. He claims that one of his next door neighbors is "infested," and as a result his place is infested. He says he tried to get his neighbor to go in on fumigation or something but the neighbor isn't interested. So every six months he has to put out money to have someone come in and debug his place. He walks slow and, together with sitting outside in the evening, strikes me as something you do if you're an old man.
     Thursday. I'm back at the waterpark. It's a routine. I swim in the sunshine, and when I get to work, it's overcast. This time, the army of children coming out of a school bus are all in orange T-shirts. These shirts have "Fun in Foothills." It's an organization for kids sponsored by the Parks and Recreation Department. Next to the bus, a vehicle from Animal Control is here also. When I get inside, another line of kids are marching along. These kids are in blue shirts with "Discovery Link" on the front. The waterpark must be supported by group ticket sales from kids' organizations. After my swim, I am overjoyed to see my bike is still here, as I went running out of the house without my bike lock. My compliments to the honesty of the residents of this neighborhood. I've been eating lunch on the way to work every day, and am determined to find someplace less expensive than the shopping center where I work. Delicious as the food has been. I venture to the next closest shopping center, not far from my own. I run in to a supermarket and grab something from the salad bar. With no bike lock, I take my bike inside and lean it against a trash can. I return from the salad bar to find it has fallen over. It impacted a gift card display and bike three hooks off. No one else appears to have even noticed. On the way from there to work, I pass a church. In the parking lot, what do I see but a van for Avid Adventures, the mysterious organization I spotted in another church parking lot last month. I will later look them up online. Actually, their name is Avid 4 Adventure. (Hey, you try reading these names from a moving bike.) Next to the van is a trailer, loaded with perhaps ten canoes, all psychedelic orange. It's not the journey, but the paint job.
     On my ride home, I approach a traffic circle at the intersection of the bike trail with traffic from carts at a golf course. I can see, sitting on his bike, a middle-aged guy in the middle of the traffic circle. He's looking at his phone, and he isn't exactly in the way, but from where he is the rest of the world must go around him. His bike is the color of the psychedelic canoes. About a half hour later, I'm riding through a neighborhood back on my side of town. I hear a mechanical kind of whine over my shoulder. A young guy comes running around the corner with a remote control in his hand. He says, "Oh shit...oh shit."  I think his drone just crash landed on a neighbor's roof. Friday. Mid-morning and I enter the trail. Across a bridge from the trailhead is a kind of shelter. On some evenings, I've seen it piled with belongings which I suspect are owned by homeless. This is the second morning this summer when I've seen a collection of Lycra-clad cyclists gathered to begin a ride down the trail. I turn past them just as I see an oncoming cyclist headed for the group. I suspect he is homeless, as he's riding in pants which almost appear to be dress pants, and he has no shirt on. This morning, I am taking the train to the street with the office which has the season passes for the waterpark. I've discovered that the waterpark is actually run by the city, not a private company. I tell them that this is pure genius. Pass in hand, it's off to swim. Today's buses parked at the waterpark are from the Boulder YMCA. After my swim, it's off to work, and after work I am headed home. Of the handful of characters I pass along the way, the most striking is the woman in her sixties. Just down from my own boulevard, she is walking in the street. She's wearing a black T-shirt with a white skull on the front. As I pass her, she asks, "How's it goin'?"
     When I was told last month that I needed to go to a city office to get a season pass to a waterpark which I thought was a private company, I was perplexed. When I understood that the waterpark is, in fact, owned and operated by the city; I recognized, to quote Col. Kurtz, "the genius of that." When I arrived at the city office, I mentioned this to them. In my discussion with two clerks, and my reading of some information about the local area, I realized that it would be in my interest to establish a bit more of a relationship with the place. This office also has a gymnasium where I can work out before going to work, and it appears that after the dust settles from the transition in ownership of my place of employment, that I may be working around here rather than elsewhere.

     Dr. Schweitzer is a profound moralist, but he has...little interest in human beings... The hospital... Some visitors find in it all that they are looking for spiritually... Others...do not...regard it [as so.] Discussion at mealtimes or in the evening hardly exists... With his eyes closed, the Doctor tells them..."Do this," or "I want no more of that"... ...many African workers seemed unhappy... ...the hospital area swarms with animals... He seems fonder of the animals...than the human beings... ...the hospital gives [the] atmosphere of...a kind of abstraction, almost an exercise in penance. - Gunther

     Sunday. I am headed to the outdoor festival which I was headed for last Sunday. Only, this Sunday is the actual day of the festival. Right. I am coming under a train bridge. Up ahead on the sidewalk is a guy pushing a shopping cart loaded with crap. Behind him is a woman pulling a wagon. His "buggy has a full size U.S. flag waving from a pole. Hers has a smaller U.S. flag. We all get to the corner and cross the street to the train station, where they have a seat next to their wheeled possessions in the hot sun. His shopping cart has a big sheet of poster board affixed to the front. It has something written on the front which I don't stop to read. I take the train downtown to Chilis to grab lunch. The hostess shows me to my seat. The next thing that happens is, a middle aged woman in a Sheriff's uniform (with three stars on her collar and a Glock o her hip) brings me a diet soda. The place has a handful of Sheriffs, with aprons tied behind the handcuffs on their tool belts. My waitress comes along and I tell her what I think I just saw, and that I haven't had any alcohol to drink today. She explains that today is "Tips for Sheriffs" day. They are collecting cash donations for the Special Olympics. I order, and just after my plate arrives, a young sheriff comes to my table with a big kid. He tells me that the kid competes in the special Olympics and gives me an envelope for any donation, "a dollar or two," I may wish to provide. They can't be making much money from this. I tell him that I don't have any cash with me. He tells me that they accept checks, or else he will "catch you next time." I hear other patrons thanking the sheriffs for what they do. (I read that police in Louisiana or in Dallas or someplace are suing Black Lives Matter for inciting the shooting of officers. I will see several of Black Lives Matter T-shirts for sale at the art fest.)   I take the envelope with me, after I chase my waitress for napkins. And silverware. And a refill on my diet soda.
     After lunch I am headed across town to the art fest. Along the way I pass four homeless guys in the shade of a building. One guy has his shoes off. He sits on a walker with a cigarette in his fingers, staring tiredly at the concrete. He has a T-shirt on with "Manhattan Soccer" on the back. I make it to the fest and stroll the grounds before returning to downtown. On a corner, a couple of guys on bikes and a woman on foot are crossing the middle of the street. The woman's skin is orange from the sun and she walks as if she either has heels or no shoes hidden beneath the cuffs of her jeans. There is what appears to be a black flower in her hair. When they are on the other side of the street, one of the guys (a tattoo from the side of his neck to the side of his face) appears to be directing her where to go. I wonder if he is her pimp? I go to grab an early dinner at a place which is decked out as if it's a happy hour locale for office types. On one flat screen which is not showing sports is a female reporter in a helmet and flack jacket. Something makes her jump and the camera turns to a helicopter blasting someone or something on the ground. As the place gets full, it gets louder. At the table(s) next to me, both young and middle aged women show up one at a time and are ecstatically introduced to the others. Some are from out of state. It almost sounds like a gathering of sorority chapter representatives, but I hear one of the seven women mention that she "worked as both a counselor and a educator."
     The following morning, I am out of the door at 4:15 AM, off to work an open to close shift. It's been a while since I was on my way to work under the stars. I am strolling up the boulevard toward my old bus stop. In the dark I'm walking past an apartment complex which is a halfway house for ex-cons. Siting there on the front step, silhouetted against the interior light, is a thin guy with shaggy hair under his cap. I assume he's up at this hour because he can't sleep. A few steps later and I'm hit with drops of water from a sprinkler. He tells me to watch out for the water. I see, he's a maintenance guy. Thanks. After the drops od water, I am along the next block with a parking lot full of broken glass and cans. Meandering in the lamp light of this lot is a little guy. He's in a button down shirt which hangs off of his frame, along with a backpack. I see him bending down to pick something up. I kick a can and he turns to see me. He mumbles, "There's bottles and cans everywhere." Bottles and cans and just clap your hands and just clap your hands. He doesn't look like a Beck fan... The broken glass and discarded bottles and cans go on for three empty parking lots. Reconquista. I reach my bus stop, where a guy is reclined on his back, his head against his backpack. When I show up he lifts his head. he looks like a guy waiting for the bus, not like a homeless guy. When the bus comes, he doesn't move. The bus drops us off at the train station, with its new condo units. A handful of homeless sit at the base of one unit. One guy lies under an outdoor bar of a cocktail lounge.

     Feudalism...in a rigid Moslem area... broadcasting has to be done in the simplest vernacular. ...the most rudimentary question about government, people will not understand. [At the movies, it's not easy] to hear...the audience shouts...in surprise..."Look, a horse!" As a rule women in the new adult education classes...have to be, prostitutes. No other women exist to recruit from. A doctor needed assistants...and prostitutes were the only women he could get. ...of the Gold Coast... Politics here are more advanced, stable, and sophisticated... If the Gold Coast turns out to be capable of...enlightened self-government, then it will be difficult to deny [independence] for Uganda, or Kenya... The Gold Coast is, [Gold Coast nationalist native leader] Nkrumah thinks, a forerunner of...the emancipation of all Africa... "We are building on the old heritage of the chiefs. ...our movement rises from people who understand our goals." His behavior in prison was exemplary, as it was in court. The British like him for this - he "plays the game"... In 1949, Nkrumah stood for immediate and complete independence "outside" of the Commonwealth. Today he is...prepared to [be] within the Commonwealth. The British...the hated imperialists, became popular even with...nationalists. ...a tranquil, politically adult, Gold Coast... The Gold Coast has, like Nigeria, a handful of noisy Communist intellectuals... Sometime ago, Nkrumah began to take measures against further Communist penetration. "It is not in the best interest...for any nationalist . . . to be...used by a Communist organization." ...on the Gold Coast...the industrial proletariat is small. ...Communism is regarded in the Gold Coast as a "white" movement... ...in a society largely uneducated, the government has a duty to protect those who might become Communist dupes... He has to draw a line between those who are capable of reading...without being inflamed or seduced...and those who cannot. ...Communist books have been banned...only after scrupulously careful investigation. ...most likely to be outlawed...mix half truth with truth. ...the varied influences of Nkrumah - Christianity, Marxist socialism...civil disobedience from Ghandi - Roosevelt and the New Deal, and...African nationalism. - Gunther

     I wonder if NPR [National Public Radio] is a pariah [in Iraq now] of if my rejection of [my previous driver's sexual] overtures is the issue [why he is no longer my driver.] Amer says [about him, he] was caught raking in too much money without sharing it with his superiors, and...ordered to cut back on his clients. [My new minder is] half-Iraqi, half-Serb, and...her heroes are Milosevic and Saddam. ...degradation...can be seen every day...in Liberation Square. ...with sellers of second-hand clothing, plumbing fixtures, plastic sandals, and cheap Chinese radios. The traders include teachers, engineers, lawyers...   They prepare...fish grilled over an open fire...it requires...precision to suspend the fish... ...families would stroll down to the Tigris to a row of restaurants serving this delicacy. Now such forays are too expensive, and most of the restaurants are closed. filmmakers and artists...have [a] pact with Saddam...to...produce their art. Baghdad was like any European city. "We are a place of culture." "Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, and Baghdad reads." ...a city too proud to welcome an invading force. But if Saddam goes, they are afraid fundamentalists will move into the power vacuum... My editor...and I...agree it's important to give some context even at the risk of being expelled.  New portraits of...Saddam...have been placed throughout the country, and new songs composed in his honor. ...in military uniform...patting the head of a child...in a three-piece suit...in traditional Arab attire defending the Palestinians. He is all things... He has promised to make his country great. His intelligence services have infiltrated every crevice of society. ...banking on Saddam surviving. ...organizing an exhibition of Saddam portraits...just when war is likely to start.  - Garrels

     Mayor...Hancock...launched Safe haven... ...20 churches...have signed up and received training to serve...anyone...to receive support...following a critical, gang-related incident. Following an incident, the closest participating church is activated for three days, and church members...volunteer...to support a community healing process. ...trained in psychological first aid, disaster spiritual care, critical response training, and asset-based community development for churches. - Denver Urban Spectrum, 7/2017

     We sophisticate our tastes in order to tap dance [past] hassles and shove the poignancy of "bring downs" into impersonal shadow. We focus everything toward the transcendence of daily consciousness: macrobiotic diets, hallucinogens, eastern and western aesthetics, philosophies, etc. ...always quick to contrast ourselves with middle-class man. ...almost to the same end: personal, national, or racial success. The hipster...a mockery of "straightness' and his alienation from the social norms of morality and dress. ...liberated from...bourgeois conformity and established in a packed class...which combines the highest material pleasure with a total lack of commitment to middle-class humanism. He is hated, feared, and envied. He is a man who can sing about the evils of the world...from beneath a satin pillow while margining profits into war economies and maintaining his comfort on a consumer level of luxury. - Kornbluth

     I am the youngest member of the Denver City Council, but even at my age there are times where I have to squint to see Denver as the same city that I grew up in. ...two 30-plus story towers...a favorite shop...the quiet church...or the single family home...being torn down to build something that feels completely different... With almost all...projects, City Council never has a opportunity to review or to vote on them. Churches...embedded in neighborhoods on residential streets... Most...are currently zoned [to allow] congregations to sell [to someone who can] tear down the church...and build homes... ...kids today will find it nearly impossible to afford...the city where they grew up. - the profile, 7/2017

     Tuesday. It feels as though it is incredibly hot outside, over 100 degrees F. I will later be told that it's only 90. I do my first workout at a gym on the way to work, and have no time left to swim. I stop at a place for lunch and drink plenty of water. After work, I'm riding home in a light rain shower. Along the creek off the bike trail, I spot a guy in a Harley Davidson T-shirt coming out of a tent. He has another T-shirt hanging off a branch. The following day I have a doctor's appointment to get a prescription for a refill. I'm headed toward the train station, rolling down the sidewalk of a busy avenue. I come up behind someone who does not strike me as homeless. A guy in clean clothes does appear as if he has just woken up. He walks slowly, perhaps because he has no shoes or socks. His left arm is inside his sleeve as he scratches his side.   On the way home after work I have just entered the trail. On one side of the trail stands a guy. Across from him is his shopping cart. Just over a bridge, off in the bushes, is another shopping cart.
     Thursday morning. I'm at my new gym along the way to work. Lifting weights are two or three firefighters. They all wear matching navy shorts and navy Polo shirts with their logo on the breast. A middle-aged one is telling the other can he isn't lifting more than 275 lbs. He mentions another fireman who is, "younger. He can [go ahead] lift 500 [as far as I'm concerned, but not me]. I'm gonna leave this [machine] at 225. You can move it..." The seniors at my usual gym never mention this kind of stuff. A walkie talkie is broadcasting the dispatcher's voice all over the gym. I also hear a couple of "civilians" in conversation. One is giving the other advice about having a social life. "You have to know groups to know groups." A third firefighter is talking about doing construction on his home. The dispatcher comes over the radio, calling for an ambulance because a firefighter broke his hand. On my way out of the place, I watch a line of small kids come in for their swimming lesson. They walk in a line, holding hands. I exit the place behind a tall guy walking very slowly. He has two wallet chains on his jeans, an orange T-shirt, and a leather top hat. He slowly, slowly walks to an old Chevy Suburban, and he sits in the driver's seat with the door open.
     I'm down the street, on the trail, and headed for the turn to the waterpark. On the other side of the bike trail, from the bridge to the waterpark, are gathered on the grass a collection of children in matching purple T-shirts. I get to the ticket window before they do, but I am not as fast as a bus load of school kids. After an adult (some ten or fifteen years younger than myself) tells us to back up, and we all bump into each other, we pass through the entrance. A girl checking my bags lets me know that I cannot bring inside a small glass jar of mushrooms. She doesn't see the other jar. But I don't make fun of her because she strikes me as smart, just like the physician practitioner I saw yesterday. They are both women after my own heart. Not to mention the girl in line at the waterslide, who is perhaps taller than myself, with strong legs. She is perhaps a college freshman. She looks quietly fearless, with round wire-framed shades tinted brown. I like her style. The first one held my mushrooms for me. I like a girl who holds my mushrooms. After a swim and a slide, I'm back on the trail to work. I pass a middle-aged woman in a tank top with "love" on the front. She's walking a tiny dog, and she greets me as I pass. Not far behind her is a guy dragging a camouflage pattern tarp and a two by four. Not far past he, at a familiar spot under a bridge, I see a bedroll and an empty shopping cart. On my ride home, I pass the bedroll again. In the long shadows of early evening, an open umbrella sits shading where someone's head may perhaps be. I spot people off in the woods. I pass a young bald guy walking along, his shirt over his bare shoulder. The trail takes me to another which follows the river. Money has been spent on a large section, turning it into a paddleboard coarse. Stopped in my lane of a bridge is a grey-haired guy. he's taking a shot of paddle boarders.
     The following morning I am headed into work, having been called in early. Late in the morning, I am pedaling down a long residential street. Walking in the street is a lanky guy with a walker and an oxygen tank. Some ten hours later, I am headed home after work. At an underpass, where I usually see the bedroll, is the guy I've seen standing on the other side of the trail. He is laying off the side of the trail, on the concrete with his hands behind his head.

     In the '60s...flush with oil wealth, Iraq was joining the developed world. Baghdad was booming. Buildings were going up on every corner. There were extraordinary improvements in education and healthcare. A teacher...delighted to practice her English. Asked if she might contact me at the hotel in Baghdad... Minutes later she ran up to me...gave me back my business card, saying it had been a terrible mistake... Clearly, someone had gotten to her. She didn't dare even hold...my name... Chechnya is a reminder of how quickly events take on a life of their own and determine the future. ...from a once comfortable middle-class life... His business...couldn't survive the sanctions. His savings are gone. Now the neighborhood has slid into poverty. ...Iraq needs a strong leader to unite the...competing tribes... Residents [of Baghdad] are too poor to go elsewhere.
     The Russian hookers...have disappeared. [Of] the reporters...left in Baghdad I am struck by how few Americans there are. ...sixteen, including..."The New York Review of Books" among them? The absence of...large American networks has created an intimacy and a lack of hysteria in the coverage. ...this is a precious time that will undoubtedly never be repeated. ...Iraqis have remained tied to their clans...subsets of the larger tribes that divide Iraqis. ...large, extended family grouping numbering in the hundreds. [During the U.S. advance on the city, there are] many injured civilians. Some were n their cars when the tanks appeared and...their vehicles were turned to toast. ...a...four-year-old...pronounced dead on arrival. In the hospital morgue...corpses dumped in a walk-in refrigerator, among them...the Al Jazeera correspondent, still in his flak jacket. ...Baath Party members, steely-eyed security, and police have vanished. What has followed has been an orgy of looting. ...a column of Marines approach... ...I shout..."Hey, guys." One turns around with an M16 pointed at me. I raise my hands...screaming, "I'm an American." Iraqis are afraid of anarchy. They are afraid of themselves... ...wannabe Iraqi politicians...dressed in ill-fitting camouflage, have come in with the American troops. ...they are distinguished by...FIF (Free Iraqi Forces) on their sleeves...   [At city hospitals, there is] no idea how many patients have died...in recent days... ...at...a small private hospital...a lack of supplies and electricity could soon be compounded by looting if the United States doesn't do more. ...a young Marine screams out, "Hey, weren't you the lady on the bridge the other day?" He confesses he nearly killed me. More than a month after entering Baghdad... Thieves have taken over the streets. Aid organizations cannot operate... I hope the United States [ensures] that this war doesn't spawn another. - Garrels

     ...the Church ceased to exist as an organized institution... Here on display was the whole domestic and agricultural wealth of several prosperous gentry families, all of which had been transformed by bitter struggle into "fruits" belonging to the people. The total value of all the goods available...was first figured as a grain equivalent. Then every family was put in a "grade" based on need. - Hinton

     There had always been individuals who felt that the mechanized urban areas were ugly... ...humanists began to realize that society had...reverted to Byzantine or Late Imperial times, and who therefore withdrew to save their souls... ...policy...was supposed to get most people "off" the land and speed up urbanization. Meantime there were obvious signs of over-population. Urban costs mounted geometrically... ...in a densely populated area...the inhabitants were becoming poorer and poorer. The middle classes, who had options, fled to the periphery to avoid taxes and the lower classes. (I say "urban areas" because there were no longer such things as "cities." I say "dwelling unit" because there were no longer such things as "homes.") ...the government responded with noble speech, confused programs, and enough actual money to finance several reports by sociologists. Departments of urban affairs were opened at several universities. It was at this time that one of the junkies...was heard to say, "Zap! This urban area has put the whammies on me!" "But man," said the friend, "like how you gonna score up there I that mountain, where a stream runs?" "Zap! I say Zap!" A coed said, "I am tired of having premarital intercourse in urban areas." - Kornbluth

Sunday. On my way to the swimming pool, where I went when I lived on that side of town before moving a decade ago. After lunch, I stop into a supermarket which was around at the time, but this may be the first time I've been in here. I go to a coffee bar. When my drink comes up, the young woman says to me, "Job well done," about her work. She asks me, "Where were you?" Where was I? "You look like you're..." Oh, I'm in my cycling gear. I tell her I'm on my way to the pool. "Oh. I misjudged you." It's a lovely swim. It's a cloudless sky overhead, and I watch thunderheads build on the horizon. I used to come here on the weekends during the first half of the previous decade, to swim and read. On my ride home, I dart onto a sidewalk and come up behind a couple of people on some kind of motorized unicycles. Across a boulevard and a highway, I'm walking my bike up a steep residential hill. A couple sits in chair outside the front door of their tiny bungalow. Standing in the doorway is a young smiling guy who watches me. He asks me how it's going, and if I want a soda. I don't want to know why he is offering me a soda while the older pair look as if they could care less.
     The following day I have a doctor's appointment to try to discover why my testosterone level, which was perfect, has dropped significantly. At my doctor's office their computer system is down. This does not prevent the physician's assistant from determining the reason. I mention that my original instructions were to apply the testosterone cream to my shoulders and chest. I tell the P.P. that I stopped applying the cream to my chest because I developed acne there. She does some checking and tells me that this is the culprit. My chest has a 50% rate at which it absorbs, as opposed to one of 6% for my shoulders. No wonder my level dropped. Though I'm not sure that I like the fact that my chest has such a capacity to absorb, I'm happy the answer is so uncomplicated. After I grab breakfast up the street from my doctor, I decide that the train is a more direct route to work than the bike trail maze between here and there. I get back on the train to the closest transfer station to the line for train to work, the same station I rode to this morning. When I get out, a woman on the platform comes out of nowhere. "Sir, can you spare a few dollars? ...emergency..." She walks as if she stumbles. She is either too tired or too drunk to realize that she left some words out of her sentence." I answer, "No thank you." I grab the train down the other line and get out at the gym. After a workout, I am on the trail to work. I go under the underpass where, today, the bedroll has someone sleeping on it around noon. When I come back this way some seven hours later, there are four guys sitting here listening to a radio.

     CAOITALISM IS A FAILURE! It creates overpopulation, slavery, and starvation. I have escaped politics. ...introduction of technology to non-technological nations, colonial nations are directed to produce products desired by the West. They are trained as consumers of Western material artifacts. The Culture is extinct! The last sentry at the gate has pressed the muzzle to his forehead and pulled the trigger! POLITICS ARE AS DEAD AS THE CULTURE they supported! Politics are theories regarding the speculated laws of power... - Kornbluth

     Monday, when I get to work, I discover that another one of our stores is closing. This particular store has a combination AM/FM radio, audio cassette dual deck, and CD player. Something you can't find anyplace anymore. I realize that I must save it lest it be tossed away. I call the store to get an OK for me to come and pick it up. I decide to attempt the transport by bicycle. I have my largest bag with a strap along with me, not knowing if it will be large enough. I leave the house, breakfast be damned. I head to the train which takes me to the end of this particular line, one final time. I used to come here on my way to any one of three different stores. I've already made my last trip to two of them. This is my last trip to the third. I elect to take my bike on the bus. By bike from here or by bus, either way it will be the last time. I've been driving a van to this store and back for a decade. It's only during the past couple of years that I have been biking the trail along the C470 business loop highway, or riding the bus through past the manicured lawns described in last's month's post. Only in the past two years have I explored the shopping centers surrounding this store, an adventure in itself.
     I arrive on the corner and run into the bank to deposit my paycheck. Then it's onto the store to pick up the radio. I have a couple of bags which fit over my shoulders. The speakers come off, and I remove the left one to place into a smaller bag. The rest goes into the big duffel. Then it's over my shoulders and once more onto the bike lane along the parkway. Our late seamstress, under the previous owner, worked at this store. Her passing precipitated the sale of the company, and two and a half years later it prepares to change hands yet again. She used her decades of experience to do the alterations for the previous owner's 19 locations, right up until cancer prevented her from doing so. I wonder if this is her radio? I will soon and unexpectedly find out. All I need do is follow this boulevard to work. The bags hang comfortably. I can't believe that this is working. I try to put anything I don't want to bounce around on a bag I wear. Milkshakes and martinis are good for the bike rack. The road will shake those up. I stop at an Applebees before proceeding.. I ride up this boulevard for the first time in a good decade, and I probably will never come this way again. Past the road which, just down the street, will take you to the plant I worked at for ten years. Which will be evacuated at the end of August. On this corner is Arapahoe High School, where one winter I watched some students have a snowball fight. as I waited for a bus Every time I came this way in a van I would see the students crossing the street for lunch. This is where one student shot another in one of the metro area's infamous shootings. I was at work at the plant that day.  I haven't worked at the plant in two and a half years and I never will again. I am a kind of travelling anachronism. I'm on a bicycle, carrying an audio cassette and CD player, yesterday's technology moving along old memories. I get to my own shopping center at 12:30 and I am still hungry. I guess I just ate breakfast, and I will have lunch at a seafood place before work. And after that, I roll into work with the radio safe and sound. Unbelievable. My last stop is in a yogurt place, where the first person I see is someone who used to work for the previous owner, at the store from which I just came. She worked together with the seamstress. She now works at a clothing store here in the center. I let her know that her old store is closing, that I have the radio. I ask her if it belonged to the seamstress. She says it did. I ask if she would be okay with my having it, and she assure me she would. This entire adventure has been like some kind of reclamation, repurposing of a past which has little to no meaning save a very few of us who carry it with us.
     On my ride home there is someone else now stopped on the same bridge where the other guy was photographing the paddle boarders in the river. This guy is doing the same tonight. At the other end of the bridge, a couple of guys come along. No shirts and swimsuits, they are each carrying a big black inner tube. They walk as if they are surfers with boards. The following day I am off to pick up a prescription, work out, and hit the water park before work. At the pool today is a microbus from Smiling Faces Academy. Some eight hours later I am across the street from work and headed to the trailhead. It's raining and I'm in a poncho. Along this residential street comes a guy on a bike in a T-shirt. he is turning slow circles on the width of the street. At least he has a helmet on incase he slips and cracks his skull on the wet pavement. I'm through the neighborhood and onto the trail. Under the bridge with the bedroll, there is an old guy on the ground, another guy sitting down, and a young guy walking around. I'm down this trail and onto another. Along an industrial stretch of this trail, someone has pitched a tent. Not between the trees and the river, hidden along the bank, but on the grass next to a road in plain view. I get home around 8:30 PM. I watch a guy walking from the back of my parking lot, where there is no exit of entrance. He doesn't look like he lives here, and he carries something in a brown paper bag. He takes it to the parking lot of the apartments across the street and stands off on the stones with another guy.

     ...we judge all politics and all public speech and ideology by...the...anger...therein. All present political parties propose violence to resolve our confusions... - Kornbluth

     Thursday. I didn't get to sleep last night until late and woke up late. No time to swim. I'm out on the trail and headed past someone asleep on the grass in the shade of a tree. Next to him is a bike with a trailer on the back, loaded with crap. I head for the train station, where there is another guy on a bike and a child-carrier hooked up to the back, loaded with crap. This guy has the homeless skin and hair thing going on, together with a short sleeved buttoned down shirt with a bright blue flame pattern. He's talking to someone on a bench, and for longer than it takes to ask for change.   On the train platform, in the shade of a roof are three street guys. The youngest appears in his twenties, in pants roughly scissored off at the knees. On the other end is a guy perhaps in his thirties. the middle guy appears the most weathered. he has a lit cigarette and his jaw appears to spasm in tiny motions, as if he is silently stuttering. A fourth street guy comes along. He almost looks like a kid who disappears in his loose-fitting long-sleeved shirt and loose jeans. The jaw guy is suddenly tapping his lighter hard against the bricks he's leaning against. When my train comes, he get on with me and without the other three. He takes a seat and talks to himself as he loudly taps his lighter against his hand. I notice that he's in a T-shirt with a silhouette of a bicycle on the side. He gets out at the next stop. On the back of his shirt, it reads, "Ride more, eat hamburgers." I get out at the stop after this one, and ride down the street toward the trailhead. It's a street with industrial warehouses. Yesterday and today, I see who I believe are secretaries who work in these buildings. They're on the sidewalk, perhaps out for an early lunch.
   Friday. 4:30 AM. I'm on my way to work a full day at another store, but first I make a stop at an all night diner. Just before I got here, I passed a young guy on the sidewalk across the street. In the dark, he yells at me, "Hey bro, got any change?" I suppose any passerby will do. At the diner I am sitting in front of a pair of twenty-something couples. They are loud, and talking about taking mushrooms, and about Mexico. One of the guys has shoulder-length hair and a European accent. He uses the F-word. The girl next to him is laughing non-stop and is putting on an English accent. She has hair so dark that I wonder if it's dyed, and a lot of makeup on her eyes. Young hipsters at an all-night diner. And then there's me, with five or six hours of sleep. laughing girl says, "Yeah, we're supposed to be in Miami." This diner is nowhere near the airport. Whenever I come here, I think about a story I read online, was it this year or last? A woman stepped out of a cab here and was immediately kidnapped by meth users who also were holding other women. An employee comes along to dutifully replace silverware and sweep under the tables. He appears as if he may be originally from Mexico. The guy in the other couple at the table quotes the movie Dumb and Dumber. The hair guy mentions, "If you have money in Mexico you can live the best life ever." He tells the others that he is from California by way of Mexico, and he has family in Spain. He's interested in locating an "after party. let's go to the mountains and have some beer." How European. This morning before I left, I turned on the TV to see a preacher and his wife soliciting donations for clean drinking water for residents of Mexican villages. "Use your credit card as a 'miracle card,'" the preacher says. I've seen video footage from decades ago of this guy on stage with former President Regan, decrying homosexuals. It sounds odd now, 'decry what?' I hear the hair guy tell the other guy that he sounds like Tom Sawyer. If that's true, then hair guy's date sounds like Kate Middleton. I finish my food, pay the bill, and exit the joint. I see the two couples through a window, which has a sign next to it inside which reads, "do not raise blinds." The hair guy is kissing his date's neck as the waitress looks on. The scene is like a Mark Tansy painting.
   For a guy with only five or six hours' sleep I feel pretty good, especially after eating something. We will see how I feel after a 12-hour day. I hit the train station as the dawn creeps up. On the platform are train and bus operators waiting to be transported to their respective routes. one of them watches me write these words in a notebook. "I didn't think anyone used pen and paper anymore," he tells me. My train arrives. The driver gets out and greets the other operators. The train gets going and we climb the track elevated over a boulevard. In the distance, I see the sign for the place where I just ate. I see it again reflected in the window of a passing building. On the ride to the end of the line, we stop at stations along the way, some of which I have been to during the past decade. I disembarked at them, on the way to stores which are no longer open. At 7:15 PM, I am back on the same train, sitting and waiting to embark back to my own train station. I remember being here thirteen and a half hours ago, before the sun was up. Tomorrow morning I expect to have had more sleep, and I will be at a store which is closer to home. And I won't have to be at work until an hour later than today. Regardless, I will turn around and do this all over again. The train ride is about a half an hour. I get out and ride past the diner I was in fifteen and a half hours ago. Sometime around 8 PM, I am back in a neighborhood just across the boulevard from my own. I watch as a couple of young skinny guys ride past on what appear to be ten speeds. Both have "capes" tied around their necks. One has an American flag. The other guy, with a man bun, has a dark grey shawl. They both go rolling down the street after dinner. Another block along, and a drunk in a cowboy shirt is making his way slowly through the crosswalk. On the other side, he steps off the curb and suspects he may have made a mistake. Headed up a street toward my own, a kid asks me, "Excuse me, ca I race you?" I'm too tired tonight, but I like that kid.
     Saturday. The end of the week I have been taking the bus to work. It's a break from the bike trail. If I didn't have laundry to do after work I would take the bike and perhaps go swimming after work. I am out of the house at a quarter to six AM. I run into the gas station for a diet soda and meat, both on my diet. I pass the bus stop across the street from where I live. The one guy who appears as if he is on his way to a job is a grey-haired guy in an apron, standing at the stop. There are a couple of guys on the bench in the shelter, one laying down. It's the guy standing off to the side, leaning on a liquor store fence, a grey-haired guy who looks familiar; he holds himself as a panhandler. He appears to be sizing up the people around him, and his red nylon fleece almost looks like a disguise. Three more blocks along is an intersection with four bus stops, a pair for each direction of one route and a pair each direction for another route. Sitting at one stop is a woman who says, "Hi," to me. In this neighborhood, this is unusual. Perhap she is simply happy to see someone who appears as if they speak English. At the stop across the street is another woman. This one ran to the stop as if she spotted a bus coming. No bus appears as she moves anxiously on the spot where she stands. When a car turns the corner, it appears as if she is trying to thumb a ride. My own bus arrives and whisks me away. We come to a bridge over the river, and I see either steam or smoke rising from the bank. I wonder if it's a homeless campfire. WE arrive at the station, and on the train platform I see a little grey haired guy leaning on a cane, smoking a vape. He's in black pants and a black T-shirt with classic cars on the back. Around his shoulder is a bag with a single strap. The bag hangs below his butt.

     ...a queer rapper who identifies as bisexual, uses the volatile nature of hip hop to create a unique, raw form of self-expression... "...my parents; they'd always take my sister and I...to Disneyland. I found out later that my parents were regularly dropping acid when they were on those trips..." ...Disneyland also represents a point in his life when he was unable to be fully himself... "I started to develop a dependency on ecstasy...when I was 14 or 15... When my mom took us to Disneyland...my serotonin levels [were] totally out of whack, [I was] just depressed and semi-suicidal and craving ecstasy. I never wanted...to...do 'Drag Queen Rap' or anything. "...Young Thug...wore a several thousand f*cking dollar dress on the cover of the best rap album of last year..." - Outfront, 7/5/2017

     ...an enlarged family unit will emerge for many citizens...as the Zen Buddhist anarchist anthropologist, Gary Snyder observed, with matrilineal descent as courtesy to those saddhana or hold path is sexual liberation and teaching of dharma... ...with theory on acceptable community sacrament. I am...proposing official blessing for these breakthroughs of community spirit. Among the young we find a new breed of White Indians...dancing Nigerian Yoruba dances and entering trance states to the electric vibrations of the Beatles, who have borrowed shamanism... We find communal religious use of ganja...sacred to Mahadeva (Great Lord) Shiva. ...someone will have Mantra Rock over the airwaves. - Kornbluth

     ...the landlords, the rich peasants...fled with the intention of returning to take revenge...when the great offensive, being prepared...with American support [to turn] the tide of history, [crush] the Liberated Areas, and put the traditional rulers back in power. With all the manpower of South, Central, and West China...with thousands of American officers...with all the surplus weapons of the Pacific War...and...the arsenals of America pouring in new arms all the time, the gentry felt confident... Should all these fail, America still had...the atomic bomb? If they could not hold China, then they could destroy her. - Hinton

     Sunday. What do you do when you only get six hours of sleep? Well... After the grocery shopping, I turn around and ride downtown to see a movie. I had to go some distance crosstown on another one of this month's hot days. The theatre was featuring an annual GLBTQ film festival and it was something of a casual afternoon gala. I got my ticket and concessions and went to the men's room, where I took my beverage cup and filled it with cold water. Which I proceeded to pour over my neck and head over the sink. Once I figured how the handle for the water worked. This is not a blog about health. It's about shopping carts piled high with homeless belongings. parked in some weeds. But I am pursuing travel by bike, not simply because I don't own a car., but it's a part of my stumbling into the healthcare system. And rather than a story of some kind of paperwork nightmare, it's a story of sweat running down my neck and the sights along the way. I made the movie with no time to spare. After the movie, I grab some food and realize that a swimming pool is on the way home, which I am able to hit. I decide that I am less interested in the Denver County Fair, which is more like a county fair cult with it's collection of hardware company vendors and manufactured craft authenticity. It's a long way to go for a warehouse kind of experience. Sorry Denver County Fair. Maybe next year. I think that's fair...
     Overnight I do get some sleep, and I am out of the house early. At the gym is a guy who appears as if he has been burned on much of his body. His hands look as if the fingers are gone up to the first joint of every finger. The two middle fingers appear fused together. After my workout, I am at the waterpark as the gate opens. Sitting outside the gate, under a shady table, is a huge guy with Downs Syndrome. He is with a caretaker, and he is making loud noises as if he is afraid., covering his face with his hands. Here on this morning, the kids with the coordinated shirts have yellow ones with the name of their summer camp. Over by the lockers, a mom comes in and asks her kids, "I love these tiny lockers. Who can fit anything into these lockers?" The next mom comes along and tells her kids, "I have to pee. Who has to pee?" I head for the pool, where I hear one guy tell his wife he can't swim. Another young couple stands with their kid as he goes on the waterslide. The guy has a chiseled body and tattoos covering his chest and arms. I swim for almost an hour and am heading back to the lockers. I see the Down Syndrome guy headed for the water. He has a huge stomach and walks with his legs spread as wide apart as they can go. His arms are out from his sides as he moves. He appears almost as some kind of creature with a desire for the swimming pool. His suit is falling down, almost completely revealing his butt. I wonder what he has been doing for the past hour, and does he swim? I exit the park past a dad coming in. He and his son are hauling a heavy cooler. A guy comes walking up, talking into a telephone mic I can't see. He's in too much of a hurry to take the sidewalk all the way around to the employee entrance. He steps up a low concrete wall and treks across the landscaped stones. His own gait communicates that he's a waterpark, parks and recreation head honcho. A few minutes, a couple of teenaged employees come along and do the same thing. I'm securing my bag to my bike as a mom standing nearby drops her phone. Her young daughter says, "You're not supposed to drop your phone mom." Minutes later, Head Honcho comes outside, is in his truck, and on his way. On my way out I see a shady spot inside the park with tables and umbrellas. The guy with Down Syndrome and his caretaker are sitting there. The guy is now making sorrowful noises.
     After work, I am headed for the trail. A guy on a reclining bike comes off the trail and turns to prepare to get back on. He's in some kind of space age sweatpants and long sleeved Lycra shirt. It's a hot evening after a hot day and I elect to ride without my shirt. I pass him and a woman on the trail. She's the first person I remember seeing walking the trail with a walker. She has a huge purse on the seat of the walker. Perhaps the walker is for her purse? Across a bridge or two and the guy on the reclining bike coasts past me in his Formula 1 cycling suit. The guy usually sitting under a bridge is in the weeds next to the road.   I pass a guy who looks like a granddad-aged guy, slowly stepping along in a black Lycra tank top. Down this trail and onto the next. A third person is stopped in my lane on the same bridge, watching the paddle boarders in the river. Someone should be charging admission to this bridge. Many cyclists on ten speeds and wearing racing shirts are pumping along. Up the trail and across another bridge, a young dad has his child in a stroller with a damaged left wheel. He's pushing it while he's on a skateboard. I don't know, can you be young and old at the same time? Down the trail, on the street, and I am on my own corner. I hear an ambulance coming from down my street. It comes along with a police car ahead of it and two more behind it, all with their lights on.
The following day, I have the day off. I head downtown to have lunch wit the sister. On my way to do a bit of shopping for a new swim suit, I am on the pedestrian mall. An elderly oriental woman approaches me to tell me, essentially, that what I am wearing is uni-sexual. Okay. I head over to a sporting goods store and purchase my suit, n impending birthday present from a relative. From there I head back to the major transit hub to purchase more discounted coupons with which to ride the train. Inside, I hold the elevator for a guy who I think is coming inside. he pauses at the door and asks me if I "know how a Cub Scout becomes a Boy Scout? He eats his first Brownie." When he approves of my smile, he tells me that he tried that joke on "the guys upstairs [at the entrance], and they just stared at me." The door closes without him. Not everyone upstairs has anything going on upstairs. Some of the guys who hang out at the entrance, I believe, have mental health issues "in the membrane. Insane in the brain." I take the train headed to my side of town and the pool with a twisty slide. Another guy follows me on with his own bike, and a cap which reads "Navy Seals." He sits down and, before the train gets going a third guy this one younger with dreadlocks and a goatee, opens the door to see both of us already at this end with bikes. A pudgy guy in khakis and a dress shirt holds the door of another train car for him. The Navy Seal dude starts laughing. "I guess he didn't want to bring his bike on here," he says. he goes on to say that his backpack is full of prescription drugs, and he hasn't had a drink in about four months. "I could sure use one now," he tells me. He must have been with Seal Team 0. I hop out at my stop. On the corner down from the platform are a couple of young guys who look exactly the same. Caucasian, hair from their caps down their backs, and knee-length shorts. In the hand of each is a disk. These are frisbee golf players I immediately realize, without ever actually seeing one. I haven't heard of the sport for some three decades. I get to the pool. It's closed for another 35 minutes because of a party. Then thunder arrives a few minutes later and they must close for another half hour. Time for me to pick up some overdue photos and attempt to swim at a pool closer to home. It's a pool where an empty vehicle was found fucking submerged in the lake. That's one way to keep the repo man guessing, and wash your car at the same time. I call first, and they say they may open in twenty minutes. Twenty minutes later, I show up. They have decided to shut down for the day. I have the hardest time swimming at the pool closest to where I live. Perhaps that's why I have season passes to Denver County public pools, Englewood County's water park, and an amusement park downtown with a water park. I decide to swing by my girlfriend's house to see if she is home. No one is there but her daughter's dog, which barks at me until I leave. Someone driving a grade school kid goes past, and the kid yells at me through the window, "Teddy Boy!" Wow. This kid was somehow in Liverpool fifty years ago.

Everyone was jawing about what NoNeck and the punk had found, but Rushmore's filters were clogged, and he had retreated to the place where he always slept when he passed this way, wedged into...the ruined overpass. The trouble was that the hobos, cut off from the network of television and computers that linked the isolated hugger homesteads, lived in a world of rumors and superstitions as primitive as Cro-Magnon man's. Rushmore hadn't known the punk long enough to trust her... Crazy...was a Communist or a revolutionary or whatever and claimed the huggers had forfeited their rights by deliberately letting welfare go down the can in a postwar crash, and anyway all wealth came from the earth, which really belonged to the whole human race. Crazy wanted to organize the hobos... He was...hiding out from the FBI and he didn't understand hobos for shit. The last thing a hobo wanted was to get organized. The whole point of road jocking was freedom. "...you lazy scarfers steal everything that's not nailed down. That's why you're vermin, and every honest person thinks you ought to be hunted down and exterminated like rats." Mooching a meal was easier with one, and you alone decided when to move, how fast to go and in what direction. Absolute solitude was absolute freedom. - "Angel At The Gate," by Russell M. Griffin, OMNI Magazine, 6/1981

     Wednesday. I am out of the door early to get a workout and a swim in before work. It's a cloudy morning. Around 8 AM, I stop for breakfast at a diner on the way. At a pole on the corner, in front of the diner, is a locked up ten speed. The tire is off the front wheel, and locked with the rest of the bike. The tube is missing. Someone had a flat. Inside, I'm sitting at a table next to a couple of young guys who mention working at "the kitchen," wherever that is. They don't look like cooks. One has long curly hair and a laptop. They're just in for some coffee. When they are done they get up, give each other a fist bump, and say, "See you later, Homie." In another section, someone is using the F word. "Youthinkyouthinkyouthink NASA's gonna build a fucking satellite? I'll show you what Japan is doing." He sounds drunk. Another guy yells, "You just fucking said! 'What is the escape velocity?'" "Exactly! You don't give a shit! You don't fucking need statistics! You can just fuck off." Looking out my window, I can see a guy now carrying the bike and the tire over his shoulder. I can't see below his waist, but he is moving along as if he is on another bike.
     As I am just down the street from the train, I head there and hop on one for a few stops to the gym. Coming out of the entrance is a white haired guy with a cane. His T-shirt reads, "Nice try, heart. I'm still here." Indeed. It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools. The gym sells T-shirts, and on a flat screen in the lobby is an informercial for a "super molecule." The host of the phony show has a grey goatee and a dark bouffant. In the lobby is a guy talking to a mom, telling her about a novel about the antichrist. he tells her that he didn't like The Hobbit that much. The mom's little girl stands next to her. The guy says hi to her and the mom asks her if she is shy. She must not like the antichrist. I'm sure she would get more out o The Hobbit than he ever will. I pick up a shirt on my way out.
     This morning the waterpark is host to five different groups of color coordinated kids. The Wave Warriors, Sheppard of the Hills Summer Camp, Discover Camp, as well as two bus loads from the Poudre School District and a bus from the St. Vrain Valley School District. The schools sound as if they are well past the metro area, out on the plains or up in the mountains. I'm in line at the short slide, behind a couple of kids. "Can you swim?" one asks the other. "Yes," he replies. "You're good," the first says. Hey, you got to be good. There are camps and schools here with T-shirts of every color there is. There's even a guy who looks like a parent, who is standing over at the deep end. he's in a tank top which claims that he is a Lawn Dart Champion. In an emergency, he can accurately throw the victim a lawn dart. After a swim and some short slides, I'm down the trail to the trailhead, and make my way to the top of a steep hill. At the top, coming out to get his mail, is the first ever resident of this neighborhood I've ever seen. He's a senior who says, "Morning." He asks, "How do you like...our little hill here?"

     ...a microcosm of the clashing needs and wants of living in an increasingly population-dense Denver. "...this oasis in the city is going away." ...desire for affordable housing, open space, more retail and an event center - and...concerns that the neighborhood would change if a buyer builds affordable housing on the campus. One resident also worried about crimes...because of...population density.
     ...Denver Mayor Michael...Hancock said it "cuts me to the core as I witness my friends and family members get priced out of their homes and entire minority neighborhoods struggle just to get by." ...the state of our city...is not strong for everyone," he said. ...he finds the pace of development and change "shocking" - even though he has a lot more control over what that looks like than most Denver residents - and he also reiterated his long-held belief that Denver's economic prosperity can be made to extend into every corner of the city. Hancock promised...major displacement efforts...announced...new department of Transportation and Mobility...also...a Multi-Modal Citizen Advisory Committee... ...to pay for this.  ...raising the cost to park downtown. ...creating the city's own transit authority. Hancock said the city is "pulling on every lever" to create more housing that is affordable... Hancock also announced a National Western Center Community Investment Fund...and the communities of Globeville, Elyria and Swansea will decide how to spend it, Hancock said. On Denver's role on the national stage "It's time to stop threatening our cities, stop targeting innocent people, and get to work on real solutions to bring hard-working undocumented people out of church basements, and out of the shadows. We have marched for women. We have marched for science. And every time, we have marched together." To thunderous applause... Asked afterward if he was considering running for higher office...
     ...a historically low state unemployment rate of 2.3 percent, the lowest in the nation... "It used to be that the typical ad you would see for employment was 'help wanted, rock stars.'   Nowadays it's more like 'help wanted: warm bodies.'"
     ...hundreds, maybe thousands, of Coloradans...sell homemade goodies under the auspices of the Cottage Foods Act, a set of guidelines designed to grease the wheels for home cook to sell their wares at farmers markets, community event or even out of their driveways. "...cottage foods means freedom." Getting set up in cottage foods isn't difficult... - Denver Herald-Dispatch, 7/20/2017

     ...one of the staple artists of the once-flourishing River North arts community. Soon, that neighborhood will be home to a World Trade Center, a light rail stop, and many new apartment complexes. ...her art is still visible on the streets of RiNo, and the remains of her work can be found in the tubble of the buildings that once housed many galleries but were torn down to make room for Denver's growing population. One [piece] features a woman wearing an American-flag Hijab... ...she pulled up a photo of her hijab piece after it was defaced, the words "stop female genital mutilation" scrawled across the image. [She] seems positive about the fact that her audience is reacting to and interacting with her pieces. "I think that's part of why I like making art in the streets. It's a semi-military enterprise but sometimes you interact with people." The process of pasting..."there is something beautifully low tech about it...it's very liberating..." ...making her way through RiNo, she passed the location of the future World Trade Center and the new condos that will surround it. "All of that over there used to be studios; it was where I had my studio." - Outfront, 7/5/2017

     One hundred square feet...the tiny house movement...building tiny house villages to temporarily house...growing homeless populations. Denver joined the movement... ...zoning permit requires that they move...every 180 days, so the houses are on wheels... The permit also limits the village to a maximum of 20 people. ...St. Andrews [church] has ambitious plans [for] a Mental Health of Denver facility... Enthusiasm for the project is lower among St. Andrews neighbors. There have been numerous complaints from neighbors about some unsavory activities by homeless folks that St. Andrews allows to sleep on its grounds.
     By [council person whose committee approved the Urban Camping Ban], Denver City Council...
     One of the most divisive issues...is gentrification. ...these neighborhoods tend to be more desirable by affluent whites because of their proximity to downtown. ...'gentry' meaning privileged class. Ruth Glass coined the term in the early '60s. ...these areas need 'public' investments: good roads, sidewalks, parks, etc. - Capitol Hill Life, 7/2017

     August can be the best month of the year or the...worst, depending on whether you are 35 years old or 10. ...the waning days of summer...make August bittersweet. ...a race to squeeze in every ounce of pool time... Now mom and dad... After a summer of camps...breathe a sigh of relief. ...our award-winning Calendar of Events. ...packed with more than 250 ways for your family to...make the most of August. - Colorado Parent, 8/2017

     Thursday. This morning's coordinated child's T-shirt colors here at the waterpark are red and blue. The blue ones are for Mead Summer Camp. The red ones have on the front..."Best Summer Camp." In case you were wondering, now you know who the best is. There are also a couple of buses from the Boulder Valley School District, which makes me feel better because I know where Boulder is. Friday. Ride home after work. I am approaching the bridge on the trail where riders stop in my lane to watch the paddle boarders on the river. Before I get to the bridge, there is already a rider stopped in my lane, watching them. After a full shift tomorrow and the following two days off, I'm out of this month.