I ride all the way to the gym, which means I go through the parking lot of a golf course. A collection of old people are all on the same small patch of grass, dressed just as you would expect them to be. A lot of white sweaters and visors. I walk into the gym ahead of a trio of elderly guys. One of tells the others that he had a stroke a few weeks back. I usually begin with some different machines. I sit down on the first one as I hear someone behind me making a noise like a fly. Then I hear a woman say, "Stop." It turns out that there are a small group of partially mental young adults at the gym today, with their caregiver. They are doing various exercises, except for one guy who was making fly noises. He's smiling and watching. The caregiver is also working some machines. When it's time for them to go, the caregiver leads them upstairs as she rolls what appears to be their backpacks along on a dolly. After the gym, it's time for a swim...at the waterpark. I've noticed that the waterpark is a bit like Brave New World. There is a kind of chain of command so to speak. The lifeguards, trained in CPR and water rescue an competitive swimmers, come to the concessions window out of line to get I know not what. Perhaps refills on complimentary snacks. While I wait for a hot dog, a couple of lifeguards come straight to the window. They tease the lowly employee behind the register; one has a pet name for him. The cleanup crew wears shirts with "Matey." on the back. Others, presumably lower in stature, have "Barnacle" on theirs. I can only imagine that one can get no lower than a barnacle. I have yet to see any employee shirts with "Plankton." I take the time to get all this done before work, and to stop and have lunch, and to buy a new belt because mine is too big now that I've los weight, just to get to work to find that yesterday was payday. Now, to make sure my check doesn't bounce, I must take the next hour to ride to the bank and back. Even if the person at work can't stay and has to close the store.
The following day is my birthday. I am expecting to go into work. Instead, my boss gave me the day off. So I plan to meet the sister for dinner downtown. Before then I am headed to an amusement park with a wave machine, also downtown. Around 1 PM I'm at a train station up the street from where I live. I watch as a couple of bicycle-mounted police cruise down a slope from the street. They cruise the platform. Their uniforms have mostly black with a little yellow. They have to be hot in the sun. The uniforms match except for the helmets. I wonder if they use their own. In no time, I am at the amusement park. The train takes me right there, even on foot. I do the wave machine for a couple of waves. In between waves, I turn around and see a 4th grader, who asks me, "Can I ask you a question? Do you wish the waves would go on forever?" He excitedly tells me how he passed under the waves. But he has already revealed to all of us the meaning of life. I go to my $11 locker and collect my dinner clothes before taking a seat on a bench. There are a couple of kids there. After asking someone else, one kid asks me if I have a dollar, because he is "hungry as hell." I have no cash.
Thursday. It's a strange cold an overcast summer morning, sixty degrees F. at 8 AM. After a workout along with another fireman, it's a short ride to the pool, cold temps be damned. When I get to the waterpark the sun is out. In the park, across the creek from the entrance, a woman has a wand with which she is making huge bubbles. Her audience on the grass is a collection of children, all in sky blue T-shirts. I swim for a bit before I go down the short slide at the deep end. Once again, I forget to take off my shades. When I resurface from the slide, the shades are off. A lifeguard saw them behind me. Now they are nowhere where either of us can see. A second lifeguard comes over to scan the bottom of the deep end. It's not myself who needs to be saved, it's my sunglasses. They are spotted, and I must dive the twelve and a half feet to get them. It's been a while since I've has that kind of pressure on y head. I retreat to the swimming end of the pool when I watch a lanky teenager come clumsily running to the deep end. He is followed by a man and woman in wetsuit shorts and shirts; his caregivers. There are a few mentally challenged young adults here this morning. One place where they are perfectly agile is in the water. The lanky guy jumps in the deep end, and it takes both caregivers along with three lifeguards on standby to usher him to the swimming part of the pool. It's all in a day's work for your neighborhood lifeguard. After work, I am on the bike trail home. I'm almost off the last trail when I happen upon a couple walking, around 8 PM or so. The guy has a blond ponytail under his hat and is lifting small weights as he walks. Both he and the Mrs. are wearing fanny packs. Perhaps twenty minutes or so later, I am coming back to my own parking lot. There is a guy I met earlier this summer, who told me he had been living here for a couple years and asked if I had heard he had 2 or 3 domestic violence visits from the police. I hear him arguing with his wife at the back door. he is yelling something about how he is beginning a new job. She is quietly telling him from inside the back door, "Get away. Get away. Or I'm calling the police." He strolls over to the concrete wall, which is his go to place. He immediately slowly walks back into his back patio.
Friday. My paycheck has bounced. My boss says the owner will bring me another. But I won't have a chance to deposit it until Monday. And, I am called into work early. Typical Friday. I had two days off this week, I suppose I can use the hours. I will be paid for them eventually. I wake up too early and don't feel like getting on the bike. I head up the street. I just miss one bus to the train, and two more up the street to another which will take me to the train. I'm walkin' it. When I get to the corner I see a young guy in a white two piece suit which could have been sewn at home. It looks like a uniform for some ambiguous charity. My sister tells me that it is a sham. As I pas him, he says, "Hey, bro, you want o donate to the cause?" Perhaps if I ever get paid. I head for the deathburger, where I am told that the soda machine does not work. I am then told that it's merely shut off in back and will work for a limited time. I get back to my bus stop and the bus comes along. The driver tells me not to use a ride coupon which has been "already validated." The coupon has printed on it, "hand...validated ticket to [bus] operator upon boarding." He is the first operator who has ever told me this. The bus takes me to the train, which takes me a couple of stops away, where I call the transit system to double check on the operator's instructions. The person on the phone verifies what the ticket instructs rather than the operator. While I am on my phone, two young women come along and stop next to where I sit. One puts a Red Bull can on the concrete next to me.
My connecting bus comes along. It parks at the southbound gate. The driver apologizes and says that he is northbound. When my real bus arrives, she looks at the transfer I got from the first operator, and she tells me that it has the wrong security code. I tell her I got it from an operator who told me that I am not supposed to use validated coupons, and that a transit system person on the phone told me that this is in fact what I am supposed to do. She tells me that she does not know which is correct herself, and that she will have to inquire about this. I am writing this down on a piece of paper which I put in my pocket, and take out again when this bus arrives. As I take it out, it tears almost exactly in half. So much for chaos theory. I carry both pieces on board and sit down. When I go to continue to write on both halves, one has disappeared. I crumple the remaining half to start over when I see the other half on the floor of the bus.
...bankruptcy, famine, and war had forced them to leave home... When the Party leaders spoke of the working class...these men recognized what they were talking about... ...thousands of rural villages...of the 1920's, 1930's, and 1940's. The...large-scale industries...the penetration of internal markets by manufactured goods, the ten-year Civil War...imposed an unwanted, a violent, and often a tragic mobility on a...stagnant society... The great famine of 1942-1943...reinforced doubts as to...the old way of life and...drove so many of the poor and dispossessed onto the roads. ...to travel...to hear new ideas, to open their eyes and ears... They welcomed...Marxism...eager to hear more. ...all...were influenced...by the extraordinary prestige of...Mao Tse-tung...savior of the nation. ...Mao wrote that it took ten years to remold [someone] to be a great Communist...to rid...conceit, personal selfishness, individualism... The Party led the village by...the example they set, seriously studied problems collectively, and...acted together. Finding superstition still a powerful weapon in the hands of the landlord class,the Communist Party organized a special campaign...to free the minds of the people from...geomancy, astrology, spirit talking, and mud idols... ...a long discussion [took place] of dependence...on...god... Before long everyone was laughing at...the discredited god. Once the gentry had been overthrown, it became obvious...that...the "eight ideographs...or the position of ones ancestral graves no longer determined one's fate. ...their trust in...the Communist Party increased. ...the real test would come if and when the truce ended without an agreement on peace [between the Kuomintang and the Communists]. Then the future of China would be decided by the armies in the field. In the summer of 1946, the fragile truce...broke down...because Chiang Kai-shek and his American advisors thought they had enough strength...to wipe out the Liberated Areas. During the entire six months of the truce, military supplies poured into Nationalist-held ports...and...supplies owned by SACO...a joint espionage and sabotage operation [run in part by] China's [very own] Himmler. - Hinton
Our authorized sanities are so many nebutals. "Normal" citizens with store-dummy smiles stand apart from each other, like cotton-packed capsules... Perpetual mental out-patients... ...insipid "functional personal relationship" and Art as a fantasy pacifier. Everyone is kept inside while the outside is shown through...advertising... And we all know this. How many...TV specials would it take to establish one Guatemalan revolution? How...would an ad agency...face-lift the Viet Kong? Slowly, very slowly we are led somewhere. We will be told which burning Asians to take seriously. Slowly, later. But there is real danger in suddenly waking a somnambulistic patient. And we all know this. ...free stores...liberate human nature. ...free the space, goods and services... "Let the theories of economics follow social facts." ...human wanting and giving, needing and taking become...open to improvisation. Pop Art mirrored the social skin, happenings X-rayed the homes. Street events are social acid heightening consciousness of what is real on the streets. ..Hells Angels...ride...with girls holding NOW signs. Flowers and penny whistles passed out to everyone. ...UHH! - AHH! - SHE IS COOL! Mirrors held up to reflect faces of passers-by. The burial procession. Tree black-shrouded messengers holding staffs topped with reflective dollar signs. Four pallbearers wearing animal heads carry a black casket filled with...silver dollars. Members of the procession give out silver dollars and candles. ...two Angels...busted... Cops confront 400...a growling poet with a lute, animal spirits in black, candle-lit girls singing "Silent Night." - Kornbluth
Saturday. 5:30 AM. On a local cable access channel is an advertisement for some kind of organization which helps neighborhood residents establish things such as community-owned businesses and to give residents apolitical voice in plans for their being relocated out of their neighborhood. The first resident I see is a guy with white hair and a long white beard. If I hadn't seen his home on TV, I may have suspected he is homeless. In Spanish, he is saying that he would be lost in another neighborhood. Everyone he knows lives there, his job is there. He shows the camera some turnips he's growing. There is a shot of the mayor cutting a ribbon an some new neighborhood facility. At this commercial's end, a voice says, "We are Westwood." I've just seen my neighborhood used in a local cable access TV commercial. Saturdays I get home from work more quickly on the bus. This morning, I attempt to put my validated ticket into the fare box on the bus. The fare box is broken, and I get a transfer without paying any fare.
"Omni": Where should we begin trying to understand...loss of certainty?
Kline: The idea was that God designed the universe, a "mathematical" universe. ...and that we can discover the mathematical laws... ...if you knew all the mathematical laws...you could predict the future. - OMNI Magazine, 6/1981
Tuesday. I had yesterday off, and I spent half the day riding around in the rain on a cold, wet, weird summer day. I didn't expect it to begin while I was out on my bike. It never rains here. This morning, I get a call from the boss. The long time plant of the company for which I have worked the past 12 years has two more weeks of operation before we vacate the premises. Our new driver was fired for not doing any work. I'm not surprised. He was nice enough, but the only question he ever had was, "Cool?" And all of a sudden, an employee at the plant can no longer work as many hours as she has been. Forces have conspired. My boss needs someone who knows where all the few remaining stores are, can drive a van, can load and unload, can dryclean, and knows how to shut down the plant. And this person must be willing to work until 10:30 PM for the next two weeks, and still go to work where I have been on Saturdays, which will be on four hours sleep. ...she needs me. She's got my shift covered where I work now for the coming fortnight. I've been to the plant a couple of times with my boss, to look for some store keys. But I haven't operated a drycleaning machine or touched a spotting board since December of 2014.
Today I am scheduled to go in at 3 PM instead of 5, for a quick refresher. At 11 AM I am on a train platform with a bald guy who has a tiny chin beard. He has a few groceries in a small bag at his feet as he drinks from what appears to be a cough syrup bottle. I go for a swim before I head back to my old store to pick up some food. I don't realize that I will be coming right back here with the van, which makes this trip unnecessary. But I do grab lunch. I won't be coming this way for the next two weeks, unless I want yogurt. I will have to wait and see how addicted I am. Underneath a bridge, between the waterpark and my old store, are a couple of young women sitting to the side of the trail and talking. Further along I spy a tarp hung on a rope off in the weeds, someone's homeless camp. Down the trail, headed toward me ate a couple of middle-aged women bringing up the rear of a handfull of hiking teenagers. I get to the shopping center and eat at a place full of seniors, and I sit at a booth next to a couple of women. One is telling the other about a house "not built for someone in retirement. We're two alpha females," she tells her. "She's a techie, so we balance each other out." "Well, I'll come over and see what I can do," the other says.
My first work day in 30 months, back where I worked most of the time for a decade, goes relatively fast. The Iranian couple I knew who owned the gas station in front of the plant have been gone for just about a year now. I have to figure out how to work the digital controls on the washing machine, the door of which locks during operation. Same with the dryer. After drying one load, it won't dry the next. Which means I must hang up that load to dry. The drycleaning machine won't extract or go into it's dry cycle. It lets me manually drain and extract, but the machine won't let me reset the dry cycle or manually dry. I turn it off and leave a note. I shut everything else off. It's a remarkably uneventful return to this place. I remember eight hour Saturday shifts pushing and pulling and sorting loads of drycleaning. What I picked up from our remaining stores makes only two medium sized loads: perhaps two hours of work for an entire day. I don't know how any owner could survive on this paltry amount of work. I leave at a quarter to 11 PM. The previous owner employed someone who would work this late cleaning. It rained after sundown and the street is wet when I leave, shining under the streetlight. I wait for the bus at the same stop I used for the better part of a decade. What was an empty field across the street, containing nothing but crows, has been under development for the past three years and is now home to developing condos and a huge parking garage.
A Mexican woman, perhaps in her sixties, comes across the street to the stop. It turns out she works at a hospital from 5 AM until the afternoon, and then from 5 PM until now, almost 11 PM. She does this Monday through Friday. The bus comes and she successfully flags it down in the dark. I put my bike on the rack and we take a seat. She asks me where I learned Spanish and I tell her of my career with this company. She gets out a little way up the street. I haven't been on this route this far south since the new owners quit offering specials on Saturday, early in 2015, which is what I did on Saturdays for ten years. A girl gets on the bus and tells the driver that her transfer fell into a puddle. She has jeans rolled up at the ankles and a bag with jeweled stripes on the outside. I can see that she is wearing an ankle monitor. She looks way too young to have been far enough through the system to already have an ankle monitor. A woman in her sixties gets on, followed at the next stop by a guy with a head scarf, Dickies denim jacket and pants, and motorcycle boots. They know each other and strike up a conversation. Each has exactly the same gravel voice. The woman tells him that she is still on the city council and that some bar was "shut down because of bugs." The ankle monitor girl is texting while her friend sits with her head on her knees. We pull into the first of two train stations, and I debate whether to jump off to catch a train. I decide to wait on the bus to see if the schedule I have is current. If it is, the train will appear. It does. Perhaps tomorrow I will race for the train. The girl then gets a call from someone who wants to know where she is. The call drops and she calls the number back, telling whoever it is that she is "on the bus!" We pull into the last train station and I the only one to get out. I am headed home down a busy avenue. I pass a library branch next to a grade school. Some time around midnight, there is someone under a white blanket right in front of the entrance to the library. They are listing to eighties music on a speaker.
On July 6, Governor Hickenlooper, Denver mayor Michael Hancock...officials and businesspeople and...Outdoor Retailer...made...Colorado the epicenter of...the fight to protect the wild lands and public restoration areas... The state of Utah lost the OR show...because it is purposefully seeking to dismantle public lands... ...prominent outdoor lands...decided they were done with Utah. ...its politicians sought to subvert the places the industry...relies on for business... Colorado and its legislature and governor...see the wild places...that will draw high-paying jobs and creative people.
..the life aspiring Instagrammers dream of... ...lived the life of...pimping out his beer from the back of numerous "mobile" homes. ."..little did I know...I would love not having a fixed address. Waking up wherever I want to be is awesome!"
In the 25 years...since my last visit here...the culture of climbing has changed on North America's highest mountain. My teammates were watching movies [on] their smart phones, climbing traffic had doubled and...tourist-engorged bush planes swarmed over the mountain... Modern hoodies...made mountaineers resemble...hoods. But some things hadn't changed. We stomped out a helicopter pad in the snow and I sat next to the dead body of a Czech ski mountaineer. - Elevation Outdoors, 8/2017
Summers used to be a "local secret," but somewhere along the way the word got out. We went from a couple of three-day festivals to multiple summer residencies by overwhelmingly talented artists. Athletes, chefs, designers, retailers, farmers, families, guides, friends...
Vail is an international community. ...the cultural flair...Heavenly Himalayan Contour Wrap - a salt scrub made from exotic salts... Multicultural, relaxing, hydrating and nourishing...it's...an international experience like no other. ...a hand-harvested white algae body mask...said to help with hormonal imbalance and water retention. ...for skin repair to end all skin repair...mineral-rich Undaria algae oil... The result? Skin that sings with hydration. ...nutrient-dense seaweed...bioavailable minerals...
...off-road chops. ...in southern Utah...tackling blizzard conditions, blasting through sand dunes, inching over boulders and navigating river bottoms and mud bogs, and...emerged victorious - in addition to being capable of confidents 130-MPH cruising on the highway... ...cool-looking, high-tech...futuristic functionality that's still quite removed from domestic or Japanese... - Vail Lifestyle, Summer 2017
A livestream package for the International Near-Death Studies Colorado conference...is available for the discounted price... ...hear 22 hours of keynote speakers... Two free videos from previous conferences are your free gift. A session on Healthcare-Education-Research-Science... - natural awakenings, 7/2017
Wanting out is one thing, and finding a viable alternative to the present system is quite another. The middle class in America is large, almost all-embracing, and defectors are usually welcomed back into the fold. ...the self-imposed exile [seems] almost transitional...another step in...growing up. ...a "psycho-social moratorium," and...Bohemianism may serve roughly the same function as college. How can anyone permanently escape middle-class values? ...a new system must prove itself both more stable and more exciting than the America one leaves behind. The economics of such a structure defy imagination... The prophet of a better society is much awaited... - Kornbluth
With land in their own hands the peasants could be counted on to volunteer in...forces by the hundreds of thousands... {Land ownership] was...the key to the destruction of the old pattern of society... Changing tides at the front had brought massive windfalls of captured American equipment. ...towns in North China...a school for the study of strategy an tactics of the New Democratic Revolution, a school of class consciousness and of socialist morality. - Hinton
Wednesday. The boss called and wants me to start from now on at 2:30 PM instead of 5. I won't be going swimming today. I have just enough time for a workout. The train station at 12:30 PM is full of construction guys, weirdo hippie wannabes, and one guy who appears to be both. He has a bright green head scarf, shades, goth pants, is middle-aged and is listening to hip hop music on a speaker. I watch as a middle-aged couple who appear homeless get off the train with a transit security officer. He lets them know that they are free to go. The couple have weather beaten faces, the woman's face the same color as her Clairol-red hair. I hit the gym and stop at a little coffee place which has a walk-up window and a table and chairs under an umbrella. A second middle-aged couple are siting at the table. At first glance, they appear perfectly ordinary. The woman gets up to approach me with some kind of ceramic figurine in he hand. She wants to know if I "want a little card holder for" my 'kitchen." She tells me that she is "trying to get on the bus," and hopes to sell me this piece. It's too bad that Antiques Roadshow isn't around. "You can put cards in it or sayings..." I wonder when the last time was when this woman was standing inside of a kitchen.
After work I am on a much earlier bus home. At 8 PM, I'm sitting across from a sleepy drunk, who is asking the driver rambling questions. His eyes closed, his head is on the wheel well, his trash on the top of it. A lanky guy with a grey beard and grey shoulder-length hair gets on. In his blue tie-dyed T-shirt, he puts his bags in his seat and stands for the ride, cursing quietly whenever the driver his the brakes and throws him off balance. He gets out at a stop where another guy gets on. This guy could be in his sixties. He's in a maroon velour running suit, and he is digging through his bag for his fare. When he can't find it, he begins yelling "Fuck! Shit!" The driver, in a Slavic accent, tells him to "stop that language." It continues. The drunk wakes up and asks the driver if he wants him to throw this passenger off the bus. This passenger becomes the drunk's mission, like a dog with a bone. "Get of!" he begin yelling at the passenger. The passenger tells him to shut up, he's having a bad day, a relative recently passed away. It's as if a button has been pushed in the drunk. He hears nothing else now. He is yelling at the passenger, even after the passenger has discontinue yelling himself. He calls the passenger a "piece of shit! Get out!" the drunk says mindlessly, oblivious to all which is sober. The driver allows the passenger to take a seat. The drunk gets off, and continues yelling at the passenger as others enter the bus. From outside, the drunk yells, "Get out! Get off the bus!" We can hear him as we pull away from the stop.
Thursday. It has been decided by the boss that I am to come to the plant and pick up a van, to take to the store where I work. I am no longer working at the plant, but working my regular shift at my regular store. After we close, I am to take the clothes from my store in the van, and pick up the rest of the clothes from the other stores and deliver all the clothes to the plant. So I ride to the waterpark for a quick swim before I make the trek down a busy boulevard to the plant to pick up the van. When I get there, I suggest to my boss that, after I deliver the clothes to the plant, that I take the van and park it back at my store overnight. I will not have to come all the way to the plant then to pick up the van each day. She gives this idea the okay before I go out to put the key in the van. The van's battery acts as if it has been dead and buried for ages. It doesn't even pretend to turn over. The immediate new plan is for me to go on to my own store 9yes, by bike0 and for her to bring me the van at closing time. It's already been a long day. Schedule changes aside, these have been a strange couple of weeks, with the 55 degree F mornings, the clouds breaking and warming closer to noon, and then the death clouds coming back towards rush hour for rain. Later in the day, the boss figured out why the battery died and brings me the van. After I close, I pick up the clothes from the stores and deposit them at the plant. I get back to my own store and, with a quick check of the bus schedule, realize that if I can make it to the stop outside in five minutes, I can take my bike on the bus to a train station which is closer than the one to which I would have to ride. And I can get to this other station more quickly. And , though this bus route is only the next boulevard from the one I took last night, the passengers are 180 degrees different than the one on the magical misery route from the previous evening. This route has professionals, college students, and the occasional restaurant employee.
This being said, I am in a rush to get changed into my riding gear, pack up my bags, and get the hell out there to the stop. From the bus to a train which arrives shortly after I arrive at the station. A couple of stops later, a bus home is at the gate. My bike and myself arrive on my own boulevard in jig time, around a quarter to 10 PM. I think this schedule with my doing the extra driving in the van is going to work. I decide to get another batch of chicken wings from the gas station. When I pull up there I see a middle-aged guy sitting in front of a corner of the place, behind a Red Box. A car pulls up, and he says, "Nice Buick. He talks to the young guys who gets out, suggesting a modification. He eventually comes inside and then leaves with a guy a couple decades his junior. When I get home, I can't remember what I did with the van key. I conclude that I must have left it in my shorts when I changed out of them. I pass my mailbox as a middle-aged couple is coming down the sidewalk. The guy has a pinewood staff I've seen used for hiking mountain trails. With his grown out stubble, he has that homeless thing going on. As they pass me, he asks me if I am going to participate in an inaugural bicycle race in the ritzy downtown neighborhood of LoDo (Lower Downtown). I only read about this race today in a little neighborhood newspaper. I wonder how he knows about it. The next morning I will call the morning employee and ask he if she is brave enough to stick her hand in the pockets of my shorts. The key is not there. Only when I come in do I see that I put it right where I had planned to, at a spot on the desk.
...isn't impressed by RiNo. During his 28 years... He adapted to changes by introducing some pricey wines and local beers, and kept working his twelve-hour days while building relationships with customers and brushing off what he considers lowball offers. Out in front, a few guys are asking people for money and smokes... ...a few say they are living on the streets or in shelters. Directly across the street is the enormous Denver Central Market that RiNo developer and landlord Ken Wolf opened last year. Some of the panhandlers leave...to try their luck over there. ...Wolf and other business leaders sent letters to the city licensing officer, recommending that his license be reconsidered...a pretty rare move. "...does not do business in good faith," read one letter. "Each morning there is a line of visibly intoxicated individuals - many of whom appear to have slept on the street..." Supporters gathered to wave signs that reed "Gentrification in Progress" and "Welcome to RiNo: Poor People Keep Out." - Westword, 8/10-16/2017
On afternoons in [my] neighborhood, you might see a man wearing a woven straw hat pushing a white cart full of snacks... ...he's a 69-year-old local...Spanish-speaker... When he is not working, he sells snacks to residents in the area. ...about three days per week. "(I have) not much money, food... Not strong," he says...pointing to his knees. His two sons also sell snacks out of carts... [He] has done it for seven years, and he's worked in the area for 30 years.
As more young adults move to Denver and the cost of housing skyrockets, some city neighborhoods are seeing drops in...people of color and children. ...rising housing prices are pushing families out of some neighborhoods. ...the...district is more racially segregated now than it was 10 years ago. - Denver Herald, 7/6/2017
"A lot of parents... They're thinking, 'Oh, my kid... They stay with a grandparent all day...' This is across economic lines. People want their kids to be engaged in learning and eating good food..."
People are asking, where's the money? We're not seeing it in our neighborhoods... The traditional neighborhood schools in southwest Denver have been overlooked in the last three bonds... Most of the big money has gone to charters... Parents are taking their kids out of DPS [the Denver Public School system] in general. We're fining that DPS is undermining rather than investing in our traditional neighborhood schools. We're seeing some racial and economic segregation when that happens. Some of the hottest schools [lacking air conditioning] in the entire district are in southwest Denver. Many old schools, some range from 40 to 60 years old...
"Help me understand why there is no housing money in here given the crisis we are facing." ...money for supportive housing for homeless people was cut... "And the ironic part is that we've never seen more housing be constructed." And the cost of construction keep going up. - Denver Herald, 8/8/2017
"We live in a food desert. We do have...mostly...wholesale." Referencing community input...a grocery store was number one on the list. "..our first priority is to know and understand what all the adjacent ...neighbors want, because they'll be staring at whatever it is. Along with that, we do want some amenities that just don't exist anywhere else in our neighborhood, or not in walking distance." - the profile, 8/2017
...a different kind of contracting that hands over some control of publicly owned space to private interests for decades. ...could be a harbinger of things to come. Mayor Michael Hancock and other city leaders see promise in public-private partnerships, which infuse...private money and management into public projects... ..the City Council...some members express misgivings... ...early plans call for ending the elected council's default role as final arbiter over those public-private partnerships contracts... ...providing more certainty for the private partners that the deal would go through with administrative approval. "...kind of forming this hybrid-fourth form of government." Hancock held firm... "Thee isn't a mayoral conference I attend that we're not talking [about this] and what it means." - The Denver Post, 8/13/2017
The City has emerged as an innovative leader in successfully using public-private partnerships to provide high-quality and cost-effective municipal services... ...contracting with the...Sheriff's Office for public works and code enforcement...for building services, and...for animal law enforcement services. The City continues to attract top employers...and families with an eye for good living. - Centennial Community Guide, 2017
...with acts serving as a guide to motivation, no progress can be made unless the individual is willing to co-operate. ...not for partisan advantage, not for sake of exposure, not as an exercise...but...to remove obstacles in the way of more effective work. This was the objective framework around which the unfolding of subjective attitudes revolved. And this, not coercion...not some...self-torture made...criticism viable and grounded it in necessity. ...began to pull the group together. I could feel this was happening but could not find any decisive reason for it. ...the mere exposure of trouble had brought about a changed relationship between these people. As they gained insights into the background of each others' weaknesses, they felt a growth of mutual sympathy, of common ground. - Hinton
[Alan] WATTS: ...we are trying to take moral violence out of...efforts...to bring human beings into a harmonious relationship.
[Allen] GINSBERG: Now, how much of that did the peace movement in Berkeley recognize?
WATTS: I think they're still working on the basis of moral violence, just as Gandhi was.
GINSBERG: ...I went last night and turned on with Mario Savio. He was describing his efforts in terms of the motive power for large mass movements. He felt that one of the things that move large crowds was righteousness, moral outrage, and "anger"...righteous anger. - Kornbluth
So there I was worried about the key. After I close my store, I take this key out to the van. When I turn it, the "new" battery is just as dead as the old one was the previous morning. I call my boss, who tells me to head home. I am to get out as early as possible the following morning, get the other van from the plant, pick up what wasn't delivered today and deliver it, as well as pick up bags of clothes to be cleaned. I wake up at 4:30 AM, and I am out of the door at 5, headed for a 5:38 train. I'm rolling under a bridge when I see a figure just about the middle of this underpass. It appears in the dark to be a thin woman silhouetted against the street light from the far end. She's leaning on a railing having a smoke. Next to her is some kind of cart with a barrel or cooler on it. In the dark it almost looks like a shop vac. I make it to the train, which deposits me at a station where I used to transfer buses home from work under the previous owner. I ride from here down a street I haven't been on by bike in some ten years. I have memories of riding down this road, in fall of spring. It has perhaps the first bike lane I' ever saw. I make it to the plant, and the delivery goes well and I am only an hour late opening my own store. I stop into a breakfast place across the parking lot or an order to go. I watch a slow moving senior citizen, with a copy of The Closing of the American Mind in his hand. The kitchen may speak Spanish, but the clientele is pure Caucasian. There are the customary kids in shorts and nylon thermal underwear. There are families. There are high school seniors. There are newborns. There are Caucasians of every age.
I open my own store perhaps an ahout and a half late. Seven and a half hours later I close up, load up the working van, and do another round of pick ups of bags of clothes. The van is full almost up to the top with bags and households, from this morning and this afternoon, all of which I deposit at the plant. I'm out of the plant at twenty to seven PM. I elect to catch the 7:10 PM bus with my bike. While I am waiting, I calculate that I would have made it home more quickly had I rode to the train and caught the 7:12, or even the 7:30. I sit there and take stock of the stop where I waited for the bus home two and a half years ago. I survey what used to be an empty field across the street from the plant, now filling with condos and eventually a new shopping center. The Iranian couple who bought the gas station in front of the plant, I find out, sold it a year ago. Shortly before the bus arrives, a car goes past. I hear a young voice, and the most Caucasian I have heard since I lived among them. The voice yells, "Wiiiilllson!" The bus shows up for the 35 minute ride to my train station. We pull into and then out of the first of two train stations on this route. I spent some cold winter days waiting for the bus at this one particular station. At the last stop on the way out, the denim Dickies dude and the city councilwoman get on. He stands up at the front as usual. She sits behind me again. She asks him if he is breathing before she tells him that it smells in here. A middle-aged woman gets on, who is friends with the city councilwoman. She's in a pink short-sleeved blouse and tight knit, flower print Capri pants. She sits next to her behind me and tells her, "Guess what? I'm running for city council. A judge signed off for me District 1." I've heard of grassroots, but bringing it from this particular street? "Oh this is funny," says the councilwoman. "This is going to be a joke." I wonder if politics couldn't use a little levity... or any at all.
Sunday. It's a beautiful afternoon and I get a swim in before a dark cloud of death materializes out of nowhere like the spaceship from V. II say the heck with it and I ride up to another little art festival in another park. I roll up on the park as lightening flashes and thunder claps. I see the whole festival right before a gale force wind appears straight out of the Bible. I'm standing in front of the "aura clearing tent" and I snap a photo right before it almost collapses. A woman screams and a guy yells, "Grab it grab it grab it!" It will be the only tent to come close to blowing over. I head under a tree to wait out the hail storm. I watch as this festival gets its aura cleared. Tents are taken down and carts pulled over grass, all in hail and rain. Shit, I got a swim in just in time. I know the afternoon drill my now. Holy crap. A couple of young women run to my tree before one declares, "This isn't the tree of choice." Do they not realize who I am? I am Wiiiilllson! And then, from under my tree, I watch as a guy in a black and white skeleton outfit walks past in the rain. With a woman who has an umbrella. He's really...killing it. I head over to a McDonalds for a snack, where a smattering of middle-aged homeless are taking it easy. After I make it home, I have dinner at my usual Sunday night Vietnamese place. It's full of young Caucasian couples and larger parties of multiple races. I watched as I was walking the few steps from my home to the place, I watch four young Caucasian guys get out of two cars, one with Massachusetts plates and new white Mustang with Oklahoma ones. It's less expensive to register your car in many other states than it is here in "colorful Colorado." That's what I call a 'creative class.' I sit next to some of them. One guy tells the others that he remembers when this place was next door, in a smaller location. The parking for the new location is right up against my townhome. During my ride home from the art fest, I passed a couple of brand new condos just up the street from where I live. I can't help but wonder if a different race, from the one who dominates the older homes, is moving into these new homes...
Monday. Shortly after 10 AM, I have just entered the bike trail to work. I left the house without eating breakfast to try and swim after a workout. I come up from the first underpass and look over my shoulder to check for oncoming bike traffic. Behind me is a version of Santa Claus with red skin, a brown T-shirt, and about 200 lbs. lighter. He's on a bike, taking a drink of water from his bottle. Ahead of me is a gaggle of neon lycra-clad cyclists. Once they pass I glance back. Orange Theory Santa has vanished. I soon come upon another homeless cyclist, this one cinching up a duffel bag on a bench. He has olive drab clothes and brown skin, and a brand new Schwinn with a big extra bar across the handlebars, I assume for hanging a load. I head to the train, which lets me out next to the gym. I rush through a workout to have enough time to swim. Shortly thereafter I am rolling the length of the waterpark, hidden behind trees at the top of a hill. It's eerily quiet. No water, no kids, no bell. Up through the entrance, I enter an almost empty parking lot. A young mom is getting out of her car with her young son. I ask her if the place is open. She's under the impression that they open at 11 AM. I tell her that they should have been open since 10. I approach the ticket window which has a posting that, beginning to day until the rest of the season, the waterpark will only be open weekends. I coast back to tell her the bad news. In her shorts and spaghetti strap blouse, she's a cute as can be. She can't even be thirty yet. She thanks me. Oh well, it's time for lunch anyway. What is it the French say? Oh yeah, 'if you don't speak French, you can pretty much go to hell.' I won't be fluent until next summer. I may come back on a weekend before the season ends. The public pools may be open another week or so, but they don't open until noon, too late for me to swim before work. Plan B is to swim at my other gym's outdoor pool. My daily route is now determined by which outdoor swimming pool is open. If complication equals adventure, the adventure continues.
Like a wet blanket, I decide to drown my sorrows at a pancake house. Inside is a table of seven 18-year-olds celebrating the birthday of someone in their party. With their exuberance, they could all be 8 years old. So may end my waterpark summer. It's been lovely. I don't know why, but it's as if I have watched a summer in the lives of many, memories in the process of being made. The kind of thing which does not necessarily show up in the accounting of city administration . At a table next to be is a grey-haired guy and his wife. They get up to leave. When I glance back at the table, just seated are another grey-haired guy and his wife. A couple of college girls join their friend seated behind me. The friend says to them, "Oh my God, you scared me." They all discuss who is transferring which majors. They are a less hip version of the college-types which inhabit the Vietnamese place behind where I live. I gobble my eggs and soon am outside unlocking my bike. A trio of middle-aged guys come out. One says he's "had it with this humidity," referring I assume to all the rain this month. My flowers love it. I guess he's no flower. The 18-year-olds come out next. One tells the others that they are invited to his house to take a shower and play games. I'm convinced that they are somehow all actually 8 years old.
My shift at the store and my run in the van, and I am on the 8:57 PM bus. In the seat next to me are a couple of guys in black uniforms. They are not members of Swat, but in the cooking industry. Black is a color which denotes culinary aplomb. One is telling the other that, according to company issued odometers, he knows that in two months as a server at Applebees he has walked the equivalent distance of 17.5 miles. A couple behind me are quietly conversing, the guy telling the lady that he "was married at 16." We pull into and out of the first train station. At a stop at the corner of the boulevard, a guy in back jumps up and asks, "Is this the (route #) 12?" A woman who looks like a barfly from 1977 tells him, "No, it's the zero." Zero is a good number for this route. The following morning, I am back on another bus. These days, all I appear to do is ride the bus with my bike. On the way to the bus stop, I came down a residential street where I stopped at a corner. A middle-aged guy is on the corner, with a trash bag in his hand, next to a recycle bin. He is yelling at the car in front of me, "Put your bag right here, it isn't queer!" He says to me, "I don't know why you're riding you bike around here. They kill people!" He keeps yelling, "That's right, son! And I'm done!" I make it to the bus stop and the bus comes along to collect me. Currently, I am on the way to my alternative swimming option. Actually, during the week, it's my only option. A customer told me yesterday that I "look burnt." A young couple get on the bus with a one-year-old. The mom is in a hunting camouflaged hoodie, the dad in a hunting camouflaged cap. I get out at the stop for the gym and pool. I am securing a bag to the rack on my bike, next to the lawn of a church. I look up to see a guy with a lawnmower under the shade of a tree. He is waiting to mow the very spot where I stand.
Moments later I am in the pool. Instead of diving over twelve feet deep to get my sunglasses, I am doing laps alongside middle-aged Caucasians with swim goggles, bathing caps, and flippers on their hands. The only thing missing This is my sister's scene. But it is peaceful and meditative. At one end of my lane I rest my head back against the side. I look up at spidery clouds and passenger jets. It's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful day. 77 degrees F. and a cool breeze. Having left my waterpark during the week for the rest of this season, I have had an unexpected reaction to seeing it for the first time this year. This may sound arrogant, but I feel as though I have somehow seen a typical year there, almost as if I have seen every year just by being there one season. If I have written about it as some kind of special place, I feel as though this waterpark is a remarkable result of the ordinary duties of city planning.
The following morning, I have not had enough sleep. Too bad. I need to workout and I am determined to go for another swim. I almost get on the bus with my bike, going the wrong direction. I am taking a bus which comes sooner than the one I usually take to the gym. I does not go all the way there but I have my bike with me. Workout, swim, crosstown bus, connecting bus, lunch, shift at my store, run in the van, and when I am done I have just missed one bus home. I elect to ride to the train station. I am riding a road I've been on a decade before, but never at night. I get to the station and just miss a train. There is, however, a bus which will take me directly up my boulevard. I forgot about this bus route, which I used to ride home thirty months ago. Back then, I rode it during the day. This is the 9:10 PM. The station parking lot is no longer close to being packed full of cars. It's dark and quiet. A light rain is falling. There are a handful of passengers here this evening. One is a young woman in a brown hoodie. A middle-aged guy in plaid shorts comes along. He asks the driver when he is leaving. "I think I'll ride with you 'cause I'm going home." He spots the young woman. "You need a pass little sister? You sure are pretty. You married? You tell your husband he sure got a good one. You tell him Doc said so. You got any sisters ain't married off?" I'm suddenly in a Hemingway novel. I wish he would just evaporate. Somebody marry Doc. Take my wife...please.
Thursday. I have had sleep, but I don't feel like going the opposite direction from work just for a lap swim this morning. I am off to grab breakfast and pick up a prescription. I elect to get the prescription first. Along the way, on a residential street, I spot a disconnected toilet sitting in front of a curb. Next to it is an empty toilet paper roll. At the pharmacy the must look through both yesterday's and today's delivery, before they locate my prescription in the safe. I decide after this to skip breakfast and head to work, where I will have lunch. Along the way, I decide that I am hungry. I turn off the trail where I have passed many times in almost two years, but never have turned before. It's the path to an enormous shopping mall. On the way home along this trail, in the fall and winter months when it's dark between 7:30 and 8 PM, I can see the lights of this place from across a golf course. The long line of lights runs the length of the field. I always wondered which mall this was. It's just a little after 10 AM. I get up to the huge parking lot. It's empty, save for the ever-present rumbling pickups which are simply passing through. There is an enormous Costco, a Game Station, a Costco gas station with no convenience store. There is nothing here I would want to purchase. I ride the length of this side until, at the end, I find a deathburger. I go in, where the crew is Hispanic. I speak a few words of Spanish. A couple of patrons come in, young Caucasian guys who look as though they may be serious gamers. In tis neighborhood, the young pursue Xbox, the seniors are out on the golf course, or out on the bike trail with the homeless and myself. I stop in to an Italian place for lunch. When I come out, I see four young Caucasian girls with long blonde hair, and two more going inside. Most are wearing sunglasses. I run over to a store in the mall, to purchase another notebook with which to write these words in. Leaning on a bike rack is a bald and heavyset, middle-aged Caucasian guy on his phone. He is saying, "Right. Right, right. Oh? Right."
After work I am headed home on the bike. It' been interesting this week, riding to the train station near the plant. I know when one bus home is there, the 9:10 PM. If I miss it, such as I did tonight, there is another bus at 9:44 and a train at 9:21. I elect for the train. Closing in on 10 PM I am headed down a residential street toward my own boulevard. At one particular corner, a couple of pickup trucks com to a stop. As I pass them, I hear someone in one truck say to someone in the other, "Freeze. Don't move. Don't move. Don't move." Someone in the other truck replies, "This is my car." I continue on my way as they both rumble past. Overhead, the police helicopter crises past. The following morning I am off to work at 10 AM. With these night pickups I am getting home later and getting up too late to go all the way out to the gym to swim, which is a trip I don't feel like making anyway. I do feel like a bike ride. Down the street, at one residential corner, a police car with its lights on is parked in front of a home. n the opposite corner is a yard sale. A sign on the lamppost reads, "yarda," Spanish for yard.
The streets are dad out here in the late morning. School has already started. The summer feels relegated to the weekends now. I feel conscious of being out and about while husbands are at work now that it's well past rush hour, and wives and at work inside of homes. It feels like nothing if not a traditional side of town. I'm on the bike trail and just up from an underpass when I pass a curly grey haired guy with red skin. He's in a winter jacket and has an unlit cigarette in his mouth as he put the pedal to the metal on his bike. He's followed by a couple of younger men on ten speeds talking about an Italian bicycle race, who are in turn followed by a pair of yet younger guys weaving back and forth on skateboards. The trail is busy with cyclists late this morning. I wonder how long they will be out here once the thermometer drops in the coming months. These bright, hard-pedaling, pace-keeping folks completely vanish once the summer season comes to an end, and I have done winter rides home where I am the single cyclist out on the trail. This morning's skateboard guys are followed, around a bend and over a bridge, by yet another curly grey haired guy on his bike. This guy is pulling the first rake in a wagon which I have ever seen behind a bike. Down this trail, onto another, and out the other end. I am climbing a hill with a young couple on their bikes. The lady tells me, "This is not a fun hill." I never get a chance to talk to other cyclists. I tell the story of the resident on this street who came out as I passed by, and asked me how I liked his "little hill." She asks me if I ride this way often. The last I see of them, they are headed for a trail called the Highline. I don't see them when I get there, they must have gone the other way. I get to work and have lunch at a pancake place. When I am done, I am outside where I watch an elderly couple coming in. The husband tells someone inside, "She's coming." The wife says, "So's Christmas."
After my shift at work and after my run in the van, I get home around 10 PM. I don't fall asleep until after 12:15 AM. I awake at 5 AM and am off to work. I don't feel awake enough to ride to work but I must take my bike to make the trip from my store to the plant, where I have one more run as the driver. I was in the plant last night, shortly after 8:30 PM. The crew worked it's last day that day. The plant was empty and dark. I said goodbye to ten years of friends, some of whom are no longer with us. And I was the last person to clock out of that plant. I may or may not make a run this afternoon. This morning, I am at my Saturday bus stop shortly before 6 AM. I am watching an odd guy across the boulevard. He is pacing around an empty Vietnamese insurance office parking lot. He raises his hand, he pumps his fist. He disappears behind a parked food truck. He reappears and walks through the crosswalk, stops and crouches, stands and goes back to the other corner. He can't be much older than 30. He stands and stares at oncoming traffic. I work my nine hour shift at my own store, then do the half hour ride to the plant, then do my run in the van for one last time. I catch a bus around 7:30 PM. At the first train station where we stop, a guy in his thirties gets on. He sits down and uses his cane to grab a cigarette butt from the other side of the bus. Another guy, middle-aged with hair to his shoulders, asks him, "Whaddya' find?" When I get home I celebrate my mom's birthday with two candles on two cupcakes.
Denver has grown at a record-breaking pace over the past few years. Demand for housing has skyrocketed, and so have property values. The average citywide rent has also risen... Some of the biggest increases have come in surprising places, including [my own neighborhood.] "While Denver's economy thrives, our families and our neighbors carry much of the burden of Denver's upcoming economic development." For these residents, finding comparable housing in the Denver market would almost impossible. ...17 percent of homes in Globeville and Elyria-Swansen [not my neighborhoods] are owned by clandestine companies... "...people needed...sidewalks, curbs, bus stations, bridges." ...parts of Five Points are unrecognizable. The eye candy of development - trendy stores, repaired roads and refurbished buildings...mask the fact that large populations of low-income people have seemingly vanished, pushed into other neighborhoods. "I always say [Elyria-Swansen] is Denver's last frontier." Once it's gone, he wonders, "What else is left?" When he was doing his final walk-through of his old home this summer...men from H.C. Peck were already there. "They were boarding up my parents' dream home while I was walking through it for the last time." ...asked the men if he could have a few minutes alone. ...one man placed his hand on...shoulder, looked him in the eye, and said, "Get over it. Move on. Star your new chapter." - Westword, 8/17-23/2017
It's a place whose history began when...P.T. Barnum bought hundreds of acres of land in 1878. It's...about 79 percent Latino. It's...a symbol for the community. "Once you're here, you want to be here." ...some students are from foster homes or live with their grandmothers or uncles, and...some students may be...having a parent in jail. "A lot of times in schools...you hear about the school-to-prison pipeline."
Christian Cycling is a worldwide organization that meets in smaller "spokes" in different areas around the globe. According to...head of the Colorado spoke, most of the members in Colorado...live around Highlands Ranch. "We ride for the Lord. Being able to ride and enjoy God's creation..." - Denver Herald 8/10/2017
I have two brothers and a sister at home...and there is not a lot of time and space to study. ...the rec center...would be the perfect place for me to go and achieve my dreams of going to college." "We don't want jails or rehab centers for our youth anymore. No more discrimination for our neighborhood." "If we really want to make [my] Boulevard a transit corridor, it's going to take a lot more than $9.8 million, and it needs to be programmed," [the City Councilperson for my district] said. "This is money that we don't know if it's for bus shelters, if it's for dedicated lanes. We heard at one point it was for electric vehicle charging stations." City officials said they wanted to...move buss better in the absence of a full bur-rapid-transit system on a corridor with some of the highest ridership in the system and a lot of pedestrian injuries and fatalities. - Denver Herald, 8/17/2017
It's 9 AM on a Sunday. I am at the bus stop on the corner, headed to the supermarket. I watch over on the opposite corner, as a couple of young guys dressed mostly in black are loping down the sidewalk. One guy is in bright red pants and a gold chain around his neck. They walk up to he liquor store and try the door. At 9 AM on a Sunday? Nope, not even in this neighborhood. They head for the gas station instead. The won't have any hard stuff, but I guess it's better than nothing. Another guy is coming from the opposite direction, on my side of the boulevard. He stops to ask me if this is a stop for a northbound or a southbound bus. I tell him that all the traffic on this side of the boulevard is headed southbound. He continues to walk north, and gets across the street when the bus shows up. He stares at it. In a back seat on the bus is a little guy with a face full of stubble and a voice like he has smoked way too many cigarettes. He's wearing a long sleeved olive drab shirt with a collar. He's talking to a middle aged woman sitting in the seat next to him. He's telling her about a Chucky Cheese restaurant which "gets robbed all the time. They have PTA meetings there, Neighborhood Watch meetings there, Stranger Danger meetings. 'Come to the Stranger Danger meeting!'"
In the seat next to me is a middle aged couple. he woman is wearing a Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtle hoodie. Her phone rings a couple of times, and she answers with, "Hello? Hello?" I get to the store, and after shopping I am back on the bus headed home. At one stop, a senior Vietnamese man gets on and shows the driver his transfer, to ask him if it's good all day. The driver says no. Smiling, he tells the driver, "Okay, see you later." And he exits the bus. I drop off the groceries and go for a workout and swim. The waterpark pool is full of bald middle aged guys and all ages and genders with tattoos. But it's great to be there again. I don't stay long because I decide o have dinner downtown. I ride back to the train station. On the platform is a middle aged guy in silver-framed sunglasses. I'm headed north. The southbound train comes first, and drops off another middle aged guy and a younger one. The first thing the first guy does is walk over to me. It's the first of four times he comes walking over to me. Every time he does the same thing. He will asks me a question, "What's up Grey Dog? Are you down?" or "Check this out," and then he will slowly back away as he watches me through his sunglasses. The other middle aged guy is pontificating. He says about the police, "I admit my opinion is a little jaded because I'm a criminal." He asks the sunglasses guy if he smokes pot. Shortly thereafter, I am downtown for dinner. It's late afternoon on the pedestrian mall, where gay male couples are out for a walk. I watch a group of eight go past.
The next morning, I am coming off of my late night schedule of the past couple of weeks, and I don't feel like getting on the bike. It's a good thing I worked out yesterday. I don't feel like swimming either. I am instead headed for my Saturday bus stop just up the street, around 10 AM. Along the way is an old house. I have once seen a middle aged guy in dress slacks and a buttoned down shirt in front of this place. The only occupant of this home I've ever seen. Many times, I have seen a line of vacuum cleaners out on the edge of the lawn, for sale. This morning there are three guys who look like they stepped out of American Chopper. They are seated around a patio table, drinking. Out on the lawn this time are assorted framed pictures and paintings. I assume that the trio at one time thought this stuff was cool. Under one tree are fifteen tires. The bus transports me to the train station, where a guy standing on the platform asks me, "Excuse me, sir, do you smoke?" I don't. "I'm sorry sir, my mistake." He walks the platform looking for a smoke. Today is the morning of a partial solar eclipse in this neck of the planet. Every employee of every shop in the center where I work is outside with their "eclipse glasses." A waitress asks if I want some eclipse glasses, then insists that I take them outside. A customer comes in asking if the place has eclipse glasses. I finish lunch and walk across the dim street toward work. An employee of a bakery on the corner yells at me, asking if I want to see the eclipse. I was interested in this stuff since I was 5 years old, in 1970, when for my birthday I got the Golden Book of Astronomy and began asking about the rings of Saturn. These, however, are members of the mayor's "creative class." It's not about the science, it's about the brand. I get back to my street after work around 9 PM. Between my corner and my parking lot is a young woman in a wacky outfit. She appears to be yelling at passing traffic. She yells at one pickup, something about her boyfriend tore her hair out. She rambles on, followed by laughter. I stop at the Chinese place across my street, and when I get to my parking lot, I can hear her behind the apartments in back of the Chinese place. She is making coyote noises, laughing, and rambling. She comes back to my side of the street and heads down the avenue.
...her crew...in stylish grey aprons and tattoos...are already in the zone, what psychologists call "flow." Flow comes when you're...doing something creative... You experience it at restaurants when you're eating well... ...what flavors those fables Italian meals, the ones pimped by Olive Garden commercials, the ones that resonate... ...she knows the power of Italian food to bring us together... - Westword, 8/24-30/2017
I worked another nine hours on Saturday. I went through a day full of hoops attempting to help a company and its customers through what I thought was a transition to a different kind of service. I had no way of knowing that it may have been my last day working on a Saturday for I don't know how long. My last day working for the company I had been with for twelve years and two months. During that entire time I had been occasionally travelling to and through neighborhoods across south Denver, from west to east. I had needed a small stack of bus routes and schedules. And on Saturday evening I went to bed an employee of this company for the last time. When I returned home from grocery shopping around 11:30 AM I had a message from my boss. When I called her back, I discovered that the owner has decided to toss away what remains of this company, two remaining stores out of what was once nineteen locations when I came aboard in April of 2005. I am no longer an employee of this company, because there is as of today no more company. I have been offered, by my boss, a position at the location the owner has had before he purchased the one I worked for, beginning Monday. I still get to work the closing shift. And it's Monday through Friday. I will have Saturdays off for the first time since...1991? I will be travelling through northwest Denver now until further notice.
I have a lot to do this afternoon. I debate having lunch until I get to the waterpark. I have to pick up a DVD from the library downtown before perhaps the last swim at the waterpark. Then I will ride to the store where I have been working to pick up a lot of stuff to haul on a bike. It finally took the discontinuation of the company to drag me away from the expensive restaurants where I have been consuming lunch every single work day. I will pick up a stereo system, a big boom box which belonged to our seamstress, which I brought to my store from where it had been in the three years since she passed away. I will also pick up a radio which belonged to someone else who is no longer with us, the manager of the store under the previous owner, where I have been working for the vast majority of the time under the new owner. I hope one day to give it to her son. He may like to have it. A couple of sport drinks and a pair of shoes. The rest gets left behind to the ghostly hand of Adam Smith, which comes along like some archangel to sweep away what gets left behind from the former plans and dreams of the living and once living. I don't even know what will happen to the clothes which customers have not yet picked up. The last thing I will do before I leave for the last time is turn off the air conditioning, which has been left on after closing yesterday. Yo quero tu contenda en paz, mi Lilliana. God watch over her soul, her son's, and his father's. My charge over her store has come to an end.
It's shortly after 1 PM when am out at the bus stop across the street from where I live. I have the bike I take on the weekends, and what I hope are enough bags to carry all the stuff I am going to get. Sitting in the shelter is a kid in black teardrop shades. He sees my transit system discount coupon in my hand and wants to know if I "got transfers for sale?" I don't have transfers for sale. Those are available exclusively from a bus driver. I tell him I don't. "So you won't sell me one?" I decide not to wait for this bus. I ride up to my old bus stop, which I will never use to get to work again, to catch another bus. A young, overweight guy walks slowly past. He is having trouble keeping his balance, as if he is drunk. The bus comes along to take me to the train, which takes me downtown. I collect my DVD from the library. Deciding that I am hungry for lunch, I ride back toward the train. Not able to find the entrance of one place (where my younger brother worked years ago) I elect for the one next door where...I can find the door. After lunch, I come out of the door I can find. Where my bike is locked up next to the curb of a downtown street; a white stretch limo, with Playboy bunny heads on the tinted windows, has parked. I am on the train to the waterpark. Coming out of downtown, it crosses a busy downtown boulevard. I watch out of the window of this train as a guy makes its way across this boulevard. He is carrying a bedroll over his shoulder. It and him are both the same shade of brown.
On Monday, my boss promised that she would let me know if she will give me a ride to my new place of employment. I decide not to wait for her, or to be late on my first day of work. I take my bike to work on an 8:30 AM bus. The driver of the bus up my own street is a middle aged guy who is joking with everyone who gets on. "Are you a senior? Are you 100? Do I scare you?" At the intersection with my old bus stop, he tells a hairy street zombie that he can't get on without fare. Fifteen blocks later, he slows down at the stop for the social security/human services complex, waiting to see if anyone wants to get on his bus. He is pulling away when a passenger let him know that he rang the bell for this stop, and that he is going to make her, "fucking late!" At 50th, where I don't ever remember being before, I disembark to catch my crosstown bus. Myself and another passenger are jockeying for the limited shade from the morning sun at this bus stop, next to Regis High School. The other guy actually crosses the street to stand in the grass of the tree-lined median. Coasting along comes a grey-haired guy on his bike. He uses his left shoe against his back rim as his brake. I watch his park his bike in the gutter by leaning the pedal against the curb. I suspect that his bike has no kickstand. Oncoming morning traffic, most of it turning the corner of a busy intersection, must turn wide to miss his bike. I wonder if an oncoming garbage truck will run over it. The guy is on the bench for a bit before he begins looking for his own shade. He does not appear to want to cross the street to the median. When I see the other guy come back to this side of the street, t's my clue that the bus is coming. When it pulls up through the green light, the guy is standing in the street in front of the moving bus. Every bus has a bike rack on the front. It has space for two bikes. The first passenger with a bike will place their bike in the space closest to the back, leaving the front space available so that the next passenger with a bike does not have to maneuver between another bike and the front of the bus. Which may require the passenger to step out into traffic. The guy puts his bike in the front space. He apologizes to me and tells me that I will have to put my bike behind his. When he gets on I can hear the driver yelling at him for standing out in front of a moving bus. I recall what President Obama said about not thinking we need healthcare, and then we get "hit by a bus." This guy does not strike me as much of a voter. But who knows. Maybe he stands with his bike, blocking the entrance to his polling station. He tells the driver that it won't happen again and suggests to her that she not "get excited." He gets out before I do. I disembark at the end of the line. I ask the driver if she sees that guy every day. She is a substitute driver who hasn't done this route before. She gets out and calls her significant other, asking him if he misses her. I believe that, however I get here, I will be on the transit system most days out of the week. Even if it's on the train. I ride to a supermarket to purchase a transit system monthly pass. I ask a young guy at customer service if, as today is the 28th and next month's passes go on sale around the 20th, if he has any September ones for sale. "Umm...probably not..." He opens a drawer to reveal a stack of September passes.
The two years and nine months which I have spent, mostly at one store which is currently being closed, are decidedly over with. I go in to work two hours earlier, have a longer commute, and I literally have no time to sit down. Some nights, I am working until an hour after we close. I did little sitting before, but this is eight or nine hours of non-stop work. With the addition of that company's customers to this company's door to door pick up and delivery service, the manager tells me that our workload has doubled. Along with my previous boss who also works for this company now, we both are in the center of the tornado because we are the two left who know more than anyone about the company being absorbed. Like one planet swallowing another. At the end of the day, I go racing out of work to the bus stop. Just when I believe that I have missed the last bus home, it turns the corner. I take it back across town to a stop for the connecting bus south, back on my boulevard. I arrive there as a middle aged guy comes lumbering along on a cane. He has with him a pizza box and a five-year-old with hair to his waist. The guy complains to his kid about the mom. "It was me who got you that umbrella, not her." Just what every five-year-old wants...his very own umbrella. He has a seat on an overturned bucket. He asks me if I'm hungry. He asks his kid why the mom hasn't called. He tells the kid what a long day it's been; he's in no mood for more adventures today (it's 9 PM), and they are going back to the hotel. I suspect that they are not here on summer vacation. Perhaps she knows better. When her call comes through, she asks him if he got any soda to go with the late dinner. "No I don't have any sodas. I don't give a fuck. I'm walking around with a goddamned cane." The bus comes to collect us and we take our seats. His kid is on his lap. He tells the kid not to mention grandma. "I mean it. Don't mention her or I will not take you anywhere. Understand? My momma and your momma don't get along." A woman comes and her three little daughters comes on board. Her oldest daughter is in 3rd grade and is telling the guy about sleeping in a homeless shelter, falling off her bunk bed, and breaking her arm. The guy's own kid is touching each of two daughters sitting on wither side of his dad's lap, saying "Tag!" each time he touches one. The kid speaks loudly and acts as if he is starved for attention. The guy tells his own kid that they are going onto another bus, and they get out at the train station. I try to figure out which bus they are taking. Someone in the seat behind me fires up a video game and digital gunfire can be heard throughout the bus.
Tuesday. I am making my first ride to work. It's a relatively short ride to the train. At one stop the door opens at one stop with an abandoned rear bicycle rim laying on the ground. I blast north some thirty blocks, not sure if I will make it to work on time. There is a dangerous blind curve with no sidewalks on a 40 mph stretch. I hook up briefly with a trail and am suddenly riding through open space so close to the foothills that it appears as if I could reach out and touch them. Tucked away in a small shelter off the trail is a homeless guy. He has a big cart covered by a tarp, and a big shovel sticks out of it.Giant buttes rise as I turn off the trail. I am much closer to Golden than Denver up here. It's only an eight hour day, and I decide to do the ride back home. I'm on a sidewalk just down the street as I follow a woman in a halter top, shorts, and no shoes. She is wandering back and forth across the sidewalk as she polishes off a beverage, tossing the plastic bottle into a bush. The following day I decide to use some leftover transit system discount coupons before next month's bus pass kicks in. On a bus up my boulevard, a guy gets on in a T-shirt which reads, "Sorry I'm late. I didn't want to come home." The following day I don't make the last bus from work. When I check the schedule to see if one will still be running when I get to the station, I realize that I brought along the wrong schedule. I decide, the hell with it, I will ride home from here. I take the trail to a crosstown avenue. Along the way in the dark, I pause at a bus stop with a posted schedule, to see if one will be coming along. A elderly guy is alternating between standing and taking slow steps and sitting down in the bus shelter. I ask him if he is waiting for the bus. he replies, "No sir." He gets up again and says, "I'm sick..."
The following day is the last day of the month. The schedule adjustment continues. I hope i get some sleep this evening. I'm on a bus up my street with a couple of students. One is telling the other what sounds like the entire story of the Lord of the Rings. As if neither has seen Peter Jackson's trilogy. The one doing the talking has a left shoe which is untied. I get out at my stop, where a middle aged street couple is sitting on a bus bench in the mid morning. The woman says to me, "Good morning," and the bald guy repeats this. I say good morning to each. The bald guy gets up and inaudibly knocks on the door of the bus as it pulls away before he sits back down. The woman says, "He wouldn't let you on the bus." Again, the bald guy parrots her. I think they should give a seminar on the theme of a successful relationship. And, you know, make some money. Bald guy says to her, "If he could see my spirit, he would let me on the bus. I'm a good person." I'm reminded of an advertisement on a bus shelter, which the bus passed on the way here. It reads, "Success works when you do." After work, I'm on my bike on the way to the train station. I pass by a "park and ride," a bus hub where passengers may park and take the bus. I notice a bus back to my boulevard when I elect to get on with my bike. It takes me back to my boulevard, but I know not when a bus will be along. I head toward home on the bike, pausing at bus stops along the way to see if one is coming. The boulevard takes me past the football stadium. The sidewalk is full of people who I must navigate around. The final preseason game has let out. I never do see a bus, and one I failed to spot in time goes past some ten blocks from home. I arrive home around 11 PM. Another auspicious end to the month. My life is on a path of becoming more complicated. Labor Day weekend, the first of who knows how many Saturdays off since I can remember, and a farewell to the company and normalcy which I have known...
