Is the Greater Denver Co-Prosperity System really just the kind of city Jeff Bezos is looking for? Maybe he's the kind of guy who enjoys drinking pre-shaken sodas and getting run into by shopping carts in the check-out line. According to a story in last Sunday's "Denver Post," there's currently a housing "deficit"...of about 32,000 units in the Denver metro area. If [Amazon opens its HQ2 office in Denver, and]
half of Amazon's HQ2 employees...come from out of state...the demand for housing in the area will increase by 25,000 units. ...250,000 trips per day will be added to the region's roads. And God help us if Amazon holds a bike to work day. - Boulder Weekly, 2/1/2018
"...the demographics of this city are changing. Communities are acutely concerned...as we see more gentrification, that diversity...is not lost." ...accepting non-boundary students... ...High-Tech Elementary and Inspire Elementary...are part of a district "enrollment zone"...
[The]
owner of [a]
70-year-old north Denver favorite [restaurant says,]
"There's such an influx of restaurants right now..." {The]
owner of...the soon-to-open Bang Up To The Elephant, "It's super perplexing...how many people have been moving into the city and so rapidly. It's a tough city. It's getting more and more expensive." "It scares me...now there's more of these [restaurant]
jobs then...ever...before. Years ago...70 people apply for one job. ...it's become harder and harder to...grow new team members." ...said [the]
communications director for the Colorado Restaurant Association. "...someone will call in Friday...or Saturday night and say, 'I got another job.' You don't budget yourself for extra help. You used to have an interview...seeing the guy's not a serial killer. But nowadays, if there's somebody on the other end [of a phone] breathing, you gotta hire that person." You'd think that a bigger population would come with a bigger pool of potential workers. But it's not working out that way. ...the population boom has come with a bit of a restaurant boom, too. "I have never experienced this in all my time in the industry..." "'Who would want to work in a room with no windows for 60 hours a week and it's 90 degrees inside?' ...they just wanna sit down and pick weed and it's $18 an hour and they get vision and medical benefits." - Denver Herald, 2/1/2018
...locate the Beermuda Triangle...by walking a straight...(depending how many beers you've had) line [along three different bars, all located in a neighborhood which is]
not a place where I can afford to live, as housing costs in the area have risen rapidly over the past few years (as with much of northwest Denver's trendy zones.) The Beer Depot [has]
older customers who remember everything about the neighborhood and had advice about where to put my purse and how to keep an eye on it. I'm a fan of bars owned by women...such places tend to have...purse hooks under the bar...
...Tennyson's Tap [has]
painting classes...and...collective touchdown shots with specific instructions from the sassy younger female bartenders. ...the eclectic crew...could include BeBe...who gave me a book of affirmations and sayings that she wrote herself. - Westword, 2/1-7/2018
Throughout all these years, the Americans also continued to supply the Iraqis with battlefield intelligence so that they could [use]
as the U.S. government knew...poison gas. ...the child soldiers of Iran, it seemed, would be forever dispatched to the trenches... [During]
Friday prayers at Tehran University during the war...these miniature soldiers [had]
inscriptions on...bands round the little boys' heads... "Yes, Khomeini, we are ready," it said. [They,]
identically dressed in yellow jogging suits, banged their small fists against their chests...in time to the chants. It was a communion with doomed youth. ...a German correspondent had suffered a fatal heart attack during an Iraqi air raid... The Iranians would later call him a "martyr" of the "Imposed War."
...two Bell choppers with Iranian insignia...their rotors snapping in the hot air... ...nose down...we swept over a date-palm plantation...a few meters from the tree tops...we cornered graneries and rose over broken electrical pylons and then fell into troughs of wind and sand and dust and turned like a buzzard over long military convoys... To hell with the danger - just look at the war. ...I see another body in a gun-pit, a young man, in the foetal position, curled up like a child, already blackening with death but with a wedding ring on his finger. On the hot, golden morning it glitters and sparkles... ...he's around twenty-five years old. Or..."was"? Do we say, as Binyon wrote, that "they shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old."? ...was he... A Sunni or a Shia of a Christian or a Kurd? And his wife. He could not be more than three days dead. Somewhere to the north of us, his wife is waking the children, making breakfast, glancing at her husband's photograph on the wall, unaware that...her husband's wedding ring, so bright with love for her on this glorious morning, embraces a dead finger. The man from the ministry [of Islamic Guidance in Iran said]
The Iranian air force has...fighter cover...to protect...foreign correspondents. No Iranian pilot is going to waste his time protecting...the "journalists"... A plane flies over... "There you see, just like I said." ...I know a MIG when we see one. It's Iraqi.
...the Iraqi army barracks...now had a banner floating over its entrance, reading "Islam means victory." ...thousands of Revolutionary Guards. They wave at us, hold up Korans. ...the mud..consumed...roads...gun emplacements, the base of...burning oil tanks...uniforms of the Iranian fighters, gradually absorbing the Iraqi bodies spread-eagled across town. An elderly, grey-bearded man emerged from a ruined house... "Jang ba piruzi," he shrieked. War till victory, the same old chorus. He wore a ragged red cloth round his forehead and waved a stick over his head. "He wants to die for Islam fighting Saddam." An old jeep pulled up alongside...a rusty loud speaker on top. "Jang ba piruzi." The machine crackled and the old man jumped up and down in the mud. Behind him, red flames rippled across the base of a burning oil storage depot where the Iraqis were shelling the Iranian lines.
...a ministry minder had led a Reuters photographer into a minefield. Both were blown to pieces. The Iranians...were only just prevented from sending his widow a glossy book of coloured photographs depicting other martyrs in various stages of dismemberment and purification. [Of each boy sent to the battlefield, his]
protection consisted of just one red bandana...upon which is inscribed...God's supposed invocation... These young men believed they were immortal in the sight of God. They were...heedless... I was propelled by [an]
idiotic giant...who was...too irrational for [a]
religious war... Bullets buzzed around us. [He beckoned us to look]
towards the pillars of black smoke... "That is the Basra Sheraton Hotel!" "We want to [leave.]
" "Why?" he roared. Then he [gave us]
the kind of wave one gives to a small child. [A]
small boy [on the battlefield, holding a Koran to his heart and smiling at us]
knew, with the conviction of his own life, that heaven awaited him. ...the fast train...no limbo... He would go straight there. For there was...a death process within the state itself. In a nation that looked backwards, not forwards, in which women were to be dressed in perpetual mourning...a black experience that found its spiritual parallel in the mass slaughter of Cambodia rather than the ancient battlefield of Kerbala.
"...a new interpretation of religion...the war was a sacred duty. We were led by a prophet-like statesman. This was the reason for our overwhelming commitment. The war could not be separated from our religion." "...the importance of morality in our war. ...people died regardless of the material worth of their lives. It was their...faith that mattered..." We mourn...sacrifice...destruction... The Iranians of the eight-year Gulf War claimed to love it, not only as proof of their faith but also as the completion of a revolution[ary theocratic domination of a national government]. - Fisk
...the massive influx into the cities following the mid-seventies oil boom had created a rootless, unhappy proletariat. In Tehran thousands of workers spent their days building villas or even palaces for the rich and their nights in hovels of holes in the ground. The materialism was crass... ...people turned to their traditional leaders, the mullahs... ...of the sources of unrest...the mullahs were getting their money from the merchants in the bazaars... -
The Shah's Last Ride, by W. Shawcross, 1988
{The Goat Hill neighborhood]
is full of culture and community but lacking in infrastructure... Up until about 2009, Goat Hill didn't have any sidewalks. ...some of the more residential areas...still don't. ...Our Lady of Visitation...church's annual bazaar...for three days every July. ...the bazaar was a celebration of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, a region...of Spanish colonialism, northern Mexican heritage... [Descendants of]
the small towns that dot this region are adamant about how they describe themselves. [The church's closure troubles its members.]
"The archdiocese has taken away their opportunity to serve God." [Catholic]
churches are registered corporations, their archbishops the presidents and CEOs. "We're not dealing with theology of beliefs or the sacramental life of the community. ...none of that is considered by the bishop." An archbishop must provide a "very grave" reason for unconsecrating a church. Churches are owned by archbishops and must pay dues to the archdiocese, even if they are self-sustaining. "Winning [a court case]
isn't everything. ...I...report to Rome...so the Vatican can pay attention to a bishop that is abusing his people. We tell the Vatican the truth. If I did this to win, I'd have ended twelve years ago." ...Our Lady of Visitation's austerity and tight-knit community [is]
a respite from other catholic churches...in Denver. - Westword, 2/8-14/2018
Friday is my sister's 60th birthday. Around 7:30 PM, I am on a crosstown bus back to my boulevard after work. As usual, a collection of characters gets on. A young woman with a long perm and camouflaged stretch pants takes a seat. Another couple comes on. The guy is Native American, with long black hair. He is talking nonstop. Behind me, a tall guy in a tan Fedora, wool coat, sweater and buttoned down shirt sits down. The woman in the camo tights gets up to get out. The couple tells her, "Good luck." The guy says, "I hope you win something." Along the way, another young woman comes on board. She has a pair of headphones with cat ears. In a circle on each earpiece and the outline of each ear, red lights blink on and off. There is hip hop coming from the headphones, so loud that it can be heard all over the bus. The driver hopelessly asks her through the PA system to turn it down. The Native American successfully alerts her.
Monday evening. Seven fifty-five PM. It's after work and I am rolling up to the stop for my last bus home. In the shelter is another passenger with his own bike. He asks me for a quarter. I tell him that I have no cash. He asks again. I repeat my reply. He is wearing a parka with what I am guessing are the Norwegian and Swedish flags on one sleeve. The bus then pulls up. He unlocks the bike rack on the front of the bus and lets it drop. It bounces to a stop. He then slowly lifts the front wheel into place. I catch the driver's eye and emote an expression of amusement. He gets on and gives the driver the old, 'I'm only going as far as so-and-so' (and the unspoken question, may he ride without fare please?) The driver appears to be 'cool' with this binational Arctic cycling interloper. I get my bike on the rack and hop onboard, and have a seat next to a crushed beer can. The bus makes it's regular stop across the street from the train station. One little guy gets on, has a seat, and begins to drift off. Closer to my stop, I see him smoothing out some wrinkled train tickets. He turns around to me and says, "Amigo: four passes; two dollars." He's asking if I want to purchase his tickets, which may be used as transfers, and from the furthest stop away may be good for perhaps as much as two and a half more hours. He should really be hustling these to a family of four, or a pair of couples. But he's drunk, and his clientele is limited to this captive audience. I haven't seen any theater patrons on this route. I make a point of avoiding 'black market' transit system fares, and I do have my own monthly pass, which I didn't get used. The following evening, same time and same bus, he's here again. He moves his seat to the one behind me, where I hear him ask that guy for "a couple bucks."
Thursday. 8 PM. It's after work and I am on my last bus home, rolling down my boulevard. The usual rabble are onboard, as always, seated in the very back. I hear them talking when suddenly a seated Mexican guy turns around to insult one of them, I'm not sure exactly what is said. I hear someone say, "I saw that coming." After a few more blocks, a couple of guys come over to the Mexican guy. A younger guy and a middle-aged derelict guy begin throwing upper cuts at this seated guy. The driver stops the bus until they are done some seconds later. They return to their seats. A girl in back is laughing at everything. A male voice says, "Thank you driver. You're a good driver." No one appears to react to all this, including the Mexican guy, who sits as if he was never attacked. He does not appear to be beat up at all. I ask myself if this was all some kind of performance. The bus continues along and is sounds as if the driver makes a quick report to headquarters. A couple more apparent of insults are exchanged. An unsuspecting passenger gets on and sits next to the Mexican guy. I hear the derelict ask the passenger to please move out of the way. The passenger does not comprehend this and remains where he is. There is no more fisticuffs before I get out. The next morning I am on the same bus headed back the other way. The guy across from me has a can of beer.
...Haj Amin...earned...enormous popularity in the largely rural areas of Palestine. "His major sources of power were the imams... The Arabs in the municipalities were for the English. To us...the heads of the municipalities were traitors because they were against Haj Amin." In 1930...Haj Amin insisted that an Arab "nationalist government" be created...the British lost interest [in restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine]. - Fisk
[The]
fantastic history [of the nation which became Iran is what]
the Shah celebrated at Persepolis in 1971. He had persuaded himself that he was the spiritual heir to Cyprus, and that he to would...advance the Persian empire. [A parade of soldiers, ancient and present day, even]
"the new Women's contingents of the armed forces...all were...at Persepolis; all attested to Iran's glories." "...many felt that by celebrating the Iran of Cyprus and Darius, the Shah...deliberately ignored...the prophet Mohammad. Oil prices were about to bring Iran colossal, unimagined wealth. For the Shah himself it would bring a complete divorce from reality. - Shawcross
Saturday. Last bus home. 5 PM. My coworker now desires every Friday off, and wishes to work every Saturday. As it's just her and me on the closing shift, I just worked my last Saturday for who knows how long. It has been snowing since the sun came up. A young guy gets on board with his young son in a stroller. The kid has both hands on on an Ipad or something. It sounds just like a television. At some point along the way, the guy begins berating the driver . "I hate the fuckin' snow, but slow the fuck down, bro." He repeats, "Slow the fuck down, bro" about ten times. He then wants to know if the driver will give him a transfer. The driver declines. i wonder if the guy did not pay full fare, which would disqualify him from a transfer. "Gimmie a fuckin' transfer," he says. He isn't getting one. He gets in the driver's face and repeats "Slow the fuck down, bro" a few more times before the driver suggests that he will call the police. "Call the police, bro. Fuck your life, bro. Let me the fuck off then." He and his child get the fuck off then, the child still with both hands on the Ipad or something.
The following Tuesday, I am yet again on my last bus home. Yiggedy-yig. Along cometh another inter-passenger confrontation. Okay. This evening, a big guy in a red elastic headband comes onboard and takes a seat. he is looking at video on his phone and nonstop giggling. Some blocks later, a skinny little guy gets on. On his head is a knit cap with long green foam strands coming out of the top. After him, a female gets on. As she goes past where he is seated up front, he asks, "Any weed? Got any weed for sale?" She appears not to. A short time later, he responds as if he has seen something which appears to upset him. He tells the big giggling guy to "Go back to New York." (?) The guy stops giggling and says, "We're from the south, sir." The lime frightwig guy taunts him, asking him to "Get off at my stop." This particular bus driver is one who decides to intervene, telling both to settle down, and the big guy to stop giggling. He replies that he lives "life to the fullest." He then continues giggling at his phone video. The other guy claims that, when a female passenger was sassing next to the big guy, the big guy showed her a knife tucked in his sleeve. She then got up and moved to another seat, and he claims this is because she was freaked out. The green wig dude than apologizes to her for having to suffer "this ordeal."
The following morning is Valentine's Day. I'm on a crosstown bus to work. At the stop after mine, a guy gets on who is conversing on his phone. "If you don't hear from me, I'm in jail. I don't think so, but I have to report to court this morning. I have an active warrant out on me. Hey, do you guys ever work on the weekend? They had me sweepin' and vacuuming and all kinds of fuckin' bullshit at work yesterday. Pickin' up cans... I brought extra tools but left the strap for the pack in the van. That fuckin' thing was heavy. If I have to keep doin' that every day, I'm gonna be sunk." Some ten hours later, I am on the vary same crosstown bus back the opposite way. We stop at a transfer station, and a handful of street folk get onboard. One is a young bald guy with tiny faded tattoos on his face and on the back of his right hand. Wearing a hoodie, it appears as if he is trying to cover his face by pulling the neck up. He's telling his buddy next to him how he went running out of a hospital with a bullet in his leg. The staff were yelling at him to come back, according to him, because he ran a risk of lead poisoning without further medical treatment. He says something about an adjacent county being "run" by a trip of wealthy judges who want to kill him. Then he mentions something about his "smartest men" being killed. "My main niggas." He's on his way back to the hospital, and lists the counties and neighborhoods between here and there which are too dangerous for him to get off the bus. His friend offers to get him a hotel room. The guy is listing the names of friends in prison, all with children which he says he must look after. He has an open soda can, into which his friend pours some liquor from a tiny shooter bottle. He puts a headband on around his face. I get out at my boulevard and roll along to the stop for my last bus. I see this guy come loping up to the stop. When the bus pulls to a stop, he slowly picks up my bag. I mention that it's my duffel bag, to which he replies, "I know. I'm helping you." He pulls the bus rack down for me. We both get on and I sit down. A couple of guys sit behind me. I hear one tell the other that a female acquaintance was just released from prison. We roll along, and the lead poisoning dude gets out at the train station.
The following morning, I am as usual at the bus stop across the street from home. A guy with grey hair and bright red cargo pants which look like pajamas walks up to the stop. He wants to know if I "smoke cigarettes by any chance?" I watch tall young Caucasian woman with blonde highlights cross the street from the direction I came. With her wool coat and smart-looking backpack, she looks like a university student. Standing here among the wandering derelicts in their jerseys and construction boots, she appears as a character who belongs in a TV show other than this one. She's on her phone and appears to be not completely comfortable on this corner. And yet, I suspect that she lives in the renovated apartment building with all the other Caucasians, across the street from my place. I wonder if she knows any of the other residents of her building, perhaps the guys in shirts and ties who in this neighborhood look like police detectives. The bus arrives, scoops us up, and deposits her at the train headed downtown to campus. At the station, I watch through the window a guy at the end of a line of passengers boarding this bus. He has a scarf tied around his face and sunglasses. He sticks his head inside the bus and looks toward everyone before exiting. I don't know who he can see in his Ray Bans. He walks over to someone who I recognize as the lead poisoning dude. Some ten hours later, I am back again at the stop for my last bus home. A half hour earlier, tiny snow flakes began to fall. They are now growing in size and accumulation. From around the corner of the Muslim doughnut place, next to the bus stop, comes a big middle aged woman with a walker. She's in a coat, but in her rayon slacks does not appear dressed for the inclement weather. She is asking me something which I can't hear over the noise of the traffic on the wet boulevard. She wants to know if she can ask me something. I join her under the overhang and out of the falling snow. She wants to know if she may have ten dollars, or a 'Hamilton' if you will, to pay for her room. What I love about this is, I assume that I am supposed to understand that she lives in a room. Never mind where it is. Her wardrobe appears as if it came out a closet from four decades ago. I wonder if she is the dementia patient who the police were helping her family look for earlier this winter. She says something about "just being out here." I guess that, without a Hamilton, it's not yet her room. Adam Smith, we knew ye well. She makes her way back around the corner.
But my work week is not yet over. Still, there is one more day to go. I think my new schedule of having every Saturday off work comes none too soon. I am at the deathburger next to work before my shift. In a booth is a middle aged couple. The wife is on the phone, telling someone that they just closed on a home for which they had been praying. Meanwhile, seated directly across from me is a grey-haired guy in a jumpsuit and cap from A-1 Storage. He asks me, "Whaddya readin' there, buddy?" He tells me that he has lots of books, including some rare physics book, "but no place to stick them in." (Such as perhaps a bookshelf.) At the booth with the couple, the husband is now on the phone. "...'thus sayeth the Lord.'" He mentions a home under contract. A-1 Storage guy spots my bike helmet on the table. "You ridin' a motorcycle in this cold weather? I found out what happens when you ride a motorcycle on ice." He then gets out his phone. I hear him say, "You want to be nailed up on a telephone pole, dumbshit? Have your brain hooked up to a transformer? Now, having said that..." I make a resolution to endeavor not to need any storage...
Saturday. I am making a late start to the day. I get onto the bus to the supermarket. On board is a young guy dressed as a woman. He is repeating out loud the schedules for each connecting bus on the routes for each street we pass. This is followed by his intermittent laughter. On the way back home, I pass a long Vietnamese strip mall. A crowd is celebrating the new Year of the Dog with paper dragons, cymbal and drum, and firecrackers. After I drop off the groceries, I run up the street to drop off some film. Across the boulevard from the drug store is another big Vietnamese shopping center, and another celebration is taking place. The following day, I am headed downtown to the library. I take the bike trail under the avenue I will need. To get back up I must climb an exit ramp on my bike. There at the bottom of the ramp is a homeless guy feeding a couple of geese. His front bottom teeth are missing. H asks me, "Do you have to walk, or are you gonna ride it up?" I tell him that I am riding it, whereupon he begins cheering for me, all the way to the top. On my way back from downtown, I pass a third Vietnamese shopping center, across the boulevard from the second. More celebration is happening.
"Terrorism"...has become a full stop, a punctuation mark...a sermon... Terror, terror, terror, terror. It is a sonata, a symphony, an orchestra tuned to every television and radio station and news agency report, the soap-opera of the devil... Strike against terror. Victory over terror. War on terror. Today we are fighting forever. The war is eternal. The enemy is eternal, his face changing on our screens. Western leaders have veered wildly...coldly advancing...the collapse of the Ottoman empire, crudely calculating...to invade Suez, pragmatic...to liberate Kuwait, trapped by politics...in...support for Israel, insanely emotional when they invaded Iraq. - Fisk
...Reza Khan...in 1923...started to strengthen the central government against the tribes. ...in 1925... He had considered creating a republic, but he was persuaded by many of the leading clergy that they monarchy should be preserved. The mullahs were concerned that in a republic the Muslim clergy might be disestablished, as had recently happened in Turkey. ...he was less successful...in forging a strong national ideology. ...the mullahs...merchants and intellectuals [had a place]
in new Turkey. - Shawcross
One of Denver's poorest neighborhoods is...Sun Valley...from Interstate 25 on the east to [my]
Boulevard on the west... Although Sun Valley is one of the most geographically central neighborhoods in Denver... The median annual income is just $9,874; 83 percent of Sun Valley households live below the poverty line. ...70 percent of Sun Valley residents are without jobs. And the neighborhood's violent-crime rate is the highest in Denver... In the 1950s, the construction of Interstate 25...resulted in...Sun valley Homes, a 330-unit, barracks-style affordable-housing complex... [Sun valley has been chosen for some serious revitalization. A neighborhood next door, and at the opposite end of the spectrum in wealth, was considered instead. In]
the River North neighborhood...it's just exploding, and it doesn't feel like it's growing in a way that's taking into account the types of infrastructure it needs to handle the growth. [One property purchased for new building had]
two illegal marijuana grows...operating, and the Evil Souls motorcycle club had taken over part of one of the buildings on the site as its clubhouse. - Westword, 2/15-21/2018
The Denver City Council on Feb. 12 approved a plan... Would a surge of new residential units simply accelerate gentrification and drive out residents of nearby neighborhoods? ...residential high-rise...units must serve people making less than 80 percent of the area median income, or about $60,000 for a family of three - a level that some critics said wasn't affordable enough, through housing vouchers can further drive down the cost. The units have to stay affordable for at least 20 years under citywide standards. "The requirements of affordability are not enough considering the actual dynamic of displacement... ...Council President Albus Brooks...blamed some of the backlash on "fear of change." "Somewhere between the soaring skyscrapers and soaring housing costs lies the answer." - Denver Herald
[At]
Colorado's first Outdoor Retailer's Snow Show (OR)...there were actually more than 29,000 of us in Denver. People travelled from 60 countries... ...five days of the largest U.S. trade show for outdoor and winter sports industries... ...the booths...some so elaborately constructed a family of four could live comfortably inside. ...most [patrons]
were white, wearing plaid, their bodies were slight variations on the athletic build... Will...the Outdoor Industry Alliance (OIA)...continue as...white and plaid-clad? At...OR... What they call "activation areas" are...places to host panels, seminars and discussions about...the outdoor industry. At no time in causal conversation did anyone...provide me their exciting plans to address diversity...or...indigenous opinions on outdoor recreation. - Boulder Weekly, 2/15/2018
Monday. Yesterday, I was riding my bike across central Denver in a T-shirt. This morning, it's snowing and 17 degrees F. and the snow is drifting down and accumulating. At the bus stop across the street is a middle-aged woman in a hoodie and sweat pants. She may not be dressed warm enough, but she has a lit cigarette. Not what I would choose, but I suppose better than nothing, provided a flake doesn't land on the burning end. She offers me "cigarettes for some bus tickets or something." She means ride coupons, sold by the transit system, and not intended for resale. It's an old story of mine. I don't smoke, and my monthly local bus pass covers all my transit needs. With this information, she proceeds to cross the boulevard somewhere between the falling snow and the traffic. Some twelve hours later, I am perhaps sixty blocks directly north of this stop where I was this morning. It is now after work, and snow has been coming down all the live long day. These have been a snowy couple of weeks, the first serious snow of the winter. I am waiting for my last bus home. It's a 30 minute wait as I just missed the previous bus. My options for the moment are limited to having a seat upon a metal bench as I watch traffic crawl past the blowing flakes. I observe a couple of guys come across the middle of the boulevard. The one bringing up the rear is maneuvering with tactics, or lack thereof, which suggest he is drunk. He's taking his time for someone crossing a boulevard with oncoming traffic from both directions. As a southbound car approaches him more and more slowly, he is staring into the headlights as if he can't make out what he is looking at. Does he see two lights, or four? Does one plus one equal two, or three, or four? He shuffles the rest of the way across and follows the other toward a deathburger. I watch one after the other, the drunk one with his jeans falling down, slowly disappear behind a curtain of sodium lamp colored flakes.
Twenty-three and a half hours later and it's right after work on the following evening. The ride to work was over paths which had not been plowed, and a couple of spots were barely walkable, much less passible by bike. I spent the workday worried how I would make it to the bus stop inside twenty minutes to catch the bus on time. God bless whichever HOA paid an ATV with a plow to clear me a path all the way to the stop. Even with a plowed path, the trip requires me to operate at the limit of sanity. It's a dance between maximum speed and minimum traction. Traction is everything. Everyone is always telling me to be careful. The following morning, at my physical exam, my doctor notices my ski pants and asks me if I am going skiing. When I tell her that I ride my bike 'all over God's creation,' she also tells me to be careful. This evening, when I arrive safe and sound at my stop, there on the ground is a homeless woman of sixty or seventy, in a sleeping bag. It's below freezing outside this evening. She isn't hidden at all, and has a travel mug and a cigarette. "Baaahhh!" she exclaims as I arrive. She then begins yelling, "Come get your pussy and drugs!" This is followed by a rambling narrative as I remove by headlamp, bag, and bungee cords and put them away. The bus arrives shortly thereafter. When it comes to matters involving pussy and drugs, I hope that she will be careful.
The next morning I am on the bus up the street when a young woman comes onboard. With a crumpled ride coupon in hand, she is regaling the driver with a story about unexpected seizures which she claims to have just had. He encourages her to pay her fare and get on so we can get going. This is a particularly busy stretch of the route. The woman is speaking slowly, as if she may be inebriated. She begins to tell the same story to the first person she comes upon, who ignores her. She proceeds toward the back, complaining that, "nobody cares." The next day sees more snow In the afternoon and evening. I arrive at the bus stop as soon as I always do. When the bus has not arrived at the bottom of the hour, I call the transit system. It informs me that the bus was early. I wonder if it arrived early in anticipation of delays along the way due to inclement weather. I wait an hour for the next, which is also early. Along the way, we arrive at a bus stop at one intersection. The police are blocking the southbound traffic on one boulevard. A passenger gets on board, dressed is matching forest camouflaged jacket and pants. Instead of his fare...he has a story. There is as yet no shortage of passengers with stories. "I don't know what happened to my transfer, and I don't got nothin' and the police are here, and I don't know... Okay?" He waits to see if this run on sentence is something which he may substitute for $2.60. It appears that the driver is "okay" with this. He can put this evening's fare into his fund for arctic camouflage to match all this snow. I transfer buses. Seated across from me is a guy in a camouflaged headband under a camouflaged cap. This morning, I was in a seat on a bus up my street with standing room only. I woman stood right next to me, holding a camouflaged blanket. With lime fringe. It's a good thing that the simple possession of camouflaged gear does not constitute impersonating a veteran, or these unsuspecting street characters would be receiving death threats otherwise reserved for those considered by trolls as insulting the service of authentic veterans. As if life on the street isn't dangerous enough. The bus takes a detour around a city block, and gets back on route where I notice another police vehicle. The following morning, I will be on this same bus to work, headed the opposite way when the sun is up. It will be clear then that the reason for the detour is a house being examined by guys in white hazmat suits. But tonight, on my last bus home, a passenger gets on who is talking to himself. Passenger after passenger complains about how cold it is. With his 1970s haircut, he's in a hoodie. He carries with him a plastic laundry bag with a couples of towels and a pinecone in the bottom.
Sunday afternoon I have nothing to do. I decide to get one of my two weekly workouts in. Not far from the stop for the bus to the gym is a deathburger where I grab lunch. I order from a girl of whom I ask if she is from Uganda. Very close, she tells me, Congo. I ask her what they speak in Congo. She replies, 300 tribal languages, as well as French, a couple of larger African languages, and Swahili. A couple of days later, I'm off to the second half of my weekly gym trip. The crosstown bus is winding it's way west. Downtown is behind us. It's easy to tell which way is west 'round these parts because the mountains are west of the city. Sprawled in a seat is a guy with a cast on his left leg, a crutch at his side, and his head lowered. Long, long after we have left downtown behind us, and with the foothills looming in front of the mountain peaks behind them, he suddenly wakes up and asks if we are headed toward downtown. ...uh. no... He gets out on the side of the avenue opposite the side where he must catch the same bus the opposite direction...that would be
toward downtown. He is with cast and crutch, he's nowhere near two streets much less a crosswalk, and his bus is approaching. At the gym, I have finished my workout and am changing clothes where I can hear a wife ask a white-haired guy where in their home he was when he had lunch the other day. "I have no idea," he replies. He's watching a TV from an exercise bicycle. It appears that a congressman is questioning a nominee for an executive branch position. "Republicans and democrats must do more to ensure that people of color have job opportunities," the congressman tells the nominee. "Oh bullshit," says the snow-haired guy in his track suit. Have a nice lunch... Some ten hours later, I am back on the crosstown bus, headed for my street. A little white-haired Mexican guy gets on board. He's listening to mariachi music on a device with a speaker. I get out at my street. he gets out across the street, crosses the boulevard in the middle of the street, walks over to the carwash next to the bus stop and through one of its stalls, around the back of the Muslim doughnut shop and over to the deathburger next door before wandering over to the bus stop. The bus arrives and we both get on board. he is still listening to mariachi music through a speaker on his device. The driver speaks into his mic and says, "Remember to use earbuds when listening to electronic devices." The music continues, even after the driver repeats his request. Finally, the driver yells, "TURN THE DAMNED MUSIC OFF!" "You no like?" the guy asks. "I told you twice," replies the driver. The music goes inaudible. He gets off. Someone else gets on and is playing some hip hop, without comment from the driver. This is the same driver who deescalated the trouble between the giggling passenger and the guy with the weird green knit tree cap. I guess he's not so good with mariachi.
The following morning I am back on the bus up the street. A guy gets on with a rollaway suitcase and a neck pillow. He gets on board at 27th Avenue. He points north and wants to know, "Is 29th that way?" Yes, the numbers get higher as you go north, just as in every city in the United States. Some eleven hours later, I arrive after work at the stop for my first bus home. Yiggady-yig. The odd snow flurry blows past. Sitting on the bench is this evening's street character who does not comprehend the schedule for this route. He thinks that we will be here for the next hour. He has a wispy head of hair and notices my bicycle. He tells me about his own travails with bicycles. He locked one up at a train station and it was gone the next day. A bus driver told him, he claims, that the transit system cuts the locks on all bikes locked at its facilities after 48 hours. He then tells me that he placed a call to the transit system, which told him that this was not true. he also says that he locked up a second "brand new" bicycle at "K-mart." The bus arrives a few minutes after I show up, a small amount of time for this guy to unload the yarns of his personal property. We get onboard, and he gets out where he claims his second bike was stolen. He calls it a K-mart. I don't see any K-mart. There is an enormous Walmart here. Between his exit and our stepping on the bus he claims that he is a former member of the Sons of Silence motorcycle club. He suggests that he get a couple members of his crew to stake out a decoy bicycle and wait for an unsuspecting thief, then "beat the hell out of them." A half hour later, and I am at the stop for my connecting bus home. A guy wanders up to ask if I have a cigarette. In front of a Muslim doughnut shop?
Haram! Not to be confused with harrumph, but essentially the same result. In the shelter is a guy with a white beard and a chopper bicycle. When the bus arrives, he maneuvers it onto the bike rack. As Peter Fonda said in
Easy Rider, "I'm hip about time. I just gotta go." And the shit has surely been beaten out of another month.
...the fantastic, almost surrealist path the Shah had been destined to follow... ...his father, to whom no son could be equal. There was...external manipulation - and yet...dependence on those same manipulators. There was impetus...mostly from the West, but also from within...his own Western education, toward...modernization and reform... The were similar demands... from the people... Conspiring against almost everything...were his...notions of his own divinely inspired relationship with the Iranian people.
As the fifties proceeded...coups, countercoups, wars, revolutions, and civil disorders made the Middle East one of the most volatile areas on earth, a place that..."reverberated with the sound of crashing thrones." ...Farouk had been deposed. Then Egypt tried to overthrow King Hussein of Jordan. In Iraq...the Hashemite royal family was murdered in a coup in 1958... In 1959, Nikita Krushchev told the Iranian ambassador to Moscow that a neutral Iran would be able to obtain "ten times" as much aid from the U.S.A., and Soviet aid... He also warned that Iran's ties to Washington might lead the U.S.S.R. to...move against foreign bases in Iran. - Shawcross
"He was religious, he had a big beard when he died and he was with Hamas. He was a supporter of Hamas for a long time, then he became more 'active'... All his family are with Hamas...his brothers all said he would be a martyr. He also said he would be a martyr." Active? Did [he]
carry a gun? No one knew. But he was throwing stones and...the front of [his]
face...had been powerfully stove in below the nose. Did he go to paradise? "If you are a real believer, then you go to paradise. I believe he went there, "inshallah."" The mourners drifted away from the little mosque where a group of nineteenth-century buildings of pale grey stone spoke of an earlier, gentle Ottoman Ramallah.
The crack of an explosion comes as a shockwave from over a kilometer away...in west Jeruselum...I turn to the Israeli waitress and say..."suicide bomber" and she nods and her right hand moves involuntarily to her mouth. I give her more shekels that the meal can be worth and set off running up Jaffa Street... ...a plump lady with her brains bursting through her head. A child - perhaps three, perhaps five - so mutilated that its eyes have been blasted out of its face. There is blood and glass all over the street...on the faces of those who have survived. ...I see another woman with a table leg sticking out of her stomach. [Years later, after a]
suicidal assault on an...army position [the father of the attacker]
appeared on Lebanese television, laughing and smiling, beaming with delight as he spoke to well-wishers on the phone. His son's young fiancée also expressed her pride in her dead husband-to-be. But she did not smile.
...the soldiers of Lebanon. They were mostly single men... They might receive their orders while at prayer in the "masjid" or mosque... The imam would be told to use a certain phrase in his sermon - a reference to roses or gardens or water or a kind of tree. The cleric would not understand the purpose of these words, but in his congregation a young man would know that his day of "martyrdom" had arrived. ...the Lebanese...queing [standing in line]
to watch Pearl Harbor...in Beirut in July 2001...the young men studying the cinema stills of equally young Japanese pilots tying their "martyrdom" bandanas around their foreheads. If Hizballah helped to construct [the]
gateway [to a martyr's paradise],
then the Palestinians surely passed it on to the Iraqi insurgents of 2003 and 2004. ...Iraq, a country which had hitherto had no record of self-annihilation in its various insurgencies against foreign rule. ...revolutions in guerilla warfare...do not cross frontiers unless the people who wish to adopt them have a cause. Today, the Arabs are no longer afraid. The regimes are as timid as ever...supposedly "moderate" allies obeying Washington's orders...holding their preposterous elections...shaking in fear lest their people at last decide that "regime change" - from within their societies...is overdue. The old Sharon policy into which the American neo-conservatives so fatally bought...of beating the Arabs...until an Arab leader can be found "to control his own people" - is now as bankrupt as the Arab regimes that continue to work for the world's only superpower. This is not to recommend the social and military "people's" revolutions...in the Middle East. But in Lebanon, "Palestine" and Iraq, the suicide bomber has become the symbol of this new fearlessness. - Fisk
