Preload That Media
Netflix and YouTube can be a great way for kids to pass the time...but...when you pull out of the driveway? Bye-bye, Wi-Fi. You gotta plan for this.
Mount It!
My kids won't sleep holding a tablet...so we bought mounts from Amazon...
App It Up
...you need to load apps before you leave the house. - Colorado Parent, 4/2018
...a case that has...resulted in a $4.6 million settlement. The report...by Denver's independent police monitor, a civilian oversight agency...recommends...a civilian be put in charge of the Internal Affairs Bureau of the sheriff's department... ...an inmate's health conflicts with jail security. The City of Denver reached the settlement with [the family of an inmate who died in custody] in November that required...changes at the jail...mental health coverage and training for all deputies... [The inmate], 50...choked on his own vomit, lost consciousness and died...at a hospital. ...nine days after he was restrained by Denver jail deputies... About a month later...the Internal Affairs Bureau...told the independent monitor's office that its investigation was complete... ...investigators did not interview any of the deputies...or the nurses who were called [when the inmate] became unconscious. ...in June...investigators declined to further investigate. [One of the restraining deputies] was nominated for the department's "Life Saving Award" for performing CPR on [the inmate.] ...internal investigators mistakenly relied on results of the criminal investigation... ...nurses told deputies that too much pressure placed on [the inmate's] neck could cause him to choke after vomiting but deputies...said they had to control [the inmate.] - Denver Herald, 3/29/2018
Charges have been filed against one [assailant] arrested ...in a joint effort by...Edgewater Police...Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the Colorado U.S. Marshal's Fugitive Task Force. [The victim] was walking into a restaurant...around 8:40 p.m. ...when a silver sedan pulled up. A passenger stepped out of the car and shot [the victim] once in the chest. ...the shooting appears to have been random. - Columbine Courier, 4/19/2018
...Certified Light Journey Guide and Intuitive Healer... Featuring support from her equine herd...deeply transformational training... Space is extremely limited... No healing background or equine experience is necessary...
"The Gathering for Humanity, Awaken Through the Seeds of Knowledge and Wisdom"...an urgent calling to all of humanity committed to increasing the light and coherence to all of humanity committed to increasing the light and coherence on the planet. ...a calling of spirit...to form a new global alliance. ...The Wholeness Crystal earth project...
Join with kindred Plant-Healers, edge-dwellers, culture-shifters...
...after Jesus' lifetime, he worked with other ascended masters to set up a network of healing energy... ...clearing pain and invalidation from the body. - natural awakenings, 4/2018
...an international apostolate to help strengthen families and relationships through God's gift of a family meal. "The power of food is really about strengthening relationships... It's a theology of food..." ...providing advice on eating together as a family. ...food is sacramental. "I can't give the Eucharist to everyone but I can give them a plate of food.." ...fan base included the elementary and home-schooled moms. - asian avenue, 4/2018
...cannabis is all the rage. First off, there was a ton of security. A big man checked my ID at least three times... My friend began quickly browsing the store like a professional... Honestly, it all looked the same to me... ...your local dispensary worker: they...are surprisingly nonjudgemental. There are a bunch of ways to use cannabis... After choosing a...pipe I was...coached on how not to set my curtains on fire - which would disappoint my firefighter dad. ...trying my new purchase. My friends thought this was hilarious. I made them all turn around...my dad was adamant about not letting me play with fire... I...hit my...pipe... We watched "Rick and Marty", which made me too nervous, then switched to HGTV which showed lush beaches and rich couples looking to buy expensive houses. Stacy and Brett looked for their third home in Puerto Vallarta. ...I fell asleep and woke up 12 hours later... - Out Front, 4/18/2018
"The interest in gravel... The dirt, the friendships, the scenery, the difficulty, the mostly empty roads all scream adventure and connection." Road bikes are...limited by tire width. Mountain bikes...on dirt roads, they're heavy and slow, making for more work than necessary. - Elevation Outdoors, 4/2018
Tuesday. After work. Bus stop next to the Muslim doughnut shop. Sitting on the concrete next to the wall outside is a guy who is yelling "Yo!" He yells it twice more before I step onto the bus. Sixty blocks later I step out and into the Chinese food place. Outside is a grey derelict guy, smiling at the cars which pull up. A customer is leaving and hands the guy a dollar. I pull out my camera and take the guy's picture through the window. He smiles and waves. The following morning I'm on my crosstown bus to work. I suspect that I have stepped onto the North Denver street character express. One guy brings his bike inside because the outside rack is full. He has long grey wavy hair and has a paper bag of food from a deathburger. At one point, he asks the driver, "Do you think we could invent a video game called dodge the chuck hole?" Some ten hours later, I arrive at the stop for my first bus home after work. The is yet another series of random lone nuts here this evening.. I'm going to miss these folks when the train line out here finally opens...no I won't. What I miss already is my beautiful ride to where I used to work. But I digress. This evening's nut is a short woman, my age or older. It's a nice evening, too warm for my winter coat, which I needed this morning. I'm in a long sleeved T-shirt. The lady is in a T-shirt. She's going on and on about how cold it is out here. She asks me what they all ask. When does the bus come? Which route I say. Any one she replies. Sounds deceptively romantic. Actually, it's a bad sign. She compares waiting in the "cold" to where she lives. "I wake up at five in the morning and I think the day is already gone." I'm already lost, but please continue. "But I don't care because, sunsets...I got the most beautiful fuckin' view out my window." She tells me that she is coming from work, that she worked "78 hours this week." Everyone has a story. She works up here and yet appears unfamiliar with the bus route? The bus arrives and we get on board. She has a seat before she comes up front to ask the driver how to get east. Though she sounds lost, she is equally indignant that the driver would dare suggest that she didn't live here "in the city all my life," which she keeps returning to as a theme. She didn't appear to know that we are headed eastbound. She decides to stay on t he bus.
Thursday. Bus stop across the street from where I live. I don't remember the last homeless guy I saw, not on a bus, who sounded angry. Along the sidewalk comes a shuffling a guy in a brown winter coat. The rest of his clothes and body have the same pall as his coat. He slowly shuffles within a couple yards of he bus shelter before he turns 180 degrees. He begins yelling at the line of traffic. I make out, "...LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE....!" He kicks the bus shelter a couple of times. The bus arrives. he has no fare. And this is a driver who is not down with that. "Yeah...whatever," he quietly says as he gets out. He begins yelling, calling her a "BITCH ASS!" before resuming yelling again at the traffic. A few blocks along, we pick up a kid with a skateboard. He's in a buttoned down shirt and a suit. I can smell his cologne. Fifty plus blocks along I disembark at the corner for my crosstown bus to work. Who do I see from inside the Sinclair station, headed toward the door, but the corner prostitute. In a summer dress and high heeled evening shoes, she comes inside for a couple packs of cigarettes. She already sounds drunk as she tells no one in particular, "I' tryion' to quit but two packs a day is good." She asks the clerk from Ethiopia, "You know what happened with the lotto yesterday? I missed every number by one." Turning tricks and playing the lotto. Surely this is the chuckhole of the American dream.
I head over to the stop for my connecting bus. I watch a Walmart delivery truck hurry from around a corner before it returns the same way, searching for an elusive address. Behind the bench is a yard with a calico cat who has come out to chase bugs. About nine and a half hours later, I am rolling up on the stop for my last bus home. I pull up behind a grey-haired guy shuffling up to the bus shelter. He is attempting to put together a question with single words. "A pass?" he asks. I don't understand. The driver will sell him any kind of pass except a monthly one. It sounds as if he wants to look at my bus transfer. He says he wants to make his own. I think he wants to know if his own transfer has expired. The bus then arrives. He gets on ahead of me and attempts to ask the driver the same question with not nearly enough words. The driver says, "I don't care as long as you got a transfer." We proceed and the guy tells the driver to enjoy his day off. When the guy gets out he tells the driver something about Jesus and god. As we get close to my own stretch of the boulevard, we stop where a trio of drunks get on in a line. If the previous guy couldn't find enough words, the drunk at the front of this line is nearly in comprehensible. "Can I...? ...they're closed (he points across the street)... Can I...?" The driver motions to the clan to just take a seat.
...a violence inclined "youth underground" has taken root in Iran... ...several hundred mainly middle-class Iranian young people, educated overseas or at home...alienated from their government and society to accept...clandestinity...in pursuit of..."revolution for the sake of revolution."
When the oil money began to arrive in 1974... The Shah declared time and again that he would turn Iran into "one of the five industrial powers..." a model...for the Third World...for the West, whose...waste he now constantly attacked. In just a decade, Iran would be equivalent of West Germany. "Oh yes, we can do that," he asserted... "And in twenty-five years, we can OVERCOME the European countries." The Great Civilization was just around the corner, the Shah insisted. "No other state in the world...gives its workers, farmers...as many benefits... And...more was to come. Free elementary education, free milk for students, national health care, housing loans for workers. All this and more...because Iranians were capable of extraordinary effort. [More than] the 'blase' societies..." Western embassies in Iran, never long on analysis, became dedicated export missions, above all on making sales. By 1976...the Shah [sent] a six page letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld complaining about ...delays, cost overruns, and the ineffectiveness of many of the arms he had bought. Rumsfeld [blamed Iranian corruption.] "We are the only judge of what we need," said the Shah, with [Kissinger] sitting by his side.
The Americans had become a catalyst for the [Shah's] revolution. Now...there were thousands of Americans stationed in Iran. ...in their own little suburbias...dollar shops...pizzerias...and their large cars and...alien customs. Many of Bell's employees were Vietnam veterans whose....previous experience...was...where the natives were trying either to kill or serve them. During religious days of mourning, the Americans would have large parties with...drunken revelers... Their bars were closed to Iranians. Several'''featured Vietnamese bar girls. As the boom of 1973 turned to slump...peasants...had crowded into cities, and now had neither work nor homes... A few Americans were murdered. [The Shah's] dispatch of troops to help the Sultan of Oman put down a left-wing guerrilla movement in 1973 (...was...the Shah carrying out the...Nixon Doctrine...) ...some Arabs saw [this] as a trial run for interference in their own affairs.
Iran [now under the control of the Islamic "revolution"] was just too powerful to offend. Heads of state...now denounced [the Shah and his queen] publicly - even if they...made...apologetic private phone calls. ...the Bahamanian government forbade them to make any comments on...Iran, where the waves of executions were continuing. ...Hamilton Jordan, quotes [President] Carter...as saying..."it makes nos sense to bring the Shah here and destroy whatever slim chance we have of rebuilding a relationship with Iran." - Shawcross
Below us drifted the remnants of a...perhaps neolithic-village... They were good men on Cyclone-Seven-Five. [The pilot] swearing when he tore refugee tents out of the ground with the wash of the rotors. There were 60,000 people under canvas below us...when [the pilot] switched off the engines we suddenly heard the sound of 60,000 people talking. Perhaps it's with this...that we create nations.
Our...helicopters were arranged by a...civilian air controller with a hook instead of a right hand. ...I realized that this was an Apache gunship, a big tank-killer... ...I noticed that all the Americans were in civilian clothes. "Where you from?" England, I said... A journalist... "Jeeesus Christ!" he shouted. ..."So, where are 'you' from?" I asked. "U.S. embassy...most of these guys are CIA." ...I positively burst into laughter... ...it was my turn, "Jesus Christ." I said. "You," he said, "have got yourself one hell of a fucking story." The chopper...raced along the snowline, its passengers staring...like men possessed. - Fisk
At times [the movie] "Beirut" slips into Homeland-style shorthand, suggesting there's not street in town that's not home to religious murders. Meanwhile, the score too often offers a percussive foot-chase clatter caked over with Middle Eastern instruments, resulting in a familiar melange we would call "Muslims Chasing White People." - Westword, 4/12-18/2018
Sunday. In the late afternoon I head across the street for a couple of scoops from the Chine place. It's the same side of the street with the building turned into new apartments, full of the only Caucasians in the neighborhood. On my side of the street, I see a female head with purple hair emerge from a car. Not a truck with eighteen wheeler tires or a street racer with a spoiler on the back or a 30-year-old Cadillac with cartoon-sized rims, but a car a university student may drive. Is the head white? yes. In the Chinese place, a kid no older than 20 comes in. He has skinny pants with his socks pulled up over the cuffs, and an anklet of beads around one leg. I am convinced he's from the apartments.
Monday. At the bus stop across the street from where I live, it smells like snow this morning. But it has yet to fall. Waiting for the bus with me is a middle-aged guy talking to a teenaged kid with his pants below his underwear and a Batman backpack. There is no mistaking my own neighborhood for any other. We all get on the same bus when it arrives. The older guy is telling the kid a story about a car which intentionally went through a puddle in order to splash him where he stood. A police car was behind the suspect vehicle. It odd listening to this guy relating this to a kid with his pants below his underwear. Sitting up front is another guy, who appears as if someone may have socked him in the face. Sitting on the other side of him is a guy with a disassembled stop sign, on his way to work on some street. His grey hair is sticking straight up in the air. We have driven into rain. I get out on the corner where I will catch my crosstown bus and stop into the Sinclair station. Snow flakes are falling. An elderly clerk offers to let me wait here for my bus. I explain that the driver will only pick me up at a stop, and neither of us can see the other from inside here anyway. I head over to the bus stop where I watch flakes melt onto the handlebars of my bike. The bus comes to pick me up and we ride out of the squall and into sunshine. It's an odd experience.
About eleven hours later, I am on the very same bus headed back the opposite direction. At a stop before the one where I get out, a wobbly guy with a cane unsteadily gets on. Somewhere between here and there, he says to I don't know who, "Show me your lights, brother." I disembark and the bus pull up a few more yards to let the wobbly guy out. A minute later, I roll up on the stop for my last bus as it pulls up. Through the traffic in the street a guy is running at the bus, asking me to hold it. He tells me that I am his "carrier," for which he will pay my fare. I don't know what a carrier is and I elect to show the driver my monthly pass anyway. Carrier dude sits in back with a couple of people he recognizes. I hear him say that he works at an "old folks home." It appears to be a dangerous life caring for the elderly. A few stops later a woman with her own cane, and a black leather jacket with fringe gets on. She is followed, a few stops later, by a woman who strikes me as a gypsy. Purple pants, boots, orange shirt, scarf, handkerchief over her head.
Over the past few years, a...person standing...holding a sign...has become a more common sight in...the metro suburbs. ...Change the Trend Network. A network to agencies is necessary to tackle the problem. "...the rapidly rising cost of housing...has forced many people to loose their homes." ...three to four years ago...fewer people on the street who appeared to be homeless. "...a lot of [homeless] folks are starting to move south into Englewood and Littleton." - Denver Herald, 4/5/2018
...when I see or hear something that affects me, I don't reach for my phone. I'm a writer. I don't see the point of not writing. ...letting emotional reactions fill the pages of a tiny notebook. ...there are just some conversations between people we are meant to overhear. Apartment by apartment, my downtown building has become less of a vertical neighborhood and more of a hotel. ...a group of Latinos talk about losing their hotel jobs. Not to work in hotels, not to have hotel jobs, is an incomprehensible way to live for these working people. VRBO/Airhub is affecting their livelihood... "No one's going to tell me I can't rent my place in the city by the week while I'm in my ranch in Wyoming." ...Airhub [likes] to boast how you get to live "in a real neighborhood." - Lilipoh, Winter 2018
On Saturday, March 24, the Denver County Democratic Assembly voted to endorse...the platform..."the economy should be...owned and controlled...to serve the needs of the many, not to make profits for the few." ...members of the Denver chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) had been elected as delegates in the caucuses. ...the amendment [was brought] to the floor. ...an overwhelming majority 0f...delegates raised their voting cards in approval. ..."a stereotypically downwardly mobile millennial"...says, "We have a booming economy in Denver but...stagnant wages, rising rents and unaffordable health insurance." [The] DSAers...hope to add the socialist statement to the state's Democratic Party platform. ...the group will "continue...to bring radicals into the Democratic Party and to radicalize everyone who is already there." DSA...members are in their 20s and 30s...running for office and...getting elected. - Boulder Weekly, 4/5/2018
"On why the Democratic candidates are running for governor:" ...through globalization... We're going to see...people coming out of college...who are going to experience...thirteen different careers over...their lifetime. We have to prepare a system that helps to...re-train them over...their lifetimes...
Hollywood doesn't make many movies about...grownups like the men [Jon] Hamm [plays]: handsome, hyper-competent lugs...edged with doubt. [His] square-jawed existentialists...face the truth that handsomeness and hyper-competence - and the success that both seem to promise - won't be enough to keep the happy. They're men smart enough to know that each day the world needs men like them less than it did the day before, but...not...what to do about it. - Westword, 4/12-18/2018
Tuesday evening. It's after work and I have just missed the bus down my street. I have a half hour wait to spend with three guys who sound as if they are ex-cons. They are sitting on the concrete next to the Muslim doughnut shop. I hear one tell the others that he likes to shave his head but had his razor blades taken away. II decide to grab dinner at a nearby deathburger and bring it back to the bus stop. i sit next to the trash can. One of the trio comes over to throw something away. He asks me, "How's it goin'? You having a good evening? Rockin' and rollin'?" Hey, it's Danny Zuko from Grease. "Where'd you get that [food]? How much is it, five dollars? God bless." I see the bus coming and I smell marijuana coming from their direction. The bus arrives to rescue me...or not. At one stop we pick up a guy who sits next to me. He keeps apologizing for bumping into me whenever the bus lurches. I see his face ut of the corner of my eye. Is his face covered with stubble or tattoos? He gets up and disembarks. Down the street we pick up a drunk with some shopping bags on a small dolly. He takes a seat next to me and dozes off. The driver pulls up to a stop and picks up a passenger. The drunk suddenly wakes up to say in a weak voice that this is his stop. The driver does not hear this and closes the door. This much I anticipated. I did not expect what transpires. The drunk stands up with some effort as the driver accelerates, unaware a passenger stood up. The drunk slowly leans toward the rear and tells the driver again that this is his stop. The driver then slows down to keep the distance away from his stop as little as possible. The drunk leans back toward the front and falls to the floor. The drunk weakly says, "You asshole. You sent me tumbling all the way down the bus." The driver is defensive, helping the guy pick up his dolly. The drunk takes forever to disembark, and then comes back on board. The driver finally asks him, "Okay, can you go?" He slowly, slowly makes his way down from the bus.
The following day I am on the bus up the street. We are closing in on my stop. A few streets before it, we pull up to a stop where a young woman tells the driver that a group of passengers will be here momentarily. Three adults and a gaggle of kids, one in a wheelchair, get onboard. The one in a wheelchair has on her head a wire connected to a tiny blue light. The group keeps repeating, "We made it." One of the adults says, "I saw a silver flash and said, 'That's the bus.'" The adults recall an outing when a motorized wheelchair lost battery power. My stop is on a corner with a Sinclair station. One of the women says, "That Sinclair station is always interesting. Always interesting." I think I hear her mention something about drug addicts. I haven't spotted any there. On the same bus headed home 12 hours later. In the seat across from me is a different drunk complaining that we haven't yet arrived at 32nd Avenue. It's not long before we arrive at 32nd, where he disembarks. About fifteen blocks later, a passenger gets on and is about to sit where the drunk was, when he realizes that the drunk urinated on the seat.
Friday. I'm on the bus home after work. Stretched across three seats is a guy with long grey hair and his shoes off. He has a couple of silver rings on each hand. His shoes are on the floor, and I notice that even though they are off of his feet, the laces on each one are still tied. It's a bust weekend. The following day is grocery shopping, a movie (Chappaquiddick), and a musical (Refer Madness) in the evening. The day after, I am headed downtown after a workout for three things; lunch, a marijuana "wellness" fair, and an indie comics fest. I'm at the bus stop outside the gym. Services at a church on the corner has just let out and colorfully-dressed families are making their way through the crosswalk. Down the sidewalk comes a guy perhaps ten years my junior. He has a black leather jacket on and a face full of grey stubble. He has a vape in his left hand and a paperback with "God's grace" on the back in the other. He lets me know when the bus will show up, spots my bike and asks me if I have any others I want to get rid of, and stands in the way of my view so I can't see if the bus is coming. From the other direction, up the sidewalk comes a homeless guy, perhaps ten years the other guy's junior. He carries his sleeping bag unrolled and the rest of his earthly possessions in a plastic grocery bag. Our bus arrives. Leather jacket dude takes a last drag from his vape, takes a gander at the homeless dude, and gets onboard.
Monday. I'm on my connecting bus to work with a guy in earmuffs, a knit cap, and denim shorts. He is recounting for the bus driver memories of the neighborhoods through which we are moving. He points out where his "dad's girlfriend used to live." He graduated high school in 1972. He speaks too loudly and with a strain to his tempo. He sings his high school song. He points out a Home Depot where he "sold plants." He exclaims, "I get to go to Piggly Wiggly today!" The morning after I am at the Sinclair station on the corner where I change buses. My bike leans against a window outside. Inside, the registers are not working for the gas pumps. Customers line up to purchase snacks. The guy ahead of me tells the clerk that he places a ten dollar bill on the counter. The clerk says that she never saw it. He asks her to call the cops. I alert him to the crumpled ten dollar bill on the floor. I turn to check on my bike which rocks back and forth in a wind.
I catch the crosstown bus and down the street we are headed for a big construction dumpster. It sticks out into the street from the curb. From behind it emerges a skinny guy in teardrop shades, white pants, and a white Polo with the collar turned up. I can't tell if there is a bus stop hidden behind the huge dumpster. he waves at her to let her know that he needs this bus. She waves back at him and says "Hi," out loud. I'm convinced that he believes her wave means she will be stopping. I am just as convinced that she has no intention of stopping. As we blow past him, I hear him say, "I need the bus." She says out loud, "I'm running late, and you're late, so..." Some nine hours later, I roll up on the stop for my first bus home. This evening's character at the stop is a little elderly guy. He's in skinny jeans and a coat with racing stripes, and carries a backpack. I'm struck by how much he looks like a teenager, until I see him walk with tiny steps. When he boards the bus, he takes forever to dig out his fare. We are moving along as he twice drops the same brass key before he finds a dollar bill.
Surrounded by photos of Bruce Lee...they sat...eating...brownies...while nostalgic dance hits from...House of Pain and Lauryn Hill blared from the next room. Some excuse themselves...to take a dance break. The...group...with their...Russian hats and mermaid leggings, ...the audience was...responding...with snapping fingers and exclamations of "dope!" and "fire!" - Boulder Weekly, 4/12/2018
...a life straight out of the movies. ...ran culinary tours from a small farm in Tuscany...worked as a private chef for...Dave Matthews and Jane Goodall...opened a cooking school in Mexico. ...she's [opening] her first restaurant...an all day eatery and marketplace...at the edge of LoHi... ...will serve as a CSA distribution point and micro-farmers' market, and...a beehive on the roof. If I lived nearby, I'd pop in regularly for a latte or cocktail... {She was] biking in Italy and saw a boar...the food historian...taught her that boar should be dusted with cocoa... - Westword, 4/19-25/2018
Despite a strong economy and low unemployment...some food banks are seeing donations beginning to slip [due to] changes in the federal tax code... "...at the community level, religious congregations and fraternal service organizations are shrinking or dying off..." "...recent cuts to the federal food stamp program place a higher burden on us." High day-care and housing costs fuel hunger... ...more needy people in the last few years than at any other time in...27 years... Denver's crackdown on homelessness in recent years has pushed some needy people out in the suburbs... - Denver Herald, 4/19//2018
When you couple...strong musical history...an amazing art scene with deep roots, thriving real estate and tech economies and the best weed imaginable...and then you add all the people moving here to experience all of the above, you've got a pretty formidable mix. We had the perfect environment to compliment it. It's important to tread carefully and be conscious of how these changes affect the soul of it all. We don't want progress to drive out the creatives, the diversity and uproot the ecosystem that made this vibe possible in the first place. - Westword, 4/19-25/2018
Wednesday. Speaking of money, I'm at the bus stop across the street from where I live, with a regular passenger. He has a perpetual smile on his face and rambles while on the bus, about working people and how they are supposedly deceived by vices. He's in the bus shelter with his grin. The bus comes and we get onboard. He stands up front, speaking as if to someone. I hear him speak the words, "transit employee, federal employee," before he says, "I got twenty-two trillion dollars in the bank." He then mentions, "one thousand billion dollars." I believe he suffered a head injury and since then has believed that he works for the World Bank. Sitting in front of me is another guy, this one in khaki denim construction clothes and sunglasses. On the seat next to him are a couple of small trash bags and a plastic grocery bag, all full of stuff. He turns to ask me the time, and he is the second passenger this week who I tell about the clock at the front of the bus. He replies, "Yeah, but I can't see it with my sunglasses on." The following morning I am on the bus up the street. We arrive at the train station. The driver has opened the door and let passengers on, including a guy in a deathburger uniform, before closing it. A passenger then says, "This isn't the bus I want," and leaves. A second passenger follows the first. Some fifteen blocks later, we pull up to a stop and the driver lets out whoever is getting off here. We are pulling away from the stop before deathburger employee realizes this is also his stop. Some eleven hours later, it's after work. This evening's odd character at the stop, for my first bus home, is a guy on his Bluetooth. I first spot him across the street, gesturing with both arms as he converses. He crosses through the middle a street with multiple lanes. he's a clean cut guy in sunglasses, ball cap, and hoodie. It sounds as if he may be discussing different strains of marijuana with a significant other. "It's literally going to be like, five caps of that."
Twenty-four hours later, I arrive at the stop for my last stop home. I have a half an hour wait for the bus. I decide to run over to a nearby deathburger. The usually empty place is, this evening, host to a gaggle of Caucasian neo-hippie weirdo types. I bring my bike inside when I come here, and one of the loopy twenty-somethings asks me if I backpack around. I reply that I use it to commute to work. He asks where I work and I assume that he wants to know how far. I tell him the streets, to which he says, "Oh, I'm from Boulder. I don't know where that is. It's a beautiful bike." Ah, but it's a beautiful world...somewhere. But this is my street, pothead. I head for the bus and get on when it arrives. Some forty blocks south, the driver puts down the wheelchair ramp. A passenger gets on. He has grey hair and sunglasses on, and the clothes tied around his coat are not much more than rags. He has brought on the bus a gasoline powered scooter. On the seat is a collapsible shopping cart full of plastic grocery bags, full of something else.
For [the Shah] to have had any chance of realizing his ambitions, Iran would have to go for massive and immediate capital investment [to] switch from oil to industrial exports. In the 1960s Iran had been able to feed itself. Not in the 1970s. By 1975... Credit had been expanded much too rapidly and...banks...now [had] to apply for international loans - despite the gigantic oil income... Imported goods were left stuck on docks which could not possibly handle the volume. ...when [the Shah] began to talk of his vision of the future, "he moves...into...emotional overdrive, and his words blend into [a] monotone...as if he were programmed. "My country will become the second most sophisticated nation in Asia after Japan. My people's cultural maturity and intelligence is going to put this country up with yours. Iran will be one of the SERIOUS countries in the world." In the 1970s, the whole country became a wonderland... Kickbacks, bribes...secret understandings between princes and PR men, princesses and CIA agents, Samsonite briefcases packed with hundred-dollar bills. Secret orders and counterorders...in private meetings with the Shah...from 1973 onward. ...the various princes and princesses were getting everything they said they had to have. In Tehran the satellite courts swirled jealously around the Shah's relations... ...children of the courtiers . They used to bring...cocaine, into Iran... There was a Colombian dealer who...came so often...they called him "Concorde." Any child of the court could get him through the airport...
...Iranians could achieve no political power. ...wealth had to be displayed... Girls from...the most sophisticated call-girl service of the time...were flown on Concorde from Paris. Land prices soared... Rents in Tehran became prohibitive even for the new middle class that was supposed to be the heart of The Great Civilization.. People had to pay up to 70 percent of their incomes to landlords...thousands of peasants had fled the countryside [for] the city. By now it seemed that one of the principal purposes of land reform was...to extend central government control over [peasant] lives. ...the Shah was encouraging agribusuness ventures by...multinational companies. Between 1970 and 1976 more than fifty thousand villages were displaced... - Shawcross
Here at last, it was suggested we could see the real fruits of war...if we could forget...thousands...put before...mass execution squads... ...that the New World Order was merely the Old World Order on good behaviour... ...a restoration of...the frontiers...after the 1914-18 war, with the...original 1948 Israel... For this is was lay at the roots of Western policies in the Middle East. ...when Americans allowed Saddam's domestic opponents to be massacred. Faced with...allowing Iraq to disintegrate, or Iraq to remake their own map...the West opted for Saddam... I...heard that Iraqis [had] a strange new cancer "epidemic"...in the summer of 1997. [During the 1991 Gulf War, one munition used included] American depleted uranium shells. And the beautiful girl in the sun bonnet [in the Iraqi hospital] her name means 'budding rose,' and she has acute myloblastic leukemia - smiles with delight. Aman Ahmed sits [while an] electric fan cools her fever. The machine fighting the heat of the Baghdad afternoon, becomes a kind of halo around [her] head... "Now here is Cherou Jassem and she has put on a party dress for you to take her picture." ...Dr. al-Haddad...asks if I will send copies of my photographs [taken by the author] of [these] children...as soon as I can. In a month or two, [both girls] may well be dead. - Fisk
Saturday. I am coming back home from a dental appointment. On my street I notice a couple. The guy looks like Jethro from The Beverly Hillbillies. The woman is wearing lipstick so red that I'm sure it can be seen from outer space. When I come out of my door an d out to the stop for the bus to go grocery shopping, the couple is in the parking lot of a mechanic garage next to the stop. They have a stolen shopping cart full of their own groceries. On the bus home from shopping, a young guy gets on at a stop. He's is sweat pants and socks, but no shoes, and has cuts on his heads. The following day, I head downtown to the bike shop to have the brakes checked on one of my bikes. Afterward, I grab lunch at a bar and grill. During lunch the host come by to ask me if I want a refill on my beverage, in which I put the lemon slice from my fish and chips.. "Iced tea?" he asks. "Diet soda," I reply. "The lemon threw me," he admits. On the bus home, a kid gets on who appears to know a middle aged guy sitting across from me. The two embrace. He refers to him with the Spanish work for "friend." Both sound as if they are my neighbors. The guy is ten years my junior but speaks with a voice of a 100-year-old. His face appears red from being on the street all day. He tells the kid that he's getting methadone treatment. A little later I step out for dinner. From the new Caucasian apartments across the street rolls a weirdo guy on rollerblades. Just like the apartment resident walking a dog, this guy is the only one I've seen with rollerblades in the neighborhood. He's a wiry, muscled guy, bald, with no shirt and skinny jeans rolled up above the top of the skates. He whips down the sidewalk to the corner and back again, and then back to the corner and up the boulevard.
Monday. I get on board my first bus to work Sitting up front is a blonde, long-haired 40-year-old nut who also has a bike on the rack. He's in a sweatshirt with the neck torn open n front. He asks me if my bike is fast. "Mine's fast. It's called Peaches." He says he bought it for $25, and he also mentions that he has a Korean wife. He doesn't mention any summit between both Koreas, or between Korea and the United States. He does a little singing, then a little talking to the driver before he disembarks. My bike has no name. It felt good to get out of the rain. At the bus stop, you can't remember your name for there ain't no one for to give you no name. I change buses and my last bus to work drops me at a median on a corner. A senior comes walking along, with a walking stick and a silver helmet shaped like those of the Civil Defense. Almost twelve hours later, I am back on my boulevard, with a half hour wait for my last bus home. I took the crosstown bus here with a little guy in a hoodie. He slowly got on and took a seat. Twenty minutes after I got out at this street, I see him at a deathburger next to the stop. He stands at an order window in the dark, light pouring out of it. I don't see him order anything, or watch him say anything at all. Ten minutes later, as my bus pulls up, I suddenly notice that he is in the middle of the boulevard. The bus honks at him as it passes.
Wednesday. I'm headed from the gym to work on the bike. I'm stopped at the light when, from behind me, I hear, "Oh, fuck. Fuck." A young guy on a BMX bike comes along. He has a Dolce and Gabana cap. He wants to know where the courthouse is for a particular county. If it's the one I'm thinking of it's miles away, up against the foothills. I wonder if he committed a crime in a county he's not familiar with and therefore knows not where the courthouse is. I don't know how to get there from here, or if it's even the one I'm thinking of. I tell him I can't help him out. He scans his phone and asks me where a particular avenue is. It's behind us, the opposite direction of the mountains, but a lot closer. After work, I've just left and am riding along a long brick wall. There is a break where the wall forms a recessed space. In this space is a big electrical box. I just saw someone pull in here on a BMX bike, and behind the box I see a leg. I wonder if it's him. I hop on the crosstown bus and connect with my last bus home. A young woman gets on in a coat which appears to be falling apart. I don't look at the rest of her before wondering if she's homeless. When I look up at her, she's a Caucasian hipster with a groovy necklace, purse, and knit hat.
...a well-heeled neighborhood boutique teleported to the peaceful interior of a lush forest. ...enriched with oil paintings... ...proof that it's possible to blend old school and new age... The feel is that of a vintage library in a woodsy mansion of a regal Spaniard... - Westword, 4/19-25/2018
..."Cherry Creek North" is quickly evolving: expanding on the foundation...that raised the bar...with...personalized service. ...it's important to support the trailblazers who made this community so great. CHERRY CREEK NORTH is...most of all REAL PEOPLE. ...there is not another place in the country quite like it. ...something for everyone. ...the neighborhood evolving into a mini metropolis...
Spring is here. In Cherry Creek North... Six major construction projects are slated for completion in 2018, adding 201 hotel rooms, 236 residences, 110,000 square feet of office space and 50,000 square feet of new renovated retail space. Great neighborhoods...come with a history. With a walk score of 95, Cherry Creek North is also known for being the most walkable district in Denver. It's really exciting... We're about to have an influx of new residents... ...its legacy of a bright, shiny destination spot... - Cherry Creek Now, Spring 2018
The economic boom Denver is experiencing...certain neighborhoods...have been left out of this growth. These same neighborhoods are being asked to shoulder the burden of unprecedented construction and change.
We are leaving for the simple fact that we cannot afford to stay. [My wife's job] will not pay her during maternity leave... ...what I believe the city has become: a place where building equity through home ownership is more and more a dream than a possibility... ...to buy a home today...a Denver city councilman [is] priced out. - (Capitol Hill) Life, 4/2018
Thursday. I'm on the bus up the street. There's a familiar-looking middle-aged guy in a seat. I dunno. He's dressed like a teenager. Athletic shoes, jeans which appear too big for him. A basketball jersey under a hoodie. A pair of radio headphones is on his head. Is he going to work? Does he work? I get out at the corner where I catch the crosstown bus. When it doesn't show up I call the transit system. They tell me it broke down. When the next one shows up, and when we get to a transfer hub, the driver opens the door where a passenger stands. She's another person looking for a courthouse. He tells her he's not aware of any courthouse he passes on his way. He steps out to use a portable toilet. I jump out to grab a newspaper. She stands outside and begins yelling. "Shit, this makes me so fucking mad. It's gone it's all gone. I want him arrested I want him in jail!" I get back onboard. She comes on the bus to ask if this bus goes past the courthouse. Nine and a half hours later, it's after work. I'm on my last bus home. I turn to see who is riding this evening. One mental guy and one homeless. A young woman with mouse in her short blonde hair asks me if I want to sit down. Her skin has an even tan. She gives me the impression that her mind is in some other space. She asks me how I am doing. When she gets up to leave, she says, "Peace be with you." Right before my stop, a short, middle-aged guy gets on. He's in denim clothes and looks just like anyone else who rides the bus on this boulevard. Except for the blue ink tattoos on his face. Not tattoos of images or letters, but marks. He has a line running down his left cheek from his eye.
After work, I roll up on the stop for my first bus home. The 90s grunge guy is leaning against the pole with the transit system sign. Flannel shirt, sunglasses, cigarette. Catch you on the flippity-flip side. This bus deposits me ner the stop for the connecting bus. The connecting bus gets to the train station. A familiar local drunk gets on. He looks like a bald Pat Morita, from Happy Days and The Karate Kid. He bends down to sit next to me and leans into me face with his. He asks me for my "pass" (transit system transfer) so he can show it to the driver, pretending that it's his. This isn't a hustle, it's a blatant invitation to a crime. As if, to him, we're all criminals. Not that he has any trouble with this. When I tell him that I have no "pass," (what I have is indeed referred to as a monthly pass) the passenger on the other side of him digs hers out for him. He flashes it to the driver and he's good to go, as if he is going someplace. The crowd around him enjoys his performance as he rattle off his pap. "I'm...fucked...up," he imparts slowly. The surrounding passengers burst into repeated laughter at this and other enlightened revelations. He gets up as we approach his stop and falls onto a young mom and her child standing at the door, because there are no empty seats. I get out at my stop and head over to the Chinese place. In the lot are a group of Caucasians having car trouble. Inside is another young weirdo Caucasian couple. They come inside, go outside, dig in the back of their car.
Sunday. I am downtown for a new pair of shorts. I'm riding down the pedestrian mall as a beautiful young woman makes a left in front of me. She's in denim shorts and a flannel shirt, and has great legs. Her golden hair is airborne behind her. It's been some time since I have remembered when I was in my twenties. We both chase a mall shuttle bus as it stops at each corner. I stop into a deathburger for lunch and see a manager I haven't seen in a couple of decades. This deathburger is a gathering spot for homeless, mentally ill, and young vagabonds. Such as the middle-aged guy wandering around, making statements to no one in particular; "Spell "dog." You can't? Take a seat."
The [Islamic] revolution was producing turmoil in Iran. Throughout the countryside thousands of revolutionary committees, known as komitehs, sprang up. They were extensions of the neighborhood committees that...formed throughout 1978 to encourage the revolution, stopping people...searching homes, dragging people off to prison. They were quite outside [the control of the remaining monarchical government.] - Shawcross
Monday. I'm headed up the street on my first bus to work, and it's packed. The guy with the long grey hair, falling apart black leather coat, and gas engine scooter with the collapsible shopping cart on the seat rolls inside. For the next fifteen blocks he stands in the narrowest part of the aisle up front. This results in the bus crawling its way from stop to stop between here and there. because an inordinate number of passengers with rollaway suitcases get onboard and take forever getting past scooter/shopping cart man. This results in passengers in the front seats getting up and sitting down again, as well as changing seats, to let the new passengers enter the bus. This in turn results in one standing passenger offering to help every passenger with a suitcase past scooter man, because this passenger says that he will be late for his connecting bus to school. This in turn causes another passenger to burst out laughing. Unrelated to this chain of events is a familiar drunk who gets onboard at one stop. He also is wearing a black leather coat, this one with a hood. In the right pocket he does his beat to keep steady an open tall boy can of beer, from which he takes a swig. At another stop, a homeless guy gets on...with grey hair and in a black leather coat.
Some fifteen blocks further, a bent over passenger gets on with a walker. Behind him is a pregnant woman who, he informs the driver, is his caregiver. He asks if she can ride for a reduced fare. The driver gives his ok. He tells the woman, who he refers to as "honey," "Whad' I tell ya' honey? No one leaves a pregnant woman standing outside." A woman with a rolling suitcase is disembarking. The guy lifts up his walker so she may pass. My stop approaches, and when I stand up, the guy notices one of my bags under my seat. He asks me if it's mine. I assure him that, unlike the collection of characters present for the past sixty blocks, I have it under control. Actually, I just look at him...and tell him yes it is. Some ten hours later, I am on a connecting bus home, sitting across from a guy having an imaginary conversation with someone he is calling Fred. I change buses. Along the way home, the driver puts the ramp down for a bent over guy in camouflaged pants and a short-brimmed hat. He has a beard with grey in it. The steps he takes are inches at a time. He can barely form words to communicate with the driver. He sits down and spends the blocks we travel ever so slowly putting one handle of a plastic grocery bag around the grip on his walker. His movement is barely perceptible as he takes medicine bottles from a zippered bag and puts them in his pocket. When he gets out, the driver must take his walker off the ramp for him and waits outside. The guy acts as if he wants his feet to step forward but his nerves are hardly able to follow his commands. While he fights with his nervous system on the ramp, someone in back gives him a "Fuck! Hurry up!" The admonition could have come from an evil genius responsible for yet another month having come to an end.
