Karim Alrawi, the Egyptian writer...explained..."A writer is to be a creator of texts and to claim for them a truth...not...the sole truth of one sacred text. For that reason, the target [for murderers in the name of Islam] is writers, not merely their words." - Fisk
[The wife of the Shah of Iran was known as the Queen.] Many of her associates were intellectuals and artists; some were thought to be liberals, even leftists. [Some] blame the queen and her circle for the debacle that befell the monarchy in 1978. Through the sixties she began to emerge as a...cultured figure. She was...interested in social programs... [One particular national celebration] she argued [was an] unparalleled forum for kings and Communists, dictators and democrats... ...perhaps more problematic for the Shah...she represented a strong Western influence...an anathema to the Shiite clergy and...ordinary conservative Iranians. ...particularly...in her patronage of the arts. During the seventies her court became known...as a den of avant-garde liberalism. - Shawcross
It's after work on Friday. I roll up on the bus stop. There is a post-grunge rock kid in a red flannel shirt, having a smoke and leaning on the bus stop sign. An off duty bus rolls past and he curses with a post-grunge rock curse. The harvest moon is rising over the shopping center across the street. "Look at that moon," he tells me. He has strange hair, this archangel come to herald a new month, with his supernatural twin strands of hair over his face. I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me? Some 45 minutes later, I am at the stop for my connecting bus home. A guy stands with earbuds on, rapping away and busting his moves. Another guy wanders up and wants to ask him what he is listening to. The dancing guy asks, "What you want?" He's freaked out by this wandering neighbor. The wandering guy leaves, followed by the dancing guy. The bus comes, and a stop or two later a skinny little young guy gets on board. he hangs up front before wandering to the back. His gear is some kind of western disco. He is going on and on about "the gay shit. You wanna be gay, doin' that gay shit?" A young couple comes on board. The male recognizes and greets the 'gay shit' dude. The female says, "Let's get out." And they are gone.
Saturday. I'm at the neighborhood post office, chatting in Spanish with a mom of a ten- and a three-year-old. At 9:30 AM the place opens, and after a few minutes a guy in a navy outfit with reflective stripes on the shirt is at the counter complaining about not enough employees here this morning. A young, skinny guy with long hair comes out to take over another window. I mail a small package, purchase a book of Thoreau forever stamps (because Thoreau is forever) and head off to a late breakfast. A chicken place is open, and a young guy is outside holding a rag above his left eye. he has just run inside to put some ice in the rag.
...if I'm a role model, then the community is in a lot of fucking trouble. I was the first openly gay comic to perform on television in America and that was 1993. So now, 22 years later, I'm the first actress to have dildo dyke sex [on television]. ...there was so much fucking WORK that needed to be done. I felt like "Gay Pride Day? Sorry I don't have enough pride to last the fucking day." People would say, "Oh, come. It's a great party." Stop right there; I'd lose my fucking mind. I was sick of every fucking Pride having some asshole talking about how we're like everyone else and we're exactly like straight people. That fucking goes up my ass so far. ...religion seemed to take over every Pride I went to. I was like, "If I...see another religious float, I'm personally go up to Heaven and bitch-slap Jesus." You can only take...my stand-up comedy. ...for so long. I would...start screaming "fuck!" and "dyke!" and "cunt!"... And that's been my format since 1982 and hasn't changed.
"If the true goal is to rehabilitate folks...then you [must] have a strong village around them. ...people who want the best for them and are going to stand by them. We're in this space now where nobody is safe. Nobody is safe. When you look at something and know it's wrong, you cannot unsee it." - Outfront Magazine, 2/21/2018
Along 104th Avenue and east of Highway 2, signs for new homes entice interested home-buyers to pursue neighborhoods built by Lamar, Shea Homes, and KB Homes. New homes can be snagged in the low- to mid-$300s, a steal.. [The school district here] has a history as a mostly rural district with agricultural roots, but those days are long gone. ...mill levy...overrides...have created a patchwork of inequality across the state... ...a single mother of two daughters...negotiates drop-off times...and relies on...after-school carpools...(a charter school with no transportation options.) ...so that her kids are...home alone...not for more than one hour. - Westword, 3/8-14/2018
..."What do you want to experience here in Colorado?" I don't care; I don't care if I see anything here in Colorado - that's fine as long as we win a championship. I'm a dog person, and I didn't plan it this way. I drink too much tea every day. - Mile High Sports, 3/2018
...I didn't know anything about basketball at all. I know football and baseball well enough...but basketball...I was like "man, it's just about the last two minutes..." ...basketball really is about this struggle for space in the world. - Asian Avenue, 3/2018
...the presence of a charging station at the end of the road...he's more likely to drive toward Union Station or Lowery than a watering hole along Colfax. Public works...runs the streets. neighborhoods groups will have to be consulted to make sure they actually want charging. ...residents might revolt if [electronic vehicle] efforts complicate the already difficult parking situation. If the city tried to plug into streetlights...Xcel Energy...owns all of them. - Denver Herald, 3/8/2018
...many in our city fear they will be forced out of the city...due to unaffordability. ...vendors [of this newspaper, some homeless] choose to leave...unable to support even their barest essentials. ...thousands of Denver natives...poured out of the city last year.
Denver Community Action Network (CAN) is a newfound collective made up of many organizations in the metro area including...Invisible Denver...Ditch the I-70 Ditch, and Denver Homeless Out Loud, among many others. In November 2017, [a] Denver coffee shop ...posted a sign outside..."Happily gentrifying the neighborhood since 2014, Nothing says gentrification better than a...cortado"... ...residents....attended protests of [the shop] but also demanded larger action... "...having more places to eat and having our sidewalks fixed and better bike lanes, etc. ...that really wasn't for us. It's not about stopping gentrification... Gentrification isn't a new fight. When the city says, 'we have had community input' that usually means a small group of people they've selected. We are blowing up that paradigm... We don't want to make the same mistake the city is by identifying a few folks as the committee..."
[A 24-year-old River North resident was notified that her rent would be raised by $500.] ...the new...rate would eat up 55 percent of her earnings. ...forcing [her and her two roommates] to skip meals...to save for a down payment on a new residence. [They had no choice but to move to]one of Denver's neighborhoods most vulnerable to gentrification. "All of River North is being redeveloped. There's construction on every street, and businesses surrounding every apartment complex. Not many of them are local either." ...someone looking to purchase a home in Denver needs to earn just under $80,000... Many of Denver's culturally diverse neighborhoods are rapidly transforming beyond the scope of a normal developing city. ...a "neoliberal reimagining of cityscape, the result of...the local real estate market to actively create a new space of consumption." ...re-imagine city-space for economic gain rather than inclusion of residents. Once the area had cultural capital, businesses, and investors began moving in...increasing the cost of living...by limiting the supply of space...high rents attract modernized housing developments and business who cater to high-income consumers... IS DENVER DOOMED? ...we're seeing in Denver...a continuous dilution with movement from white neighborhoods into ones of racial and ethnic population centers." - Denver Voice, 3/2018
Tuesday of the following week. On my way from the gym to work I see my first north Denver street racers. On Friday after work the crosstown bus is a little late. That's good news for a couple running for the bus. Neither one appears to be old enough to drink. She has long grey tips in her black hair. Who can guess what her natural color is? She's in a coat with stars and galaxies on it, a skirt, bare legs, and untied shoes. She has the voice of a ten-year-old. The guy has a black leather jacket and a bandanna around his head. She's eating something from a small plastic cup. He's on his phone, telling someone that he was "unsuccessful in making a donation. Do you still want the money if I do it?" The bus driver is hauling ass to make up for lost time. We hit the transfer station and the guy sitting behind me curses. Because we are late, he watches his connecting bus pulling out. A middle-aged guy gets on, in a hoodie, baggy jeans, and red shoes. He asks the driver directions; he's going so far across town that it's close to the crosstown length of the entire greater metro area. The driver offers his suggestion and he wants to know if there is not a faster route. I get out and over to the Muslim doughnut shop, where a homeless guy is sleeping next to the wall outside. Something rousts him and he gets up to walk back to the alley. A small hatchback is parked with a flat front left tire in front of the door of a detached garage. He lays down between the car and the garage door. My bus arrives. I get onboard and take a seat behind a guy with long grey hair and in a wheelchair. He's wearing striking blue fussy pants with the Pillsbury dough boy all over them. He's on his phone, telling someone that he left his cane on a corner thirty plus blocks north of here. I think that I recognize a local drunk headed for the back door. He's in a red Nebraska Cornhuskers knit cap and coat. "God bless you, take care," he tells someone.
Saturday. When I am out to breakfast with the sister we head to our booth, passing a little guy who is a manager. he's scolding a homeless guy in another booth, telling him that he must keep his head raised [i.e. not rest it on the table...as in sleeping.]. When we leave, he is asleep, resting his elbow o the table, and his head in his chin in his hand. Later in the morning, I'm on my way to a movie, trolling the avenue along the way for a place to grab lunch. the first place I stop into is full of young local urban residents. It has the energy of a country and western BBQ place, packed and loud. I duck out and into another place full of young couples and the occasional family. I'm sitting next to a guy who is going on and on and on to a friend about his job. "I said, 'Give me your shittiest accounts. I'll work on them. Don't have me cold-calling like I'm fucking twenty-five years old." After lunch, I get to the movie and decide that a hot chocolate is closest to my diet. I watch a thin guy with a thin mustache put two packs of hot chocolate mix into a paper cup, shaking and shaking them to get the last grains out. He then adds hot water. He's earned his pay this afternoon.
The following morning, after a trip to the gym I decide to have lunch downtown as I am already on a bus that direction. I transfer to a train with an elderly Caucasian couple in the seat next to me. The guy is wearing a mustard robe and a skull cap. At the next stop, a couple of teenaged kids and Mom and Grandma get on. The stop after this, a street guy gets on. Though the color of pollution he is animated with the standard neurological delay. He turns to the couple and, in Spanish, asks the guy 'What's up.' The guy gestures with his left hand and says that he speaks no Spanish. "Whoa," says street guy, "I need to change my lingo." Listening to him is like watching a film running too slow. He asks the couple where they are going, and they are headed to see Hamilton at the Performing Arts Complex. The mom says that the four are also headed that way. Street guy wants to confirm that Hamilton is a popular production, before asking Mom if her kids enjoy Shakespeare. I suspect that he believes Hamilton was written 400 years ago for the Globe Theater. I'm sure Mr. Hamilton was familiar with the Bard, but I wonder what Alex would think of this arms-length student of the fine arts. He tells the husband that, if anyone makes fun of his outfit, he will "get busy." It's as if he is (or rather has stumbled into the role of) a character from the musical. The husband tells him, "I'll call you." It sounds as if street guy has found an agent. I step out on the pedestrian mall and I spot a vendor for the local homeless newspaper. I haven't seen one in months. I purchase a copy and the guy tells me a joke. "What does a politician say when he steps in shit? 'I'm melting!'" (Before the joke, he asked if I was a politician. My kindergarten teacher thought i would grow up to be a politician. I check the sidewalk for feces...) I grab lunch at Chilis. A girls' sports team is leaving. Another is coming in. My waiter tells the departing team, "Don't forget your sports bottles. That's what everyone forgets." I finish my meal and, as a third team comes in, I can't figure out where to put my chip card into the Ziosk.
The Shah...repeated that what Iran needed was "an honest first-class Army with a decent standard of living." - Shawcross
"Our opposition wanted to work for...a democratic future, without bloodshed. Islam was a fundamental part... The French...[in 1830]...destroyed our mosques and prevented us from speaking our language freely, the language of the Koran. ...again, under [a native dictator] we had no freedom. When Chadil Bendjedid's troops killed up to 500 demonstrators...demanding democracy in Algiers in 1988, the event helped give birth to the FIS... ...the FLN's dictators corrupted their country... Algeria's unemployed young grew tired of...false promises..sick of hearing about revolution...hearing about dead heroes who brought them only...homelessness. By 1992...was it...any surprise that...targets of the Islamists were the aging survivors of that war [against the French?] ...found with their throats slit... ...even...the tombs of FLN "matryrs" torn open, their bones...smashed by French bullets three decades earlier - now broken...with stones... "The discussion of Islam started around the end of the Seventies, in cafes, in the streets - yes, even in bars. Our people were growing poorer. The West tells us that the problems of the Third World are economic, but I came to realize through Islam that this is untrue, that in fact it is the people who must change." George Bush's post-Gulf War "New World Order" had devised Bondaf's coup d' etat in order to prevent the creation of an Islamic Republic. ...the real danger of the FIS's war in Afghanistan...is in learning about the potential Islamic republic. Much more seriously, its young men are learning how to fight. ...they can learn to drive T-55s and T-62s... ...in the rest of the Arab world. ...Egypt, in Jordan, in Syria, it is the liberal democratic elite who bemoan the lack of democracy...and the...Muslims who suffer its consequences in silence. In Algeria in 1992, it was a popular Islamic movement that demanded democracy while the middle-class...produced convoluted reasons for its postponement. Insurgents were now moving across Algeria in company strength. Algeria's cities were close to panic. ...thousands of Algerians desperate to leave their country...stood outside the French embassy until [a French woman's murder in Algeria by insurgents] closed down the visa section. - Fisk
Monarchs share...a smallish society... ...the community appears to be forever shrinking... ...the shah himself had supported...the former kings of Afghanistan and Albania...Constantine of Greece. Umbertu, the former king of Italy...and the one-time King Simeon of Bulgaria, now a Spanish car dealer... King Hassan II [still then in power, had no] wish to disrupt his carefully crafted relationship with the mullahs in Morocco. - Shawcross
Monday. After work. Along the south exterior wall of the Muslim doughnut place next to the bus stop. One homeless guy sits on the ground. Another guy comes along and takes a seat next to him. Some minutes later, a couple of young derelict women come along. They appear to be not far at all into their thirties. One drags a roll away suitcase. The other appears familiar. She sounds drunk as she raises two fingers up ans asks me for a cigarette. Thew following morning I am on my way to work. I get out of the first bus, on the corner for the next. I stop into a gas station to grab breakfast. The clerk tells me that she hopes the season will see no more snow. I ask if she is from someplace where there is little or snow. She is a native of Ethiopia. Her tiny frame is in stark contrast with the regular Caucasian guy usually asleep on my connecting bus. he's three, four, perhaps five times her body mass. Dreadlocks, silver band around one of them, headband holding them together. Headphones on. African print pants above his untied high tops. Some twelve hours later, I am headed back down my boulevard. One guy gets on the bus and appears to know another passenger. He tells the other that he had to meet with his parole officer because someone allegedly saw him come out of a bar. "I said, 'Give me a[n alcohol] test right now.' We're almost grads anyway," he tells the guy, most likely referring to a treatment program. He also mentions to the guy that he was in the passenger seat of a truck when someone in another car shot and killed his friend sitting right next to him.
The evening after this, I work until nine minutes after closing. These few minutes are enough for me to miss my usual bus and I am left with the next. The passengers are ones I usually don't ride with. The first to get on is a woman and her emotional support dog. Her voice is like grinding ball bearings as she rambles non-stop about her dog. I will later see her outside with a cigarette. Passenger Two (P2) is an African American guy who begins the ride sitting silently, affectionately looking at the dog. Passenger Three (P3) is a Native American guy who also takes a seat and begins his ride silently. .P2 begins waxing philosophic. He says, "See, I'm from...California..." before mentioning that white people have destroyed the lives of his race. He speaks with a drunken kind of detachment. P3 immediately responds, telling him that he doesn't have to carry around anger. They go back and forth as the exchange is on. P3 responds with laughter to what he interprets as P2's desperation. P2 alternates between anger and quiet observations such as "You have knowledge, I didn't know that," and "You're smart." He mentions that he's all about love and "See, I'm from...California..." P3 says he hears hate behind his love and suggests letting go of the hate. P2 gets angry and mentions genocide. The driver at last chimes in , "I don't need this crap on my last run. Knock it off or I'm calling PD."
...Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Mousaui Khomeini... At the very least he has made the subject of Islam one of widespread facination in the West. ...the principal Shiite mullahs and teachers (ulama)...were able to be independent of the Iranian state authorities... ...the ulama found themselves acting in effect as guardians of the people against the government. Europe needed Iranian stability and Iranian oil. While Khomeini had been in France, the French had come to think he might not be so unreasonable. - Shawcross
...state television repeated news film of the post-Soviet slaughter in Kabul. ...the unspoken message...this will be Algiers and Oran and Constantine, and all...cities of Algeria. But how far could the authorities go in frightening people into supporting a government? Within a year...Algerian army intelligence officers [toured] Arab capitals, notably Cairo and Damascus, in the hope of learning how to combat Islamist" guerrilla armies.
The broken-down hamlet was named after the sixteenth-century founder of Blida, Ahmed el-Kehir, who brought with him from Spain the Arabs of Andelusia - irrigators of fields and planters of orange orchards - long before the French arrived... Algeria's next president was a colourless ex-general... A few years later...local Hezbullah officials...might have claimed that all Muslim forces were united in one aim. Algeria's war changed that. There was a time when the Algerian authorities would have tried to censor the atrocities, being carried out by the "Islamists"...
Events now moved so fast in Algeria that even those of us travelling regularly to the country could scarcely keep pace. The Algerian war was being fought in the shadows. Both sides wished this darkness to envelop their struggle. ...the Algerian "garde mobile" transformed into paramilitary units...hooded...cops hauling young men from the slums... ...through the poverty of Algiers in...Land Cruisers...between crowds of men who stood in the...garbage... ...into open country...running into orange orchards around Blida...youth's whose hands were held high... Almost all..."Islamists" carried Czech or Israeli weapons...had shaved their beards, donned djellaba robes...pretended to be fruit pickers... In Bab el-Oued [we] were watched by perhaps a thousand young men... "It's swarming with spotters. Look at the way they look at us." I pulled up my camera and looked through the lens...when there was a third blast...and through my telephoto lens, a curtain of roadway, grass, iron...streaming upwards in slow motion. ...a woman came shrieking and imploring God and the police to stop the noise. A rain of stones and concrete thundered onto the roadway...and the petrol cap of the third police car...jumped past my face. That's when the fourth bomb went off. - Fisk
Monday of the following week. I'm headed up the street, on a bus. I'm sitting in front of a white-haired guy in a cream colored wind breaker. Some fifty blocks later I am approaching my stop. The guy has been silent the entire time. When I stand up to put on a pack, he pulls something wrapped in foil out of his pocket. He asks me if I am hungry for a burrito he has. I explain that it's not on my diet. "Oh," he replies. It is, I believe, the first food offered to me in my 27 years on this transit system. Up to the front of the bus comes along a little guy with a red wrinkled face. Hidden inside his coat and knit cap he stands and stares at the burrito guy. He asks burrito guy where he works. Burrito guy laughs and tells him he is a mechanic. "I work on cars," he replies, burrito back in pocket.
Eleven hours later. I spend the ride on my first bus home after work speaking in my incomplete Spanish to a passenger from Caracas. He's here for a month and wants to know how far to a couple of different train stations. I get out at the corner for my last bus home. I get to the bus stop when, from behind the corner of the Muslim doughnut place, comes sauntering a woman I believe I saw here some months before. At the time, I was at this stop writing words such as these into a small notepad. She came up the sidewalk and saw me writing. She told me that my notepad was substandard, and that she had a notepad of assuredly superior caliber. Not in so many words. Then, as tonight, she sounded drunk. This evening she announces her presence by asking me if the bus is coming. I tell her it is not. She replies, "I know." There are no good deeds which may be done for this inebriated diva. From up the sidewalk comes a guy with shoulder length hair. I listen to her tell him that he missed a bus. I watch as he lights her cigarette before they go walking back toward the direction from where he came. She tells him that she is "staying in a motel over here." I wonder if I saw my first prostitution transaction on this boulevard. They say that crime doesn't pay. But this is my street, and just when I think I've seen it all... Whatever they did, they did it very quickly. In a few minutes they are back.
The following morning I am back to spend my second workout of the week at the gym on the way to work. I roll up to the bike rack, which looks like a sculpture of a bicycle. I thought that's what it was when i began coming here, until an employee told me I can lock up my bike to it. This morning, a grey-haired guy stands staring at me as I am doing just that. He slowly walks over and begins slowly rambling, "I guess you can do what you're doing, lock you bike here. Although it looks like a sculpture..."
...the city was unprepared for the idea of the Beloved Community Village - a collection of tiny homes...housing...people who have experienced homelessness. ...they only want nonprofits to be allowed to run the villages. "...we don't want developers coming in and selling $80,000 tiny homes." - Denver Herald, 3/15/2018
...to combat the erosion of affordable housing options and the hollowing out of middle- and lower-income households in Boulder. ...what is affordable today will not be affordable in the future because of Boulder's hyper-inflated real estate market. ...a community benefit - permanently affordable housing. ...short-term rentals...reduce supply by removing dwelling units from the long-term rental market. - Boulder Weekly, 3/15/2018
...I arrived mid-day... Businessmen in jeans and blazers clapped each other on the back, taking prime corner seats at the bar. An Italian couple, stylishly clad in black, leaned in close in hushed conversation. ...loudly echoing voices...swapping stories of trips to Sicily and France. - Westword, 3/15-21/2018
...the kind of caffeine-fueled philosophical conversations only a bunch of 20-somethings can have... [At] 21, he found himself disenchanted with..."employment"... "I was just...rediscovering...what was my relationship to money... Our first space...we...trashed...fuck, this is who I am..." He...wrote a play...a psychedelic epic based around...an early midlife crisis. - Boulder Weekly, 3/15/2018
This fourth book...explores six of the lifetimes in which the incarnations of Jesus and Buddha intersected, beginning in 700 B.C.. ...you will be saved countless years in your spiritual development.
...near death trips to The Other Side, including...Interstellar Surgeons, Light beings...
a "psychological autopsy" of the motivations...of...a 16-year-old girl who dies by suicide and finds herself in heaven. Through dream visits, channeled messages and a spiritual healer...
...psycho-spiritual growth. - Leading Edge Review, Spring 2018
Wednesday after work. I roll up on the stop for my last bus home, just as it arrives. A couple get on board ahead of myself. The lady is middle-aged, or perhaps in her sixties, with bright gold highlights in her short dark hair. She's in a coat with fur around the hood. The guy could be in his twenties, in dirty, skinny white pants and a U.S. Army cap. Both of their faces appear red from being outdoors. He acts as if he is high, raising his bus transfer in the air quickly and waving it around. He rubs his hand on the window. She has a couple of paperbacks, one a romance novel, in her hand. She looks tired. They sit in separate seat across from each other. He shifts quickly in his seat, bends over to look under his seat. Nothing is under there. She pulls her hood up and dozes off. Another street guy gets on at a stop where I used to catch this bus home. He's middle-aged and in a bright orange hoodie. He asks the wacky guy, Hey, little bro. You get beat up or something?" For where I am sitting I don't notice any bruises or cuts, and he doesn't act like someone who has been beaten. Yet he replies that he has been "hit in the head hard six times." "You ain't got no home to go get yourself cleaned up?" asks the heavy set glowing orange guy. Wacky guy does not. "That's tough," responds orange popsicle guy. The lady lifts her hood to see who is speaking, but remains mute.
Wacky guy flips his transfer over his head and it lands on the floor behind his seat. He responds by climbing under his seat in an attempt to reach through to the other side. It's millimeters from his fingertips. The lady gets up and grabs it.
Thursday. It's after work once again and I am back at the same stop for my last bus home. It's a nice evening. Across the boulevard is a bald guy in shorts and barefoot. He is swinging his arms back and forth at the traffic and making some kind of noise. He heads into a pizza place. Standing along the wall of the Muslim doughnut shop are a pair of guys, one with a cane. A third guy with a bandanna over his scalp comes along and begins yelling at one of the others. "I can't understand a fuckin' thing you're sayin'. You gotta speak up. Go fuckin' ask him for a cigarette." The yelling guy leaves, followed by the one being yelled at. The guy with the cane hobbles off the opposite direction.
..in Saudi Arabia. I could see dozens of American Bell/Agusta gunships...packed tight like...insects, midnight black... A row of Galaxies was disgorging...piles of white-tipped missies. A desert-brown Hercules C-130...was loading up missiles.... ...all three American crews of the U.S. 3rd Airlift Squadron with shoulder flashes which said "Safe, Swift, Sure." ...a message that had more to do with supermarket delivery times than theology. All this was lost on the clean-cut young men and women... Every fifteen minutes, the Galaxies arrived, their wheels shrieking under the load of Cobra gunships... In the banks of the mist, we...found a cargo ship, its hold and deck piled high with Toyotas...now fleeing the Hormuz and the open seas. The good days were over. - Fisk
Friday before work. I'm on my way to a dentist appointment. I have a stop to make along the way. Last year I got a call from an old friend who didn't know I was on the other end of the phone. Someone I worked with 13 years ago, and who kept working for the company which we both used to work for. I stop and see her for the first time since then. She was 19 and I was 36 when I met her. Today she is 36. She still looks fantastic, an inch taller than me and rail thin. And still with her own style. She steps out of her store to have a smoke as speaks to me about not being able to afford living in this town anymore. And that's with a husband who makes $115k a year. As for the company which owns her store, in a short conversation she pints a picture of a business with multiple store locations which no longer has the resources it once had. There is more than one drycleaning companies in the metro area with various drop off and pick up locations. The one we worked for, as opposed to the others, had a unique structure. Almost all the locations were owned by perhaps as many as ten franchise owners, a group who had regular meetings, a big layer to the dynamic. She tells me when I ask that there is one of those franchise owners left. They were unable, under the business structure, to make any money.
...the mutual respect she saw between adults and teenagers at Denver's North High School. having watched her own students in Maryland get handcuffed by armed police officers in the hallways...North seemed like "a utopian society." ...students...go to the bathroom without asking permission. Restorative justice - or restorative practices...began [in Denver] more than a decade ago... "When they get to my class late? Invite them in. 'Welcome.'" The school got rid of its strict dress code... "I don't need to have the very best test scores..." - Denver Herald, 3/22/2018
[In London] "the gaying of Soho" was well underway. The dazzling world of bars and clubs and public cruising spots...stood in bracing contrast to Oxford, with its dour emotional atmosphere... "The whole idea of London became sexualized for me." "There was a great liberating thrill in reading, at that time when there was so much pressure to conform to a politics of respectability, a book that was so unapologetic in its representation of men having sex...with other men." ...homosexuality is a democratizing force, it brings people together across boundaries of race and class and age. [Michel Foucault suggests] that what society finds so disturbing about homosexuality [is] gay relationships, which demonstrate that procreative heterosexual monogamy is not the only way to manage the chaotic energies of erotic life. ...a horde of estranged, surreptitiously acquired knowledge about...society, generated by the experience of not belonging to it, of being tolerated without being accepted. - The New York Times Magazine, 3/18/2018
Sunday. Around fifteen after eleven AM, I'm out of the gym that's in the neighborhood with Caucasian retirees. I'm at the bus stop when an overweight middle-aged guy comes huffing and puffing along. He also needs the bus. I watch as a couple go running through the crosswalk on a red light, toting a rollaway suitcase. They appear to be coming from a church which has just let out. The lady has a seat on some grass, alongside the suitcase, as the guy comes running quickly over to where we are. The two men begin conversing. The one who ran over is younger, and has trouble pronouncing a couple of words. The big guy asks the other if he "found it?" "Yes," he replies. The pair of men, neither of whom I have ever seen before, begin discussing which church services they will be attending later in the week. The young guy goes running back to his lady and their suitcase. Then, without any prompting from myself, big guy then tells me at least who one of them is. "That's Cody. He's a good guy. He's from the Czech Republic. He has his quirks, but he's a good guy. He left his I-pad on the bus. I've known Cody for four years." I kind of feel like I am back in high school...if I had gone to high school with an overweight middle-aged guy.
The bus arrives to take me to the train, which transports me downtown. Since the bus goes to the train I may as well have lunch downtown. When I arrive, I detect a leftover increased police presence, perhaps as a result of yesterday's March for Our Lives. I stop into Chilis, where the waiter points out that it's happy hour all day today. He tells me his name and gives me a minute to order. he comes back and again tells me his name. I wonder if he knows Cody. Cody's a good guy. My waiter thinks my selection is "awesome." After lunch I ask a hostess if they can break a big bill. She doesn't know as she is simply the hostess. I will have to ask my waiter, who she leaves me to find myself. Where's Cody when I need him? He can even bring his suitcase...
It's Monday of the last week of March. I step out of my door, off to work. Standing in the parking lot next to the townhome complex, is having a smoke. He's in black pants and a black coat. On the back of the coat, in gold capital letters, is, "ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE ME NOW." When I get on the bus up the street, I sit across from a woman in her sixties. He has wine colored moussed hair under a pair of black headphones, and black leather boots with fringe. It sounds as if she is on the phone. She has a southern accent and is gossiping with someone at the other end. She has a Pepsi in her right hand and is eating "old fashioned' pretzels with the other. When she exits the bus at the train station, it almost appears as if she is dancing. She leaves behind the unfinished pretzel bag and a single grey knit glove. As the bus proceeds, the pretzel bag falls on the floor.
On a strip of Wilshire Boulevard...a black plastic pool had been placed on the sidewalk... ...a crowd of mostly 20-somethings...were gathered behind a metal barricade. [The founder of this church] chewed gum as he danced to a pop gospel playlist blaring overhead. [Two men] dunked a woman in the waist-high water. She surfaced, arms pumping in the air as...photographs...were later posted on Instagram. One man behind the barricade...called for the preacher to purify his soul right then. [He] waded into the pool. Afterward, he looked dazed... [The pastor refers to his ministry as] one of the newest in a wave of youth-oriented evangelical churches...claiming nothing less than Los Angeles county and its population of 10 million. Nearly 1,600 people show up for his weekly services. [The pastor] is a 24-hour-a-day presence on Instagram: photographed at the gym or beach, singing karaoke with...Justin Bieber, watching the Lakers, even waiting for the valet. "Insragram built our church. Isn't that fascinating?" [He] believes he can save souls by being the hip and happy-go-lucky preacher, the one you want to share a bowl of acai with...who declines to publicly discuss politics...because...no one wants to come to church. Jesus is supposed to be fun, right? "If we aren't making people laugh... What is the point?"
In Bern With Bieber
The pastor changes his dialect depending on his audience. ...sometimes [he uses a]Texas twang... Recently interviewed [he] sounded nearly professorial. Most of the time, he uses so-called street talk. ("Whaddup dawg!") It is a holdover, he said, from the early 2000s when he was a youth minister... ...he began working for...a spiritual advisor to Mr. Bieber, who credits Christianity with turning around his personal life. "...ugh, I hate to use this word, 'positive influences.'" [The pastor was with Bieber in] Mr. Bieber's hotel. He posted a video of them singing in his room, while [Bieber's spiritual advisor] howled in pain in the background. He was getting a tattoo. ...others got a similar marking, including Mr. Bieber and the model Hailey Baldwin. [After this, both the pastor and advisor] agreed to tattoo the sentiment about age and wisdom..."Better at 70"...on their thighs. [The pastor] pointed at his tattoo. "That's his handwriting," he said of Mr. Bieber's scrawl.
The iTithe
"'You can never have church here again. You're too big of a liability.' I go: 'Liability? My crowd is sober.'" Pastors today who want to start a ministry for those 40 and under follow a well-travelled path. ...they lease an old theater or club. ...they find great singers... A fog machine on stage is nice. A church should also have a catchy logo or catchphrase that can be stamped onto merchandise and branded - socks, knit hats... (An online pop-up shop on Memorial Day sold $10,000 in merchandise its first hour.) And lastly, churches need a money app...to tithe with a swipe on their smartphones. ...a personality questionnaire...breaks down natural abilities...into "spiritual gifts." - The New York Times, 3/18/2018
Trained and overseen by the Colorado Mental Wellness network...peer navigators...are not social workers [but they] help...homeless and mentally ill [library] visitors...connect - to society with...conversation, or to social services...helping...all of the branch libraries...adjust to their changing role in the community... In a city struggling with an ever-growing homeless population and increasing substance-abuse issues, there are more questions than ever. ...libraries are increasingly doubling as day shelters for the homeless, whose population was about 5,112 in the seven-county metro Denver region last year... "...we're moving out of crisis to solution." "...to get them into somewhere that feels safe. For a lot of people, that isn't the shelter. Even managing the shelter system isn't easy." Sit at the Central branch long enough, and the tension between the transient and homeless visitors and everyone else is palpable. ...the library is a living organism, a gathering place, whatever the community needs it to be. "I love that there's this place...where anybody can just be. It's the only public place in the world where you don't need a reason to be there." - Westword, 3/22-28/2018
Tuesday. In the morning I am on the corner where my crosstown takes me to work. In the Sinclair station is the clerk from Ethiopia. An old guy comes inside, telling her that he left his phone there. "You took it with you when you left," she tells him. "The black one?" "Yeah," he says. She's convinced him in about five seconds. I like this girl. Yesterday evening saw spring snowfall. This morning, the wet snow blankets every bare tree and overhead wire. Everywhere I am with my bike, melting snow finds its way onto me. After work I am right back on this same corner. The same bus comes along headed the other direction. When I get on this evening, there is a couple sitting up front. The guy looks wasted. When they get out, she will lead him off as he holds a cane, as if he is blind. The lady is a bleached honey blonde who is trading insults with a guy standing a couple of seats behind her. An old guy comes forward to interrupt the verbal fight. He has a short-brimmed hat with stripes and an embroidered skull and bones. The couple and the lady's adversary get out at the train station, and a couple of other wasted guy get on. Behind them comes a young woman who sits across from me. She hands me a bus schedule and asks me if I can read it. She sounds drunk. She tells the guy behind me that she "just got out of jail. I was in court this morning."
Wednesday. I get on the crosstown bus to work. In the front seat is a middle aged woman with red bruises under her right eye, as well as down the upper half of the right side of her face. She's in a black leather coat and her hair is unkempt. She gets out at a stop where an elderly guy with no socks under his shoes. He gets out at a stop where a tall guy gets on. He has grey 1970s hair, an untucked shirt under a jacket, and he is carrying a computer bag.
All day and all night, the great American convoys hum up the...highway...with their...troop transporters, bridge-building equipment...ammunition lorries...and petrol browsers. A fleet of U.S. helicopters...follow the roads east...artillery, missiles and generators - even prefabricated buildings - slung beneath their bellies. By late October, the multinational army was spread across the desert...now humped and distorted by thousands of armoured vehicles, command bivouacs, missile sites...artillery...fleets of bulldozers... The dust of a hundred new military roads hung in the air...in the fog, sat thousands of soldiers... So many Arab, Muslim armies now lay across the Saudi desert to create the theological foundation of our coalition...that no sacrifice was too much for the West. Ten years ago - almost to the very day...I had been with those Iraqis. ...sharing the same dangers, hiding in the same military positions. As the "war" progressed...those of us [outside of] the infamous "pools" discovered a conflict that did not fit so easily into the television studios, with their super patriotic anchormen, their verbose ex-generals, their model tanks and their bloodless sandpits. - Fisk
Saturday. On this the last day of the month, I was called into work. I am now on my last bus home from work. At one stop a middle-school kid waits with his bike. The driver stops and opens the door. The kid just stands there. He asks him if he knows how to put his bike on the rack at the front of the bus. He says no. I jump out and do it for him. It's funny how he just stood there, resigned to his fate. A few hours later, I am at a Pizza Hut behind my place, to pick up a late dinner around 8:30 PM. I see middle aged guy in shorts and a hoodie outside the door, and I smell a hustle. He comes inside to ask me, "I'm short, can you help me out with a pizza?" I decline, and he has not enough coins to satisfy the cashier. He is on his way. Out like a lamb...
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