...walking away with an integrative packet of sound information...insight into their...state of wholesomeness... Tears, sorrow and laughter alike have been presents... ...individual and communal transformation...have followed... - Colorado YOGA + Life Magazine, Winter - Spring 2018-2019
Thursday. Yesterday, my mom's ashes arrived. This evening, I'm on my way home.from work, coming through the neighborhood across the boulevard on which I live. On a residential street is a middle-aged blonde woman. She is standing next to the open car window, handing a loaf of white bread wrapped in plastic to a Hispanic woman. The latter replies "Thank you" in Spanish. The former returns to her own vehicle, the hatchback of which has a plastic tub with loves of white bread wrapped in plastic. The next scene to greet me I first hear from a block away. In three days, Cinco de Mayo will be upon us, complete with the largest Mexican flags anywhere. I wonder if I am hearing an early celebration. Earlier this winter, striking teachers were briefly out here lining this same corner. On each of the four corners of the intersection where I live are a handful of members of some local church. I don't know the denomination, but there is an awful lot of yelling and screaming about Jesus and how he will save your life. "We love Jesus, how about you?" There is a bullhorn and a sign or two. They are cheering and clapping. If it's the same church, they've been here before last year. I have to make my way around them to get through the crosswalk before turning traffic can see me coming. They had better be gone is a couple of hours when I will be going to sleep. The last one of them I see is a weird motherfucker. He's young and thin, and his shoulder-length hair is bleached so hard it's almost fucking white. He's moving up and down my sidewalk clapping his hands and giving a thumbs up to passing cars. He's across the street from where a young mom lost her life when her car was hit my a drunk driver.
Neo-hippies use patchouli oil to combat skin problems such as cleanliness. You smell this person before you see this person, and once you see this person you'll think "Ah, that smell makes sense." THE CULTURAL APPROPRIATION GUYS-N-GALS ..."soft" racism. ...demeaning marginalized minority cultures is "tres chic" and "totes adorbiz." ...staging "Oh, I didn't see you taking my photo" photos while wearing bindis, face paint, sombreros, headdresses, dashikis... THE MORE ZEN THAN YOU FOLKS This person will try to sell you a rock. Run away.
"We want to promote gender equity. This keeps women focused on a passion and...keep away from early marriages." With...Red Bull's Bianca Haw...pro cycling has a foothold in [Africa].
What's left of Dimebox, Texas, is as segregated as it ever was. We've come to understand the intersections that create many of the social issues we face. The wealth gap...lies in home equity....for generations to come. ..."generational wealth." ...the millennial cohort has faced tremendous difficulties with becoming homeowners and building wealth...and black families have struggled at far greater levels. ...90 percent of black first-time homeowners do it without any familial monetary assistance at all. ...passing land equity down to...family has dissipated as homes in predominately black neighborhoods are assessed at lower values and predatory loans and financial practices have siphoned wealth away from black families. - Elevation Outdoors, 5/2019
He...suffered from a disease that causes his hair to fall out... ...he acquired a doctor's note...to be exempt from the school's...no-hat and no-hood policy. ...staff wouldn't honor the rule exemption... [At another high school, he] was happy there. He formed a fast friendship with...the former assistant principal, before [the assistant principal was killed] in a dispute over parking. ...many teachers [there] are white and come from higher-income families than students they teach. Black Lives Matter...has an initiative calling for [less] security officers [and more] counselors, social workers, therapists and family liaisons. The idea is to be proactive - not punitive - with non-white students in particular. That's a big ask. ...more police in schools. ...could put minorities at risk. - Sentinel, 5/23/2019
The condition of the black family in the U.S. has become ever more fractured... ...the rate of suicide among...black youth has swelled to more than twice that of their white peers. ...leaving the 5 to 12 year old population most at risk of taking their own lives. Over the past five years, the rate of suicide among this age group has reportedly even accelerated. ...schools are bureaucratic institutions that exist largely to sustain themselves. Often times they are staffed with people who look nothing like us - who know little, if anything of our struggle. It is completely counter-intuitive to keep expecting schools, in a high-stakes testing environment to speak with authority to our problems.
...students with the best access to summer activities are more likely to be white, live in homes with higher median incomes and have college-educated parents. ... a Denver-based non-profit...is...by building awareness...partnering with...learning providers...to...integrate culture and history into their programming.
...extended sadness, toil and strife are experienced as normality for most of us. The young men with warrior spirits... ...the oppressive forces in the world know the power of these... The Black Panthers reminded them.
...the machine that steals the lives of young Black men. ...it's dangerous to be Black and male in the land of the free. The journey of an activist is not an easy road. The most painful part...is the wars you fight within your own community. ...an institutional model that feeds the whole versus the individual... ...respect...what was, what is and what is becoming. - Denver Urban Spectrum, 5/2019
...writing...about the aftermath of surviving childhood adversity, about immigrant life...about redefining home and family... ...second-generation immigrants of mixed-race kids, of the Internet age, of children of color living in the vestiges of Southern history and politics... - Asian Avenue, 5/2019
...I have witnessed this bilingual yoga program narrow cultural gaps. I have observed the cultivation of social justice and the debunkment of myths... The progressive...defeat of biases such as religious implications, gender connotations, and the nucleus of the "family oriented lifestyle"...
Spoken word is such a political art form... In a town that is so homogenous...trying to make everyone feel comfortable, safe and to not hate themselves. I think there is a bravery required to step into that room if you are like everyone else. - Colorado YOGA + Life Magazine
...District 9, which includes downtown, Five Points and Elyria Swansea...saw the most displacement of any neighborhood in the city. ...from 20th Street over to Colorado Boulevard. ...north Denver is beginning to see a saturation of development. More projects are starting to move south... [Toward me.] "Part of what makes Denver not affordable is...limited single family homes, we're not creating more...and...prices just keep going up and up."
...the city is experiencing...use-by-right development. ...developers can legally build...even if the neighborhood rejects. The projects...don't come through city council... - Life On Capitol Hill, 5/2019
...Denver...over the past eight years... Developers and big business have thrived...while low- and middle-income Denverites have struggled. City blocks and whole neighborhoods have been redeveloped while longtime residents have been displaced. Tech and other booming sectors have added thousands of white-collar jobs while many other workers have been left behind. ...departments...have struggled to fulfill their responsibilities without sufficient resources - including agencies that provide critical services to people in need... ...the city's...homeless-services agency, Denver's Road Home, "lacks the staff resources necessary to carry out its role." ...unable to plan strategically and develop effective policies. It was the second time in four years that [the] Denver Auditor...identified the need for more resources to be invested in Denver's Road Home. In...2015..."a lack of data analysis and meaningful reporting..." Denver's Road Home shrunk from...2014...to...2018, leaving...six full-time employees and one intern to cope... [Requests for] additional staff in 2017 and 2019...both...were denied. - Westword, 5/2-8/2019
...a newly completed examination and audit of Public Works by [the] City Auditor...reveals... "It's in the best interest of the taxpayers to keep a close eye on the new construction...with all the new bond money." Biking Boondoggle The high-profile Executive Director of Public Works...the hand-picked protege of Mayor Michael B. Hancock...was chosen to implement Hancock's "Mobility Action Plan" and thus take attention away from the City's knotty high-density developments. ...the City's 2019 budget [includes] more and more bicycle lanes. ...new bike lanes are...clogging traffic and destroying commerce.
Living in Denver is to live in a never-ending heart health ad. A bicyclist or jogger at every corner and in between every corner, a steady stream of Denverites walking their dogs. Check out "Colorado's Bicycling Manual" put out by the "Colorado Department of Transportation." Bicyclists and pedestrians must obey traffic signs and signals. Cyclists, look for the bike signs, stay in your bike lanes and bike boxes. - Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle, 5/2019
It's 24 hours later. I'm just home from work, around 8 PM. I can see the opposite corner across the street. Last evening, these corners were occupied by screaming, yelling, cheering church members exclaiming the positive benefits of Jesus. Tonight, at one corner are four Caucasian Mormon guys, complete with white shirts, ties, plastic name tags. It strikes me how alike they look, right down to the same haircuts. I'm headed to the Chinese place. I'm stepping behind a tall thin guy on his phone. I catch up to him and he asks me for change. When I reply that I have none, he asks me if I have a debit card. I tell him that my balance is low. He spots someone else coming out of their car in the parking lot and approaches him. The Chinese place is connected to a gas station. The clerk comes out of the gas station to shoo away the panhandler. As I am entering the eatery, I spot the Mormons coming across the street. Minutes later, I'm on my way back home. I pass the apartments where I see Mormons all the time, across the street from where I live. The four Mormon guys are inside what appears to be a tiny room with an open window. One of the guys is jumping in and out of the window for fun. The following day is my turn to work another Saturday. I'm passing through the neighborhood between mine and the bike trail. I glance down one residential street to spy a Caucasian mom pushing a child in a stroller. I'm down a hill and turn on a street with industrial shops. Around the corner comes a young hip Caucasian couple. The girl is in a track suit and thick framed glasses, straight from the 1970's. The guy is in shorts and has a lot of beard. Then I'm on the trail, down the avenue to the train, and downtown to a coffee place. When I come out, I spot a couple of monks walking down the pedestrian mall. I recognize one of them from my own street and up north where I changed buses last year. They both go into another coffee place across the pedestrian mall. Screaming Protestants and jumping Mormons, and caffeinated Catholic monks. The following day is Cinco de Mayo. I hit the festival in the park downtown. Along the way, I'm headed through the neighborhood between my home and the bike trail. I pass a jogging Caucasian guy with a flat top haircut. When I get to the fest, I realize that I'm out of film and, after the fest, make the pilgrimage to the camera store before grocery shopping at the supermarket next door. When I get back to my street, I pass one truck with a Mexican flag. Then I hear them. The crowd screaming about Jesus is back. On Cinco de Mayo. (?) The long white-haired freak is jumping around and pointing at cars.
Tuesday of the following week. I'm headed for the trail to work and am at the far end of the park between there and my home. I pass a Caucasian runner who greets me. Out on the trail, under grey skies, sis a single guy in a black hoodie. He kneels on a concrete alcove between the bike trail and the interstate just a few feet away. In front of him is an upside down bright yellow bicycle. At his side is a can of Modelo. Wednesday. I'm on my bike in the pouring spring rain, on my way to the gym before work. I take a shorter route, off the trail, which I don't remember taking before. At one rain-soaked and busy intersection, I look over my shoulder to discover a doughnut shop. Why not? I go inside for a doughnut . On the wall is reads, "A Kansas City Legend," and "Hand made doughnuts." The place is a revolving door of polite men in boots, all purchasing doughnuts. These guys sound as if they know their doughnuts. "Are you out of fritters?" one asks a clerk. Another orders a manager's dozen, he guesses. "And I'll take a small coffee, I guess." "Right on," says one of the clerks. She's convinced that I'm having fun riding out in the ran. She tells me that when she gets home, she will take her dog out to pull her on her skateboard. I'm getting ready to leave after my doughnut. A drenched woman in pigtails, an open soaked leather jacket and a Super Mario Brothers T-shirt sticks her head inside the door to ask me for a dollar.
I believe it was last month when I read an interview with a local twenty-something poet, in a weekly newspaper. She laments the passing away of the city streets upon which she grew up, and upon which those who have become infamously known as "longtime residents" continue to be infamously "displaced." One of those streets is named Inca. I've never been down the stretch of Inca which I am traversing upon my way home from work Thursday evening. Around 8 PM, dusk is settling on a snowy spring day. I'm headed down Inca, south of downtown and a couple blocks from the interstate. I immediately feel as though what I am seeing is one of the last blocks untouched by the cancerous redevelopment which reaches out to every corner of the metro area. For the next couple of blocks, I'm passing home after weathered little one and two story home. Some appear to be turn-of-the-century. Others appear to be adobe. All evoke the style of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Smack in the middle of one block is a new glass box of a "home" which Is twice as high as the old ones. Against the grey sky, it glows orange from within. The wall facing the street appears as one big pane of glass. High on one wall is a flat screen TV. On a couch against the opposite wall is a red-haired, bearded hipster in shorts. The next morning, I'm coming back this way. I will have to wait for a train before going to work, and I will have to wait for another headed home. This is what happens when you live across the tracks. Before either train, I watch a guy walking his own bike toward me. His tire is completely off his front rim. It's somehow both hanging off the rim and locked to the frame. The tube is completely missing.
The following day is my turn to have off. I'm on my way to get blood work done for an upcoming doctor appointment. I ride to the train, which whisks me across town to a medical office park. It's a shorts wait to have my blood drawn before I am up the street to an IHOP. I'm sitting in a booth eating breakfast. Behind me, a woman approaches a table with children. She asks them which animal they want her to make out of balloons for them. She then proceeds to rattle off a seemingly endless list of creatures both real and imagined. She picks a dragonfly and demonstrates how it's made before their eyes. Later in the afternoon, across town back in my own neighborhood, I'm on my way to grocery shopping. I stop into a deathburger down the street from the supermarket. Inside is a family of what appear to be kids who dress like they are on their way to prison. Their Dad looks as if he's out of prison. They occupy a corner of the place while a group of homeless guys hold court at a table nearby. They are discussing the least favorable places to panhandle when one begins telling another to "shut up." Yet another homeless guy comes inside and over to the group. One o them tells him, "Gimme a cigarette. I need two cigarettes right now."
Zal, as he was known...not a typical diplomat, not a typical ambassador. Zal liked control. He rode in the cockpit of the U.S. military C-130 Hercules... "He likes to watch." ...he flew to the provinces and handed out windup radios to women himself. ...Khalilzad spoke English and...corrected his interpreter's translations. Zal...fed off the media like a personality feeds off a cult. He threw elaborate press conferences at the U.S.embassy...calling on reporters by name. Surrounded by attractive young female aides in hip, occasionally tight clothing, dubbed by some as "Zal's Gals," and always slightly late for any event... - Whisky Tango Foxtrot, by K. Barker, 2012
...alienation as "a mode of experience in which the person experiences himself as an alien." ...the alienated person is out of touch with himself. These young people appeared to believe that they had come to Canada to avoid experiencing themselves as an alien. They equated emigration with ego-preservation. ...sacrifice of self-hood... They...trust their own decisions...much more than...the culture or the group. They saw the parenting generation as trapped...unresponsive... Although...not...subdued by their society, neither were they able to influence its attitudes... ...they were alienated from their society, but not from themselves. - Williams
Mothers' Day
Sunday. I get home from a Mothers' Day brunch with the sister. We toasted Mom and had some selected buffet foods for a total of $110, not including tip. We were up on a hill, looking across the neighborhoods between us and downtown. The sister dropped me off back home, where I continued rearranging furniture and relocating stuff, moving into the space mom left behind. In the late afternoon, I took out the small easy chair she lived in, now stained with food, out for large item trash pickup in a couple of days. I also took out a small broken table, part of a decades old set of Ethan Allen furniture which my parents purchased for the new home they had built. In Oklahoma. The home was complete in 1977. Now it's next to the chair she adopted from our previous residence across town, along with a patio umbrella, from the same period as the furniture. Green with white polka dots. And a plastic patio table from our old place on the east side of central Denver. Up to five large items for pickup per month. These are the dynamics of how pieces of a life are removed. Just in time for Spring cleaning. Across the parking lot, one of my neighbors is working on a truck which he and a buddy have been toiling over since at least last week. His pal even set up a tarp on a frame over part of the vehicle to work on it out in the rain and snow. The guy yells at a diapered toddler to return to return inside every time the child comes out of the back gate to see what he is doing. Before I take out these pieces referred to as "large items", and after brunch, I clean out a drawer with her CDs and DVDs. I realize that I can take these to a used media store and turn them into cash. I give the place a call, and they tell me they are "selective these days." I'm sure every place is. I grab a bus up the street to the train station. In the bus shelter, a guy asks someone if they want any marijuana. He replies that he doesn't smoke marijuana. A woman in the shelter says, "I smoke marijuana."
I jump o one crosstown bus, along with a drunk with a cane talking about owning a rifle and shooting people. The driver tells me that the crosstown bus behind him is leaving sooner than he is, and he doesn't know why I got onto his. I'm the odd passenger? Okay. I get on the other bus and the driver of this one is shuffling up to the door. He asks a young passenger why he walked away from the bus as he's ready to depart. "Patience is a virtue, or so I heard," the driver says to me. Not all drivers for this city's transit system agree. The drunk wanders over from the other bus and this driver tells him to sober up before he boards a bus. We're off without him, and I'm out at the music shop. It turns out the guy looking over my wares "isn't very busy today." He will have my collection examined no at least 45 minutes. I mention that there's a lot of Pavarotti and Willie Nelson. He says they have a lot of that already. I have plenty of time for lunch at a chicken place a few doors down. I'm inside having lunch at a place frequented by African-Americans. At one point as I am eating, I realize that Look Away Dixieland is coming over the sound system. Inside is an old guy in his Sunday best, a high school girl in hot pants, a bald guy with tattoos. Across the alley is yet another big red brick building several stories tall. A chain link fence is around it and it's slated for demolition. For dessert, I try a fried Oreo cookie. Interesting. It's like a poor man's beignet. I think it's been at least 45 minutes and I go outside to my bike. A street couple are standing next to it meeting each other for the first time. The guy was here first, stretching his arms out in a gesture known only to those who inhabit the urban spaces. They exchange small talk as I take off my bike lock. "What's your name?" asks the woman. "Loki," replies the guy. "I'll never remember that," she answers. She asks him to meet her at a certain location. She's off to continue her trek down the sidewalk. "Women..." he says to the street.
Thursday. I'm out of work early. After dinner at the supermarket, I'm pedaling through the neighborhood between mine and the bike trail, I'm at an intersection on my regular route. Around the corner comes a nineteen-year-old girl straight out of the 1970's. She's on a ten-speed. Long dark hair blows behind her from under a helmet. She's in a tank top and shorts. She sees me stop t let her pass through. As she cruises past me, she says, "Thanks. Have a good one."
Servant's Daughter
Wednesday of the following week. I get to the gym early. My gym is inside a city recreation center. This morning, the indoor basketball court is host to a graduation for a high school senior class which appears to have a proportion of students who are developmentally disabled. Most are dressed in evening attire. A couple of teenage girls approach. They don't sound disabled. One says to the other, "Let me call my dad and put him on speakerphone. I call him Servant because he serves me breakfast." Servant does not pick up his phone. A middle-aged woman exits the rec center. She recognizes Servant's daughter. They greet each other. The younger tells the older, "I'm going to my fiancee's graduation. We're getting married in August sometime." A vague wedding date when the bride's Servant will walk her down the aisle...after breakfast. I wonder how he is with wedding cakes? A teenage kid also exits the rec center. He's leaning on a walker as he propels himself with his right foot while he drags his left along the concrete. I head inside when the gym opens. One disabled teenage guy is speaking loudly, asking everyone he sees, "What's up?" Surely unintentionally, he's doing Will Ferrell's part in an opening scene from the movie Night at the Roxbury.
Stanley Marketplace
"We're guided by our Stanifesto, which reminds us that we care a lot about being a positive force in the neighborhoods and communities we're a part of," says...the chief storyteller... With...10 boutiques and five fitness-related businesses...including salons for your hair and nails.
The Denver Central Market.
"I love the hustle and bustle of DCM. I like to grab a chai latte and a breakfast burrito and pretend to blend in with the people working on their laptops."
Zeppelin Station
The hipster mecca in RiNo...wants to make sure that your lunch is more than just a quick conversation. - Thirst Colorado, 5-6/2019
Unlike on other embeds, the officers here were so strapped, spread so thin, they had no time to worry about what I was doing or writing. Children did not crowd around the Humvees, asking for pens and candy, as...in the rest of Afghanistan. When we drove through a village, the women and children ran away. NATO and the United States claimed to have killed one thousand Taliban fighters in ten weeks - still, the militants kept coming, an endless army. - Barker
The first national exile conference...was held in Montreal in the spring of 1970. The Pan-Canada Conference of Deserters and Resisters... The exile organizations...discussed...draft resistance, the GI movement, desertion, and the underground railroad. ...the American movement was recognizing the exiles, and the exiles were throwing off their "nonpolitical" stance. ...the conference...was one of those rare times when...liberals to Marxist-Leninists...come together for...sensitive political communication... - Williams
Thursday. I'm back at the doughnut shop on the way to work. There appear to me a Caucasian male population who come in here for a dozen doughnuts, for the office. They all sound to me as if they are embarrassed about their lack of ability to decide which doughnuts to choose. They are ill prepared to return to their childhood confidence in knowing exactly which ones are the best. Or perhaps this kind of choice involves the non-masculine process of "art." One guy comes in and accepts the manager's offer of a "banana" doughnut. sample. "Banana," the guy says. "Yeah, okay. Awesome. I'll take that one." It's painful for him to continue to choose, like taking a test. "Awesome" is a popular Caucasian word. It's a cool spring morning. A bearded hipster in a knit cap comes inside. He's a regular and the clerk appears surprised about his choice of beverage. "It's funny," he says, "because I have to explain this to everyone in here." He's either stopped drinking, or he is beginning to take up, caffeine. I can't make out which. I don't want to know. A second Caucasian guy comes inside. Shirt and tie, slacks, argyle socks, and raw leather shoes. He giggles after every other sentence. The manager is successful also in selling this guy on a banana doughnut. "They're only here on Thursdays," the manager tells the guy. Sure as hell, the guy replies, "Awesome!" The guy tells the manager, "You know more about doughnuts, you know better what's good." He follows this with another giggle.
Memorial Day weekend, it's my turn to have Saturday off. I had put some furniture, a table which is falling apart and the chair my late mom sat in all the time, outside for "large item" trash pickup. I did this on a day indicated by my copy of the recycle calendar. The stuff was never picked up. An email arrived in my inbox from the HOA, warning all residents about a fine for leaving large items outside on inappropriate days, and asking for any photos of residents or non-residents caught in the act. Today, I notice a pickup truck parked in our parking lot, I suspect owned by a resident. My mom's favorite chair and the table part of a furniture collection once prized by my late parents now reside in the bed of a pickup truck of someone I will likely never meet. After a late dinner, I run across the street for a snack. As I am coming back, I spy a guy on the corner with some kind of long bag over his shoulder. He looks as if he's a street character. I don't recognize him. I first see him whistle at a guy on a passing scooter. Unfortunately the corner where he stands with his long bag is one most convenient for me to take back across the street. He asks me if he can borrow my ID to purchase alcohol. He appears to be of legal age.
The day after, I head out to the waterpark which opened yesterday. I'm across the boulevard and rolling down a residential street. I stop at a stop sign. On the corner is a teenage kid with a laminated name tag and a container with a lid. At first, he looks as if he may be doing yard work, as he's at the edge of a front lawn and is killing time with a twig in his hand, waiting for someone to come along. That someone is me. He begins giving me a pitch about his wares for sale, hence the container. He has games and candy for sale to anyone with children. The sales allow him to "stay away from drugs" he tells me. The games age pictures which a child may color and can be erased. We're not talking about kindles or i pads. I don't ask him why he agreed to spend his time on a residential corner, on the afternoon before Memorial Day, in a neighborhood next to the poorest neighborhood in the metro area. I simply tell him that I am on my way to the pool. I make my way over to the bike trail. Lately, I take this trail north, into downtown. Four years ago, I began taking it south, on an hour and fifteen minute ride to work , six days a week for two years and three months. My employment, long story. The ride, beautiful year round. Each day, I would pass the waterpark along the trail to work. The last summer at that job, I went swimming every weekday before work. Last year, I took the train back and forth to a trail head for the final stretch of trail to the waterpark. This afternoon, I elect to do this ride for the first time in almost two years. The first half of the trail along the way follows the Platte River. Two years ago, I would see the occasional individual homeless tent on the riverbank. I see the same when I take this same trail north into downtown where I currently work. It's now two years later, and along the same trail south, there is a stretch where the back has a long line of homeless tents and encampments. On the way home along this same stretch, the municipality of Englewood has zip tied a couple of pages in plastic to branches of trees. They are, I assume, for the homeless. They are official notices that, for the next two months, these homeless encampments will be removed. As I read one of the two notices, a guy comes out of a tent with a small propane canister and yells "Hey!"
I get home and run across the street for a quick dinner of Chinese food. I forget my book, but that turns out to be okay. I'm watching one table and listening to another behind me. To my side is a couple of young adult women and three kids. They are all Hispanic and dressed in suits and dresses. The youngest is a daughter, who spins and dances next to the table. Behind me are four clean cut young Hispanic guys. The sound as if they are discussing street racing. One is doing most of the talking. All are using "fuck" throughout the conversation. The loquacious one says something about putting children to sleep at daycare, before he mentions that he "popped a tire racing." he goes on to mentions that, "We crashed. We ran." He also claims to have been charged with seven felonies. He mentions that his bond was reduced. They mention a local speedway, and I listen to them watching a motorcycle racing video on a phone.
...we pick up [a draft] dodger and his girl...scouting for land to buy in British Columbia. His "thing" is hydroponics, growing plants without soil, and he and twelve fellow exiles...are moving [there] to build a "city" of geodesic domes. - Williams
