January 2020, 'Two Dollars For You Or Pay My Homeowner's Insurance?' And "Hey, Big Face!"

     ...to transition a baby or toddler space into a bona fide kids bedroom...for school-age kids who have formed (strong!) opinions...  Local interior designers say it is possible to fold in your kids' preferences without going down the theme-room rabbit hole.  ...preselect 10 kids room photos you find online.  "I'm an advocate for finding pieces that can work through teenage years if done right."  ...when picking the...rug.  ...ones with viscose, can't handle kid-caliber action.  - Colorado Parent, 1/2020

     ...an election..."flipped" the Denver school board, giving control to members backed by the teachers union...  ...Denver school board elections are often...with candidates backed by the Denver Classroom Teachers Association on one side and those backed by ["] education reform groups ["] on the other...  "Last night, somebody was like 'Oh, we have a school board member that wears his hat backwards.  He's a thug.'"  He pulled out a black baseball cap and put it on backward.  …"this school board member looks like his district."  All three newly elected board members...pledged not to close struggling schools or open new charter schools...
     ...1) acknowledge the heterogeneity of boys and men and the unique needs of diverse populations; 2) develop culturally appropriate male-focused screening tools...  - Denver Urban Spectrum, 1/2020

     …"so many sex therapists, so many doctors, so many sex workers...started approaching us almost immediately."  ...for women who identified as queer or feminist, or just people who wanted a better experience.  …"no matter what level they were at in their sexual journey or their feminist journey.  We just did the first in a four-part series about sex-positive parenting.  ...we're going to do one on sexuality and media literacy one, and another on porn and social media.  We also always do a ropes class..."  - Out Front Magazine, 12/18/2019

     New Year's Day.  I'm headed downtown to meet the sister.  I take the bus to the train station, where I disembark with a guy who has his bike.  He tells someone when he boards a connecting bus, "Thirteen years in prison cured my criminal mind."  My own connecting bus takes me downtown, where I head over to the downtown deathburger homeless central.  In a booth are a couple of young guys who sound as if they are from Great Britain.  On the other side of the booth is a young guy who appears as if he's homeless.  It sounds as though they are getting a kick out of him.  A woman in line begins reciting a bible verse.  Her friend behind her tells her to shut up.  She replies that she can say, "whatever the fuck I want."  She turns to one of the Brits to say, "I like your sweater, can I have it?"  She says she likes to meet people.
     The following week, Tuesday after work.  I run into one of my nextdoor neighbors, each of us at our respective front doors in the dark.  I mention to him my encounter on New Year's Eve morning, with the townhome resident who made his threat concerning his recycle can.  I elected not to make a police report, but to mention it to this neighbor, who is our HOA president.  He's aware of him, tells he that he always appears to be drunk, and that he lives with both a female and a child.  That this character lives with a child is perhaps the most disturbing news of all.  Our HOA president's advice is to avoid him, along with his entire half of the townhome complex.  Striking advice from someone at the head of an association in charge of the place he lives.  I've heard him mention the other half of this place a few years past.

     ...the type of community that charms its visitors...  "We get to live in the kind of place we'd want to visit."  ...a thriving business scene and vibrant neighborhoods.  ...the Denver Inter-Neighborhood Cooperation..."strives to...unite the neighborhoods."  ...its focus [is] attracting more young and diverse people...  [Denver's mayor] said, "we had to turn our attention to the issues facing highly desirable and successful cities."  - Life On Capitol Hill, 1/2020

     ...the only ADA-compliant emergency shelter for men in Denver is...a warehouse across the street from gleaming RiNo luxury apartments and high-end yoga studios.  If someone with a disability is at all able to get themselves off the floor in the morning, they can expect to find themselves sleeping on it.  "It blows my mind to think that we've been granting dollars to these entities for so long and had never had an interest in whether or not they were accessible"...Councilwoman...CdeBaca adds.  [One particular shelter] designed its building to ease...trauma...with warm lighting...soft color palates...a...kitchen with inspirational sticky notes on the walls...
     Riding to dispensaries and cultivation tours on weed-friendly buses...playing dab-and-disc-golf tournaments...are now receiving official licensing...  ...cannabis painting class...runs...out of the Coffee Joint...  …"my painters...do things...better...artistically the more stoned they are.  If I'm painting samples for a class...I reward myself for finishing a painting with a dab.  Keeps motivation...  ...I'll partake during class, but...keep that to a minimum so I don't forget the next steps!  ...gradient backgrounds...allow people to...get into a vibe with the process of painting...  I had a visitor from out of town over-consume and pass out...  The body high...makes the event a much more spiritual-like experience.  I was...grateful to the staff at the Coffee Joint for their...expertise on over-consumption...  - Westword, 1/16-22/2020

     The very middle of the month falls upon the very middle of the week, during the first month of 2020.  I'm on my way to the gym before work.  I stop at the supermarket downtown first.  I'm in line at the check stand where I hear the cashier conversing with her bagger.  They both go to the junkyard for parts with which to repair their motor vehicles.  "I'm 54 and I've learned a lot in my time."  "I'm also 54," I interject, "and I haven't learned anything."  "That's too bad," she replies, "I sure have."  It's a morning bereft of irony.  Surely ignorance is bliss.  Outside, I am unlocking my bike as a young woman wanders along.  She appears young enough to be a high school student.  She's cheerfully asking passersby for, "two dollars?"  She has no takers.  Her last attempt is from a woman who is speaking Spanish into her phone.  She gets around to asking me.  I reply that I am saving my pennies for my homeowner's insurance.  She reacts by sitting down on the concrete and opening a folder full of documents.  Friday.  On the way to work, my disc brakes are finally so clogged with road grit that I have no brakes.  I will have to wait for my paycheck one week from today to get them serviced.  Until then I will need my other bike.  Sunday, I am across the street at the Mexican place for dinner.  The waitress tells me in Spanish that more Caucasian residents are coming in.  She asks me how to say some sentences in English.  I'm now teaching English to Mexican waitresses.

     Executive assistants...women whose positions vanished are now in their 50s and 60s...the only jobs...some...can get are low-paying and physically demanding...  The workers taking their place...make half as much money...  ...the [new] model...has...remote executive assistants in five low-cost cities...who support executives in places like Manhattan and Los Angeles.   ...partners were increasingly away from the offices...  "If somebody's not in our office, yet we have...their assistant [there], where's the disconnect?"  ...partners and directors...call travel services themselves.  [They] keep their personal lives separate...no one is picking up their dry-cleaning.  "This model offers new benefits and broader opportunities and is...meeting changing business needs."  "We were the glue for everything.  We were so important [once upon a] time."  ...the frenetic pace...and flatter hierarchies.  [These have replaced] separate dining rooms, reserved parking spots, private offices and personal assistants that help run their lives...  [At] retirement parties for the departing assistants [they were handed] $500 gift cards...  ...some...worried about paying their bills sold the gift cards for cash.  Up to 10 million women across six mature economies...will need to switch roles or careers by 2030...  ...women will have more trouble than men...greater responsibilities at home and less freedom to move geographically.  - The Wall Street Journal, 1/18-19/2020

     Who doesn't want to work in yoga pants without a commute?  Until you realize you can't remember the last time you showered or spoke to someone that isn't the baby - or the dog.  ...to build a community of women who work alongside each other.  The space was designed by...female architects and designers.  ...five private offices...a mother's nursing room, a library nook, and a vanity area.  ...in-house salon services, dry-cleaning services, pop-up fitness classes, a refrigerator stocked with healthy food, and a regular speaker series.  Leadership meetings, meditation sessions...and nap rooms.  ...grocery delivery...shoe repair...  - Colorado Parent, 2/2020

     "I was born in 1940 into a...harem...a luxury of the bourgeoise."  ...a place of seclusion for a patriarch [and his extended family to reside all together.]  ...behind the "hudud", or sacred frontier...high walls and...iron gates.  ...the doorkeeper was the enforcer.  ...the females rarely went out...only with permission...vailed and escorted by a male family member.  The one connection to the outside world was a large radio...for men's ears only...  "My mother doesn't know the alphabet..."  [At] a family council of senior male members.  Debate was heated, but...decreed that...female cousins could go to school.  "If I had been born two years earlier I would not have obtained an education.  Historically, only the king and his advisors had information...  In 1991, I got a satellite dish.  It brought CNN...also...the first Arab satellite stations, and suddenly all the boundaries between private and public...palace and street, and all...dichotomies vanished."  - Wright

     …[un]confirmed claims that one man...regularly patrolling...had stolen...possessions...  ...on a Facebook page...residents...argue that taking possessions from the homeless - drug addicts, in particular - would actually help get them off the streets.  "'We were totally gonna clean up this garbage and pack up...but then we got high...and didn't.'  If y'all [sic] tend to imagine homeless folks as a class of angels or saints, grow up.  If one gets involved, one soon learns...poorly made decisions based on sloth and self-involvement.  And we don't help when we pander."  - Sentinel, 1/23/2020

     The propaganda will start by blaming the victims...and don't understand the disparities between the rich and poor, not giving any credit to the socio-economics in our society.  They will make broad generalizations, such as work harder or they are drug addicts, to...discredit...policy changes.  And...continue to be fooled by...propaganda that pits Americans against one another...
     Vote out the activist politicians...allowing people to camp in the streets.  ...this is primarily a drug, substance-abuse and mental-illness problem...  - Westword, 1/30-2/5/2020

     Wednesday.  I'm at the gym where I see my friend behind the desk.  I find out that my gym membership is so low because, when we first met a year ago, she gave me a disabled discounted membership.  One day this week, I don't remember which, three different street guys ask me for a lighter.  One guy asks me for spare change because he's hungry, telling me to fuck off when I don't, on the corner where I work.  Thursday, I walk into work.  An employee is there from another one of our stores.  She tells me a terrible story.  Our usual morning person, who started with us late last year, very quickly became one of our best people.  Reliable, fast, a tireless cleaner of our new location.  A close friend to the other guy here, something I believe he has a hard time finding.  Just yesterday, he and she were discussing one of her sons, part of her extended and raucous brood over which she does her dogged and thankless best to keep in line.  Her youngest son, seventeen, was in a park late yesterday afternoon.  Not a long walk from my home.  He likes to pick fights.  He picked one with someone who had a gun, and put at least one bullet into him.  Someone else drove him to the neighborhood clinic just down the street from me, instead of directly to a hospital.  He was dropped there, and the clinic had to call an ambulance to take him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if his mom has to do all the work, perhaps without any help, to arrange his funeral.  Perhaps as she did during his life.
     Sunday is a busy one.  I head out to grocery shop at sunrise, and as I've ferried some food home from the supermarket downtown after work, today's trip is short.  Then I'm off to drop off and pick up film.  I'm on the bike with no brakes, which I am taking to drop off at work, where I left my other bike.  I discovered my boss used to fix bikes and he's going to take a look at this one.  So yesterday I decided to take the bus home having hatched this plan.  So I ride to work with a sliver of braking capacity.  Along the way I stop and pick up some soda for work.  I arrive and make the switch before I'm off to the camera shop.  I cross a street before it hits me, I can take a bike trail along a thoroughfare which will take me straight there.  I get there early and grab an early lunch at another supermarket next door.  I'm eating chicken wings outside the shop as customers filter in.  One is a family with two tiny daughters there to have photos taken.  A few minutes later the door is unlocked and the two girls are each sitting for photos.  The last is a toddler.  After her photos, she holds up her doll and exclaims, "[Now it's] Baby's turn!"  From the back comes my Tall Photogenic Hippie Goddess.  I apologize that I didn't let he rewind my film.  Then it's off to yet another library used book sale.  This one of course would be all the way across town.  But the high is supposed to be 51 degrees F today, a nice reprieve from this month's frosty mornings.  Outside of the camera shop I grab a bus to the train.  The driver sounds as if he's from Louisiana.  At the train station, I almost leave my bike on the rack in front of the bus.  It's the first time I remember doing this.  Perhaps it's a sign that I'm relaxed after several months of having to scheme how I will pay the expenses of mine which all arrive around the beginning of a new year.  The train whips me across town, where I catch one bus out to the municipality of Aurora.  During the ten years I put in with a previous company, I came out here by train and bus and foot.  These were early morning adventures before sunrise.  Other times were layovers waiting for connecting buses after sundown.  This afternoon I have a short ride from the bus to the library.  Last month I was at another library sale where the pickings were slim and being sniffed over by stragglers.  Today's sale is hopping.  I ask how long I have.  "Until four or until we run out of books," I'm told.  Patrons laugh.  I get a soda which I am allowed to take into the sale.  I make it back to the stop shortly before the bus hauls me back to the train, which drops me at a station where the bus home collects me straight away.
     The following Monday, I'm at work with my coworker who is familiar with socioeconomic institutional mistrust.  He spots an acquaintance making his way through an intersection outside the window.  The middle-aged guy in his worn and dirty hoodie and jeans appears to be s street person.  My coworker steps out and yells, "Hey, Big Face!"  Big Face steps inside for a moment.  I think my coworker introduces him as Terry, I'm not sure.  He asks Big Face if he's not working.  He replies that no, "He's mad at me."  "Your boss?" he asks him.  "The big boss," he replies.  "Because you didn't show up [at work] for a little while?" he asks him.  "Yeah," he replies quietly.  After work, I'm coming up the steepest hill on my ride home in the dark this time of year.  I move over to the left side of the street as an SUV approaches the stop sign, at the intersection at the top of the hill.  The vehicle stays behind the sign without proceeding.  This isn't unusual in my neighborhood.  Most vehicles, with the exception of the city buses, either go too fast or stay put for inordinate periods.  I'm walking the hill as I sometimes do.  I watch as a middle-aged disheveled woman slowly, slowly wanders in front of the vehicle's headlights.  As the vehicle is finally able to continue on its way, she turns as if she wants to address the driver, perhaps ask a question.  I get the feeling that she may want to ask directions, or for some help.  She's dressed in clothes which appear warm enough, but she appears to be wearing a long sweater which is falling off to reveal a bare left shoulder.  I last see her standing by a no parking sign, almost as if she thinks it's a bus stop.

     "I want someone that doesn't...approach this from a crime-ridden...point of view.  Law and order is not what Aurora needs.  We need someone who understands the full diversity of Aurora..."  "...what you've given us and what your systems have given us...since 1978 in Aurora, are basically used car salesmen."  Following months of protest sparked by [an] in-custody death of [a] 23-year-old...in late August.  "I have never seen such a fracture, in my 24 years, with the public."  Much of the recent violence has involved area teens, some of whom have ties to gangs, according to various social media accounts and anti-gang crusaders.  "This is 200, and...organizations are still trying to intervene and prevent gangs in a 1993 way.  They're not necessarily identifying with a park or a school or numbers or anything like that...now, it's six or seven kids who play Fortnite together."  ...he nearly walked out of a recent community forum after attendees failed to discuss youth violence.  "Aurora has no idea what they're doing at all - none whatsoever.  As a kid...I'd think they don't give a f[uck] about us.  ...and if you go to these meetings, they don't."  - Sentinel, 1/23/2020

     Wednesday.  I'm approaching the front door to work.  On the opposite corner is a homeless guy, his chin sticking out of the hood of his coat.  He's yelling, "YOU EXPECT ALL THESE THINGS FROM ME!"  It makes me think of the guy I work for, who is taking time out of his busy day to help me get the brakes on my bike working again.  I mention to my coworker that I am running down to the bike shop.  He has so far brought two different newspapers to work, the last one in the kind of plastic bag used for home delivery.  These are the very first newspapers I've ever seen him with.  I suspect that he's stealing them.  I head over there to pick up some mineral oil, as my owner instructed.  Inside are four employees discussing new bike lanes in the city, mentioning that the city council passed a resolution giving bikes the right of way in bike lanes.  Bike as opposed to...what exactly in bike lanes, you may ask?  Electric scooters.  Back at work, my coworker mentions that our other coworker's son, who was shot and killed last week, was a member of the gang known as the Bloods.  The Westside Bloods.  His killing a drive-by.  She is due back to work on Monday.   On Thursday, the owner comes into work.  He opens the reservoirs on each of my brakes and fills them with the mineral oil I bought.  He works the brakes to remove the air bubbles, replaces one gasket, and replaces the covers.  I have brakes again, thanks to my boss.  I'm ready for the next month.

December 2019: "Mayor Fucknoy", "Get Off That Bike", A Guy With "666" All Over His Pants, "My Neighbor. She's A Piece Of Shit."

     The East Colfax Neighborhood [had a meeting which did not] "target renters' typical issues" [nor] "the level of people...at risk of displacement [being] 70 percent.  ...never...that upwards of 40 percent were listed as living in poverty [south of Colfax].  ...let alone the...Registered Neighborhood Organization...to actually do something about it and to protect these populations.  That was like another universe, somebody else does that stuff."  [Someone new] was elected president of the RNO at the beginning of 2019.  At its October meeting, the organization voted unanimously on a resolution declaring that preventing involuntary displacement was it's number-one priority,  ...RNOs have long been...often viewed...by the city...as the voice of their neighborhoods [but] have a reputation for representing only a certain slice of the city [which] has the time and resources to make it to hours-long evening meetings and write public comments...   A slice that is older, wealthier and whiter than its general population.  "...property owners...run...them..."  [Denver's] Neighborhood Planning Initiative...guides future development according to community desires.  ...there was no requirement that RNOs reach out to non-members.  Some residents...are worried that it doesn't establish enough protections against displacement.  The East Colfax Neighborhood Association has...its own neighborhood plan.  [It] would require RNOs to...ensure that it mirrors socioeconomic diversity of their geographical boundaries.  - Westword, 11/28 - 12/4/2019

     ...the most bustling, population-rich core of the city...  Capitol Hill is the densest neighborhood in the city.  Eight of the 15 D 10 neighborhood tracts surveyed...have a population density that exceeds 15,000 residents per square mile.  ...the number of people on our streets is significantly higher than the 71,000 residents who live here.  We have more arterial commuter through traffic in our neighborhoods than other districts...  - Life on Capitol Hill, 12/2019

     [During] his second to last meeting, before protesters forced councilmembers to move rooms, one activist called [the outgoing mayor of the municipality of Aurora "a fuckboy"] and presented a cake that said "bye mayor [fuckboy]."  [The outgoing mayor responded with,] "Thank you.  I hear from other people...saying, 'What in the hell is happening in this city?'  And, 'Who are these people getting up and speaking...?'  ...with...council members...there's some that I never got through to."
     [The new mayor of the municipality of Aurora was sworn in on December 2, and] said he would lead meetings with a "big gavel"...  [A member of] Abolish ICE...created [a] five-foot long gavel [brought] to city hall [with which the new mayor posed for photos].  During the last meeting [some] city council members wore...t-shirts, often association [sic] with the Blue Lives Matter movement.  In apparent response [a party chair] passed out t-shirts with...silhouettes of...two new [progressive] lawmakers...  - Sentinel, 12/5/2019

    ... peasants flocked to the cities...  But this did not make them "urban."  "The values of a civil society are...created by citizens, and one or two generations...in the cities under a totalitarian regime had no chance of becoming citizens, politically or culturally."
     It was "COWGIRL Night"...in [one] section of Bangkok.  [From children to twentysomething women wore] sheriff's badges, high black-suede boots, and [denim cut-offs revealing their bare] buttocks.  The evening was sponsored by Pepsi Max, whose...logo appeared on the [children's and] girls' cowboy hats.  A voice over the loudspeaker announced that all major credit cards were accepted.  The [children and] girls ran their...hands over...Western oil riggers, stockbrokers, and tourists...  One girl with...overdeveloped breasts...wore a red kerchief...  "I'm Khmer Rouge, darling, Aren't they cool!" referring to...guerillas who murdered over a million [of their fellow countrymen and women and children] in Cambodia...around the time she was born.  Hostesses [were] marveling at each other's sheriff's badges.  ...they were all looking for...foreign businessmen...to set them up in apartments.  They lacked the hard mouths and cash register eyes...among the prostitutes in...Samarkand.  ...the girls put their hands together and bowed in Buddhist supplication before they mounted the bar to gyrate...  ...44.2 percent of Thai prostitutes worked in the agriculture sector before entering the sex industry.   - Kaplan

     ...soldiers who...return to...peacetime, often describe combat as the peak event of their lives.  After an experience like that, "everything is anticlimactic."  …"everything" is all that [most] have ever experienced: work, love, children, family, friends...  ...women have inhabited a world that warriors happily leave behind, or arrive at - only to destroy.  [It's} as if [the] Warrior Caste had a kind of historical inevitability, transcending...everything we know as culture.  - Ehrenreich

     ...loud children, their faces covered in sores; their heads shaved against lice.  The dust of old carpets and the soot of coal fires blended...as though I were seeing a...lithograph or daguerreotype of Kashgar.  Kashgar was populated by Turks...whose culture had been ground down by Mao's awful threshing machine.  ...hippie back packers and similar Western travelers.  Kashgar was...a nexus...of this 1990s hippie route.  There were...packs of young men and boys...with hardened...faces...robbed...of their childhood innocence.  The China one-child policy...had already collapsed in the minority areas.  Overcrowding, unemployment...  ...a Moslem resurgence...  ...the lack of a burgeoning middle class...  - Kaplan

     A week or two ago, I was out at the corner where I live.  I noticed a bicycle chained up to a pole, a bike I hadn't seen there before.  It was spray-painted white -  a "ghost" bike - placed somewhere in the metro area where a cyclist was killed in a traffic accident.  Yesterday, I noticed that it had been moved to another pole some yards down my street.  I can't think of any reason it should have been moved...unless it's stolen.  The homeless are nothing if not resourceful.  But if this is the case, it's nothing short of insidiously brilliant.  Or perhaps simply the mother of invention.  I don't know that someone homeless wouldn't realize that a ghost bike is supposed to remain in the same location, never mind that to be seen riding one couldn't make a bike more obvious that it's stolen.  Or perhaps it would suggest that the rider must also be a ghost.  The mother of invention - there's little room in the dynamics of survival for social opinion.  Nothing surprises me in this neighborhood anymore.  Today is Sunday, the 1st, and I am across the street at the Chinese place for lunch.  From inside, through the window, once again I see my neighbor's grown son at the trash can.  At first, he's simply having a smoke.  When I turn around again, he isn't merely poking around the top of the can.  He has his entire arm inside.

     On Tuesday, November 26, the full fury of a [snow] storm struck Denver...exceeding two feet in height.  ...plenty of Denver residents are angry about the snow-removal efforts...  [The storm lasted from] "the wee hours of Tuesday...until early afternoon - about an inch an hour.  [After plowed cleared a full circuit,] there were several more inches...and traffic packed it down - and the temperatures were quite cold."  Once a layer of ice has formed...the options are...limited...  "If you're looking at melting, [salt] would be so expensive that any benefit...would be minimal."  - Westword, 12/5-11/2019

     ...downtown is family-friendly, right?  Are we going down there to view the homeless of get stuck or fall on the ice and snow?  There was snow everywhere.  In the streets, in the open parking spots, all along the pedestrian mall...even where the Xmas market was being held.  Why did my street get plowed over and over and downtown did not?  - Westword, 12/5-11/2019

     December 7th, a date with will live in infamy.  This year, infamy falls upon a Saturday.  I would have had this one off, but was offered the chance to work today.  The snow and ice have mercifully been in retreat during a week of temperatures well above freezing.  I'm pedaling up the sidewalk of a busy thoroughfare of industrial shops.  Beyond the opposite side of this roadway is the interstate highway.  I happen upon a point where the rest of the sidewalk, beginning across one side street, is occupied by a long line of who appear to be homeless.  They are standing in between metal gates set up on the sidewalk, monitored by someone in an orange vest.  The line leads to a large parking lot of a large brewery, where food trucks fill the lot.  Rather than make the suicidal attempt to ride in the street...the wrong way up a one-way 45 mph zone...to pass a line which is so long I can't see the end around a corner, I choose the only alternative.  I take the sidewalk of the side street, because the street itself is blocked off with a barrier and a police cruiser.  The street is full of metal gates, along which the belongings of the homeless are lined up on the ground.  I get to work on the first weekend of a Christmas sale around the corner.  Past my work, all day long, stroll endless groups of apparent family and friends, some carrying various purchases.

     ...in...Cherry Creek State Park...a local political party activist stole a homeless man's tent and possessions before a recent snowstorm.  On any given day, there's usually about three tents set up illegally in the state park...more than in recent memory.  In a Facebook post last week, members of the Arapahoe Tea Party group argued they had an ethical obligation to remove drug addicts...because these people cannot get themselves the help they need.  ...the man would be charged with theft if he did take certain items under the guise of park cleanup.  [The perpetrator] did not respond to a request for comment.  It's unclear whether the local Tea Party affiliate aims to...rid the state park - or area - of homeless people.  - Sentinel, 12/5/2019

     Our culture in general is experiencing a major disconnect from our environment...  Shoes inhibit the ability to use our feet like a ground wire - passing negative energy to the ground and receiving positive energy from the earth.  - natural awakenings, 12/2019

     A massive statue of Mao loomed...  Rather than the father of Asian communism, here he symbolized the conqueror from a...technologically advanced civilization.  ...hippie backpackers...went in droves to places...moving too quickly from a medieval culture to a modern one...suddenly exposed to outside influences.  ...two backpacker demands: that a place be "wholly exotic" accessible to Westerners.  [Such places] were likely candidates for upheaval.  In [Pakistan], it is a sign of manliness to pass other vehicles o blind curves...  …"this is why...Pakistan is going places.  Because we are ambitious and dynamic..."...as if...fatalities were a reasonable price for...social and economic dynamism.
     Malthus...in 1748...propounded...that population, when unchecked, increases [faster] than food supply…  Malthus...worked among the poor...and was in constant conflict with utopian[s] who believed social ills were exclusively the fault of a coercive state.  He failed to see the [future abundance of Western resources.]   - Kaplan

     "Sobriety is awkward.  There's ten minutes of awkwardness that you need to push through...  That's what we've learned.  We need to have cornhole or whiffle ball...or we need to have a TV that's got the sports games on.  How to get through to the other side of that is definitely talking about it, figuring out a plan...  ...to support anyone who's afraid they're going to feel like the only ones there not on drugs or alcohol.  ...'find a sober wingman and charge up your battery.'"  - Westword, 12/5-11/2019

     ...spoke English.  My DJ was on acid and I think the rest of my crew was on shrooms - I think I was sober at the time, and I don't do psychedelics that much anyway.  My DJ met us outside looking bizarre - he has this marine knife, bigger than a Bowie knife that he carries with him.  I don't know how he gets it through security.  Maybe because...he looks like he's white.  He got that into Universal Studios.  He had pills, a fucking knife, and some weed on him and all they said to him...was, "you have to leave that here."  - (Salt) Magazine, Issue 13

Two different men's hats
     Monday.  I'm on the way back at the doughnut shop on the way to my gym before work.  Along the way, I cross a busy thoroughfare.  On the opposite corner in a shadow are a couple of homeless guys.  One of them is a guy who could be in his twenties.  He's a dead ringer for someone in a photo I remember seeing, taken during the Great Depression.  Even his winter cap strikes me as the same  one in the photo.  I get to the shop at 9 AM.  A succession of local Caucasian neighborhood residents come along.  The guy behind the counter converses with them, and everyone is speaking at a rapid pace.  I feel as though either they are on speed or I am on downers.  The sound system is playing its usual droll contemporary pseudo-indie rock music.  One couple in their thirties comes inside, with their son who appears not quite old enough to be in kindergarten.  The dad is in a tan, felt, short-brimmed hat. The mom is responding to each sales pitch from the clerk with a perky, "Sure!"

     We live in crazy times...art & culture can be curated by the masses...  Localization is a reality...  The old way of thinking is a world of hurdles and barriers, ones that breed discrimination and segregation of talent, aesthetics and personality.  We will make this market competitive and shirk the old hurdles and barriers [and] build our own regional school of art.  - (Salt) Magazine, Issue 13

     It's the Friday before Christmas.  I arrive at work and spend a few minutes before clocking in with a coworker on break.  We get to talking about her bizarre family troubles with two seventeen-year-olds and a twenty-five-year-old stranger beating up her cousin, who is a child.  Because the cousin has a sibling who is a popular hip hop artists on the internet.  I believe that she lives in a neighborhood where this is an old story.  She relates an attempt to rape her by a twenty-year-old when she was eleven.  She mentions where it took place 30 years ago, an alley on a street corner.  It's in the neighborhood I pass through every day on the way to and from work.  Speaking of work, on any given day, individual groups of different downtown residents will saunter past the windows.  A group of executives, followed by a group of homeless, followed by a group of hipsters.  This afternoon, someone who I think is a man in his thirties comes stumbling along.  I suddenly realize that he's not wearing any pants or underwear.  I expect to be confronted by a penis when my brain tells me that something is missing.  This may be someone who appears to be male above the neck, but it's indeed a woman.  She stumbles along, leaning out of the way of our driver before lumbering past him and down the sidewalk.  I wonder if she has been sexually assaulted.  My coworker wonders if she has been given meth by some homeless and possibly raped.  Our driver watches as the building's concierge gets on the phone to the police.  After work, I'm on the way home in the dark.  In the neighborhood between the bike trail and my boulevard, in a school parking lot, a street racer is doing doughnuts.  A "woo-girl" goes "Woo!"  Saturday.  The stop for the bus to the supermarket.  On the bench is an open bag of cookies.  A familiar middle-aged guy comes shuffling along.  He spots the bag and takes a couple of cookies before he is on his way.

     ...Sukarno...his acquiescence to the Communists' demand...that he introduce...political commissars in the armed forces.  ...the Indonesian Women's Movement.  [They] would not be difficult to train...for participation in the coup...  ...a Revolutionary Council...would take over from the progressive Army elements...then dismiss the Cabinet and rule the country...  - Time out of Hand, by R. Shaplen, 1969

     The following week, I work Monday, Thursday and Friday at our newly acquired plant.  It's a special and a transitional week for our company.  I meet the manager of this plant who I immediately come to recognize as one of my professional contemporaries.  On Friday, one of our drivers bring in the remnants of the supplies from our old plant.  It's a signal of the end of that plant.  Last week brought me good news.  I got my first energy bill during a full billing period when my furnace hasn't stopped running during cold days and nights.  It's not as large as I feared.  Today, more good news.  It's payday, and my check s large enough for me to pay the rest of my root canal, to pay for next years annual gym membership, and even to get a calendar for 2020.  Those are bills I am happy to put behind me.  Saturday is my turn to work.  Small snowflakes are blowing in and have already accumulated more, I think, than the three inches predicted.  It's enough to cause me to take caution, but it isn't as bad as the previous Hell On Ice!  I make it across my boulevard and I'm making my way past the bus stop where I used to catch the first bus in the morning, now five years past.  I still roll past the occasional character in the shelter.  This morning, around 8 AM, there is a small, out of place group here.  Three elderly Caucasian guys in what appear to be the same navy down coat.  One cranes his neck to peer outside the perforated wall, to spy the bus.  My back rim slips slightly on the sidewalk, and the one closest to me speaks up.  "Get of that bike.  You'll break your neck.  Lord have mercy."
     Sunday.  I decide to purchase a wall calendar from this paycheck.  The bookstore is steps from the downtown train stop.  I wouldn't be doing much bike riding.  I may as well take the transit system.  My transfer from this morning's grocery shopping is good for another hour.  I head out to the bus stop where, yesterday morning, I was told by who I assume was a waiting passenger to dismount my bike.  Instead of a trio of elderly white guys, the shelter's occupants include a couple of guys in jerseys of the city football team.  There must be a home game today.  Two express buses roll past through the melting snow, exclusive for those residents of my boulevard headed straight to the stadium up the street.  Eventually, a bus with an actual route then collects us there, and onboard is a drunk in a wheelchair.  He's conversing with a couple of middle-aged guys in a seat across from him, who appear to know him.  His brakes are not locked, and he slides back and forth according to the acceleration and braking of the bus.  At one point he slides backwards into another passenger in a wheelchair.  One of the drunk's two friends asks him if he has seen his sister.  He hasn't.  "You know James West died?" the drunk asks him.  "He was killed," he responds.  He tells him that the drunk's sister came into town to "investigate it."  From the bus to the train, to the downtown transit hub.  On the platform, next to the free pedestrian mall shuttles, is a crazy who is attempting to sing.  His voice sounds as if a metal rake is being pulled over asphalt, and it resounds throughout the station.  His style is one of someone in physical internal pain.  The only intelligible words coming out of his mouth are "puppy love".  A couple of transit security officers show up to ask him how he is getting along in life.  They also ask him if he is going to board a shuttle.  He acts as if he suddenly remembers to do so.  Before long, he's in a seat on my shuttle.  He returns to his painful singing/scraping, at a relatively lower volume.  I'm out of the shuttle, inside the bookstore, and have tracked down an interesting wall calendar.  I order another and purchase this one before I'm out the door and back on another shuttle.  This one takes me to the old deathburger homeless central.  I'm at the front of the line.  Directly behind me is a homeless guy who is watching the security guard handling food packaging behind the counter.  "He shouldn't even be doin' that," I hear him say.  "He don't even have no gloves on."  A friend of the guy behind me suggests that they make their exit.  The guy goes ahead of me to ask for some ice water.  I order food, head out, and grab a shuttle back to the train.  Onboard this one is a silent guy in a seat.  His face below his eyes are covered on this winter day.  He's in khaki pants with faded magic marker uniformly down the front of both legs, forming rows of "666"s.
     The following day, I'm back at our newly acquired plant.  In the morning, I'm on my way to my own store.  I stop first at a 7-Eleven down the street from work.  I'm inside and back outside when a guy hanging out asks me if I know anyone with bicycles for sale. Then I'm off, stopping for the light across a busy downtown thoroughfare.  A guy in a hard hat, orange vest, earphones, and a plastic grocery bag crosses on the red.  He tells me to be careful.  "I busted my ass a couple of times (on my own bike.)" he reveals.  I arrive at work and head down the street, for a beverage from the restaurant next to our old plant.  Parked outside of this plant are two flatbed tractor trailers.  Buckled onto one is all of the remaining machinery from inside which we no longer need, including our drycleaning machine.  I remember the first modern drycleaning machine I ever saw, that one newly minted and coming into the place where I was working at the time.  It was the only previous time I saw a drycleaning machine on a flatbed, some 28 years ago.  Here at the end of this year, we're finished inhabiting this old building.  The new property owner has also purchased the restaurant next door.  He bought the business as well as the property.  He wants to expand it.  The owner of the restaurant jokes that he now needs a job.  At our current plant, after the day's work is done, I have a discussion with the longtime manager there.  She's an old school drycleaner and spotter like myself, and we discuss spotting chemicals.  She has one which I used to work with way back when, and haven't seen for a while.  These are reminders of how long I've been in the business, and how many people I've seen pass through it.  And then there is this.  I've been living where I do, coming up on 13 years now, as long as the previous home I rented.  During which one of my neighbors has a family, including grown children.  One is the guy I've mentioned, who strolls the neighborhood extra slowly.  And I wouldn't call this place, with it's discarded tires and carbon monoxide, exactly a strolling kind of neighborhood.  But I digress.  This month, I saw him panhandling for the first time.  He was outside the Chinese restaurant, manning a usual panhandling spot for various rotating characters.  I mention to one of the staff that he's my neighbor.  They reveal to me for the first time during these years that he's been doing this since before I got here.  One time, he came in a bought food with a $100 bill.  He took the change and handed it out to random passersby.  They say that no one knows their neighbors anymore.  I guess they don't...
     Speaking of which, New Year's Eve, I'm out collecting my neighbor's recycle cans.  My big neighbor comes out of his back gate.  I believe he's the guy I saw being frisked by the police some weeks ago, a few feet from where he now stands.   He tosses or kicks an empty shooter bottle across the snow and ice.  It comes to rest next to another empty.  He pulls out his phone and looks at it.  The last can I take out of the way of the parking lot entrance turns out to be his neighbor's.  He tells me, "You shouldn't have done that for her.  She's a piece of shit.  You shouldn't have done that for her."  If he recognizes me from the first time we met just a few short years past, he doesn't mention.  I ask him if the can belongs to a "her."  "Yeah.  She's my neighbor."  Later on, I realize that I've seen her for the first time just this year.  "And you definitely better not touch mine," he adds.  I don't see the recycle can for the condo I've seen him come out of.  Neither does he mention the last time we spoke.  Again, I was bringing in residents recycle cans.  That time, he was questioning whether I was putting the cans next to the correct condo units.  I'm not sure he holds me in much regard.  You see, I'm his neighbor also.  Walking back to my unit, I hear the sound of a tumbling can.  A few minutes later, I'm out at my own gate taking down my Christmas lights.  I see that he knocked over her can.  It's sideways there in the snow.  After sundown, I head across the street to grab a bite to eat.  On my way back, I see his gate open.  He's crouching down over at the corner of the townhome complex.  The end of his cigarette glows orange in the dark.

      ...a judge ruled...the city's urban camping ban...ordinance unconstitutional last week...  Denver County Judge Johnny C. Barajas...said the ban amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.  Earlier Friday, Denver police...officers stopped doing...street checks for unauthorized camping...after learning of the ruling, "pending further guidance" from the city attorney's office.  The city appealed the case Monday morning...  - The Denver Post, 12/31/2019