December 2022, "Lots of People Here. Cheating the System," "What the...What the...?", No Butts and "Don't Take."

 

Coffee High City

     After months without a coffee option, [one of downtown's fashionable moneyed neighborhood] food hall[s] has a new resident coffee shop.  [It] previously operated as a cart [and] opened in the space formerly occupied by [some such other coffee shop.]  It joins five new food stalls [in] a recent revamp of the global food hall.  ...strong coffee community.  "...somewhere that shared our values...and a better city for coffee."  ...jumped right into Denver coffee culture...managing the coffee program at...the Readers' Choice winner for Best New Coffeehouse...in 2022.  They started doing pop-ups[, or short-term mini businesses, at one of the neighborhood's] men's clothing store[s.  Coffee is] "a craft, not a commodity."  ...showcasing coffee roasters...  "...future guest roasters...  I don't know if it's because it's such a transplant city, but we've been very welcomed."  ...encouraging people to get its logo tattooed on their bodies.  ...(on an arm or leg - no butts).  - Westword, 12/1-7/2022

     [Colorado's soccer team], headed up by their world class communications director...host[s] an annual [event] where members of the media, along with...alumni, get to play a real game...with a full kit...  ...I was invited to attend...by...Amazon Prime.  ...Prime rolled out the red carpet for...fans.  ...to bring awareness to all the great stuff Amazon Prime offers its viewers...with a room at [a famous downtown hotel and] a bag full of schwag...pregame sideline passes...a prepaid card for concessions...  - Mile High Sports, 12/2022

     None...are doing anything...for which they are qualified by their education...  The bureaucracy is...immobilized...  ...most of the...younger talent is being wasted.  "The generation gap is very bad.  We are the transitional ones.  The younger don't care or aren't ready for anything.  Most of them feel abandoned...disillusioned, they pretend to be full of bravado...  The older intellectuals are laying low or have given up.  We have nowhere to turn except politics, which remains corrupt."  The [powers that be] created their privileged...class...but...left the peasants and the middle class untouched.  And they've used the civil servants...as just that - servants."  There were many paintings or drawings of cemeteries and skulls, of bare bones in fields, of people on the run.  ..."Hate calls for hate, blood for blood, skull for skull."  ...a display of the "weapons of the weak."  ...this...country...needs...engineers and scientifically trained graduates...  ...sons and daughters...go abroad to study, and stay away.  ...the dean of...a private Buddhist institution [remarks,] "Who wants to come back to a huge prison and get killed?" All [city] residents...except foreigners have to go through an elaborate identification procedure when they move into a new dwelling, and they are subject to constant checks and rechecks by the police.  Each family must have a census certificate approved by the chief of...a group of families.   The paper must then be certified by...something like [a ward captain.]  Then the...sub district boss, has to give his approval.   A middle-class [street] has fewer...pimps...petty gangsters, and other troublemakers...  There has been a complete breakdown...  Civil servants now live...close...to...taxi-drivers who make three or four times what they make.  "...there will be a flattening out of classes...  ...the taller houses will overshadow the huts and shacks.  There may emerge a whole new middle class, or there may be no middle class...  No such thing as social mobility, in the traditional sense, any longer remains."  - R. Shaplen, "The New York Times", 4/15/1972, reprinted in Reporting Vietnam, 1998

     In 1776, Matthew Boulton...said...of his famous Soho iron works..."I sell here, Sir, what all the world desires to have - POWER."  ...the English Midlands...were the forefront of the world's manufacturing life.  As well as industry, literary and scientific societies prospered.  ...two centuries on...where the Industrial Revolution grew up, now lies...ruins.  - Aldiss

      Thursday.  Last month of the year.  Indeed, it has flown past.  I have an email which I assume is telling me that my Christmas photo cards are ready.  I make a point of being at the camera shop when they open, so I have plenty of time to get to work.  Inside, they take a little time searching for my cards.  It's decided that they had to go up to a lab in Boulder, because they are being printed on special card stock.  The email I got means that the order is complete, and I will get a call when they arrive back here...in the city where I actually live.  I'm not disappointed.  I'm successfully seduced by the idea of fancy card stock.  They are going to be "super" cards!  The following week begins with my working a couple of hours past closing time.  Another good week for myself.  In the morning, I got the trip to the gym out of the way.  The following morning I get a late start.  Late night, late start.  Do the math.  I grab a bus down to within striking distance of work.  I sit in front of a homeless guy.  He's in some kind of horsehair coat which is white with black spots.  I disembark and ride in jog time to my shopping center.  I hit the breakfast place before work.  The first two guys out of the door are characteristic enough, both with grey hair and in nylon fleece.  The next guy is middle-aged, shaggy-haired, and disheveled.  He comes out of the door on his phone, "It's just like Florida here.  Lots of people.  Lots of people cheating the system."  He's some kind of economic legalist in the baggy clothes of a maverick.  Most of the people moving to the state over the past few decades have been driving rents and property values skyward.  This is the first I've heard that they've been doing so under the table.  At work, I end up putting in another 2 1/2 hours past close.  I don't feel like riding all the way home I head for the nearest train station.  When I'm almost there, I'm along a man-made pond, across which I have a beautiful view of the Rockies after sunset.  I watch a train go past headed the opposite direction of my own, and I calculate that I will just miss mine as soon as i get to the station.  Which is just what happens.  I hate it when I'm right.  I head for the next nearest station, which is just a hop, skip, and a jump away.  There's a chance I will catch a bus up the avenue, but when I arrive there is none.  So I climb the ramp to the train platform and catch a train from here.  It drops me at a station with a connecting bus all the way home.  At the gate is a young woman who asks me for, what else, a cigarette.  There is a young guy who is endlessly pacing in a circle as he keeps his eye on his phone.

     Wednesday.  I will be late to an appointment with my investment broker if I don't make the same bus I did on Monday.  I make it, and along the way we stop at the same train station where I caught the train last night.  We pull up to the gate and a guy steps on.  He asks the driver where this bus goes before stepping back off.  After a brief layover, we head back toward the avenue.  We stop at a light when the driver opens the front door and shouts, "Come here" to a guy on a bench at a stop.  One passenger has just stepped onboard and turns as if the driver is speaking to him.  A second passenger gets up and comes up to the driver.  The driver says to the guy outside, "You want the (bus number) 12."  When I get home from work, I have the voicemail that my cards have arrived at the camera shop.  The shop is a ridiculously close crosstown ride.  With cards in hand, I head for the train.  I catch a train headed the wrong direction, transfer to the right one, and catch a bus down to work's doorstep with minutes to spare.  All this for some Christmas cards.  Christ!  I disembark across the street from my shopping center and, for the 4th time this week, go into the breakfast place before work.  This morning, I'm sitting next to a table with four women. two are from Argentina.  One is studying for her US citizenship.  Friday.  Today I'm working open to close.  I continue to be amazed how fast an entire day can fly past at work.  I'm up long before my alarm goes off.  Lately, I have things to do which preclude my riding all the way to work.  And I make use of the time on bus rides getting them done.  The bus to the doorstep of my shopping center doesn't run as early as another, which will drop me a short ride away.  I grab the latter, and along the way I have Christmas photo cards and stamps, and for most I have personal notes to include.  I also have an old address book.  It's a low-tech morning before sunrise.  I have an old friend who refers to cards as an "anachronism."  I take the half hour ride collating notes and cards, and putting stamps upon envelopes.  I have no pen with me and must wait until I get to work to fill out addresses.  This bus route on the pre-dawn run has its apparent regulars, as well as homeless. A couple of guys come onboard, one of whom thanks the other for giving him his transfer.  The guy who gifts it is someone who doesn't strike me as homeless, regardless of his yellow construction vest.  he's in new warm weather gear, and it appears coordinated as opposed to handed down or from the thrift store.  I notice that he carries a folding camp chair with him.   At another stop, a woman comes aboard who exchanges waves with him.  She's dressed as if she may manage a small office.  The chair guy and I get out at the same stop.  It's a stop where another passenger waits with his own bike.  The bike rack on this bus is full, including with my own bike, and the driver tells me, "You just made this guy's day."  When I get out, I notice that the guy who got out with me is already sitting in his camp chair on the median between the two lanes of this busy avenue...panhandling.  But I wonder if in fact he's retired, has his own place, and does this for extra money. What I don't realize until I do get to work is that I mistakenly include one note along with another in one of the cards.  And I must write it over.  And as I don't realize this until I've already filled out addresses and put a sign on the door at work and run over to the contract post office in the hardware store at the shopping center and come back and taken the sign down, I must repeat the process.  But I do find a gift for the brother-in-law.

     Saturday.  I take some trash out to the bus stop shelter across the street on my way to work.  In the shelter is a guy standing up.  The rest of the inside of the shelter is taken up with a blue camping tarp, covering both benches and part of the trash can, which has apparently been moved inside the shelter to support the tarp.  I have no reason to believe anyone else is in here.  I deposit my trash...in the trash, which jiggles the tarp.  From beneath the tarp, I hear someone say, "What the...what the...?"  After work, I decide to do grocery shop at a supermarket at the very stop where I disembarked this morning.  Afterword, I cross the street for an early dinner.  I hear a cyclist, is he homeless?  He's at the same spot on the median where the chair guy was this morning.  He's curing someone, in a car?  The following morning, I'm off to the sister's place.  I grab a bus just down the street.  Just before I get out, a middle-aged short guy gets on.  He's in sunglasses.  He curses "people" and punches a seat before he sits down.  Before I step out, I glance at him.  His head is tilted back as if he's passed out.  After I leave the sister's, I ride to the train, which takes me to a stop near a supermarket.  It has a product I can't find at my own supermarket.  The parking lot includes a lot of space for a shopping center, half of which has now been developed into new condos.  The huge lot remains.  A year or so ago, I was here for the first of what I refer to as a kind of flash mob car show.  It's all street racers.  After the first one of these I've seen, I later noticed sigs up all around this lot, claiming that it's in fact "private property."  This afternoon is the third gathering I've now seen here.  Street racers are milling about, hanging out at the supermarket.  The signs are still up.

     ...cycling would be much easier on his knees than running.  And like many who have knee issues but want to keep active, he turned to cycling.  ...his family moved to Denver...  The incredible Colorado cycling community, as well as the seemingly endless routes around the state...  ...still hosts a bike ride every Saturday.  Unless the weather is extreme...  And during the week, he will be pedaling somewhere by himself.  - Mile High Sports, 12/2022

     A fundraiser in support of [a health care center in Boulder committed to] each individual's physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs [includes a bike ride with] three fully-supported route choices for cyclists - 68, 38, and 24 miles - plus an outstanding post-ride party with music, food and craft beer...[The organization's director finds his work] both grounding and perspective-building.  - Community News, Second Edition - 2022

     Wednesday.  I'm out the door, and for the first time in some days, I'm riding all the way to work for a change.  The overnights are frosty well into the last month of the year, down to 19 or 20 degrees F., but the days warm up.  I'm all the way down the trail to a big golf course along the way, behind a tall chain link fence.  On the opposite side of the trail are some tall trees, a recently popular spot for homeless.  There's a tent visible from the trail.  Just a few yards away from the tent, on the trail, is what appears to be a kind of flatbed dolly you can push.  It looks just like ones available at Home Depot.  Shopping carts are nothing unusual out here.  Just this week I had to dodge two of them coming home in the dark.  Both were parked right out on the trail, underneath separate overpasses.  And this one has the usual collection of incomprehensible items.  On the bottom is a huge fire log.  But the thing which catches my eye is the orange ladder on top of the dolly.  A few days ago, last Sunday, I had just entered the trail from the sister's place.  Less than a mile from here, on the grass off the trail, was a bicycle and a bike trailer.  They were both laying on the grass underneath an orange ladder.  The following day I am working open to close.  I'm up early enough with plenty of time to ride the entire way.  Instead I ride to a bus which will drop me a short ride to work.  Had I not elected to ride to the station, I would have missed the guy sitting in the dark, under an orange sleeping bag, beneath the overpass for the train.  As I pass him sitting absolutely motionless, he exclaims, "Fuck you!"  At the station, those of us waiting for this southbound bus are at the correct gate.  It pulls up along the curb behind the gate, on the opposite end of a drive.  When the driver gets going, I'm standing next to him after I put a ride coupon into the fare box.  He doesn't appear to see me standing there.  I must ask him for a transfer before I get one.  On the bus, I'm sitting behind a guy who smells.  When he gets up to disembarks at the next train station, I see that his right leg is missing below the knee.  In his left hand is a cane.  Through the front window of the bus, I see a homeless camper in the big parking lot for the station.  We pull out of the station and onto the avenue.  We stop and pick up the chair guy.  Again, he gets out at my stop, and by the time I have my bag secured to the back rack of my bike, he's already sitting on his chair, out on the median.

     I grab breakfast at my usual place before work.  I'm sitting not far from a couple of grey-haired guys.  One is making a pitch to the other about investing in nursing homes for baby boomers, and also for the generation following them.  I missed the first one, but I'm definitely in the next generation.  He's peppering the guy with details, about residents who lock in a fixed rent "for as long as they live."  I heard death described as the final stage of life.  I've never heard of it pitched to a client in terms of something to make money from.  The following morning, I've caught up on my sleep for the week.  Working all day yesterday, I didn't get a chance to deposit my Christmas bonus at the bank.  I hit the bank on the way to work this morning.  I do the ride all the way, and I end up at the bakery next to where I work.  I'm in line for a soda, between a guy with white hair and a long beard, and a guy with shaggy grey hair and sandals.  It was 22 degrees F. this morning.  The first guy comments on the rearview mirror I secure around my wrist.  He then mentions to the guy behind me that he noticed his sandals.  The two appear not to know each other.  The second guy says, "I have to race back to my car.  Frostbite can happen in 10 to 20 seconds in 10-degree (F.) weather."  Or did he say minutes?  The guy in front of me came in with a couple of canvas bags.  He fills them with loaves of bread.  I tell the girl behind the counter, the manager, that I feel as though I am in an apocalyptic future, where money has been replaced by loaves of bread.  It's a short walk to my store.  Between here and there, a guy exits his car in a T-shirt and shorts.  He's complaining about how cold it is outside.  After work, i decide that I want to have dinner on the way home at the Black Eyed Pea.  I'm sitting behind an elderly couple.  The husband is going on and on about his life, as if he's reading from some kind of script.  He's considering some kind of exterior repair to his home.  "But I'm not doing it now.  It's too cold.  I'll wait until it warms up."  He's right about that.  The overnights have been in the mid-teens F.  The following morning, I will head out in my ski pants and long underwear, and my hoodie between my long-sleeved shirt and winter coat.  When I leave here, it already feels as though it's down into the teens.  The wife mentions something about an errant daughter, and the mother getting involved.  "She's getting involved?" he inquires.  "What for?"  He later makes reference to I know not who, perhaps the daughter, when he says, "Well, then they're insane.  They need to be put into an institution."  I'm facing the opposite direction from this couple as I watch another, middle-aged couple come in and take a seat.  The guy has a Black Sox hat on.  It's popular with particular gang members.  I take a closer look as he is facing me.  He has tattoos on his face.

     Monday.  I wake up too early.  But does this stop me from going to the gym?  Of course not.  Anything to get the gym out of the way.  I'm working out on my last machine next to a couple of grey-haired guys conversing.  One is telling the other about an old truck he parked at a train station in the metro area.  His catalytic converter was stolen.  Someone broke in and stole his prescription sunglasses.  Another time, he was walking to his truck when a "thug followed me.  I told him I had bear spray in my truck."  When he got to his truck, said thug left, because his truck had been broken into again.  I didn't hear him say if his bear spray was stolen.  Otherwise, he enjoys riding the transit system.  Though he mentions one particular train line, referring to it as dangerous.  It's a line which traverses a slate of wealthy neighborhoods.  I stay a half hour late at work and finish just in time to run out and catch a bus.  I get home about an hour before bedtime.  I grab dinner at the Chinese place.  Coming back across the street, I see a neighbor in the parking lot of my townhome complex.  I also see a couple who appear homeless.  The guy is walking a bicycle.  My neighbor says hi to them.  They go up and onto the porch of one of the units, and they stand outside without going in.  I ask my neighbor in Spanish if they live here.  She does not know.  Tuesday.  It's perhaps fifteen minutes until close at work.  I expect to ride home this evening.  Four customer come in.  Forty-five minutes later, it's time for the bus to come along.  I'm riding the bus instead.  To the train.  I've been riding home from the station where I get out.  I bungee everything to the back rack and get the lights on...just when the bus shows up.  I think that I un-bungee everything. As I'm onboard, my bike on the front rack, I don't have my bike lock.  I see it through the front window, beginning to bounce on the back rack, from which I have removed the bungee cord.  I negotiate the white trash bags in the aisle, which belong to the homeless passenger, and point at it as I ask the driver if I can run out and grab it.  Though his express tells me he has no idea what I mean by "lock", he obliges.  I lost my last bike lock just this way.

     Thanks to a deficit in the week's budget, I've already blown my $400 Christmas bonus.  But I also got a new bag for my handlebars, for under $30.  And as it came from Walmart and not the sporting goods supercenter, it didn't cost ten times that amount.  It isn't square, it's flat and called a "tote bag."  But it's bigger.   This week before Christmas, I got a notice in the mail about renewing my Medicare.  I'm not good with websites where I need a password.  But it goes smoothly.  I have all the requested digits.  I need to finally open an "account" with my company's payroll service, to access another digit.  With another password.  This goes smoothly as well.  Wednesday.  I'm coming home from work, again by bus and train.  This time I do ride the rest of the way.  The forecast has proven correct.  Shortly after 6 PM, it's 5 degrees F.  I know this from a time and temperature sign I pass along the way home.  Right after the sign tells me how cold it is, the very next message is, "MERRY CHRISTMAS".  The following day is the same.  I take the transit system to and from work.  Back yet again at the same train station, waiting for the last bus home, I spot this evening's crazy person.  A bus for one westbound route arrives.  It's headed back downtown as it's off duty...right on schedule.  The crazy asks the driver, "When's the next one?"  She replies that it's directly behind her.  If in fact he is westbound...and not crazy, he has a choice of this route or another one also westbound.  The one he wants will be here in less than an hour.  The other will be here in half the time.  I know it's below freezing out here, but it could be worse.  But I'm convinced he knows none of this.  I'm in a $300 down coat with a hood, long underwear, and ski pants.  His skinny jeans appear slung low, and he's in a jacket and a knit cap.  But he doesn't stay at this gate.  He walks across to a bus gate where no bus is scheduled to arrive.  Tean I watch him walk the opposite way to a southbound bus which has just pulled up.  It takes off, and next I hear him from the train platform.  He's yelling "Fuck you!" at the automated voice from a train which just arrived.  A middle-aged passenger shows up at the gate for my bus.  He asks if it's been here yet.  He tells me he ran from his work to the train, to make this bus.  The crazy comes back and asks him something before vanishing from sound or sight.  My bus arrives and I step on with the other passenger.  He mentions his trek to the driver before calling his mom.  He tells her that he's on his way home, what the temperature is, when he will be there, and about the frozen pizza he's bringing home with him.

A Tale of 2 Trash Bags

     From the nuts who are passengers to the ones who drive the bus.  On Friday, I'm again called into work.  I quick fry a couple of eggs and bag 'em. I again elect to take the bus as snow and ice and cold p[revail.  I hop on the same bus as yesterday morning.  It's only once in a blue moon that I'm on this route.  I wait until I'm onboard to eat, as I can then take off the cold weather face mask.  I'm done shortly before we reach the train, and I get up to toss my empty bag into the trash at the front of the bus.  I've previously had compliments for doing so.  Upon this frosty morning however, this driver first asks me, "What are you doing?" before telling me to stay behind the white line of the floor when the bus is in motion.  He says nothing about my eating on the bus, which passengers are not supposed to do either.  I'm on the same bus at the same time, which gets me to the same train.  Only this time, I miss the connecting bus at the same station by three minutes.  I walk to a cafe across from another bus stop outside the station.  I've noticed this place before, but I've never been in.  At twilight, when we close these days, I'm out of work on time.  And I'm back at the same station as last night.  This evening's daily crazy comes walking across the median of another bus gate. His winter coat is unzipped and the temps are single digits.  He stands at the gate for another bus before moseying his way over to me to ask if I have a cigarette.  I still don't smoke.  My bus arrives a bit late.  The guy from last night is back, the one on the phone to his mom.  We get on and the bus changes drivers.  Both front and back doors are open, and I'm cold inside with my hood and mittens off.  The cigarette guy comes aboard, along with another crazy.  Cigarette guy sits and laughs to himself.  The other one asks the driver for one of the plastic trash bags.  This driver has no problem handing him one, in which he puts a small box.  I do a little reading before the new driver tells us to disembark and get onto the bus behind us, which just arrived.  We all get up except the second crazy in the back.  The driver of the second bus gets out and grabs a quick smoke break. he will tell us when he comes back on that it's the first break he's had since he started four hours ago.  Holiday shopping traffic out east, from where he came, is causing delays.  Outside, he tells the mom-on-the-phone guy he dropped his glove.  I'm standing watching the driver when, after picking up his glove, the guy tells me to get on the bus.  (?)  Is everyone telling me what to do today? I must not know anything.  Once onboard, we get going.  Yesterday's guy on the phone with his mom is, this evening, an expert on every kind of sports team the city has.  The driver is politely laughing along at his critiques.  Cigarette guy gets off somewhere along the way.  The other crazy is also sitting in back of this bus.  His drops his box-in-a-bag and the driver asks him if "everything " is "okay back there?"

     Kick off your celebrations with [a] hometown throwdown...  Then on the 31st, drop it like the Times Square ball...  Don't have plans for New Year's Eve?  You do now!  ...a smorgasbord of passion...for the jam band scene.  ...a...jam sesh hot enough to melt the snow off the Rockies.  ...musical melange of indie rock, psychedelic jazz...  ...three whole nights of debauchery...  ...progressive bluegrass, jazz, neo-psychedelic, rock, funk, and jam band influences.  Pull on your party pants...  - Westword, 12/22-28/2022

A Lump of Coal for My Old Deathburger and "Don't Take."

     Christmas Day.  I do appreciate the Chinese place across the street, and the Vietnamese place behind where I live.  Very much.  I just don't feel like fried rice for my Christmas lunch before the afternoon feast.  Now, a search engine claims that my old deathburger is open today.  Not only that, but it claims that every individual deathburger of the franchise in the metro area is open today.  Okay, well...maybe.  We'll ride up the street and find out.  It's a short ride.  And the snow is disappearing.  I'm not kidding, Thursday and Friday, the high was 5 degrees F.  As it closes in on noon, it feels close to 60 degrees outside.  Yesterday, the forecast was for 63 today.  And I caught up on my sleep from yesterday, when I woke up before 3 AM and instead of lying there not being able to go back to sleep, I got up and did dishes.  On "a quiet Christmas morning in" what's left and rapidly melting of "the Colorado snow," I'm rolling downhill and dodging slush, until I pull up to the empty deathburger parking lot.  No lights inside, locked door.  A pickup slowly moves around the lot and through the drive through.  A note on the door claims that they will be open today at 5.  It's unlikely it means PM.  Actually, it reads that the place will close today at 4, reopening tomorrow at 5.  If by "today" it means today and not yesterday, then they were for some reason open before 4 AM and then closed at $ AM.  Which is somehow even less likely.  Anything is more likely that these two possibilities.  It appears that every single employee had the same idea: "If I'm not there today, the others can handle it without me."  I turn and ride back toward home, up my boulevard.  I don't get far when I see one of many Mexican places around here which I've never been into.  The neon sign declares it open.  Indeed it is.  I love this boulevard.  There are a smattering of Spanish speaking customers.  And, once again, none of the staff speak English.  This ain't a problem for this Wero.  I have a Coca de Dieta, and when she brings me a can, I have to ask for a cup with ice.  It doesn't get any more authentic than this.  I have a plato con huevos y jamon, arroz, lechuga, tomate, and a small wedge of zucchini.  Peeled by hand.  No shit.  The waitresses all wear holiday shirts which read, in English, "Be a good person."  I ask her if she knows what it means, and I do my best to translate.

     I can't go to the supermarket today, because they are all closed.  I get back to my corner, where I see that the Vietnamese grocery is not only open, it's busier on Christmas than Macy's in Manhattan.  I assume that this is because its patrons want to make a fresh holiday meal.  In their case, by holiday, for some this means a day off when everyone is home.  One of my customers manages a water treatment plant in Denver. In fact, I go past it twice a day to and from work.  Yesterday he came in, and I asked him about water use on days when families were gathered together.  It's not a matter of volume, he explained, it's rate of flow.  The rate of flow here is elevated.  I'm able to grab a pile of vegetables, which I will be able to chop later this afternoon or evening, instead of having to wait until tomorrow.  I love this boulevard.  I get back home, wrap a last present, and roll off to the sister's.  We have a little food, they watch football, and we exchange presents.  We have desert.  Then I'm off to the train back home.  It's twilight when I'm onboard with my bag of gifts.  Through a window, I look down the side streets we pass, at the occasional homeless campers which frequent these lonely blocks so close to the rail line.  No empty stool or crutch without an owner, but homeless campers as the evening of Christmas Day approaches.  I disembark at the station, contemplating riding home.  Even now the temps are in the 50s F.  At the bus gate for one of the routes back to my neighborhood sits a lonely figure in the dark.  I immediately smell marijuana.  We both get on a bus which arrives.  It's a short ride home.  A t a corner of my boulevard, a homeless guy steps aboard.  He's dressed from the cap on his head to his pants in black.  He struggles to get a walker inside.  The walker has a big box on the seat.  Around the middle is wrapped a long gauze bandage.  Written on the side facing me is "Don't take."

     It's the day after Christmas.  And I have plenty to do.  Not really, but a handful of things takes me the entire damned day.  And today is hardly an exception.  I take the trail to a Target, where I pick up a new pair of sweatpants.  I wear them around the house.  And the ones I have are falling down because I am losing weight.  The grocery side is out of eggs, so I may as well wait to pick up my perishables later in the day.  I hit the Chilis in the shopping center for lunch.  I hit the gym.  Then it's off to the train.  I need to go downtown to the sporting goods supercenter.  Somewhere along the way this week, I lost my balaclava.  And I never effing lose anything.  Anything.  The one I had was beginning to droop over my left eye, so perhaps it's just as well.  It's my staple piece of cold weather gear.  I also end up grabbing a new neck gator.  I check out and put on the new balaclava, for which it is just cold enough.  Supercenter patrons walking the plaza outside are looking at me.  It a reaction from these self-believing sport experts which strikes me as perfect.  Perfectly bewildered.  This must be the single piece of gear which just ain't their thing.  Story of my life.  I retrace my path back to the train and take it to a supermarket on the way to the pizza place.  I pick up everything but a couple of things which, again, this chain does not carry.  One is a book of transit system ride coupons, which they're out of.  From here it gets better.  I ride to the pizza place for dinner.  They are closed today, as well as the past two days.  Damned stoners.  I break out plan B.  I ride down to a Denny's on the way home.  It's a lower class place where service is usually slow, even when it's half empty.  This early evening though, it's not bad at all.  Now, back at the supermarket, I spotted a homeless guy as I was walking inside.  He has a distinctive chin jutting out from the hood of his winter coat.  He was bundled up on a day which may have reached 60 degrees F.; standing outside the front door, next to a trash can, eating something.  Now, I'm locking up my bike outside a Dennys, the parking lot of which was not long ago popular with homeless tents and campers.  Not to mention panhandlers on the corner here, of a busy highway and avenue.  And he has the current panhandling shift here on the corner.

     Tuesday.  The year itself only has a few more days to go.  This morning is partly cloudy and incredibly beautiful.  By 10 AM it must be 60 degrees F.  I leave the house shortly before 9.  I refill a prescription a few blocks away.  Then I hit my usual supermarket for the two items I couldn't get yesterday.  Then it's across the street to my bank.  Then a crosstown ride to the bus which shall take me to work's doorstep in time for lunch at the bakery next door.  On the way to the bus stop, I cross to the other end of an interstate on ramp.  I'm on the sidewalk, but right next to the ramp.  A tractor trailer is turning onto the ramp as he honks at me.  I don't realize that he's letting me know I'm too close to the ramp until he has already slowly entered the ramp, without his back end turning too sharply and coming onto the end of the sidewalk.  And on top of me.  On Friday, it's been a second day of melting snow, and the second day I decided again that I don't want to deal with riding across ice.   It began to rain Wednesday afternoon.  I took the transit system home before it turned to snow, before I went to bed.  Friday morning, I'm still not on the bike.  I discovered when I got to work yesterday morning that I was missing one of my ski mittens.  I considered heading up to the sporting goods supercenter before work today.  I did grab a bus as soon as I made it across the street to the bus stop.  But it crawled the few blocks to the train station.  And I just missed the train when I got there.  I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to grab a new pair of ski mittens as i would be on the transit system anyway.  Instead, I abort this plan and transfer to a train down to the bus which drops me at work's doorstep.  While I am waiting for the first train, I'm at the station next to the football stadium.  I haven't had any bike breakdowns lately and haven't been here since perhaps the summer.  Back then, it seemed as if the transit system security were running off the homeless as a part of some concerted plan.  I haven't seen many around my usual station.  This corner, however, is a kind of hang out for local neighborhood homeless, as well as those local to my boulevard.  There are four gathered on a big section of the platform, designed for the throngs of fans who disembark here for the football stands.  They are huddled around the post of a painted steel security fence.  A can of shaving cream sits atop the post.  Mornings this week have started off as low as the 20s F., but the days get up to the 40s.  This morning, the sun is out.  The tallest guy is in a cap and an insulated jumpsuit.  He does an elbow bump, popular during Covid, with a smaller guy in a navy wool 3/4 coat.  This guy also has a US flag do rag tied around his head.  A heavy guy is wearing a sleeping bag instead of a coat.  He eventually decides to sit down on the concrete.

     New Year's Eve, 2022.  I don't yet trust the streets with my bike.  One more day on the transit system.  Though there's more snow forecast for Sunday night into Monday.  Was it last week I lost my balaclava?  This week I lost one of a pair of ski mittens which I've had for years.  No, I don't think I'm getting old.  I think I'm just stupid.  I kept the one of the last pair which I lost.  Unfortunately, I managed to lose the mitten for the same hand as the other pair.  I ponder a return to REI, until someone recommends a store in the shopping center where I work. After work today, I will indeed find a pair there.  This morning, I grab a bus to the train.  When you rely on the transit system, especially on the weekend, you make do with layovers between bus or train.  Even in cold weather.  With the exception of my ski mittens, I'm geared up.  Twenty minutes ain't bad.  I'm on the way to finishing a book.  And in a reversal of fortune, daylight is breaking instead of waning.  On the train, I take a seat not far from someone who I assume is a young woman.  Whoever it is has a women's crocheted hat on.  When their mask comes down, I first notice the beard and moustache.  A younger homeless guy walks down to our end of the train.  He shows the crocheted hat guy a small flashlight for which he's asking $5.  The guy tries it out.  He turns it on and off and uses the button to make it rapidly flash.  He touches the back end to a disabled rail on the wall of the train car.  {?}  The younger guy points out the various features to him.  Crocheted hat guy responds with a puzzled look on his face.  This feels as if it's an authentic ending to his year.

November 2022, "Whoa, Whoa. Go Right," "I Gotta Get Out I Gotta Get Out," and A Personal Yogurt Saga

      ...everything is now a symbol, an ideogram...  All of Nature is with them...  ...they are hearing tongues in trees...sermons in stones and...twisted metal...  Growth statistics, offered everywhere, on bicycle ownership...  ...a...meaning...mythic, as though the city were an allegorical character.  ...telling its people that it is ready to...harrow hell, to rise again...  - M. McCarthy in Reporting Vietnam, 1998

     ...a...grant from the Denver Regional Council of Governments.  ...will complete...Complete Streets, which...was developed through a corridor, "walk and roll" and a project stakeholder advisory committee.  "The project will calm down traffic...and make it easier for people...travelling by foot, bicycle, wheelchair, car or bus."  - Englewood City Magazine & Recreation Guide, Winter 2022/23

     ...the Colorado Legislature has approved...revitalization grants...to involve a creative or historic space [with] a high level of community engagement and respond to community needs...to stimulate the local economy and attract other funding...to be completed in a reasonable amount of time and meet energy efficiency standards.  - Westword, 11/10-16/2022

     "We don't have cars.  We don't have transportation.  This is our only outing.  This is the highlight of my life, coming here every Monday."  The...Afghan refugee... women come to Ekar Farm, an urban farm next to Denver Academy of Torah...  ...the pandemic forced Ekar Farm [to] shift toward...outreach...with...an anti-hunger organization.  "...a simple opportunity to grow food carries a lot of dimensions.  The program allows the women to be around other people from their home country."  The program runs from May through October...  The women cultivate a small section of land and use the produce...  Colorado has welcomed around 2,500 refugees since July of 2022.  - Washington Park Profile, 11/2022

     Tuesday is already November.  Some loose ends from Halloween:  Mondays we close at 6 PM.  As soon as I'm across the busy boulevard in front of my place of employment, I'm in a residential neighborhood.  I'm navigating trick or treaters running across the street.  I cross the busy road, out of this community and immediately into an old money neighborhood, and even more trick or treaters.  The sun is already down.  The time goes back this Sunday.  ...and it's next to pitch fucking black out here.  Fortunately, I can see pretty damned well in the dark.  Not that I don't have any lights on my bike.  But no one else appears to have any.  I pass a couple of moms out in the street.  Their kids are at the door of one small mansion.  Handing out candy is a middle-aged dad in a buttoned-down shirt (and sleeveless sweater?)  I hear him tell the kids to only take one peace each.  Inflation?  He wouldn't want to lose that beautiful home.  I roll past one home with what appears to be a kind of chute.  It runs from a corner window on the second floor down to the walk to the front door.  It's lined with orange lights.  Is this the candy delivery system left over from Covid?  Just past this home is a golf cart with a string of red lights.  I turn down a cul de sac and hook up with a path to a bend in the street.  I'm down and around a couple of more curves before I reach the trailhead.  There are even a few trick or treaters out on the trail.  I turn off the trail onto a sidewalk which takes me to the Black Eyed Pea for dinner.  Except that they closed early for Halloween.  This is a part of town where they appreciate activities for kids.  Next door is Qdoba.  Not as long a line as Chipotle, but not as good.  It will do in a pinch, or on Halloween.  I'm done and out in no time, past more trick or treaters between here and another trailhead.  Just before I get there, an old pickup truck turns uphill and hits the gas past the kids as I'm coming downhill.  Again, more parents and kids appear to be headed onto the trail.  In perhaps an hour, I'm off the trail and climbing a steep hill in my own extended neighborhood.  At the crest, a woman sticks her head out of her storm door and asks me if I want any candy.  (?)  I decline.  Around a couple of corners and I'm climbing another incline.  Yet again more kids out on the sidewalks.  Up ahead, a line of three motorbikes and a couple of ATVs rumble their way through an intersection.  Last week's mayhem prevented me from getting to the gym.  This morning, I get an early start instead of a late one, and get my workout done.  Not long after I get to work, a customer comes in to tell me that he's seen me out on the trail.  (In that case, I had better take it easy with the naked riding.)  He asks me if I have an electric bike.  He's the second random person to ask me this.

     Also from last week, or the week before.  I'm again on my way home in the dark, cresting the steep hill right off the trail.  This time at the top, there's an abandoned pickup truck with the hood up.  Parked at each and of the truck is a police cruiser with lights flashing.  I pass the trio of vehicles and am rolling past a home.  A car has just pulled up to a home and the driver exits.  She says, "What's up?" to another woman exiting the screen door of the home.  She replies, "There's stuff goin' on out here."  On Wednesday, I'm on the way to work.  This week, I'm back on my regular schedule, riding to work in the sunshine.  The point where I change trails is not a traffic circle, of which there is one a short distance before this point.  This is simply the same cement of the trail in a shape of a larger circle.  So, as I'm preparing to make a left onto the connecting trail, this is the moment when a young woman behind me says, "On your left."  If I had been sent the memo, I would know exactly which secret signal to give, to alert anyone behind me that I'm making a left.  Instead, I make only a slight move to the left.  I hear, "Whoa, whoa.  Go right."  On Friday.  I'm at work when I watch a little homeless guy slowly walk past the store.  He then turns around and comes back the other way.  Under his left arm are a pile of shirts and a coat, all with store tags on them.  Saturday I do grocery shopping at a supermarket on the way home, after a quick dinner at Chilis.  When I get home, I make sure I get the laundry done.  Because, Sunday I am seeing my 4th (?) movie over 4 Sundays.  I haven't seen any since perhaps last year, and now I'm seeing them again with a vengeance.  All at the same theater.  Most are showing the first half of this month at a film festival spread out at other theaters, all during the week, and for which you need tickets in advance.  And I'm seeing them on my only day off, and purchasing tickets at the box office.  But before I'm off to the movies, I still need some items from my usual supermarket.  So I jump on a bus.  I board the same bus back home with a middle-aged guy who gets on without paying any fare.  He talks to himself the entire way to my stop, something about recognizing "evil."  I drop groceries at home and head out to the sister's our usual lunch.  Then I elect to take the train toward downtown, to grab my usual dinner of a single slice of pizza, this time to go.  I board the train with a trio of twentysomethings.  They are playing some kind of game where they get out at each stop to board another car.  They get out at my stop and appear giddy about boarding another train   I wonder if they're high?  One is a female and the other two are gay guys.  One guy is in what appears to be a fake denim sport coat.  The other two appear to be following him.  At the station where we all disembark, he jumps up onto and over a bench.  He spins around and points at it before spinning back forward.  I ride to the pizza place before I take a downtown bike trail out to the boulevard with my theater.  I'm coming up out of an underpass on a popular trail in a well to do neighborhood where I used to live.  I slow way down to accommodate the gear assembly on this old bike.  Some guy behind me instead wants to come charging up the hill, on his ten speed and in his jersey over his long-sleeved shirt and shorts over his leotards.  He's surprised by me and ends up off on the grass.

Jayden, John, Evelyn, June, Jay, Joe, and Ed

     I don't recall how long it's been.  The homeless camp beneath the pair of underpasses, along the connecting trail to work, has been as empty as I can remember it.  Ever since I called in to the police, what effectively was a sweep.  The following Tuesday of a new week, I stay late at work after close.  This is the first time I can remember staying as long as 4 1/2 hours past close.  It's a new record.  The following evening, I get out on time.  I decide to get dinner at the Black Eyed Pea on the way home.  I'm seated behind a mom and grandma.  They are in a long conversation about the mom's family.  It's striking to me how much of this familiar arc of the mom's life is completely different from my own.  I listen to a seeming never ending stream of children's names.  It sounds as if she's divorced, and she's dating someone else.  I get a look at her when I'm leaving.  She's tall, perhaps in her 40s.  Her daughter Jeanie is in college, playing volleyball.  Mom: "She calls her mom every day.  Lot of drama.  Players, coaches.  She strives to be the best student and then cracks."  Grandma: "These kids don't want to go to college anymore.  Ten percent of graduating" (high school) "classes won't go to college.  Then they" (the authors of an article she read) "were sharing how much money" (college) "grads make."  M: "There are tons of sororities.  They're all Texas girls.  She was upset she didn't get in.  She was in" (one) "with a bunch of out of state girls.  John says she was losing weight. Where is the direction?"  G: "It's a shame Evelyn wouldn't be able to talk to you.  I bet June would like that.  I started to remember about that article.  They're saying, 'Go on with school.'"  M: "She's just going to have a difficult college experience."  G: "She has a boyfriend now."  M: "I hope he's around.  I just want her to be happy."  G: "Happiness is everything.  Look at your kids.  They're all happy."  M: "So far so good.  Jay is maturing. I'm so glad he's here after 2 years of Covid, instead of Alabama.  He'd love to go to Georgia.  He's in a college town.  He met Jayden Schnelling.  These frat houses in the South are a big deal.  He's 21.  They had a bunch of their girlfriends there who go to Austin.  This is the time to have fun."  G: "That goes until 27 or 28, start thinkin' about what you're gonna do.  Did Joe go back?"  M: "He's helping with the house stuff.  He's just growing up.  Jayden is just 21."  G: "You had a good" (job.)  "We're you out of school?"  M: "I loved that I worked there.  I learned how to type.  I'd love Joe to get in there..  Even though he's not a finance major.  He's a writer.  I talked to Ed today.  His house sold.  He has the boys for Thanksgiving.  I travel a lot.  Chicago, Newport Beach.  My kids are going to come home now.  I told him, 'Let's just get through the holidays.'"

     [One] veteran...started a program called The Art of War with the Denver Vets Center...  "We're not an art therapy program, we're the next step."  If a veteran's work is not quite ready to be shown in the post's gallery, the VFW will set the vet up with a mentor to help. The post...hosts First Friday events, yoga classes, post-traumatic stress disorder therapy...  "People don't want to come to a bar; that's just not the demographics of this generation's veterans."  The post no longer has an official bar...it's a saloon...  "Art causes a lot of introspection; there's a feeling involved that works, and it's been proven to work...  "...if it hadn't been for the veterans Arts Council, they...or their spouse would have committed suicide."  "...my job is to bring everybody back into the community."  - Westword, 11/10-16/2022

     Just the amount of work you have to have to survive just to pay rent, especially in a creative field.  - outfront magazine, 11/2022

     The grunt is no gentleman.  His average age in 19, and he left high school without finishing.  His skills are with the M-16...the M-60...the M-79 grenade launcher, hand grenades and bayonets.  He brags and swears and swaggers.  He runs into battle...screaming or cursing, as if he does not believe he can be killed.  He is killed and wrapped in a green paper blanket and put off to one side...  And the...youngster - from the high-school basketball team, the sharecropper's farm or the not-ready slums - has consistently volunteered...  "He's just another dude without all those things to...make him bigger than he is...like a police department, big job or salary."  - T. A. Johnson, "The Negro in Vietnam: 1968", Reporting Vietnam, 1998

     Sunday.  I'm not off to the movies today, for once this month.  I do need a new shell, or windbreaker.  It may have been this week when I was preparing to leave work...after staying an extra 4 1/2 hours past close.  One of the last things i do is attempt to zip up the shell I bought earlier this year.  When it gets to my neck, the zipper snags as it becomes caught in some fabric.  I attempt to pull it apart and the zipper pull slides all the way off of the zipper.  I use safety pins to keep it closed for the ride home, which begins a half hour past my bedtime.  When I get home, the garment goes into the trash.  The following morning, the safety pins go back to work.  And today, I'm headed somewhere downtown for a new one.  But first, it's back to the sister's, to help tidy up a sun room.  Next weekend, we shall unpack a decade-old assortment of boxes, each with Christmas decorations.  Some of which have been in storage.  A little like Antiques Roadshow at home.  At mid-afternoon, I'm off again to catch the train.  This time, all the way downtown.  From the sister's to the train, I go past a huge garbage processing facility.  There have been a couple of recent mornings when I've been out on the trail before sunrise, just across the river from here where I turn onto a connecting trail.  That early, the garbage truck drivers are all starting their engines at the same time, maybe 5 AM.  Some of them tease each other by honking at one another.  This afternoon, under autumn skies, I see a familiar pickup truck slowly pulling out of the parking lot of this place.  It's towing an empty flatbed trailer.  I've seen this truck a couple of times going past the sister's place.  It has a neon cross in the bed next to the cab.  The cross reads "Jesus saves."  I'm soon at the train station.  I jump on a train and am all the way to the stop for the pedestrian mall.  For the first time in all the years I've been hauling my bike on and off a train, my back rim becomes wedged in the door when it opens.  The door is fully open, but my bike is immobile.  My gear assembly is wedged against a bar.  I have no choice but to wait for the door to close.  Someone is desperately making their way past me, at the end of the car where the bike entrance and exit is, instead of simple going to the door in the middle of the car which is always free of any bicycles.  As the guy crawls his way around me, he says "I gotta get out I gotta get out."  The next stop mercifully is only a couple of blocks away.  I'm back at the pedestrian mall in no time.  I hit up a downtown boutique and find a shell on sale.  As it's on sale, it's a size smaller than mine but it barely fits.  Hey, I ain't gonna turn it down.  Then I'm off for the pizza place for dinner.  Then the yogurt place next door.  Then I head toward home again.

     The Saturday before, a customer came into work to let me know about the woman next door, who did haircuts.  He tells me she's been fired.  Really?  After perhaps a year of speaking so loud I could hear her through the wall?  I wonder what she did after so long to get booted?  He puts it this way, "Well, she's a pistol."  He tells me she gave shaves with a straight razor, and she was the best.  ...I did not know this.  So, this was a barber shop with a specialty kind of service.  It makes more sense to me now.  And he tells me she was absolutely fantastic at those shaves.  Later in the afternoon, I step out to throw away some trash.  A guy is staring at the door to the barber shop, which is closed.  I relay to him what my own customer told me.  He also claims that her straight razor shaves were unmatched.  I stay at work an hour and a half.  As I'm leaving, the lights are on in the barber.  A new lady is inside giving a haircut.  I will see her on Tuesday, outside the shop on her phone.  She's aware of the previous employee, and may know her.  She wants to know when I will come and see her for a haircut.  She's young and overconfident.  She's in an Oakland A's knit cap.  She doesn't convince me.  Toward the end of my ride home from work on Monday, the very first flurries hit me in the face.  The following morning, I wake up to snow on the ground.  This month, the temperatures have finally plummeted with a vengeance.  For some reason, I have no energy on Tuesday's ride to work.  I was going to hit the gym first but just don't feel like it.  I work too late again today to go after work.  I finally make it Wednesday morning before work.  When I walk into the rec center, a woman behind the desk tells me that I'm so bundled up, she's lucky she recognized my helmet.  A guy next to her tells me that he saw me perhaps last month, on my way to work along a street I decided to give a try.  It was an attempt to determine if the train station, past the one where I usually disembark on the way to work, is any closer.  He tells me he saw me almost get hit my a car making a turn.  I was in fact right where he said I was, but I have no recollection of any near miss.  Besides, I wasn't supposed to be riding on the sidewalk anyway.  Wednesday evening.  I'm almost all the way home when the first tiny flurries begin to hit my face.  The next morning I awake to snowfall.  I decide for today and tomorrow to take the transit system to and from work. The heck with it.  I can use the time this morning, of which I have extra as the last bus drops me off early, to drop off a check with my investment broker and to get some stamps.  It's not that much snow at all which will fall over the course of the two days.  I just decide, rather than dealing with riding along and probing where any ice may be underneath, I'm just going to let it melt.  And by the end of the day Friday, it appears to have mostly done just that.

A Yogurt Saga

     Friday morning, the sun has come out.  I need more yogurt for work however.  I've decamped from frozen yogurt to something more pure, at least during the week.  Last Sunday, I purchased a 48 oz tub of the stuff, and still it didn't last.  So I elect to take the transit system to and from work once again, let the rest of this snow melt.  It's cold enough for my winter coat which is warmer than my usual one.  I'm waiting for a bus to the supermarket, out on my corner, when a homeless guy comes walking up the sidewalk.  He uses a standard homeless technique, asking the time or similar question before asking for change.  He asks where the next main avenue is.  It's in the low 20s F. out here.  He has no coat, only a sleeping bag over his backpack and shoulders.  Down the street, I soon have yogurt in tow, enough for the rest of the week.  t's the better part of an hour until a bus comes to take me the same direction as I would otherwise ride my bike, headed to a connecting bus which shall drop me at the doorstep of work.  It would otherwise be a tight connection, but the connecting bus is 10 minutes late, so I make it in time.  The following morning, the streets and trail are remarkably clear.  The sun has done its job.  After work, I head up to another supermarket where I get the week's grocery shopping done.  I find a second place which does pizza by the slice.  This supermarket doesn't have the yogurt that the other does.  The following morning, I take the same bus back down to my supermarket, both for what I forgot and couldn't carry last night.  Again, I forget yogurt.  Then I'm off to the sister's place, and after that to a movie.  Not far from the theater is the same supermarket with the yogurt.  I swing by before the movie, and the theater lets me keep it in their fridge.  After the movie, I put on warmer gear which I carry, and head back home.  To get my yogurt took two days.

     Since 2018, [surrounding municipalities of Denver:] Littleton, Englewood and Sheridan have been collaborating on...homelessness together...  [Not so] Greenwood Village, known for its economic drivers:...the Denver Tech Center and an outdoor concert venue...  ...an affluent population and the nicest street signs in the metro area.  [One homeless woman in Greenwood Village emailed the mayor of an adjacent municipality] "saying she was out of resources and very cold.  ...incredibly exhausted from having been so miserable, and...just glad to sleep."  [The homeless woman] was becoming an outspoken advocate in the media for the homeless...  ...Greenwood Village is...unique for an ordinance...passed in 2014, limiting hotel and motel stays to...29 days.  "I feel like it's an attack on somebody that doesn't make a lot of money," said [the homeless woman.]  ...the city manager of Greenwood Village...offered "...I think we have absolutely prevented...a safety and public-health issue.  ...a hotel...not conducive to long-term living..."  ...SAFER (Solutions for Achieving Fast, Effective Response), a new nonprofit...provided short-term housing in [hotels] "with the goal of health...resource access...employment assistance...substance abuse concerns...or...justice system involvement."  [The homeless woman left one Greenwood Village hotel after 29 days, but returned] through the SFAER program.  Greenwood Village has an exception to its 29-day ordinance [for] families in crisis...for hotels or motels with a written contract with [an agency doing such work for homeless. This exception] is not meant for individuals [such as the woman.]  "She was on the waiting list.  ...to get an apartment.  I think she was really just devastated."  SAFER is now staying away from Greenwood Village.  "Their goal is to get rid of" [services such as ours.  As far as her applying for other programs, applications were too long for her,] "or the information...she couldn't provide, or she couldn't check all the boxes...didn't have a child...wasn't a drug user...things like that."  [She] had to have her hip replaced.  ...found out she'd have to have another hip replacement.  "When we said goodbye, she gave me a really long hug and held on tight.  I knew...something was going to happen."  {The woman left a cousin a note.}  "I'm growing old waiting for something.  I didn't do anything to feel shame except work so hard I got myself hurt...for the rest of my life.  ...here in the big city (too many people struggling and fighting for the same dollar)...  Life is what you can scrape...or pound out of it and my scraper and my pounder are broken.  No dignity there anyway.  I'm lacking the tools to make my life what I want...or something I can live with.  Just watching time pass from the same view of my vehicle..."  [Then,] she shot herself...  In August, the city served...a court order [to the hotel in Greenwood Village for] the names and dates of birth of all...who...stayed...using vouchers...  ...how long these people stayed.  ...any contracts...with [agencies doing work for homeless, and] emails [with] SAFER...  - Westword, 11/17-23/2022

    The ride on Monday is similar to being out and about on Sunday.  It's less freezing during the day than it is after the sun goes down.  Along the way to work, the closer it gets to noon (when I begin my shift), I end up first taking off my hoodie, then my new windbreaker, and eventually the balaclava.  I leave work on time this evening at 6 PM.  I need all that stuff back on.  When I get home, I get a call from my coworker.  I need to work her shift again.  I wake up early enough Tuesday to leave with enough time to take a stab at hitting the breakfast place in the shopping center before work.  I make a play for the train, but I've missed it by minutes.  I decide not to backtrack to the trail, but to turn down the first street past the station and toward work.  It's a familiar street.  But I never knew it was a straight and complete line all the way almost directly to work.  And at 5 AM, 2 days before Thanksgiving, traffic doesn't come near to slowing me down.  I get to work faster than I ever have before on a bike.  At the breakfast place is an elderly couple at a nearby table.  The wife is doing all the talking to the waitress.  "We don't use cream, thank you.  We love coffee.  Do you have sugar free syrup?  Never say no to coffee."  She reminds her husband that they must write their lists.  He sits silently, looking her direction.  The following day, at work, I end up staying an extra half hour.  A customer tells me this afternoon that a long-time business at the far end of the shopping center also had its glass door smashed.  I decide to take the bus home, it will be here shortly.  A couple of municipal police cars are parked at the bakery next to where I work.  The owner continues to load Thanksgiving deliveries into the van at 5:30PM.  At the bus stop next to the shopping center are a couple of passengers.  One is a big, tall guy with a bushy beard.  He has a tinny high-pitched voice.  He first asks the small woman the same question he asks me.  "Do you know where this bus goes?"  He sounds as if he's whining.  I stick my thumbs out pointing north and say, "That-a way."

     ...an Army in evolution.  ...ideas of dress, behavior, discipline and rank no longer apply.  ...in return for...reluctant participation...all questions...are permissible.  ...liberated, educated, aware...  ...honesty, independence, resistance to authority.  "Our business is killing, but my heart's not in it."  "We had one guy...on grass all the time, and he won the Silver Star.  He had it down..." He'd feel the breeze blowing away from the lifers [career soldiers, who may object] and he'd say, 'Hey, the wind's right.  Let's get nice.'"  ...the company's new first sergeant...announced his dislike of the [disregard for the colonel's] orders.  The litter of abandoned ammunition at the firebase...  ...he drew and levelled his pistol to enforce orders.  [A soldier] ran off to get his M16 rifle.  - J. Saaf, Life, 10/23/1970

     The Balanced Veterans Network is a non-profit organization that aims to educate veterans...about...cannabis therapy.  Founded by [an] Air Force veteran...in 2019 [it's a] nationwide organization...to...really find balance in life.  ...other modalities.  We have gotten...veterans their medical marijuana cards for free, and...reimbursed state fees...  We have equipped veterans with...grow equipment...  ...horticultural therapy...  "Unconventional healing for conventional forces."  ...we've got a lot of folks...afraid to register in [a federal] program [for fear of any disregard for] the Second Amendment...  [The next president could send our efforts] backwards.  [We want to] help veterans feel...comfortable...utilizing the plant.  Balanced Veterans, we're a lifestyle brand...  ...breath work has been a really important tool...  We have...to connect...veterans to psychedelic-assisted therapy.  - Westword, 11/21-30/2022

     ...the CIA army's wounded were getting virtually no care except that of traditional Meo witch doctors' ancient ritual of shrieks, gongs, charms and dances...  - J. S. Woodruff, Baltimore Sun, 2/21/1971

     The day after Thanksgiving sees reduced hours at work, and I'm working it.  It's an hour longer than my regular shift.  Thanksgiving Day seemed to go past so fast that it feels as if Wednesday was actually just yesterday.  Bringing my own yogurt to work was a good move, as the bakery with the frozen stuff is closed Thursday through next Monday.  I'm on the way to work as the dawn is breaking.  Along the long street a block from my own is a newly arrived motorboat, on a trailer.  It's not piled to overflowing with junk, it's partially covered with a tarp.  ...but it's parked, not in front of a home, but along the opposite curb next to an open plot.  I make my way to the trailhead and then all the way down to the turn for the connecting trail.  The sun is preparing to breach the horizon.  At the turn is a small shelter next to a little parking lot.  In the lot next to the shelter is a guy in a hoodie.  He's standing next to a folding camp chair and a disassembled tent.  He appears a bit as if he may be the guy who kicked my rear rim last month.  Today and tomorrow, I don't get as much sleep as I do when I don't have to open.  After work on Friday, I'm out an hour early and I stop into the Black Eyed Pea for a quick dinner.  Lunch was a piece of pie and a few bites of a leftover salad.  I sit behind a family of four, with a father who is telling his son about the devil.  From there I finally make it to the gym this week.  When I get home I'm still hungry. This happens after I go to the gym.  I stop into the Vietnamese place behind where I live for a snack of shrimp rolls.  I even polish off the rice noodles, bean sprouts and lettuce.  God I'm exhausted.  I eat with my hands.  The ethnically diverse group of college-types at a nearby table don't appear to mind. The Black Eyed Pea had the city's hockey team on their TVs.  This place has WWF wrestling.  Saturday after work, I head for the camera shop, where I have prints to pick up...and I'm overdue to get my Christmas photo cards made.  I don't feel tired out on my bike, cruising up the boulevard.  I discovered a more direct way to the camera place this summer, following major arteries.  The staff there is really nice and give me a little guidance me through what I'm rusty on as far as using the software.  But I pick it up pretty fast.  I have a memory card which turns out to be damaged.  It can't take any new photos, but the hard drive can read the ones which are on it.  I also have a couple of black and white prints.  One is one if myself which is think is funny.  I'm not sure which ones I want, but the place closes in an hour.  I end up throwing something together which looks pretty good.  The card design has bright colors and two of my photos match the hue.  A staff member scans the prints for me onto a memory stick.  Three decades ago, when I began getting photo cards made, I would take a single color print somewhere, which would then have to send it off to a lab.  Now I'm talking about memory this and memory that.  My cards are done, they will be ready in 48 hours.  And with my store discount, it comes to less than a dollar per card.  I wasn't expecting to have this good of a day.  I got to the gym and I got my cards processed.  My week's work done, I cross the street to an IHOP for dinner.  I sound like a radio commercial.  The camera shop and IHOP are out on this boulevard, across town from where I live.  I used to live on this one.  This is a better part of town, but it still has the occasional wandering homeless.  There isn't a municipality around the city anymore which doesn't have homeless.  It's never feels as though it's a long ride crosstown to get home from here.  When I get there, I'm so tired I'm dozing off in a chair.  I manage to do a load of laundry and even hang it up (my dryer is broken) before I hit the hay.  What I get overnight is a decent sleep.

     So, Thanksgiving, I put up the Christmas lights for the annual display on my townhome complex.  That was easy.  Every year, my back gate has the only anyone ever puts up facing the street, which is the only side anyone else will ever see.  My Christmas card order happened without having to stand in any line for an empty photo kiosk.  I suppose I wasn't that late getting them done.  Sunday morning, I bring out the miniature Christmas tree.  And it ain't even December yet.  And now, it's off to the sister's place to dig though boxes of Christmas stuff.  I manage to find all boxes marked for the holiday.  She finds one small tree.  She claims there are 3 more.  I don't find the remaining small one, but I do locate the two large ones.  This is after looking around, and dismissing one large box with the word "TREE" clearly marked.  Next Sunday, I shall return for the trimming.  Next weekend is yet another library used book sale.  This afternoon, I could go see another movie.  But I think I'll pass.  Instead, I want to head for the pizza place and hit a supermarket along the way, for a product my regular supermarket doesn't carry.  Even though both chains are owned by the same corporation.  The corporate office must want to make sure I'm getting my exercise. And there's things I want to get done at home. It's such a nice day I decide to ride the entire way there.  In spite of eating almost an entire pie at work over two days, my diet still hasn't been ruined.  At the supermarket, I grab my item and check out. I then ask the skinny kid running the U-Scan if he has the code for the men's room.  He tells me the checker on the last stand has a key.  I ask her and she acts less than thrilled that another customer wants to piss.  She asks me to wait until she's finished with her customer before she tells me that another checker has the key.  As it turns out, she was speaking to the sacker behind me.  He gets the key and lets myself and another guy inside.  Then it's off to pizza, a pinch of frozen yogurt, and off to home.

The Dog Walker of Christmas Yet to Be

     Monday.  This week, I have time today to hit the gym before work, thus getting it out of the way.  Tomorrow, the forecast is for snow and a high if 22 degrees F.  I leave the house and am coming down the long street a block from my own.  There are now plastic trash cans from the city on every corner of the long, wide, winding, new concrete path across the empty plots which comprise the north side of this street.  At the last trash can at the end of the path, there appears to be a guy in a hoodie.  Is he taking a leak at the trash can?  He appears to zip up his pants and dry his hands on wood chips on the ground.  After work, I'm on my way home down the first trail.  I'm approaching the site of a former homeless camp, underneath a trio of overpasses.  This evening, in the dark, I can see the camp is back after being swept last month.  Soon after, I turn onto the connecting trail, and I'm up next to the damaged guardrail.  I decide to stop and put on my neck gator, and switch out my gloves for ski mittens.  The wind is getting colder, and I suspect the snow is slowly approaching.  From behind me, along the trail comes a little homeless guy on a scooter, or a bike with an improvised motor.  He stops to glance at me before he turns off this trail and crosses the road to another trailhead.  The scooter has an improvised trailer on the back.  Soon, I'm up and off the trail, and climbing the steep hill off the street along an open field.  At the crest of the hill is a newly arrived homeless camper.  It's been a while, since earlier this year, than any were here or along the street below.  I turn corners and climb a couple more hills before coming down another.  I turn again and get to the end of a block.  A kid with a flashlight is crossing the street.  He waits to see what I'm going to do.  I turn and cross a busy avenue, and ahead turn down the long street a block from my own.  I pass the last trash can where a guy took a leak and washed up with wood chips.  At the opposite end is where I turn toward my own street.  I'm on the long winding concrete path.  Crossing the street where I turn is a guy in a hoodie.  He's moving very slowly and appears unsure of his next move.  He has no light.  In the dark, he appears as a much shorter Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. He has a tiny dog on a leash.  I turn directly in front of him to exit the path.  His head is completely inside the hood, and he doesn't see or hear me until he's startled by my turning in front of him.  The dog doesn't react.

     Tuesday.  I don't get a chance to eat dinner at work.  As it snowed today and was below freezing, I decided I didn't want to ride to work.  I just don't know where the ice is under the snow.  So I took the transit system.  I got to work and my coworker told me I didn't have my "whip" today.  Apparently, whip is ghetto for transportation.  If I had my whip, I would swing by a place on the way home for dinner, less expensive than the restaurants where I've been eating in my neighborhood.  When I do get hoe\me, I expect to grab an inexpensive meal from the Chinese place on one corner across from where I live.  They didn't even used to close for holidays, and they've been closed all week.  I don't know what's up.  They don't have a whip?  The Mexican place across the street on another corner is also closed.  (?) Walking home from a bus stop up my boulevard, I passed a different Vietnamese place, where I used to get a kind of crepe.  That place is under new ownership.  So I'm back at my usual Vietnamese place. The third corner must be the charm.  They're forever open.  I sit at a table next to one couple who finish and leave.  Another young couple sit down.  The guy mentions something to the lady about getting her PhD.  Ha!  I knew these customers were university types.  Wednesday is the end of the month.  Only one more month left in the year.  This is nuts. Again, because I'm not convinced I will be warm enough out on the bike, I decide to take the transit system.  It's 10 degrees F. this morning.  I'm at a stop for the bus I didn't take yesterday because I left too late.  This morning, the bus stop appears as if something is missing.  It's a wooden utility pole.  The stop is next to a fence, behind which should be an electrical substation.  The station is also now just an empty lot.  Another reason to take the transit system.  I need to clear my head.  I'm writing personal notes for my Christmas cards, and I'm making headway along the way to work.  I even get to my breakfast place at work and spend a good hour there this morning, finishing those up.  I should return to the bike trail tomorrow, at least until the next snow and the next decision about riding.  When I get home this evening, suddenly both the Chinese place and the Mexican place are open once again.  Was their power off for the first two days of this week?  I don't ask.  It's a sign of hope that next month will begin with good luck.