April 2012

     My power went out around twenty minutes to 2 AM.  My clock radio went out, and my alarm would not have awoken me at 2 AM.  My carbon monoxide detector beeped, and woke me up.  Another shower by flashlight.  The word is that the spring snow has downed power lines for 40% of the city.  I light two candles.  They through shards of shadow across the room.  I'm waiting now under the awning of my ride's home, watching some light, blowing snow under a streetlight.  It's hypnotic to watch as waves blow in, and then hang suspended for a moment before they appear to blow back the other way.  The next morning, I would see a big skunk go trotting down her walkway.  Friday is my day off.  I'm back in a neighborhood with a store where I worked for three months, almost 15 years ago.  Victorian homes, young people running in colorful outfits, walking dogs.  A groovy bohemian strolling with a guitar.  One civilization has passed on, and another has moved in and repainted.  The place where I used to work has closed up shop, less than a year ago.  Walking down a sidewalk, I see a guy in a button down shirt and gold tie, and khaki pants.  It's been five years since I've seen anything like him on a sidewalk.
     The American West is historically religiously unaffiliated.  Whether that's the result of a deep-seated independent spirit...or a holdover from a bygone era when there simply weren't enough clergy west of the Mississippi...  Nadia Bolz-Weber...  In an hour long interview recently, she unloaded at least three F-bombs and explained that "the Jesus business pays for shit."  (...she has Mary Magdalene on her right forearm and the Christian calendar on her left.)  The uncharacteristically late services ("because no one likes to get up at 7 a.m. on Sundays," Bolz-Weber says.)  Her flock is mostly composed of young, overeducated, and, as she puts it, often voluntarily poor parishioners, who might be homeless, gay, married with young kids...
     We don't like the word megachurch - although we understand our numbers put us in that category - because the concept has the connotation that we're here to conquer a city, to swallow everyone in our path...  
     "My services are doled out over wings and pitchers of beer in local bars."  Jerry Harships and his church serve lunch - as well as give communion to - Denver's homeless population in Civic Center Park.  ...people to whom a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich is a godsend. - 5280 Magazine, 4/12
     "If you get married, will you continue to be polyamorous?"  Why wouldn't we?  Honesty also seems more prevalent in the poly world.  Almost every person I know has cheated or deceived a partner  at least once in life, as had everyone asking me about my lifestyle that evening.
     White Allies for Racial Justice Caucus.  "...for white LGBT people...addressing white privilege ..."
     "If you were to hire a really creative pollster, I think they'd be able to show most gay men are Republican," Michael said.  "A lot of gays don't want large, intrusive government.  They don't want to see their wages going to a bureaucracy they don't participate in..."
     The liberation theme is the focus of Queer Seder...  "We go through the traditional liturgy in light of wanting to be free from oppression and homophobia."
     My date was a disaster.  Not the kind of disaster where you spill half a bottle of Zinfandel on your express button-up...  "I spend a lot of time in my church, volunteering and things like that," I said casually...  "Actually, I'm a deacon."  He smiled back at me weakly...  He had no idea what to say.
     "I don't know if I've ever met another gay person in this industry," said Nadia Lopez, who for five years has owned and operated am auto body shop in Aurora.  "I had to dance around my sexuality at work because I work with men." - Out Front Colorado, 4/4/12
     The two dozen pastors gathered in a dreary room adorned with balloons and needlepoint texts from Scripture...  "I wouldn't invite just anybody to my church,"...Santorum's message at private conclaves...has been essential to his success.  Religious leaders, antiabortion activists, homeschooling advocates and Christian businessmen have rallied to his cause...  Guided by the likes of Perkins - who prodded...pastors...to urge their flocks to vote... Tony Perkins said as he introduced Rick Santorum.     The overseer of Santorum's grassroots coalitions...  "We are the campaign," she says.  It helps that Santorum casts his campaign as a divine mission.  The result...  It's also cash.  ...it's increasingly apparent that religious leaders and their parishioners offer Santorum the hope of political salvation.  "It looks like God is just trying to bless this man,"...  ...Santorum has struggled to win over fellow Catholics, who have leaned toward Romney.  Santorum recently suggested...evangelical Protestants "practice their religion more ardently" than Catholics.  ...pastor, Dennis Terry...he thundered.  "If you don't like the way we do things, I've got one thing to say: Get out!  We don't worship Buddha.  We don't worship Muhammad.  We don't worship Allah.  We worship God."  - Time, 4/2/12
     Our clients come to us afraid.  They are afraid to stand up to their abuser.  The National Law Center on Homelessness and poverty reported on their website that domestic violence is the leading cause of homelessness nationally.  "We also file petitions for undocumented residents...  This is literally their ticket out of poverty" and "into work authorization..."  - Denver Voice, 4/12
     The Hackett sisters...know you will enjoy their unique private viewing rooms and old school values.
     ...they proudly affiliate with the Association of Cannabis Trades for Colorado (ACTofCO) and Cannabis Business Alliance (CBA).
     They cater to a diverse clientele ranging from the creative counter-culture to business professionals, veterans, and senior citizens.  
     ...they are a full-service medical marijuana dispensary with the feel of a neighborhood shop.
     ...owned and operated by Colordao natives.  They hold themselves to the highest standards...  - The Hemp Connoisseur, Spring 2012
   
     The new week brings a missing driver at work, and an unexpected shift behind the wheel.  The route takes me to a street corner with an ever changing rotation of panhandlers.  The one I see today has a grey beard, baseball cap, and tie dyed T shirt.  I don't know what it is about the shirt which makes him appear somehow less indigent.  On a bus home, a middle aged guy in back is telling someone about how his kids want nothing to do with him, about his truck...

     What concerns Susan Sontag is how to live in good conscience if one is an artist, a radical, and a highly rewarded citizen of the American empire.  She answers...as an account of her temporary disengagement from the complex society, and of...a brief encounter with a different way of life.  "[I] had been unable to incorporate...my...dilemma at being a citizen of the American empire."  She records her "initial culture shock," her dismay at...a seemingly impassible barrier between herself and the real, living embodiments of the ideal Other.  "...a derisive inner voice" accuses the Other of "posing against overcomplex, hypocritical, devitalized urban society choking on affluence...As eighteenth-century "philosophes" pictured...a pastoral ideal in the Pacific Island or among the American Indians, and German romantic poets supposed it to have existed in ancient Greece, late twentieth century intellectuals in New York or Paris are likely to locate it in the exotic revolutionary societies of the Third World."  - The Pilot and the Passenger, L. Marx, 1988

     On my day off, I am returning from shopping as I find myself at a bus stop with five drunks, three of whom appear to be a man, wife, and teenage daughter.  The daughter appears to have an inch long stitched laceration on her forehead.  The apparent father gets up and tells the other two, "Hey, five-0 is coming around the block, you better get up.  I see the "dad" and girl slowly walk down the sidewalk.  I'm on a train to work on another Saturday at 5:30 AM.  An officer is on the train checking fares.  There are two young guys sitting across from me.  One of them has his fare, the other searches everywhere for his to no avail.  The guy with no fare says that they both "were in the strip club until 4."  He gets a written warning.  he recounts how a friend asked him why he doesn't pay his parking tickets.  She asked him, 'Is he not worried about a warrant for his arrest?'  He replied to her, "They're going to arrest me, in Florida?"  His head is shaved, an earring is in his lip, dimples are in his cheeks, and flames are tattooed onto his left wrist.  "Denver PD can suck my dick," he mentions.
     It's Monday after work.  Baseball season has begun.  On an overcast day at the train station, white guys in caps and sunglasses are everywhere.  Two of these guys are on my bus home.  One has a cap which reads "DEA" on both the front and back.  A homeless senior is standing in the doorway, perplexed as to what the driver wants him to do with his root beer bottle.  The DEA guy says "Go!.  Fuck.  Fuckin' bus."  As he gets off, he says to the homeless guy, "Take a fuckin' bath, bro.  You stink the fuckin' bus up.  Nasty bastard."  After he gets off, a Japanese senior gets on, and he is non-stop coughing.  The homeless man gets up and, in a weak voice, tells the driver he wants to get off.  After he does, the Japanese man continues coughing until he also gets off at the next stop.
     The next morning, around 5 AM, I grab a bus for a short ways up the street.  A woman is reading a hard back romance novel.  Her bookmark is a folded paper placemat from McDonalds.  I get off and approach another bus bench, where a guy with a grey beard, hunting cap, flannel shirt, and backpack is smoking.  When he spots me, he acts as if he has to go.  He walks a few yards before he appears to stop and count his change, before he keeps on truckin'.  Down the same sidewalk as the DEA guy.  The following morning, on the bus is a girl in a hoodie.  On the arm it says "give".  At the top on the front is a heart-shaped peace sign, with tiny rhinestones around it.  On the bus home from work, I'm listening to someone on the phone, "Myra, I just got out of jail.  I ain't seen no one but my home boys.  I want to see a family member.  I'm gonna be very disappointed (if you don't show up).  Dig it.  You're gonna pick me up.  You hung up on me.  What's up with that?"  This went on for several blocks.  Dig it.

     The Colorado Street Medics roster has fluctuated wildly over the years...  The training sessions frequently draw..."crazy wingnuts who want to fight the government in a shack in the woods."  Each class includes at least one extremist who is attracted by the mention of "chemical warfare."  "There's always someone who comes in with camo pants tucked into their knee high boots and is like, 'What do I do with the nerve gas?'  ...if you're part of We Are Change, you're not anti-racist.  We're...anti-supremacy...  Colorado Street Medics also turn down requests here at home, usually because the members of a certain cause are all white or religious...  One of the medics gives the patient permission to use female gender pronouns before asking his or her own preference.  - Westword, April 19-25, 2012

     I went through downtown on 4/20/12, my day off.  I was on my way to see a doc titled ComiCon IV: A Fan's Hope.   Along the way, waiting for a pedestrian mall shuttle, I was next to a street preacher.  He was speaking in generalizations with his voice rising and falling.  "Jesus let himself be killed.  He wants you to live without sin."  In the park downtown was a marijuana celebration complete with booths.  Celebrants were all over the downtown pedestrian mall.  They are just kids, but instead of pop tunes are walking along singing made up songs about marijuana.  Many are wearing green plastic leaf necklaces.  Someone on the shuttle mentions that she hopes the park is not "contaminated by the bums.  Stay off the grass."  Civic Center Park is a gathering place, or a place to drop, for many homeless.  This marijuana movement as it manifests itself strikes me as thoroughly self-indulgent.  A newsletter I picked up off the ground reads as telescopically focused on random information presented as 'evidence' of the importance of their cause.  GMO, or genetically modified organisms, are mentioned as a kind of 'anti-marijuana'.  A speaker on an theatre stage, at one end of the park, a speaker is pontificating upon "this incredible nutrient" which "cures cancer."  I'm struck most of all by the tone of his voice.  It's one of absolute devotion; something missing from the street preacher's script.I didn't realize that this gathering was here today, much less that it would be as organized as any other annual event in this park.  After my movie, I was back in downtown, where the Friday night downtown dining experience-seekers filling the restaurants had shown up, on the mall where the 4/20 soldiers had been all afternoon.  On the way, I was on the bus with a girl in her deathburger uniform.  When she got on her cell, she began talking about her personal life, including coming into downtown before work to "see my son.  They moved him and didn't tell me.  So I came down here and spent the day down here.  Least you can do is tell a motherfucker."  As I am headed to a connecting bus back in downtown, I see on each of two opposite corners a mime, complete with white face paint.
     The next morning, I come out of a supermarket and am waiting for a bus.  The stop is next to a new tiny condo unit.  It stands where an old apartment building was torn down, and where some street characters lived.  Where the same have moved into the new building.  One of them runs across the street to ask me for change, to ask a guy in a wheelchair for a cigarette.  He tells him, "Hey, I want to show you something.  I'm an avid coin collector."  One of his pockets sounds as though it's full of change.  "Here's one, 1777-1776...1776-1976."  He goes into the mini-condo.
     It's an uncharacteristically warm and subsequently beautiful day in Denver's Technology Center.  I am passing couples on the sidewalk, fresh from the Marriott with their 2012 Denver Star Fest merchandise.  "I haven't actually seen anyone dressed as Spock," a woman says as she goes by.  The guy holding her hand replies, "There were Vulcans."  It's 1 PM.  I pass a guy with orange hair, a black robe, and a giant alien ax over his shoulder.  The usual Ghost Busters van is parked in the valet area.  Inside, a girl in zombie makeup appears to have a bite out of her face.  A teenage kid in a trenchcoat has black wings sticking out of his back.  Another guy has a green hat with "YODA" on the front, and a fuzzy ear on each side.  There's a big guy dressed, I believe, as The Rocketeer.  He has a trio of toddlers in tow, all dressed as though they are going out to trick or treat.  Except the guy.  Another guy getting his tickets with his son is telling the woman behind the table that he's considering learning how to use a lathe.  A sign next to the elevators asks guests to limit their number in the elevator to eight, to keep them "running smoothly."
     The Tech Center Marriott has a huge area inside, open from floor to the roof, onto which the balconies open.  Over the railings, the guests have begun a tradition of hanging banners, mostly Klingon.  One is a pirate flag, one is for Gandalf's Order of the Grey.  Another reads "Party like a Klingon."  Here in the big open area, I'm sitting in a leather chair next to a woman in a pointed hat with blinking lights.  The costumed characters abound.  Rebel pilots, ST Next Gen. officers, Jedi lesbians, Aqua...Woman, one of the Droogs from A Clockwork Orange.  I see a young, thin woman in full Klingon makeup, texting on her phone.  Someone has a red uniform shirt from the original Star Trek, with "expendable" on the front.  The inside joke is that, every extra's character on the original series in a red uniform always gets killed.  I pick up a flyer for another con coming in October before I hit the men's room.  I am soon the only one in there when I hear a knock and, "Housekeeping..." with an accent.  I answer in Spanish, "Welcome.  How are you?  Have you seen any crazy (white) people?"  "Only a few," they answer in Spanish.  The art show this year is sparse.  The dealers' room I save for last.  I like to give every vendor an opportunity.  I could have had plenty of DVDs; Space 1999, Far Out Space Nuts, The Fantastic Journey.  I could have had the same AMT kit of the original Enterprise my dad bought me forty years ago.  Only, four decades ago, it wasn't $150.  It's quite a kind of history of future histories, and has great personal entertainment relevance.
     The Star Fest strikes me as, not an exclusively, but a predominantly white experience.  Though those attendees who come in costume consider themselves out of the ordinary,  the social interaction is predicated upon subtle complexities, much like those presumably other "ordinary" social interactions.  The 4/20 rally is a predominantly minority street (or park) party.  The dress is uniform to the point of appearing as a bland, singular statement.  The social interaction among these faithful strikes me as overly sincere and desperately fashionable, not to mention evangelical.

     ...no matter how weird it seems to you that people would pay thousands of dollars to fly to Aurora to pretend to be in the Wild West, it's going to happen.  ...Pueblo wants to build a riverwalk extravaganza on the Arkansas River, when there's water in it, I guess...and some "moderate income residential housing."  ...Estes Park...wants millions of your tax dollars for elk bugling classes.  ...Montrose, a place way out west that thinks it's in the mountains but is as flat and dusty as Goodland, Kansas...  They want millions of state tax dollars for putting up an RV park.   Welcome to the new capital of the Old West.
     In 2008, members of the Colorado Minuteman Civil Defense Corps chapter protested against employers who give jobs to undocumented residents.  - Aurora Sentinel, 4/19 - 4/25/2012
     GI GRILL JIM ODLE...CHAIRMAN OF THE ALL AMERICAN BEEF BATTALON...DEDICATED TO SUPPORTING THE TROOPS FIGHTING THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR...SERVES...A SOLDIER IN THE 349TH PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS COMPANY, A TACTICAL UNIT OUT OF AURORA...  "WE'RE FEEDING (THE SOLDIERS) STEAK AND LETTING THEM KNOW THAT RURAL AMERICA REALLY APPRECIATES THEM," SAID ODLE.
     To this day, I shudder when I recall...former City Manager Ron Miller who said that in the nearly 13 years he was city manager in Aurora, he was never aware that folks had something bad to say about A-Town.It was that kind of of ridiculousness that helped keep the city and its image from gaining ground for more than a decade.  - Aurora Sentinel, 4/25 - 5/2/2012

     Today I was sent to work a manager's shift at his store.  A customer came in; a tall, soft spoken middle aged guy in a black church T-shirt.  On the front, top left, his shirt reads "leader".  He brings in his drycleaning, and asks, "Do you want to see spots?"  He mentions his clothes having stains from a spilled platter.  "This is the tie I remember wearing to dinner.  Do you do ties?"  I wonder who usually deals with the drycleaning in his house...  The afternoon part-time person does not know, after working for us for almost a year, how to bag and put away orders.  As a result, I stay an extra 20 minutes, and miss my bus home.  Having a half hour on my hands, I stop into this month's rotating business next door, a yogurt place.  The patrons reflect the neighborhood's white families.  It's just the kind of place which replaced our downtown store, after the property owners doubled our lease.  The place where I am now has Hebrew letters identifying the many different flavors, and must be named Smiley's, because the cashier tells me, along with everyone else, to have a smiley day.
     When I get off the train on the way home, someone wants to sell me a wallet for a dollar.  "I'm just trying to get home."  He gets on my bus with a transfer he already has with him.  The next morning, I am on a bus to work with a couple of different passengers wearing sunglasses at 5:30 AM.  A guy at the train station is asking me for "anysparechange..."

     In an effort to deal with increasing numbers of the homeless on Denver's streets, the City Council in expected to consider an ordinance that would ban unauthorized camping throughout the city.  - Denver News, 4/10 - 5/10, 2012
     ...the exhibit at the Denver Art Museum of Madeline Albright's exhibit of pins ahe wore while engage [sic] in diplomatic work...   The students prepared questions for Albright...  Albright told the young women..."there is no room for mediocrity at the top for women."  - North Denver Tribune, 4/19 - 5/2, 2012
     The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has scheduled a Nation Prescription Drug Take-Back event...  It is a great opportunity for individuals who have accumulated unwanted, unused prescription drugs, to safely dispose of those medications.  1. Many teens feel that prescription drugs are safer to use than street drugs since they are prescribed by a physician.  ...they are found in medicine cabinets.
     ...The Older Anericans Act provides funding to...programs in nutrition, in-home care, transportation, disease prevention/health promotion, long-term care overnight, senior employment...essential to maintaining independence for older adults.
     A 2008 survey conducted by the Employee Benefit Research Institute* found that...around half (49%) reported that the total amount of their savings (excluding the value of their home and any defined benefit plans) is less than $50,000.  In addition, 22% of workers and 28% of retirees said they have no savings of any kind.  ...every generation...should have a disciplined savings program in place.  - 50 Plus Marketplace News, Denver Metro, April 2012
     Don't give me teachers.  Give me real world gladiators.  I don't deal in theories.  I want instructors who actually have experience...  I crave insights from the front lines, not textbooks.  I want every edge I can get.  Are you in?  I don't take classes.  I experience them.  Don't give me lectures.  Give me dynamic, immersive experiences...like I absorb the world...  I want to collaberate in groups.  I want feedback from practice tests.  ...I'm part of an educational movement.  Are you in?  - Colorado Technical University brochure

     The following day, I am working a closing shift.  I stop into a bagel place in a wealthy neighborhood.  I get a couple bagels and sit next two a couple of guys having a conversation.  "Corinthians 14.  Who are we becoming in Christ?  We don't teach about that.  It's so powerful.  In 30 years, I've never had anybody pray over me.  You know, something's wrong.  You know, it's awsome.  I go to these other churches.  I just learn things.  The grace of God is great, but what does it mean? "
     "It means he accepts you where you are.  ...spiritual formation.  There's not a lot of emphasis on that."
     "No there's not.  How to be focus on that?  A lot of these guys, Global Americans...awakening your spirit...  It's powerful.  I'm knowing guys who changed their mind, broken off from pornography.  Those who are awakened in the spirit are sons of God.  We don't want to stagnate spirituality.  I think most Christians think, "God, just beam me up, get me out of here."  It's changed my thinking."
     "We know God is powerful.  This is not all there is.  I don't want you to feel bad when I go.  It's okay.  I want you to know there's more.  Just havin' a big ass house in Cherry Hills with a gate on it.  You know, that doesn't make you happy either.  I know someone who has this house.  She can't sell it.  They won't let her subdivide it.  That's not life either.  Nothing is what it seems.  Everything is not, you know..."
     "I quit the club.  I left it intact.  I didn't fire this guy.  After I quit, this guy got fired."
     "Well that shouldn't come back on you then."
     "The unemployment he gets, plus cash under the table, plus his student loan..."
     "Selling this last condo, there's so much crap you have to deal with, so much paperwork, I don't even want to deal with the system."
     And just like that. I'm off to work.  Some eight or nine hours later, my coworker has given me a ride to a 7-Eleven.  She has pulled part way into the drive and stopped.  As I open my door, there suddenly is some guy on a chopper right next to me, saying, "Goddamn, goddamn driver.  Goddamn driver..."

     The next morning, I am walking up the street to the bus stop, past a halfway home in the form of apartments.  One of the basement ones has its window open.  The inside lights are out, and I see a big screen TV.  It appears to be on MSNBC.  (Rachel Maddow at this hour?)  Do I hear some guy getting oral sex, or is he laughing?  Only on the Feds.  As I travel through these neighborhoods, the lines of demarcation between class are erased.  The resulting collection of random characters have no immediate context.  About 25 hours later, I am on a bus to work, sitting behind a woman with two black eyes. She is looking at her face in a reflection in the window.  When we get to the train station, she asks me if the trains run this early.
     A couple of evenings ago, when I almost doored a Hell's Angel reject, I immediately got on a bus for a short trip up the street.  I sit next to a father and his two adorable daughters.  He doesn't appear to have the same appreciation for what of what he may consider personally as something of a long ride.  I see them again, the next afternoon on a bus home from work, this time with the mom.  I see original three a third time the following day, at the grocery store.  They may live in a trailer park next door to the supermarket.  In the afternoon, I'm on a downtown pedestrian mall shuttle.  At the stop for the shuttle, a kid asked me if I was interested in purchasing any of the marijuana buds he has in an orange plastic prescirtion medicine bottle, complete with child safety cap.  He asks another kid with tattoos on the shuttle.  One of the shuttle's stops is at a corner with a guy who has a guitar and blue hair.  The kid asks the guitar guy's friend if he's interested in a purchase.  The guitar guy's friend replies, "All I have is a dime!"  The kid says, "Okay, I'll be on my phone."

     Midnight, 16th Street Mall, at Stout  The densest concentration of homeless folk is between California and Champa, where the doorways have been filling up...  A guy hanging around in front of the Walgreens tries to hustle a few bucks when I ask questions, as though he's some kind of informant.  A few doors down, another guy strumming a battered guitar in front of a closed sandwich shop gets pissy when I stop to talk.  "I'm trying to make my living out here," he snaps.  He strums a few more chords for an audience of nobody.  1:45 a.m., 16th Street Mall and California  A pedicab driver mentions, "The most trouble I ever get is when my drunk-ass passengers want me to let them out so they can go fuck with these guys: 'Oh, let me out a minute, I want to go talk shit to this homeless dude.'  Down the mall, two girls stumble past the Sheraton.  Inside the hotel, eighteen TVs are all showing the same channel in the empty bar.  5 a.m., 16th Street Mall and California  As if roused by some kind of internal alarm clock issued only to the homeless, a large chunk of the sleeping population awakens almost exactly at 5 a.m.
     Last week, Westword sat down with Albus Brooks, the...ordinance to ban "urban camping" in Denver...proposal's main propopnent in (city) council, in the conference room of his District 8 office.  Albus Brooks: When I first got onto council, one of the first issues people were talking about was we have an incredible homeless issue.  The homeless providers were saying, "We need to...provide more services."  Businesses and residents were saying, "We've never seen it this bad."  One of the first things I saw were multiple, multiple responses from conventioneers where the first and second thing they'd say was, "Do something, I thought you guys were supposed to be the leaders.  You're nationally renowned in your effectiveness towards homelessness."  Most providers are saying, "We want to help draft the ordinance."  That's not going to happen.  As a city , this is where civil liberties and government start to meet.  I'm elected to protect the public good...  - Westword, 4/20-5/2/2012
     In Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan's first State of the City Address, he pontificates:  "In Aurora, what will happen next is a future so bright  that the rest of Colorado will wonder how we got so lucky.  We are not lucky.  We are good.  We have a focus, we have a vision, we have the citizenry, the elected officials...partners to help make things happen."  And in true Hogan fashion, he also stressed the importance of debunking the common misconceptions of Aurora.  "Now is the time to take the lead on the false images of no trees and rampant crime," he said.  - Aurora Sentinel, 4/26 - 5/2/2012



     Civilians pity us.  They're always talking about the loneliness and the danger.  They talk about the sacrifices we have to make to feed the millions topside.  They ought to take a good look at their world: crowds, noise, shortages, tension, rules, ugliness, hostility, and more rules.  They can have it.  Why do they force us to go topside for R and R every two weeks?  Why won't they turn us loose?  Why keep binding us with their own fears?    - "Lobotomy Shoals", by J. Brantingham

March 2012

     A spaceship that would transport earthlings from Aurora to Australia in about two hours.  It's an idea that Front Range Airport officials in Adams County are striving to make a reality.  The notion of commercial space flight is appealing to members of the Aurora Economic Development Council...  "There are enough entrepreneurs now who are developing these prototypes for these super fast planes that it could be a vanguard of an economic development wave," said...senior vice president for AEDC.  ...a whole new tourism industry could be tapped...  "...you'd probably have an audience or clientele..."  Colorado also requires Limited Liability Shielding...which limits liability for any injury to a spaceflight participant...  The idea of space travel is riveting for the vice president of public affairs and operations for the Aurora Chamber of Commerce.  - Aurora Sentinel, 3/1-3/7, 2012   
      My view is that the awareness of the Machine Revolution has been vital to our literature since the eighteen thirties.  Between 1830 and 1860 the image of the machine, and the idea of a capitalist society founded upon machine power suddenly took hold of the public imagination.  ...images of industrialism and particularly images associated with the power of steam, were widely employed as emblems of America's future.  - The Pilot and the Passenger, L. Marx, 1988


     Through the centuries people have...been searching the night sky for answers.  ...what I'd been thinking...  "That's not really my sky."  ...from the then-foreign sky that I was born under as I was torn from my parents' culture.  I wasn't here, but I wasn't there.  ...everything I was surrounded by was the antithesis of what I was being told...at home.  ...neither felt mine.  Life in the U.S. only made my parents wary...(no slumber parties, no PB&Js, no boyfriends...)  I had...no sense of community...bewildered at the concept of team spirit...or hometown pride.  - Out Front Colorado, 2/29/12  For decades, change was not a problem.  Most original owners stayed in Arapahoe Acres...built between 1949 and 1957 and reflects Hawkins' passion for Usonian Architecture.  The artistic vision came from Edward Hawkins who studied firsthand the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.  Most original owners began to move out in the early '90s...  But...Arapahoe Acres became hip.  Trophy homes replaced a common interest in historic preservation.  - The Denver Post, 3/5/12  Charlie Busch oversaw extensive research on the limitations of current zoning to adequately protect the neighborhood...  "What we've discovered over time is that these small communities like West wash Park really are more like small towns where people spend their lives.  ...what makes a house look like it's part of our neighborhood.  And we also found that these big, new duplexes turned over very quickly.  They were bought very often for investment property."  - Washington Park Profile, 3/2012  ..."Where am I living in consciousness?  Where am I inclusive?  Where am I caring?  Where am I judgemental?"  ...we can choose to bring our awareness to a place where we give the world what we want to get.  People are wanting a shift, and we're dealing with the old paradigm of judgement and hierarchy.  ...a new culture, a new way of being, a new humanity...  ...the problem we humans have is we get attached to everything.  We don't know how to enjoy something 100 percent, to be completely present.  If you really, truly enjoy...even for a few seconds, you'll be so fulfilled.  "What is the meaning of USA?"  It's not United States of America.  It's ultimate state of awareness. - Nexus, March/April/2012
     Chinese Evangelical Church of Denver understands discovering one's identity can be a struggle for those caught between cultures.   At Avalokteshvara Buddhist Center, one teacher says, "Our goal is to help the community achieve a state of mental peace."  In Disciple Mission Church of Denver, TVs throughout the church are synched together in highlight important information or live feeds of services.  At Queen of Vietnamese Martyrs Parish, a youth group leader explains, "Religion is important for youth because it helps them to find people like themselves who believe in the same thing,"...  She said that being Catholic isn't any harder than being a Buddhist or atheist.  She makes the sign of the cross before she eats...  At the Denver Buddhist Cultural Society, the kung fu instructor describes, "In the praying ceremony, we...bow three times and...invite thousands of Buddhas to bless the new year for...a stable economy..."  An Aurora-area high school senior remarked, "I've noticed more American people coming to pray at the temple.  It shows how people are becoming more understanding of different cultures and beliefs."  - Asian Avenue, 3/2012

     For many people who live on the street or those in housing without a disposable income, sometimes all they want is the opportunity to "splurge" on being a customer.  They want to sit at a table, enjoy a meal or cup of coffee, just like those of us with a disposable income can do regularly...
     Of the majority of those...on the 16th St Mall,  Most of us hadn't "been young" in many years.  We did not come out to Colorado "to hang out..." as the Mayor stated in his article.  They came seeking work, and because Denver has food for the homeless.  Not all other states do. 
     "...we were thinking of other people to be in communication with as educators,"...Dr. Richard Goode, professor of History at...Nashville's...Lipscomb University...said.  "I was just kind of imagining other types of people in our community who are often overlooked or underserved and trying to find a way to be part of our community."  ...of the Street Law class...30 percent of students have experienced varying degrees of homelessness.  The students partake in conversations about...the current political climate, how 9/11 changed our society forever, racial profiling, immigration laws, and the practices of global corporations.  ...how the laws and climate of society can harm the homeless population.  ...teacher Preston Shipp speculated, "You get the sense that there are certain people at Lipscomb who seem to understand that if you're going to call yourself a Christian university and claim it as part of your vocation, that's going to require more of you than a no-drinking clause.  - Denver Voice, 3/2012
     After a six-month search for the best crew of friends in the country, four guys took home the Band of Buds crown.  The search was extensive.  Thousands of crews...completed all sorts of insane challenges...converted their friends into fans...and shared it all with the world.  ...took home the title, $100,000 cold hard cash and got their friendship validated, commemorated and celebrated with a photo shoot by Rolling Stone photographer, Danny Christensen.  U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!  For four days and nights the crews battled their way through larger than life challenges, from the tables, to the track, to the VIP suites.  - Rolling Stone, 3/15/2012

     It's . . . yet another Saturday, 5 AM.  Somehow, another week, another month, coming up on another season.  I'm at a bus stop across the street from my place.  There's a couple sitting on a bench in the shelter, huddling in the cold.  A guy with an unlit cigarette in his mouth is talking about getting "reported" for riding the lightrail back and forth.  "In New York or Chicago, the train goes in a circle.  They don't have shit out here."  Exactly one week later, I am headed to the same bus stop.  As I pass the gas station next to it, I see a woman at a pump get out of her car.  She's wearing what look like pajama bottoms, standing on the floor of her car and looking over her car roof and yelling at her teenaged son, on crutches by the curb.  The following Monday, I go into the store.  During a brief conversation, the clerk tells me about the drunks who come in and ask to use the restroom.  "They do drugs in there, they write all over everything."  A girl, who he wouldn't let use the restroom, pulled down her pants and went in the parking lot.

     A sign spinner is watching an approaching bus load of kids.  The smaller they are, the more likely they are to launch litter.   ...he pulls up...at 10 a.m. five days a week, he is given coffee, a costume and a bottle of Febreeze, should he require it.  Sign spinners are officially known as human directionals.  ...some of the other sign bosses...troll the streets in the morning, pick up day laborers, hand them signs and then drop them off at a business after just a few instructions.  Medical marijuana dispensaries hire spinners who they can pay 'in trade'.  Denver municipal code prohibits panhandlers from coming within a certain distance of ATMs, community toilets, buses, outdoor patios, and other public spaces.  And...panhandling is completely prohibited after dark.  - Westword, 3/15-21/12  Across the street from me is a dispensary.  My boulevard is a corridor for a concentration of dispensaries.  Last summer, on my corner, one of a pair of sign spinners for the dispensary asked me if I had my medical marijuana card.

     Where I live and work, I see fewer white people than I can remember.  On a day off, I am in a neighborhood Mexican restaurant.  On either side of the counter, English is rare.  Weekdays are when I see a sudden appearance of white faces, and all of them in this eatery.  I wonder what I don't know about their desire for traditional Mexican food without the typical American frills.  I like the way the place does eggs, they know how to do a burger, and they got strawberries and cream, not to mention the fine service.  This afternoon is the first time I've heard them playing music in English.  The conversation of a pair of white women immediately jumps out at me.  "What did I tell you?  For six bucks (for a meal), this place is the bomb."
     The past two weeks at work, someone quit, my boss forgot to schedule someone at one of our stores, someone had mandatory high school choir practice, and today, I began covering for a sick employee when my boss called to tell me to drop everything.  Someone else was sick, and I had to cover their shift.  In that order.  I'm always saying, I can't be everywhere.  This translates to twelve hour shifts; fast food and no sleep.  I return home as I left, in the dark.  I'm back at the same dark train platform I was early this morning.  I see the same distant street lights underneath the separate line of lights capping the foothills, the same yellow and red Denny's sign as I sit and wait for one of the last buses home.
     A homebody...  is that what I am?  I'm writing an awful lot of this place.   Is this where the action is?  The only time when I can be caught downtown past the afternoon is when I am out to dinner with my Mom and sister.  They go to plays, operas, and tonight is the symphony.  Dinner tonight is at an oyster bar, a place where one can get beer on tap, instead of from a shoplifted 40 oz bottle.  We are seated at the one table which has no overhead lamp.  It's so dark at this table we can't read the menus.  I ask the hostess for a flash light.  We appear to be seated in the afterthought section.  (Because one of us is in a wheelchair?)  The ladies say that they don't mind being out of the way.  I'm out of my element, and again I'm not.  This place is full of young urban white people at happy hour.  This is a nation founded upon the happy hour, this time and place an example of the celebration of Mad Men, and the culture I am dining in this evening is one which runs in a different gear than the one in my own neighborhood.  I am familiar with the people of this culture.  They make up a kind of collective group, with a kind of collective style and taste.  To visit this place is to step into an atmosphere designed to cater to them.  The red-haired bartender briskly shaking a covered class in each hand in synch over each shoulder  The cute little girl behind the bar in her black vest and button down blouse.  The waitress who fills a glass with a tap on a hose and tips it over by accident.  That's my cue to laugh, right?  This is the stuff which Superbowl commercials are made of.  Sophisticated bar patrons know exactly what their bartenders are making by shaking it as it it were in a paint mixer.  Culture identifies itself with the experience.  Harry Shearer once theorized that, during the 1980s, art became too difficult for the upper middle class to personally understand.  Therefore, those who would otherwise be discussing art made a decision to instead begin discussing furniture.  I wonder if this decade's furniture is the mixed drink.
     In 2010, dating site OK Cupid took a snapshot of its users, gay and straight.  The top interests that gay guys had but straight guys didn't have were: The Devil Wears Prada, Mean Girls, Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, Project Runway and Drop Dead Gorgeous.  ...stories about young women...hoping to look classy and important...  ...we'd all rather live under the authority of a powerful woman - who lives in the city and has a gay best friend - than a powerful homophobic bro.  Perhaps there are two personalities in all of us.  ...book smart, and innocent, desperate to live up to...expectations of meticulous, cutthroat and condescending...  We are Anne Hathaway in high school; we are Meryl Streep when we get jobs.  We are Anne Hathaway in the morning and Meryl Streep after a cocktail.  - Out front Colorado, 3/14/12
     After dinner, I am at the stop downtown for my bus back home.  It's the evening before St. Patrick's Day.  Any holiday which this nation celebrates by drinking is a hot one for the voracious downtown area.  I would hear a radio DJ the following day mention that the drinking began this evening.  He would bring up the advantages of moderation.  A collection of young loud white guys come meandering down the sidewalk across the street, all speaking excitedly at once.   One of them excitedly mentions one of the area's oxygen bars.  Are they high on oxygen?  As they are passed by one guy on a skateboard, they all stop and turn their heads together in excited anticipation.  The skater does one, single, simple trick, and they all erupt in appreciation.  A couple walks up to the stop.  The next day, I would later see the man walking up my street, wearing the same rolled up watch cap.  He asks me if I know what time it is.  He continues to ask everyone who walks by.  Families are coming out of a restaurant, all wearing big green and white felt hats. The DJ would mention the hats, wondering about the inclusion of orange and other less 'traditional' colors.  A mom runs across the street, leaving her son on the other side.  She tells him "there's no bathroom in there" where they were eating.  He goes back inside in his big felt hat.  I don't know where she's going, there's nothing but a closed office building on this side of the street.  At the corner, someone steps on the gas, quickly moving ahead of the rest of traffic before backfiring.  The guy who wants to know what time it is says, "He probably blew his engine out."

     At least once a week my friends and I gather around bottles of good wine and play counselor for one another.  That is: we unravel the ins and out of life.   We have all had these moments.  They make us...a little more authentically us.  There is the implicit understanding that adversity is best faced in relationships...  - Out Front Colorado, 3/14/12
     An intrinsic feeling of "unrelatedness" to nature and society has often been ascribed to the very historical forces which Hawthorne had observed in 1838.  Discussing the intellectual climate of that era, Emerson once remarked...of the pervasive "war between intellect and affection."  He called it "detachment," and found it reflected everywhere in the age: in Kant, Goethe's Faust, and in the consequences of the new capitalist power.  "Instead of the social existence which all shared," he wrote was "detachment" or "alienation" (Karl Marx), or "anomie" (Emile Durkheim) or "dissociation of sensibility" (T. S. Eliot).  ...each of these terms refers to...an individual cut off from a...source of life's meaning.  ...the responsible agent...science or industrial technology.  Francis D. Klingender had indicated that industrial imagery was being used in illustrations of Milton's Hell...  Satan is identified with industrialism...  - L. Marx

     On a couple of recent bus rides home, during one of them I sat with a Spanish-speaking family who appeared to have come in from the airport.  As we passed the marijuana dispensary which I wait for the bus in front of each morning, one of them pointed to it as he explained to the rest what it was.  On another ride, I stood next to a guy who was complaining about how stupid sounding were the students sitting in the back.  Within shouting distance from the dispensary was a day labor place.  At one point during the recession, I thought that I would need their services and applied, though it turned out that I never did.  I remember one of the guys in the office telling me that, prior to the recession, he had all of his regular employees living in apartments.  They were now back living under a bridge.  My first month in this town, 20 years ago, I worked temp jobs.  This entire day labor building is now painted green.  It has its own sign, as well as the original day labor sign.  Either is is now a combination day labor office/ marijuana dispensary, or the day labor service is gone.

     Around 1840, there were alienated writers who consciously attempted to arouse fear of machines, we find them deliberately choosing the same images.  ...each subordinate unit of the society builds itself to a similar standard of success.  Each state, city, village, and neighborhood; each...merchant ...each ethnic group, family, and child...should, ideally speaking, strive for growth.
     I'm on a bus home after work with a guy in a motorized wheelchair.  He's on his cell speaking to his significant other.  He's telling her that he has gang green.  His left hand is bandaged and missing fingers.  He's missing his lower right leg and his left one above the knee.  He tells here that he will send her money.
     One referent of the word "science" is a way of behaving in society...  Can the technological consequences of scientific discovery be assimilated, for example, to a more just, healthful, and peaceful social order?  The scientific style of mind, devoted as it is to "objective knowing," is the radical flaw in the culture of urban industrialism.  According to Roszak, an ideology was handed down to us from our ancestors of the Enlightenment as part of a total cultural and political program.  Tied to that ideology is an aggressive dedication to the urban-industrialization of the world...  And tied to the global urban industrialization is an unavoidable technocratic elitism."  - L. Marx
     Occasionally a leading magazine in the interwar years would publish an article such as James R. Randolph's "Can We Go To Mars? (Scientific American: 139, August 1928) and would editorially conclude that "the plan is theoretically sound"...  ...the editors...first submitted Randolph's article to several laymen...they voted against it.  Then it was sent to several physicists, who favored publication.  Even that early, the natural sciences and "the humanities" may have been crystallizing into the mutual incomprehension and hostility of which Sir Charles Snow was to write in The Two Cultures (1959).  When Orson Wells panicked the nation with his famous "invasion from Mars" radio broadcast in 1938, Science Service...announced that interplanetary travel is impossible...  By then...Wernher von Braun was hard at work in Peenemunde.  In the mind of the general public, space travel was the expressly reserved for extraterrestrials.  - The Creation of Tomorrow, Paul A. Carter, 1977
     Every day, newspaper headlines warn us of shortages...of food in the Third World, of arable farmland, of energy.  No shortage of information however.  In science, perhaps more...the impact of the information explosion has been strongly felt.  We are rapidly becoming what Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell calls the "information society."  As Andrew Molnar of the National Science Foundation points out, "Information has become a national commodity and a national resource, and has altered the very nature of work."  Important findings may go undiscovered for several months or years, and in a nation whose technological growth is spurred by scientific innovation as a result of information overload.  As Molnar explains...  "In an information society," he writes, "a computer-literate populace is as important as energy or raw materials are to an industrial society."  - OMNI Magazine, 2/1979


     I'm downtown after work on a Saturday.  State and Federal refunds in the bank, along with a few rare hours of overtime.  I just put next month's bus pass in my wallet.  It's one of the first nice spring days and I'm waiting for a train the hell out of here.  I'm surrounded by bruskers, derelicts, and those for whom downtown is the place to go...  In front of me appears a kid with a beard and a watch cap.  He looks to be missing his right arm, and he is hustling a young white couple.  They are both avoiding his gaze.  He sheepishly delivers his pitch, "I just got my arm amputated and I can't even work and I'm trying to get six dollars together..."  The couple walks off.
     I began my work week for the second time on a mid-morning.  I'm on my usual route at an unusual time.  A guy comes by on a mountain bike which has an engine attached to the frame.  Above the back wheel, somehow attached to the frame in a way which isn't immediately obvious, is a slat from a white picket fence.  On the slat is a plastic purple basket which reads "waste management."  He is checking trash cans for aluminum cans.  The next morning, I grab breakfast at a deathburger.  A senior male is having coffee, talking to someone next to him about how he was told not to leave his cigarette butts on the table, but to deposit them in the trash.  (This happened in here perhaps?)  He says, "I don't need a Dad.  I don't like being bossed."  I grab the next bus and sit next to a guy who makes a call on his cell.  It turns out, this young guy is opening a place that sells "coffee and we are trying to decide what kind of food."  He and his partners are waiting for their final inspection.  He tells the person on the other end that he needs to do some community service for a DUI he got a couple of years ago.  A middle aged woman gets on in a low cut blouse, which reveals a tattoo below her neck.  It reads, "RIP Timothy Theile, 10-31-67 - 1-23-11."  Whoever he was, he was the age of one of my brothers.
     What we have then, in our classic American literature, is not a single, fixed attitude to the city, but rather a kind of semantic or ideological field...bounded on one side by representations of...industrial capitalism.  On the other..intense demands and expectations of a restless, journeying American self...  American classic literature of the nineteenth century lent expression to the egalitarian, self-assertive, well-nigh anarchic energy released by the American system...  ...emphasis upon the contradictions rather than the harmonics of meaning, value, and purpose, mark an important turning point in American studies.  It signaled the virtual disappearance of the older, complacent idea of our national culture as an essentially homogeneous, unified whole.   - L. Marx  At one of our stores, this one in an opulent neighborhood, we have just hired a new manager and a new counter person.  Both have commented independently on the residents' class perspective.  The new manager, it turns out, lives in my neighborhood.  She asked me why it takes so long to hire a part time kid around where the store is.  I told her that wealthy kids are perhaps less motivated to look for a part time job.  They may also have plenty of other activities, school related and otherwise.  Moms come in and keep each other updated on their children's college careers.  As someone with a couple of college degrees, I'm not sure what to say.  I usually give my congratulations.  My immediate supervisor wouldn't know college from corn cobs, and wouldn't care.  The new manager remarked that "they would be lost where we live."  This store's new counter person is a high school senior, happy to even find a job.  She lives here in the opulence.  Both her friends and her "boyfriend's mom" suggested that she negotiate her wage, leaving her thoroughly baffled and believing that they are out of touch with the rest of the world.  I enjoyed listening to her talk about her days as a thirteen year old working at an adult comic store in Las Vegas.  She was paid in store credit, and used it to buy superhero comics.  My bus ride home this evening is later than usual.  The passengers on this route at this hour often include parents with young children, going to or coming from I know not where.  On this trip, sitting up front, is a young guy playing his guitar.  He isn't very good.  The bus takes me to a train, which takes me to another bus.  I see a guy get off a train after mine.  He's wearing a long black leather coat over tan overalls, and carrying a black plastic bag.  After I get on my bus, a middle aged guy comes walking up wearing socks without shoes.  He climbs the steps, he says nothing at all as he checks his pockets for a fare or a pass.  In his left hand is a wire which appears as though it should be connected to some ear buds, but doen't appear to go anywhere.  When he finds nothing, he silently turns, steps off, and slowly walks away in his socks.
     There is a gas station at one end of a building where I work much of the time.  The owners of this gas station are from Iran.  They both have been following the events of the Arab Spring, and I continue to joke with her about the late Colonel Khadafi.  The concrete around their pumps is being torn up because something under it needs replacing.  They also have ordered new gas pumps to replace the originals, which are thirty years old they tell me.  The decision to replace the pumps came during the past year.  During the winter, customers would desire their gas to pump quickly in the cold air.  When it didn't, they would do nothing but complain, one after the other.  I left work just as the sun had set.  It's a balmy March.  For the first time since I can remember, perhaps since the days of my youth, I laid down on the grassy slope at the bus stop.  The next morning, I grab breakfast from a convenience store.  The usual clerk listens to hip hop.  This morning, the clerk is listening to what may be pop music from Africa.  I should have asked him who he was listening to.  He is careful as he counts back my change to me.  Suddenly, something in back begin beeping.  He says to me "I sorry" before he runs to the back.  If I was paying less close attention, it was easy to misconstrue "I sorry" for "asshole."  Close to twelve hours later, on the short trip back down this street, I'm on a bus for a few minutes with a guy who has what looks like scooter without any motor.  He uses it to kneel on with his right leg as he pushes it along with his other.  I've never seen anything like it.
     It's a Friday, and for perhaps the first time ever I am working a four hour shift.  I head down to a bus stop which I rarely frequent.  I see the waste management bike rider go by.  A small car pulls up in front of me, and three middle aged white women get out.  They each begin going house to house.  Today is recycle day for this side of my street.  Out of one recycle bin has fallen onto the sidewalk a law journal for a nearby private college.  Someone on my street is an alumnus, like my sister.  After work, I am back at the same train station.  The kind of guy waiting for my bus, a grey haired white guy in a pink knit Polo shirt and a nice gold watch, appears completely out of place.  I pay no special attention to him until a woman with a young son is about to step on t the bus.  He runs up to her and puts his hands out to motion for her to stop, telling her that he was "first."  He then gets on ahead of her and sits in the back, where he exhibits no other odd outbursts.  The woman enters into conversation with the driver, eventually giving him her phone number.
     I'm waiting for a bus after work at the end of a crazy week.  The past couple of weeks, I have been alternating between opening and closing shifts, and the sleep has been less than generous.  Today should be the last day for a while when I am dragging.  I'm sitting in the shade on a record 83 degree F March day.  On one side of me is an Acura dealership, where I am observing a collection of white guys closing a purhcase.  They are all in white button down shirts and slacks.  In front of me is a popular gas station, always busy, expensive gas price or not.  A guy in suspenders is filling a red plastic 2 gallon gas can.  There are seniors driving Caddys, someone in a Jaguar, motorcycles suddenly everywhere as quick as buds on the trees with the warmer weather.  Guys in hunting caps, one guy in an Aussie hat with his son, a guy in a veteran cap with his white haired wife.
     In Robert Bellah's essay, "Civil Religion in America" (1966), he suggests that America has a body of beliefs, symbols, and rituals which provides a religious dimension for the whole fabric of American life, including the political realm.  In 1911...George Santayana...called attention to the discrepancy in America between an earthly, native viewpoint, grounded in particulars, and...abstract, largely imported ideals.  - L. Marx  "...compared to out local transit here in town...when I tried to go five to six miles across town took over two hours.  So for me to be on a bus, I want buses that come frequently, and I want buses that get you there quickly.  Our transit system goes from the north end of town to a hub in downtown.  Then you have to transfer buses...  And that's just not gonna work."  "You look at a bus map and every single route looks, not only incomprehensible, but, um, exactly the same."  - "Talk of the Nation", NPR, 3/29/12

     On the way home, I made a stop downtown, and caught a bus home which stops at a transfer station.  The station has a supervisor who hangs out and chats with the drivers as the pull up, asking if all is well.  She's thin and blonde, in hoop earrings, slacks and heels.  She's the stylin' Super.  "...compared to our local transit here in town...when I tried to go five to six miles across town took over two hours.  So for me to be on a bus, I want buses that come frequently, and I want buses that get you there quickly.  Our transit system goes from the north end of town to a hub in downtown.  Then you have to transfer buses...  And that's just not gonna work."  "You look at a bus map and every single route looks, not only incomprehensible, but, um, exactly the same."  - NPR 3/29/12

February 2012

     I had heard on the news about Walgreens putting in electric car charging stations.  Believe me, those watching on video, charging your electric car ain't what they're watching out for.  Right here, just last year, I saw a handful of guys standing around a mountain bike.  One gets on, begins riding in circles, and rides right into a pole.  And falls off in front of me.  I elected not to ask if he had sustained any injuries.  I knew what was coming next.  "Got any spare change?"

     Yesterday I had the day off.  I went to purchase stamps, a small AM/FM radio to listen to at work, and a new shirt to wear for work.  I just read somewhere that, if you work in the service industry, your occupation can not be digitized.  After the post office, I had an early lunch, after which I called a friend on a gas station pay phone.  It was a low tech kind of day, and was about to get lower.  Next to the pay phone I was using is a second one.  Up to that one walks a homeless guy.  He had sunglasses on and was carrying a coat or bag or something I didn't notice.  He was looking in my direction, yet half-grinning at something in the distance.  He was fumbling with whatever he was carrying, but I never saw him use the phone.  That corner is popular with panhandlers.  Sitting on the curb was a younger guy.  On my way to lunch, he said to me "Hey."  I said "Hey."  He said "Hey."  I said "Hey."  When I came back from lunch, a grey-haired woman was sitting in his spot.

     It's an early bus to work.  On the bus are a couple of regulars, two middle aged women.  The one with the hat and small shopping cart does all the talking, and the silent one listens.  Having listened to her previously myself, she gave me the impression that she worked for a vet's office, or a clinic.  This morning, it sounds as though she works on the phone.  I'm trying to hear what she says over a rattling bus and heater fan.  "They call up, and they're all single parents.  I tell them that the good news is, they don't have to pay taxes this year.  So, take the money you were going to spend on taxes and make your payments for each of the next three months.  Then she gets mad at me.  I tell her she's an angry bitch.  "Well, the government doesn't have any right to take my money.'  Oh yes they do.  You borrowed money from the government.  You didn't pay it back, and they don't care that it's an inconvenience to you.  Who is the financial officer in your family?"  Wherever she works, I doubt that I will hear her mentioned during the upcoming campaign season as the next Joe the Plumber.

     Life in the ghettos is governed by...extremely high insurance rates (...past riots, vandalism, pilferage, and shoplifting)...  Substandard merchandise is palmed off on the poor because...they keep shopping in their own neighborhoods.  As for the rat-and vermin-infested housing, landlords...charge what traffic will bear.  - Tad Szulc, "Innocents Abroad"  I left my neighborhood an hour ago, with its small businesses and its bilingual signs.  I'm now speeding past bank buildings, the Mariott, a huge shopping mall with showroom after showroom, such as The Container Store.  A showroom which I can only imagine must be large enough for every kind of contemporary container.  An office park, a small airport.  I transfer to a bus which snakes past a million square foot office space for rent, through a community of multi-million dollar homes and its own hospital, long terraced flower gardens and a spectacular view of the Front Range.  Is that a megachurch or a performing arts complex?  If this is an example of income inequality, I don't feel unequal.  I wouldn't want to live down here.  After work, I'm sitting on the sidewalk waiting for the bus home.  I've read that the homeless put cardboard down before sleeping on cold concrete, which acts like a heat sink, draining the warmth from your body.  That's death from exposure, in the big city.  A school bus stops at the corner.  A teenaged kid says "hi" to me through an open window.  I see him waving at me.  Printed on the side of the bus is, "Learn today.  Lead tomorrow."  I watch teenagers being driven home from school by parents.  Some of them are watching me.  This past summer, I was here at this stop with a woman who works at a deathburger.  I spoke with her in Spanish about her job, the heat in the kitchen.  I tried to explain this neighborhood to her in my vastly incomplete Spanish.  "Big houses, multiple cars..."  When the bus comes this afternoon, one of the riders is a white kid who looks like a teenaged Tom Cruise.  He has dyed honey blonde hair.

     Another predawn Saturday.  This one with two feet of snow on the ground.  I'm at my usual bus stop.  At the bus stop across the street, someone is pacing back and forth, coughing, singing like Tom Waits.  On the bus is a young guy talking about his job taking donations.  Over the phone?  "It's almost too chill for me.  Is this Walmart?  I didn't even know where the train station was."  Denver, an integral part of the fabulous growth of the state of Colorado...  The new America of the second half of the twentieth century is the huge suburban fringe.  It offers extraordinary concentrations of wealth and power, as well as a wholly new culture, and new mercantilism and lifestyle.  The suburbs can be a virtually self-sufficient fortress.  - Szulc  At work, I am listening to the only AM station on the weekend which doesn't broadcast informercials.  One talk show is hosted by a guest host.  The topic?  This guest host had taken his family downtown for shopping and dinner, where and when he "was accosted" by a homeless man, asking for money.  When he offered his leftovers from dinner, the homeless man told him, "No, I want money."  The host says that he hasn't been there in years, and has never seen so many homeless in his life.  He says that feels unsafe downtown.  He doesn't mention, and there is no clue as to whether or not he is aware of, the different series of attacks on downtown patrons over the past couple of years; attacks of which there is no evidence of homeless perpetrators.  One caller to the show complains that the homeless pay no taxes.  It sounds like remarkably detached and uninformed stuff.  Another caller claims that the homeless don't like the rules required of attending a shelter, that they only want to smoke pot. It sounds as though the host is unfamiliar with what I have read, about the homeless' adverseness to the personal dangers of being in shelters.  Neither the host nor the callers sound concerned about the welfare of the homeless.  "I want to eat, and I have very simple needs," the host says about his social role as a downtown patron, of which he strikes me as sure.  This may explain his lack of interest in a social sub-group of which he sounds mystified.  While he was downtown among this sub-group, in a 'teachable moment' he remarked of them to his kids, "This is why you do homework."  As if the homeless never did homework, never had families, never went shopping.  The audience call and email the host, and suggest that he is less than compassionate.  "People getting upset (with me).  I don't know why.  I want to shop and eat," he says.  This appears to be a restricted perspective which extends beyond downtown.  One caller suggests that the vast number of homeless are left over from an environment before the downtown area was renovated.  The host is baffled as to why anyone would want to pay good money to own residences downtown, or why the city doesn't help the homeless with their troubles.  "Force them to go to classes," he suggests.  "Get them away from downtown," he warns, for the loss of " lot of tax dollars."  The host speculates that the homeless "probably make more than my sixteen-year-old son."  The host goes on to warn that the downtown area's loss of his patronage will result in it's transformation into a place of empty store fronts.  It's an ironic suggestion; that by doing almost nothing according to any kind of apparent plan, such a powerless population can eliminate a shopping district's economy, with all its marketing resources.  "What in the world can be done to stop" the homeless downtown asks the host.  A caller suggests that the "police make it uncomfortable for them.  Put pressure on our politicians."  It's a suggestion from another era...or a suggestion with historical context which crosses eons.  One of the last callers says that "The people who are generous (about giving money to the homeless who ask for it) are not careful who they give it to."  The needs of the homeless may be more complex than those the host claims are his own.  Yet I have my own convictions, one of which is that, it's the homeless' attempt to stay alive which appears to interfere with downtown patronage.  That is, to the extent that the lives of others are a 'problem'.

     I'm at a lightrail station in the hour just before dawn.  Snow has been falling through the night.  A light, steady snow.  I'm watching a white pickup with a plow on the front.  It's making straight passes down the long parking lot before backing up just as straight.  Where the metal plow makes contact with the concrete, orange sparks percolate along its bottom edge.  At mid-week at my usual bus stop, the air is crisp and clear.  Seventeen degrees F.  The moon is out and full.  I see a guy strolling through the crosswalk.  I don't recognize him, but his gait catches my attention.  When I look back, he's stopped in the middle of this crosswalk, talking through the passenger side window to the driver of a car stopped at the light.  I hear him say, "Can I get a ride?  Can I get a ride?"  Does he know the driver?

     The...phenomenon of "singles bars" has cropped up in the suburbs..."massage parlors,"...have appeared in droves in the suburbs...  They make the point that there is almost nothing unique left in the cities to attract the suburbanite.  ...the building boom began to turn into a bust at the end of 1973 and early 1974.  ...in early 1973, Oregon's Governor Tom McCall said, "We find a process we now call 'condomania.'  - Szulc

     There's a guy I've seen on a connecting bus to work.  Has it been longer than a year?  He appears to me, someone formally untrained in psychology, to have mental health issues.  And really bad teeth.  I've seen him make what appear as involuntary head and body movements, make faces, randomly make statements.  In the past few weeks, I've seen him with a bicycle, and a kind of dolly which appears to be designed to carry an oxygen tank.  He uses it to carry a small bag.  This past week or two, I've heard him speak for the first time.  He talks to another recent regular rider.  They both came running from the train to the bus.  He didn't have his tank dolly or bike, but was waving an umbrella.  On the bus, he was telling his friend that someone tied to choke him on the train, tried to steal his boots, tried to steal his coat, pointed a cell phone at him.  He uses the F word in his tale and the driver asks him to refrain.  At one stop, a middle-aged guy with shoulder length grey hair gets on and appears to be fumbling with his fare.  I don't hear him utter a sound.  After he sits down, I hear the driver tell someone, I can't tell if it's this guy or the guy who claims to have been choked, "Watch your language or you're off the bus now.  You don't call me no names."  The grey-haired guy is fumbling with a cassette player, putting ear buds in.  In a couple of stops, he leaves.

     The multi-purpose room at Fox Ridge Middle School was packed last night with caucus voters.  The school is in the southern suburbs of Arapahoe County...  But when you ask where people live, they tell you the name of their housing subdivision.  Tuscany, Tuscany South, "Greenfield".  That's where Mary Marx and her husband live.  They own a computer company.  - All Things Considered, 2/8/12   A few days ago, I heard on the radio that Mitt Romney was in town.  He spoke at Arapahoe High School, down the street from the place where I usually work.  I've driven past the school when in session.  I remember a few years ago, waiting for the bus home across the street, where I used to occasionally work.  I think it was shortly before one Christmas, I was watching three or four students have a friendly snowball fight.  It made me think about being 17 again.  I had heard on the radio an author who wrote a biography about Romney, who described him as a man who loved data.  (Like Howard Hughes?)  He once protested anti-Vietnam War protesters.  As a leader in his Latter Day Saints community, he told a single mother in the church to give up her baby for adoption.  The church believes, according to the author, that a child in a single parent home has fewer opportunities in life.  Instead, the mother gave the church up.  All very logical.  Howard Hughes without the passion.  

     So how did the kids of Arapahoe High dig this guy?  I've seen them crossing the street for lunch in groups of twenty or thirty, long lines of groovy-looking teenaged white kids.  (Any single moms among them?)  I bet they relate to him.  He one modern son of a gun.  (AP) DENVER- The Colorado Senate has fired an unpaid intern, accused of "glitterbombing"...Mitt Romney after the Colorado caucuses.  ...a student at the University of Colorado Denver...  The Senate majority office Chief of Staff...said student interns are not chosen by the Senate president...  He could not say whether the student would lose course credit.

     The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is far more than a form of Sunday worship.  It is a code of ethics...  ...Mitt Romney was, the man whose kids Hays used to watch, was a bishop of her ward, her church elder.  ...Romney said something about the church adoption agency.  Hayes was unmarried.  Hayes initially thought she must have misunderstood.  ...he was urging her to give up her soon-to-be-born son for adoption, saying that was what the church wanted.  ...where "a successful marriage is unlikely."  Hays decided she was finished with the Mormon Church.  The decision was easy, yet she made it with a heavy heart.  She shudders at what they were asking her to do....especially when she pulls out pictures of her grown son.  Another woman facing a pregnancy discovered she had a serious blood clot in her pelvis.  She decided to have an abortion.  Romney showed up at her bedside.  "As your bishop," she said he told her, "my concern is with the child."  She told Romney that another church leader, a doctor, supported her decision.  Romney, she said, fired back, "I don't believe you.  He wouldn't say that.  I'm going to call him."  And then he left.  Another woman came to visit the temple outside Washington to take out endowments, a sacred rite...  Romney told her, "...I don't understand why you stay in the church.  ...but I also don't...you're not my kind of Mormon."  - Vanity Fair, 2/12

     Ron Paul is so extraordinarily attractive to young people...  But the Republican Party is not dominated by 22-year-old college students reading The Fountainhead for the first time and finally understanding what it is they've always hated about their ex-hippie parents.  No, the party is dominated by middle-aged white suburbanites...  Our oligarchy has thrown a rod.  One of the characters in this scene is Mitt Romney.  This experienced national politician...had run a superbly organized campaign for president in 2008, a man whose very trademark is inoffensiveness and caution.  He's a hypernervous control freak...like a walking OCD diagnosis...  ...the messy chaos of South Carolina was a phobic horror.  ...South Carolina - a nest of upright country church folk proud of their...distrust of...stem cells and Hollywood relativism...  At the debate in Charleston...  By a curious accident, both Romney and Gingrich had scheduled 10:45 a.m. campaign stops on primary day at a roadside restaurant called Tommy's Ham House in Greenville.  Romney showed up 45 minutes early, darted through...and was back in his campaign bus 20 minutes before Gingrich even arrived.  When Newt finally showed up, his supporters greeted him like a Roman emperor...  As he strode into the Ham House, his supporters mocked Romney by erupting in clucking chicken noises.  ...at that moment in the driving rain and slop of Greenville on primary day.  Newt...stood on a beer cooler and crowed, "I have a question.  Where's Mitt?"  "He left!" someone in the crowd shouted, "He ran!"  Romney's event, at the South Carolina fairgrounds, was a mogrue.  The floor was half-empty...you had to pay three bucks for a drink, and all they had was soda.  Across town, meanwhile, in a Hilton ballroom...the crowd slobbered over visiting dignitaries like Mrs. South Carolina.  "It's like free admission to Wrestlemania," chirped one attendee.  - Rolling Stone, 2/16/12 

     I'm at a train station after a closing shift.  A guy on the train platform is pacing back and forth looking down the track for the train, back and forth looking down the track for the train.  His mannerisms appear agitated, but expression is calm.  He strikes me as from some other country.  He's wearing one of those British caps, a lime green corduroy sport coat, and a yellow and red bow tie.  On the train, he's snapping his head around, looking through every window.  The door opens at a stop and he whips his head around to look at it.

     I get off at a station to catch a bus home.  There are white couples standing around the platform, waiting to catch a train downtown for dinner and drinks on a Friday night.  I'm usually asleep now, and not part of this scene.  I'm usually here long before these folks, waiting with guys carrying their lunch.  It's twilight as a couple of drifters wander by. I see a college kid with his iPod on.  The temperature has dropped, the wind has picked up, and he appears to be busting out moves to keep warm.  A haze has descended upon the roofs of the buildings downtown in the distance, and snow is threatening.  I'm up against the back of  one of two lightrail ticket machines next to each other.  Around at the front  one are a pair of young white couples.  They are having fun trying to figure out how to get tickets out of it.  Three of them are in designer down parkas.  "That's cool," I hear one say.  "You don't have a ticket? Didn't you go to school?"  Standing a yard away is a woman in a hoodie speaking Spanish on her cell, trying to keep warm.  "This machine is evil."  The four erupt in laughter at something the screen presents, perhaps telling them it can't provide what they want.  "Let's try the other one."  A kid in a hoodie comes up to them.  He delivers a monotone statement about a fight with his "old lady" and he needs change to get to his dad's house.  Their united front is that, 'hey, we're as broke as you are.'  They appear to have their tickets and stand with the rest of the crowd headed for Friday night downtown frivolity.  

     The following morning is a frosty one, with a drizzle of flakes.  After five and a half hours of sleep, I am back at my usual bus stop.  I hear a guy at the stop across the street hacking and coughing.  I see the dull orange glow of a cigarette.  His sound echoes in the chilly predawn air. A car pulls up to the red light.  The driver looks both ways, then runs the light.  A minivan behind it is also at the light.  It honks at the other car, continuing to honk while the other car is halfway to the next light.  At the train station, day laborers are shovelling the platform.  I know the office they came from.  I went there a couple of years ago when I was alerted by my then boss that my hours at my regular job my decrease.  I never did seek employment through the day labor.  I was talking to a guy who ran the office.  He told me that, before the recession, they were all living in apartments.  After the recession hit, work dropped, and the employees who were back living under a bridge.  Some were collecting government checks, sitting home, getting high, watching cartoons all day.  

     The next day is the day I do my grocery shopping.  I'm at the bus stop right outside where I live.  A car pulls into the parking lot of a deathburger next to the stop.  A nice young woman in a black suit gets out and comes up to ask me if I want a copy of The Watchtower she shows me.  She tells me that the particular issue she shows me is not a warning of the wrath of God.  I tell her the truth, that earlier this year, at this very bus stop, someone else showed me this very issue and also told me that it was not a warning about the wrath of God.  I should have asked her what God was thinking while he watched this.

     For at least five centuries...variants of essentially the same narrative core represented distinct interpretations, of which new meanings include obstacles to "progress," or to the realization of "the American dream" as measured by economic growth...innovation, production, consumption.  ...cultural formations have, so to speak, their own internal, quasi-autonomous history...  ...ideas only aquire determinative power when adhered to by significant social groups...a group's thinking is revealed as clearly by its discourse practicies, its stylistic habits, and the figurative forms it favors...  All this suggests that the various manifestations of cultural conflict are related to each other like a nest of Chinese boxes.  The slave and hero exemplify the egalitarian community of Whitman's manipulation.  It's the same sort of community that Mark Twain sets up aboard a Mississippi raft.  Here is the core of the American vernacular.  It's not simply a style, but a vehicle for the affirmation of an egalitarian faith so radical that we can scarcely credit it today.  It sweeps aside received notions of class and status and of literature.  - The Pilot and the Passenger, Leo Marx, 1988

     Up the street from my bus stop early in the morning is a programmed construction sign, asking drivers to "support local businesses during construction."  I'm on an early train to work, listening to a couple of guys talking about working at their job sites, about getting bonuses for living in on site housing, about tools, equipment, "CNC lathes", job security, "laser CNCs", "2 million dollar machines."  On a connecting bus this morning is the guy who claimed to have been choked on a train, as well as the driver who asked him not to use the F word.  A car pulls out of a side street in the dark, and almost hits us.  The guy who got choked exclaims "Shit!  Asshole."  On this morning, the driver responds with laughter. 

     Like Whitman's hero, Huck(leberry Finn) is a rebellious, democratic barbarian.  He lies, he steals, he prefers magic to religion, he identifies his interests with those of escaped slaves, and above all he speaks the vernacular.  ...its capacity to take on the dignity of art...  In Whitman and Twain...criticism was based on egalitarian standards.  It came from a comparison of an actual America with an idealized democratic vision of the nation's destiny.  When the style first emerged it was nourished by a political faith that we can scarcely imagine nowadays.  ...the history of the vernacular has been a history of its fragmentation.  The technique has been separated from the belief...  - L. Marx

     American vernacular?  I stop into the gas station across the street before heading to the bus stop up the street, to catch the 5:20 AM bus Eastbound on another Saturday.   There's a guy in a wheelchair, not motorized, with one tooth, a weatherbeaten face, addressing humanity as "bro", and using the store's cordless phone.  He asks me the number for the city's transit system.  I suggest that he try information.  I hear him mention something about no buses running.  As I'm across the parking lot, he comes outside to ask me if I have a cigarette.  When a woman removes her hajib, she is revealed as a person.  The homeless are somehow the opposite.  They have the same dirt on all of their faces, the same long scraggy hair.  And they all have the very same vernacular.  Everyone they address as "bro, brother, honey".  Their actions are regimented.  To get your "hustle on" you must act naturally.  To successfully be homeless, you must appear other than homeless.

     Abandoned mattresses and empty liquor bottles sometimes sometimes line the streets...adding to the piles of trash...  It's an example of one of the plights...that 35 local high schoolers have spent the past six months documenting through photographs and video-cameras.  Their work will be featured at an exhibit called "Shattered Dreams"...  The event will mark another chapter in the student' PhotoVoice exhibit, a project they've working on since the summer of 2011.  About 200 event invitations were sent to community leaders and law-makers.  Of a high school junior, One of her favorite photographs is of an empty beer bottle in front of her high school.  "The image...says we have these things in our community that are good for us and then we have this litter...  ...people do take notice of their community..."  PhotoVoice is led by Maisha Pollard..."...it really shows that we weren't doing this to point the fingers at city government or school boards, but the youth have really begun to take ownership about it and say "This is my community," Pollard said.  - Aurora Sentinel, 2/16/2012

     After work, I am walking the short distance to the bus stop.  I'm wondering where another week, where the first month and a half of the year went.  I hear a tiny bird complaining in a tree.  Just as I spot him, a huge falcon or hawk launches out from hiding and flies to the top of a telephone pole.  

     Midweek is my day off.  I was notified by voicemail.  This is the swingin' life of a service  industry professional.  I'm across the street at a Mexican restaurant.  Lunchtime around this place is when the white faces show up, out numbering the others who fill the place on weekends.  I'm sitting next to three of these white faces.  The youngest is talking to the others about coming from out of town to accept a 9th grade teaching position at a high school somewhere.  (The one down the street, where the president spoke a few months ago?)  She described being asked how she felt about being coached, given a tour of different classes, told them that she preferred to teach math, is fluent in Spanish, and was subsequently told that her services were requested immediately.  I've seen a 60 Minutes broadcast, listened to radio reports about organizations attempting to help former six-figure professionals, out of work for four years, find some kind of work.  Is her list of qualifications some kind of secret "skill set mix"?

     A couple of days later, I am downtown after work, at the bus terminal.  I'm here for next month's bus pass.  I'm in line behind a young guy who has been here since late last night.  He got off a plane at the airport and boarded a transit service bus home.  He has his climbing shoes and chalk bag secured to the outside of his pack.  You don't have to go up into the mountains to find great climbing.  Some of the nest are at the base, among the large boulders.  For reasons known only to himself, and then only possibly, he placed his wallet on the seat and then his pack on top of his wallet.  Okay, it was late, perhaps he was tired.  Just recently, I left a winter hat, a gator, and an old pair of gloves behind.  ...but not my wallet.  And this is really the end of the story.  The rest is detail.  He grabbed his pack and got off, realized it was left behind, chased the bus, flagged a police cruiser, police dispatch contacted the transit company dispatch, who told the young man this; your best chance of getting your wallet back is to come here at 1 PM today and speak to a supervisor.  Here he is.  It's well after 1 PM.  He would like to speak to a supervisor.   The woman he is speaking to is enclosed behind glass, and replies to him through a speaker which makes her voice sound as that of an imagined character from 1984.  At first she questions whether he was on the route he says he was.  Surely she is familiar with Kafka, or rather more appropriately has never heard of him.  Upon being convinced that this man did indeed fly in to town, she lets him know that the driver, upon finishing his route, should have searched his bus.  If the wallet slipped between the seats, it's up to housekeeping to find it, which may take a couple of days.  Someone behind me is making noises as though they are impatient.  A second transit company customer service person comes out of a door to let the young man know where the supervisors congregate, a short distance away.  The mechanized voice responds, "But that wont help him..."  Now a human voice is discussing the situation with a mechanized voice.  Someone behind me continues to make noises of impatience, involuntary or otherwise.  The mechanized voice lets the young man know that all he can do is return tomorrow.  He has yet to go anywhere else.

     On Sunday, I'm at a supermarket where I haven't shopped in a while.  It's been so long, that an old apartment building in which the tenants were drunks has been torn down.  A brand new one has replaced it, complete with a "Cop Shop" in the lobby.  Just as I thought the old tenants were long gone, a white haired guy in slippers shuffled out with a lit cigarette.  He told me that he just moved in, but he can't smoke inside.  I ignore him.  He asks me if I told him that I have a cast on my foot.  It's obvious that I don't, and I answered no.  He tells me that he needs more sleep, and slowly gets up and shuffles back inside.  The bidding wars of the early 2000s where housing prices in North Denver tripled may not be back, but...home buyers are finding themselves once again in competition for houses.  "North Denver homes are currently selling faster than the average Denver home."  Proximity to downtown, restaurants, and the walkiablity of the neighborhood draws buyers wishing to live the urban  lifestyle.  "Although we don't have any specific data to review...  It's clear...schools are no longer the 'objection' they once were."  "Vintage inventory has an edge...this buyer can still get in at under $300,000 with ease."  ...the urban lifestyle is ultimately more important than the architecture.  "They also want to live among like-minded folks." - North Denver Tribune, 2/16-29/2012  Brand New & NOW LEASING!  Live the city life in the middle of the great outdoors.  There's a community where the city meets the mountains, and the Colorado spirit prevails.  Conveniently blending retail, dining, office centers, cultural centers, parks, and hundreds of acres of open space.  Miramont is everything you want in luxurious living - striking design, sophisticated amenities inside and out...  Stylish kitchens with wood-style floors, granite counters, islands, stainless appliances & 42" custom cabinets*  *In select units  Community Conveniences:  Latte Lounge & Cyber Cafe'  Game lounge with Wii TM...  Fully-equipped business conference room  Heated infinity-edge pool...  Beautiful nature garden  - bookmark-sized brouchure

     Expanding equal rights to the GLBT community and all Denver residents is a core value of my administration and I am committed to delivering a world-class city where everyone matters.  - OutFront Colorado

     Yet another new week has somehow begun.  It's the morning after the Oscars.  At the intersection in front of my usual bus stop, five vehicles have pulled up.  In one of them, someone has a bullhorn, or a soundboard, or something.  I hear a series of mostly unintelligible announcements, except for this: "Muhammad, Muhammad pull over."  At the train station where I get a connecting bus is a new tweaker.  He's wearing a desert army coat and walking around looking up at something, saying "Fuck!"  As the bus approaches, he mentions something about being cold.  After we get on the bus, I see that he has dirty hands, a small cut to the right of his eye, and appears to alternate between exhaustion and agitation.  He's sitting across from the guy who says he got choked.  His oxygen tank dolly has been replaced with a collapsible shopping cart to carry his bag, along with a couple of 4 foot long stocks with duct tape on the ends.

     It's one thing to repudiate the workaday world...to clear the ground for concentrated perception; but... In the end, Thoreau's doctrine...renounced...virtually all social institutions...  ...we are invited to...dismiss as trivial most of the everyday preoccupations of mankind: wealth, status, power, social institutions, politics, family relations, sex...  In the absence of a revelation, he renounced too much.

     Mid-week, first day of a new month.  I stop into a bagel place for breakfast before a closing shift at work.  When I open the door, I am hit by a wave of unmistakable voices.  They are professional, white, executive voices all going at once.  Not a cacophony, but organized.  Not too loud, but tightly packed and humming.  I don't remember the last time I was among this crowd, tall middle aged white women with scarves.  It has to have been decades.  Among the smaller booths and tables are large tables, which appear to provide meeting space.  My breakfast is handed to me by someone who understands Spanish.  I sit behind someone talking about Olympia Snowe.  He says that if the president gets elected for a second term, he won't feel obligated to care about the wishes of the nation, and he's not speaking about G. W. Bush.  I hear him say nothing about the current Republican primary race.  He's talking about the House and Senate, population growth, chasing capitalism out of the country, sprinkler systems, mice.  "We're going to rehabilitate them so they don't bomb us?"  He's flanked by a guy and a woman.  With his sport coat and button down shirt and manicured hair, he appears as though he may be a  local radio personality or author.  Is he being interviewed?  It didn't sound like it.