January 2013

     On August 29, 1950, the agreement between church and state was concluded.  ...the result of extortion.  The Bishops' Conference...declared that "it will take action ...with canon law against...religious beliefs...abused for anti-state purposes."  ...on May 15, 1951...a State Office for Educational Affairs...was charged...to work out...the administration of the church...  ...to regulate all questions...of religious life...  ...the church became subject to...the legal power of the state..."  - Hutten
     I was shopping too much, driving everywhere, not getting enough exercise...
     So you don't move places for your work?  And you experienced the freedom of not being constrained by jobs and stuff.  ...that stuff owns you, and it's a kind of imprisonment...  You write that when you're trapped by all your belongings, you may become less involved and engaged with your community.
     ...my friends...they're trying so hard to get out of the work/spend cycle...  Most people are like that.
     Belongings impart status; that is, we measure each other by what we have with us or around our bodies...
     Houses are a great example of status items.  Your house is the one thing that defines your socio-economic level more...  - Nexus, January/February 2013

     A new year.  5 AM.  New transit riders.  At my usual bus stop, a guy I haven't seen before is chatting me up, wondering why the bust stop doesn't have graffiti all over it.  I wonder what neighborhood he is from.  Along comes local panhandler Richard Spotted Bird.  He suddenly turns to someone on a bench, as he does, and asks him for a dollar bill in exchange for a dollar in change.  A connecting bus is full of coughing passengers.  In the past month's frigid temperatures, I've seen no one dressed as warmly as myself.  In the wheelchair space is someone in a chair with an illustration of a dreamcatcher on the back.  Above the illustration, between an arrow on each side, is the word STONE.  Sitting across from her is an employee of a Goodwill who is impaired mentally, and who I haven't seen in months.  For the past couple of days, he's been holding up an empty soda bottle as if he expects soda to come out.  At one stop, the driver brings up the automated wheelchair lift.  Stone stands up from the wheelchair, folds it, and pushes it onto the lift.  Out of the window, I see Stone, with an LCD headlamp on, using it as a walker.  Stone is wearing black sweatpants, the left leg of which has serious sun damage.
     On a train home, I am listening to a couple of young folk trading stories about doing time.  The guy talks about catching "a case."  The girl did a year before starting her own bail bonds company.  On a connecting bus is a guy with bloodshot eyes.  On his head is a scar on top of a huge knot.  The next morning, I am coming out of a deathburger.  Coming in is a curvy young lady followed by someone who strikes me as out of her league.  His response to the way she moves is "Mmm mmm mmm."  He looks at her through the window before following her inside.  Not a bad pair of characters, but definitely the wrong set.
     Another week begins.  I'm on the way to the home of a neighbor, friend co-worker, Roman, and countryman.   It's after 4 AM, and in the dark, I can't see.  But I believe that I hear someone's back yard sprinkler system going in early January.  The day after, I'm on a bus home with a small collection of groovy young white guys in British caps.  One of them is yaking away about spending "five years in the joint."  The next day after work, waiting with me at a stop for a connecting bus is a guy in a red hoodie which he claims his sister gave to him, and that he decorated himself.  On the back is a design which reads, "I love Jesus".  He goes up to another guy on the bench and begins asking him where he is going, what bus he's waiting for.  When the bus comes, the Jesus hoodie guy stands in front of the door as he explains to the other guy that this is his bus.  As he does so, he is blocking the entrance to the bus.  The following morning, around 4:15 AM, I am on my way to catch a ride to work.  I pass a gas station across the street from where I work.  At a popular edge of the building are a middle-aged panhandling pair of significant others.  The guy has his cane and the woman is in a Colorado Avalanche hockey team coat. 

     If another large-scale aggression...were to take place...a substantial majority of United Nations members would support collective action...  The real danger lies in indirect aggression - subversive tactics and guerilla warfare - where the guilty parties cannot be seen...  There are not many signs that the nonaligned nations...will...evolve any genuine spirit of unity...in world affairs.  Loyal support for an effective United Nations is the greatest contribution they can make...  ...a revolutionary ideology and movement that transcends parochial nationalist interests...appeals to all "victims of Western colonialism and imperialism."  The Western world...seeks to arrest the social revolution that is sweeping the underdeveloped world...directed against...the indigenous feudal...relics of medievalism...political or economic...  ...the shop-worn cliches of "freedom" and "free world"...has little resemblance to...a free world to defend...
     Revolutions are not impersonal forces, but movements designed to serve the interests of distinct social groups and classes...  ...revolutions that swept across...the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries...unleashed...forces that fashioned a distinct civilization...where values and aspirations have become those of an entire community of states we call the Western world.  The middle-class social orders of the West are a...fluid, dynamic equilibrium of social, economic, and political power.  The more...social class is transcended the more...that all classes of society become gradually "bourgeofued" as they adopt middle-class values.  In Central America...  There emerged a new type of middle class - a class whose social focus of power was not material wealth or ownership of factories, but possession of special skills...a group that might be called the bureaucratic intelligensia.  The distinguishing characteristic of an ideosocial system...in the equilibrium of power...among the social classes.  ...from the extreme of the Marxist-Lennist image of a "ruling class"...to an informal graduated structure...mobile and dynamic.  ...the social class that constitutes the center of gravity...acts as a bond between the social groups above and below it.  ...in the underdeveloped world, the most immediate and pressing issues...are concerned with the fundamental nature of the social order itself.  ...striking is the almost uniform character of the emergent revolutionary middle class...  The revolutionary elite in underdeveloped countries takes its aspirations and values from the European middle class...  - Martin
     One of the main advantages that set rare colored diamonds apart from all other types of investments is...that wealth is highly portable and very easily concealed.  You can literally carry your entire wealth with you across borders...  ...rare colored diamonds have a record of doubling in value within a four-year term, which is even faster than precious metals.  Rare colored diamonds currently range in price from $15,000 to $65 million each.  Another factor is the trend toward increased demand for them from investor in India and China, two countries with an exploding number of high net worth individuals looking for...the least amount of risk.  ...rare colored diamonds...represent a significant hedge against inflation.  With countless financial land mines out there on the horizon like global political instability...it's important to build a financial firewall around yourself...regardless of what occurs.  - Loxzio, 11/2012

     Downtown at my bank.  A guy on the street corner is selling CDs or DVDs or something.  My bus stop is in front of a deathburger which was a gathering place for homeless.  It's across the street from the Social Security Administration office.  It's been closed since the day after Christmas.  Someone is sitting on a sleeping bag in front of the door.
     Staying in a shelter...the people...might be...shooting, smoking, rubbing.  ...life has beat them down so many times...where you can't get up anymore, at least not onto a path that leads to a future, and you just focus on the immediate.  Where the choices in front of you don't go as deep as "how can I make my life better"...  - Denver Voice, 1/2013

no rhetoric will  no apologies for  no mental illness  no awe  no ignorance will
no middle  class excuse  no self  defense  no amendment  no patriotism
no divorce  no pharmacy  for the  alienation  no day will  no morning will
no vow  I can't move  I can't help  no people  chosen  by G-d  no name  of evil
no information  no book  no famous actor  no lobbyist  no proof will  no armor
no father's father  no mother can  so long as I am alive you say
and see otherwise  no free market  no public park  no boycott  my language
no understanding of history  you say history and mean our  collective humility
of earthen  survival  you say you believe  and in a child  in twenty  no blame
no intercom  and we can't understand  and no ignorance will
and no state or federal law  and the child should know  because the child knows
should not be told what is  and isn't  when you sing in the early  winter
when you sing  through  my  life  whether you think  humans protect
themselves through violence  will not blame  no young man  no morning
will blame heal  there is no medicine when  no avoidance  no rhetoric  this  pain
like a song  you have no choice  but to listen  no protection  not an enemy
no sanitation  no hour  no half hour  no distance  no change
no grandfather's war  when twenty children  when everyone  is  a teacher
and student  no hiding  when a young  man  no credit  no ignorance will
when each day  no market-driven  value  no value  no hunger can
and no song can  and not a protest will  and no father can  when twenty children  when they try  when innocence  is taken  for granted
when the young man was  younger  no blame will  no town's history
in the human wilderness  I couldn't move when I heard  no luck  no providence
no courage would have or  will  no rhetoric  no human nature  no doubt will
no disillusionment will  I couldn't move  I was driving home  no giving
no taking can  when there is no choice  but to see  no game  no understanding
no research no investigation  can  twenty children  when everything living
is a teacher  I felt I had no choice  - Robert Snyderman

     On Sunday I'm headed out in 15 degrees F to see a movie.  It's in a high end, outdoor mall in a neighborhood with roots.  I get off the bus at a corner where I worked almost 15 years ago.  Ironically, I live much closer now than I did then.  The owner at the time was one of those residents with roots.  His shop he took over from his father.  It's directly across the street from where my old boss and his wife went to high school.  I remember her telling me that she was one of the girls who turned over the letters to spell out the school team's name at rallies and games.  He told me that he liked to hunt and fish, was active in local politics to preserve those things.  I remember him telling me that he took his son up to a cabin in the hills, with a boat on a lake "that he can go out on anytime."  As his son was growing up, his son was losing interest in such things quickly.  It appeared as though he was looking to me for some understanding.  On this corner used to be a good Greek short order place, a Taco Bell.  The Greek place is now a tattoo shop and the Taco Bell an authentic Mexican place.  The building appears to be the very same one.  There, set back from the street and hidden away, is the old place I used to work.  On this frigid day, it appears almost as if it has been put on a shelf for storage.  It's now a one hour cleaners.  When I worked there, we had a longer turnaround time.  I've worked at one hour cleaners.  I wouldn't work at another.  It's a ten or fifteen minute walk in Arctic headwind.  Out here may still be seen the frequent older model SUV with elevated suspension for off road driving.  I eventually make it to a health food uber grocery, complete with a huge sign in a window, announcing a book signing.  In an time when malls are either being redesigned or built from the ground up, with the objective of appealing to a particular minority residency, this mall appears to appeal to the Caucasian lifestyle.  Coffee and books on a Sunday afternoon, a leisurely stroll for something sweet.  There's an ice skating rink.  I run into the uber grocery to grab lunch.  I wander among the sweet potato casserole and hot corn meal before I find a sandwich.  After the three hour movie, I'm at a bus stop in freezing cold and in the dark.  Though I didn't bring a schedule along, surely they haven't cut back service to quit running before 5:30 PM, even on a Sunday.  I watch an endless line of headlights as I look for my bus.  Along comes a truck with lights on its cab roof.  Here, at this intersection of two busy boulevards, is an outdoor mall which considers itself contemporary, which holds an annual Italian festival.  Surrounding it is a neighborhood with its own history.
     I don't ski, but I make use of a ski mask.  I'm waiting for the bus to work on another Saturday.  Overnight was 1 degree F.  It's now 5 AM.  I continue to see people out in hoodies and jeans, windbreakers or denim jackets.  I am wearing lined pants along with long underwear, and a winter coat with a hood.  If I move the wrong direction, the wind goes past my cuffs.  I am eating through the hole in my ski mask which I have on.  I don't ski, but I make use of a ski mask. The lightest of snows is falling.  The mood is one of some kind of new age.  I take the bus to the train, down to the next station.  I think I hear a native American chant from someone out in the freezing train station.  Do I see snow falling in the lamp light or freezing fog?  By the afternoon, the clouds in the sky have broken, yet the Rockies remain shrouded in a great white frozen mist.  Jesus it's cold.  I'm sitting in the sun in some seriously lined clothing and I'm still cold.  To write these words, I must exhale on the tip of my pen to get the ink moving.  It feels no warmer than it did this morning.

     Western policy must align itself with the popular aspirations of the middle class nationalist forces in the underdeveloped countries...   Either the western world...not as a hegemonic empire or series of empires - must universalize itself, its values, and its institutions, or it will be inevitably...pass into the ashbins of history as another great civilization unable to accomodate itself to...its aroused, disaffected, and disconcerted populations.  ...international corporations, consortiums, and cartels...sometimes convey the impression that they own Western civilization...  - Martin


     I'm at my usual deathburger for breakfast.  As I head in, I hear a middle aged guy talking to himself.  He comes walking up with a jerking, nervous kind of motion.  It sounds as though he has some kind of Turret's Syndrome.  He's making random statements: he will by a home in five years, just give him five years, $2,000 down, "You mess up - you're done.  That's my grandma used to say."  Then he says, "Nice to meet you."  He's making these statements as if in a hurry.  He sounds like a TV flipping channels.  He's someone else with a mental illness come wandering out of the west.

     ...Khrushchev reveals..."The national bourgeoisie is dual in character.  ...objectively interested in...anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolution.  Its progressive role...therefore not yet spent.  But...shows...compromise..."  - Martin

     I saw my first empty Keystone ICE can hidden inside an empty fast food bag.  It's at my usual bus stop, at the usual time of 5 AM.  A young guy on a bike rolls up .  He's not a regular and he doesn't strike me as 'from around these parts.'  He politely asks each of us at the stop for a dollar before he is on his way.  When I get to the train station, there's a guy wandering up and down the train platform with that straight ahead derelict look in his eyes.  When my train pulls up, a guy with a similar appearance is talking to himself before the door opens for him to exit the train.  As I get on, I think that I hear the first guy yell something.

January 9, 2013

Dear Parents and Guardians,

Today, a student reported that a male in a black van asked to help him find a puppy.  The student reported it immediately...  We also put the school on a modified lockdown for 15 minutes to ensure that all the students were safe.  The officer from DPS security is currently investigating the incident.  - something I found on the sidewalk January 20
   
     The truth is that faith in who we are and who we came into this life to be is the key component to creating the life you desire.  ...to create the highest vision of me that I can present in the world...  ...to enhance...your overall physical vibration.  And faith in me is the activating force that my "human" requires in order to align with that over-arching creative intelligence of the Universe that is my source.
     ...while the faint glow of fireplaces tease passers-by, tempting visitors with hot chocolate to-dos and Champagne fetes.   ...as we would have it - complete with an accented and convivial service staff, many from Europe...  It is what we all fantasize about, isn't it?  - Out Front Colorado, 1/16/12

     On Sunday, I am on my way across the street for lunch.  I am passed by a trio of adult drunks who prowl the broken concrete together.  They are being led by yet another person with tattoos on their face and neck, a kid.  They converse before crossing the street, perhaps for the first time ever through the crosswalk.  The trio strolls on their way.  The kid stops to speak to someone in a small white car before he gets in, and it rolls away.
     It's midweek at 5 AM at my usual bus stop.  There's a guy on the corner with a bike, and a fountain drink in one hand.  He isn't crossing either street.  He wants to know if I have a light, and then if I have a phone.  When I don't, he gets on his bike and discoveres that it has a flat tire.  He trucks on down the sidewalk.  I take the bus to the train, to another bus stop.  A guy in a leather jacket and hoodie asks me if the bus at this stop goes south, and do I have a cigarette.
     ...murky forests lapped close to villages and fields, brimming with...witches, imps, elves, goblins...  ...the violence and apprehension of material reality shaded quite naturally into a supernatural that was just as real.  Apocalypticism, after all, involves divine secrets to a select few...  Clearly, apocalyptic rhetoric used to radical ends destabilized not only church and state but also...establishments...whose interest...did not extend to overturning...social arrangements...  The stars were full of horrors: great winds, strange stars, multiple apparitions of suns or moons, eclipses, warriors battling in the clouds...  - Apocalypse, by E. Weber, 1999
     In a resolution passed in January 1952, the seniors of the Reformed Church [of Hungary] stated: "We recognize the efforts to build up a truly new and great society.  The liquidation...which makes this exploitation of man legally impossible must be dear to a church...God-pleasing and profitable to man."  The basic ideas...of the opposition...declared that Christians must object to the idea that the history of salvation is always clearly apparent in the work of the government.  "History cannot establish the kingdom of God."  - Hutten
     Christanity was a...religion about history that turned on history past events listed...and on history..deduced from prophetic clues...  Communism was hardly new in the Christian tradition; nor were authoritarian ideals.  ...Restoration England  made speculation about the Second Coming a criminal offense.  - Weber
     With the elimination of...missionary activity among...young people, heathen, gypsies, and alcoholics, the church leadership had "supported the planned interference by the government..."  Anyone who dared disagree with the church was branded a sectarian...and an enemy of the state.  Bishop Ravasz called upon the pastors to become the living conscience of the people.  The congressional councils were to be examples of national unity...  ...parish pastors who held religious meetings in their parishes...had to obtain the permission of the police, so that the church meetings could not be abused by...elements...against the existing order of the state and society.  - Hutten

     I on my home after work, sitting on a bus with a short distance to go.  Behind me are a high school kid and a burned out derelict guy.  The derelict doesn't appear half as old as his tired and confused voice makes him sound.   As the last light of the winter sun fights its way through the windows, covered in mud deposited by the last snow shower, the derelict is crawling his way through a story about his mom flushing his marijuana down the toilet Christ knows how many years ago.  When was the last time this guy even spoke to his mom?  The good-natured kid is humoring him, this kid with his whole life ahead of him.  This kid who perhaps is master of many a computer game.  Can this guy even hold a joystick in his hand?  I think that the kid realizes how sad this guy is.  Can the derelict guy even say how he ended up here?

December 2012

     ...I am baking eight kinds of Christmas cookies...hour-long holiday card photo shoot, and creating a flow chart from wish lists to big ideas.  ...while watching the days tick by on our life-sized Santa advent calendar (which, by the way, requires a tiny yet magnificent treat in each of its 25 pockets) and telling my kids, "Please be quiet, Mommy's got a holiday headache."  "That Macy's window of perfection perhaps doesn't fit your moral code," says...a physician specializing in whole-life care and women's health.  "Look at what's going to work for you."  - Colorado Parent, 12/12
     ...we have tried an amazing array of practices, workshops, retreats and teachers, dipped our toes in many philosophies, religions, businesses and roles and have learned that there's a shoe for every foot...  From relationships with others and a Higher Power, to finances, entertainment, food,exercise, environment, family...well, there's no end to the list.  - Natural Awakenings, 11/12
     ...we have come to speak of the poor or underdeveloped countries in general, or the anticolonial or postcolonial states,  and of the colored or Afro-Asian nations.  Just what will be the influence of these states upon the interests of the West...?  ...at a conference of Prime Ministers of India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Burma, and Indonesia...at Bangor Indonesia was considered their part in the creation of world peace.  It included Asian members of SEATO as well as...China and North Vietnam.  Sukarno set the tone..."This is the first intercontinental conference of colored people in the history of mankind..."  Mr. Dulles denounced neutrality as..."a nation can buy safety for itself  by being indifferent to the fate of others."  The policy of bringing new states into alliance met, however, with limited success.  Dean Rusk spoke of the newer states..."But the test is whether they are determined to be independent, whether they are trying to live out their lives in the way in which their own peoples would like to have them shape it."  - Neutralism and Nonalignment, ed. by Lawrence W. Martin, 1962
     ...in 1960, the Ecumenical (Federal) Council of Churches in the Czechoslovak Republic published a declaration...which...stated: "We are more and more convinced that our state is carrying on the work of great social and welfare activities on behalf of our workers and...the struggle for peace and...the interests of the entire society and...for the individual to realize his hopes and aspirations."  ...further...that the socialist classless society "is close to the Christian concept of a healthy society order.  ...Christianity is not bound to any given form of society...  ...Professor Jones Hromadka...as early as 1929, was very critical of the "so called Christian civilization" which he saw represented in American democracy.  It worried him to see that Christianity separated itself from the basis of its faith and was slowly developing into a program for liberal democracy.  "The so-called Christian nations of Europe and America have lost, spiritually speaking, the right to consider themselves the firstborn among the Christian nations.  They have played out their role as political leaders in international affairs.  The era of the hegemony of the Christian civilization is past.  The historical philosophy...based on...the superiority...self-glorification...a claim to be arbiters of all moral, cultural, social and international situations.  ...self-righteous feeling of superiority, from its sterility and from all claims to be the judge of what is right and wrong, just or unjust, and what is freedom and righteousness."  - Hutten
     ...Communists had no adequate doctrine to deal with the success of national movements in colonial areas.  ...the banner of anti-imperialism might be taken over by a force independent of Communism...  The modern state...has several attributes.  These relate to the precision of boundaries.  The completeness of its jurisdiction within these boundaries.  The cohesiveness of its population, and the capacity of its government...to maintain order...to formulate and execute policy for the welfare of the national community.  There may be no such thing as a "logical" boundary to demarcate a modern state in a heterogeneous, traditional society.  Democracy is based upon restraints on the exercise of power.  Democracy demands a sense...of some larger interest than that of class or action.  ...the first requirement of operational independence - the creation of rough equilibrium among foreign influences...  Only a foreign policy dogmatic and totalitarian to the utmost degree conceivable would want to wipe out all diversity...  The policy-maker works at understanding the world from a base consisting of the essences of his own society's character...  - Martin
     The Denver Municipal Code recognizes neighborhood associations as the primary vehicle for communication and dialogue about issues affecting neighborhoods and residents.
     I typically get a bit...nostalgic in...our neighborhood, with its 100 year plus history...  The seeming fury of the pace of change in our society is juxtaposed against our quiet streets and quaint homes...  ...back when Platt Park was a working man's town...a few kids and probably a grandparent or two lived in our bungalows...  How an entire family's clothes fit into two three-by-three foot closets.  I wonder how they'd be amazed by...the light rail...$5 dollar lattes (what's a latte?), modern duplexes, marijuana dispensaries...  Yep, seems the only constant is...more or less in a positive direction.  - Platt Park Post, Dec. 2012/Jan. 2013

     On a Sunday, after purchasing a timer for the Christmas lights, later on I head across the street to a Mexican restaurant.  A slew of 1980s Cadillacs turns the corner.  Outside the front door, a cook recognizes me, so does a waiter inside.  The place is warm and inviting.  As I am reading an article about the Loch Ness Monster from 1979, four men come in to play Mexican music.  A couple of days later, I am on a bus home.  It's a bus which comes a couple of hours later than I usually catch it.  I sit in the back, a couple of seats away from a guy with thinning salt and pepper hair.  His hair and his beard are both perhaps a couple of feet long.  Across from me is a forlorn looking woman with a damaged left nostril.  Next to me is a kid with a paperback copy of Wuthering Heights.  Sitting at the front is a guy tapping his ring finger, with ring, against one of the handholds, tap tap tap.
     Thursday morning.  I'm at the bus stop across the street from my place.  5 AM.  A young woman in Capri pants and pantihose is waiting for the bus.  When I get up the street, I head for the deathburger.  Coming behind me is a wandering homeless zombie.  I go in and order.  He comes in and goes into the men's room, and then leaves.  The following day, I am on a bus in the early afternoon.  A derelict guy is in the seat next to me.  As another passenger gets on, he recognizes her, grabbing her arm instead of saying something.  She recognizes him as well, and tells him that she is sorry about the passing of his sister.  Two other passengers are behind her, and tell him the same thing.
     On the bus home from the train station, a passenger asks the driver how long it will be before we will leave.  The passenger says he has to pee.  He comes back on and sits next to me, asking me to read a phone number somewhere on a jury duty notice which he has.  I ask him where the number is on the form.  He replies, "That's okay, I will read it with my reading glasses."  I expect him to put them on.  Instead, he says, "I have them at home."  He says to me, "You've never been called for jury duty, have you?"  I reply that I have, more than once.  He claims that he was a jury foreman.  A guy sticks his head in the door and asks for a transfer.  He says with a heavy accent that he's from "out of town."  The jury duty guy says to no one in particular, "He's authentic.  You can tell when they're not."
     The next morning I'm up early the next morning for work.  I'm flipping through the channels before I leave.  CSPAN has an interview with someone named conservative black chick, with file footage of her arguing with Al Sharpton.  On the Comedy Channel, Chris Rock was doing a stand-up routine about national pundits "always trying to make us scared.  I'm from Brooklyn; I don't care about Al Qeida.  Motherfuck Al Qeida.  I'm concerned about Al Cracker."  When I get up the street, I step into the deathburger.  There's a customer inside, asking the difference between the old and the new breakfast burritos. On Sunday, I'm picking up a Christmas gift from the drug store.  The drunk who comes in is known by the employees, and treated as a friend.  He's in and out.  One of the employees tells me that, when the store opened some five years ago, he was their "first drunk".  After a year or two, he got a job, and since then he doesn't come by so often.  The next drunk to come in after the first one leaves is one Mr. Richard Spotted Bird.  I believe that he considers himself sociable.  He is in fact obnoxious.  "Hey, brother!..."  He stands in front of the cashier as if he had fallen asleep.  She asks the manager to tell him to go kick rocks.  The manager complies, and Mr. Bird quickly walks out
     It's a little after 7 PM, the middle of the week.  I waiting for a bus home on a suburban stretch of East Denver called Smoky Hill Road.  Sports bars and condominium apartments.  The sun is down.  From behind the bus shelter appear a male in a two piece suit and tie, and a female in a dress.  The male is holding in his hand a copy of The Watchtower magazine, which I have already read.  Nothing unusual so far.  Except this; both of them appear to be in grade school.  An hour later, I am at a train station, waiting for a connecting bus home.   Four young adults in hip hop gear and a grey-haired guy approach the ticket kiosk.  The older guy is staring at the screen as I hear them speaking Spanish.  It's as if the walked off a TV program on Telefutura.  Then, another grade school-aged kid appears in front of me.  Why the hell are these kids not home watching TV?  The kid is holding the biggest bar of chocolate which I have ever seen.  He's selling it for some kind of cause or school group which I can't make out.  When my bus arrives, I get on board with the unwashed.  Right before we depart, a white guy gets on.  He's in a light jacket with goddamned fucking reindeer all over it.  From the Martha Stewart collection perhaps?

     ...Americans have had to think of themselves as a people with a mission, although without a clear formula for performing it.  ...the American image as it appealed to Clay and Watson, for example, seems scarcely adequate to cope with exigencies in the present.  To a people whose independence was based on generalizations as wide as ours and whose founders declared "a new order of the ages," this is disconcerting.  - Martin
     ...from the small and dusty office...of Denver Urban Ministry and o the tables of the catholic Worker Soup Kitchen.  We created a mechanism to work together for...access to places to put our things, public safety for the homeless and a place to rest.  ...the Denver VOICE stood for meaning, an anchor, a place, a sense of the pulse of us as people.  ...from the survival guides we put in the paper...  ...a link between a people who had lost everything.  ...glimpses into the torn, fragile and brutal world of a person...dying in misery and squalor...  We may have been a burden to the establishment.  - Denver VOICE, 12/2012

THE DENVER POST  12/10/2012
     Two University of Colorado at Boulder students are facing multiple felony charges after they allegedly fed marijuana laced brownies to their...class. The professor...was taken to a hospital...  ...a student...was in the hospital after having a panic attack.  The brownies were brought as part of a "bring food to class" day.  Police said the brownies...were the only items brought to class.  The campus will not ban food from classrooms...  Police said they had never experienced a case like this before.
     Macerich Co. ...isn't usually in the business of hosting religious processions in its mall parking lots.  ...hundreds of shoppers turned out from the heavily Hispanic community...  "It's a bunch of guys trying to build for a (white) world that's no longer growing."  ...using bilingual staff, sending out direct mail in both English and Spanish and hosting events like Mexican Independence Day.  Not just dim sum and chimichangas  "We're in the build-it-to-improve-it-because-they're-already-here mentality."  Because Latino families tend to be larger, developers broaden the corridors and make common areas bigger;...such families tend to be younger...  No such thing as a Chinese tie  "...there's really no such thing as a Chinese necktie..."

     Dr. Adulbert Huclak...wrote, "The state is not merely a state in the secular sense of the word.  It's doctrine is not an autonomous doctrine and its secularism is not merely a liberation from, but at the same time a turning toward, the great idols of our century."  - Hutten
     Federal Boulevard is one of the most interesting stretches of pavement in the entire United States.  ..you can drive past looming Victorian mansions, the playground of the Denver broncos, llanteros selling retread tires, Vietnamese seafood markets, strip clubs, and seemingly more medical marijuana outlets than traffic lights without ever hitting your turn signal.  ...a seemingly endless construction zone of shifting lanes, cruising lowriders, school buses and delivery trucks.  Why do so many people on this street - male and female - wear pajama pants in public?  And what's the deal with those Buchanan Scotch whisky Spanish-language billboards, anyway?  - Westword, 12/20-26/2012
     ...the Commonwealth.  As a halfway house between independence and tutelage...it was first a projected federation, then a free association...expected to act together, even going to war as one, the merely a consultative group and, lately, a tenuous link with the "colored races."  - Martin

     The medical marijuana place across the street from where I live is now a shoe store.  On a morning at ten minutes after five, four transient-looking guys show up at the door to the deathburger, ten minutes after they are supposed to be open.  Someone opens the door for them.  Without ordering anything, they go in and sit down.  The door locks behind them.  A day or two later I am downtown after work, to grab next month's bus pass.  On the pedestrian mall shuttle are a couple of guys talking about their prison time.  "I'm 45 years old," one says to the other.  "The last seven years of my life I've spent in and out of prison."
     ...the cardinal was said to have had a secret meeting with the Archduke Otto...  They allegedly agreed that after World War III...a federated kingdom of central Europe...should be set up.  ...the cardinal had been starved in prison for 24 days...with tablets and injections...and was condemned to life imprisonment...and loss of civil rights.  Others...did not agree with the political methods which the Catholic Church was using in her fight against Communism.  ...the church should not consider the battle between East and West as a battle between evil and good men...  - Hutten
     The week before Christmas, I've seen a familiar white van slow to a stop in front of the gas station across the street from where I live.  All week, I've watched it drop a single passenger, who then ambles into the gas station.  On Saturday, he was dropped off by an SUV.  On the bottom corner of one of the front windows of the gas station is a 'no soliciting' sign, a couple of yards from where a handful of panhandlers make their careers.  It's above a sign at least twice as large warning about products in the station which contain artificial sweetner.  I don't remember seeing these signs before during the five years during which I have been passing these windows.
     The train home is full of hollow-eyed people.  They have long, sagging, worn out faces.  A woman with a hacking laugh.  Before the train comes an imbecile on the train platform is wandering in circles.  He picks up a crumpled kleenex and carries it in one hand.  In his other are his keys.  There's a middle-aged guy with an unlit cigarette in his mouth.  He's holding a small dog on a leash.   When the train gets a few stops ahead, I get off with the imbecile.  He walks away, picking up every piece of trash he sees on the ground.
     It's Christmas Eve.  Early.  3:30 AM.  After my ride dropped me off at an intersection, it is as a result a much shorter walk to the train station.  I'm headed down the sidewalk.  Halfway to the next light is a guy standing silently, having a smoke.  He's in plain sight, but I don't see him until I am upon him.  He's in work boots and insulated bib overalls on an early morning of 32 degrees F.  Over his head and upper body is a blanket.  As I pass by him, he's on his way.
     The day after Christmas, I have ten minutes before I head out to work.  It's 2:30 AM.  I turn on the TV.  The channel which is on has what appears to be something like a very old episode of COPS, but somehow it seems to be something else.  The police are called to a barber shop, where a break-in has been reported.  For a full minute, two officers are inside taking cover.  Outside the front door are kids standing around, staring at the camera.  Outside the back door is the shop owner, yelling "Shoot him!" over and over.  Then a completely nude man bursts through the back door, and is tackled.
     The next day, after work, I stop into a deli to grab some potato salad.  I'm sitting next to an investor who purchases houses for cash.  He's looking at a laptop while he is on the phone with someone, asking them if they have spoken "to the real estate agent?  Get them involved.  Then maybe do your little pitch.  Are there any telephone poles?  (for flyers)  Our marketing plan is for 60% direct marketing.  What about Craigslist?  Some towns have "for rent" newspapers.  I'd like to do two or three-line classifieds.  Find out how much they are.  They should be $15 to $20.
     The following day after work, I am downtown at my bank.  I head over to the stop for my bus home.  A sign is posted, letting everyone know that today, this stop is closed and a new one is now open just down the street.  I don't yet know if today is the date on the sign.  I attempt to buttonhole someone.  Only the third person will acknowledge me.  I realize why.  I have on a long winter jacket, hat, hood, have a beard and a large duffel bag, and I am standing next to someone asleep on a bench at a closed bus stop who can be smelled from several feet away.  I also appear homeless.
     It's after work on a Saturday afternoon.  I am waiting for a bus in my neighborhood for the short ride down the street.  On one corner is a woman flying a sign which says something about needing "money for booze."  On an opposite corner is a guy with his own sign, becoming agitated, and gesturing with his cane and pointing at cars.  He sticks his sign up to a passenger window and says, "Come on!  Two dollars!"  The next day, I am at a deatyburger, when a drunk comes running in.  "Can you open the men's room?"  "There's someone in there."  "Can you open the men's room?"  "There's someone in there."  "How about the ladies room?"  "No."  He goes in there anyway.  When he comes out, he wants free coffee.  He may or may not be from a trailer park, next to my supermarket, just down the street.  At the checkout is a woman telling the cashier that her husband wants her to get him all the tabloid newspapers.  She tries to tell him that the stories are all the same in every tabloid.
     Sunday, I have lunch downtown with the mom and sister.  I catch a bus home on a day when the city's football is playing a home game.  On the bus is a big guy on his phone.  He sounds like a burnout.  As we go past the stadium, he starts yelling about an old quarterback who has "four Superbowl rings!"  He's trying to tell a kid sitting across from him about his trivia knowledge.  The kid isn't interested.  The kid's girlfriend is laughing at the guy.  Another guy, who also sounds as though he may be a burnout, mentions the Pittsburgh Steelers during the 1970's.  We pull into a transfer station right next to the stadium.  The station is scheduled to close in April, after the lightrail station opens next door.  I get off and get in line to board a connecting bus.  The second burnout is behind me.  He says out loud that he hopes our team will "kick some asssss."  He gets on for a minute before he gets off again.  We leave as soon as he does.
     It's the end of a week plus one day, of working an earlier than usual shift.  I didn't plan on coming downtown after work.  The train took me there long before I got to a stop for a bus home.  I'm sitting at the front window of a bagel place, on a bleak New Year's Eve afternoon.  The sun is peeking through a veiled sky spitting snow.  A guy shuffles by wrapped in a blanket.  I give my name for my order.  After I am called, I get up to get it, and an employee at a table asks me by name if I want to sit there.  Outside, a guy with a shopping bag is pumping his fist, a derelict has a limp, four guys walking together all have sunglasses on.  They are the only pedestrians I notice with sunglasses.  It's the last afternoon of a year of, yet again, multiple massacres motivated by mental illness capping what one could make a case was a mental illness-induced election contest.
     ...a plan of transforming a once dangerous abandoned trailer park and bar...into the City's newest and first park in 30 years in West Denver.  The theme of the new park will honor the diversity and rich cultures of Westwood/Barnum through the medicine wheel...  iViva District 3!, Winter 2012
     "...we do not exist as separate selves..."  A Mindful Nation, by Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan...  "Mindfulness...can...enhance our emotional intelligence and our ability to act with clarity and wisdom...  A peaceful revolution is being led by ordinary citizens across our nation,"...  ...The Shift Network...empowers a global movement of...creating an evolutionary shift in consciousness...  Thousands of individuals are now working in collective hubs across the United States...for the Planetary Birth Day celebration.  - Natural Awakenings, 12/2012
     Make sure to seek out our cultural experiences while you're here too - whether art, history, music, theater or one of our wacky local traditions...  ...scenic tours as well as "an old-fashioned dinner experience" featuring a homemade meal in addition to the sleigh ride.  The vaulted-ceiling lobby features...a giant stone fireplace, bedecked with an antlered moose head.  Decorations evoke Colorado lifestyle.  ...most opt for a Colorado flair for utilizing old ski photos, Western art and so forth.  ...it's not necessary to leave the resort at all - with its...arcade-style activity center, private heaters, fitness center, private theatres, fitness center, full service salon and even a spa with a cave-like grotto and indoor waterfall.  Very much the fun and fearless counterpart to its straight-laced sibling, Vail...  In a town with a calendar packed...Ullr Fest...has the unique effect of drawing together a town of visitors, second homeowners...  - Explore Summit, Winter 2013

November 2012

     On the ground, at the bus top outside of work, is someone's mailer which they tossed.  It has a picture of a young woman with her head in her hands.  It mentions something about Obama ruining the economy.  I catch the bus to the train station, where yellow papers are blowing around.  I turn one over.  It's advertising for workers to help Obama get re-elected.
     The next afternoon, I am on the way home from work, and stopping downtown at the bank.  We stop at a corner, where paintings are being sold out of a car.  The saints in my neighborhood:  Zapata, Ernesto Che, The Virgin of Guadalupe, and Al Pacino as Scarface.  Up the street, a couple of middle-aged guys got on.  They are talking about not being able to find a job without a licence, going back to prison, and seeing old friends once they get out.  "He took my beer, slammed that.  I said, 'Damn, that was my beer.'  He said, 'You know how it is.'  He wants to come over and party.  I told him that it ain't like the old days.  I got an old lady now.  He's like, 'That's fucked up.'"  The driver tells the guys to watch their language.  She had also told a passenger getting off at the transfer station to throw her trash into the trash can.  One of the guys notices the woman next to him has a hard hat.  He asks her about getting a job.  The following morning is another Saturday.  At the gas station, next to the stop next to where I catch a bus for a short ride up the street, someone is taking a long look in a trash can next to the front door.

     Michael Novak saw the "new ethnic politics as a direct challenge to the WASP conception of America.  It asserts that "groups" can structure the rules and goals and procedures of American life.   It asserts that individuals...do not have to "melt."  In her speech at...Monsignor Geno...Baroni's conference, Mikulski capsulized her view of America, "America is not a melting pot," she said...  "It is a sizzling cauldron...  Government is polarizing people by the creation of myths.  ...groups end up fighting each other for...jobs and competing for new schools and recreations centers...for tokens..."  Novak writes that "the tactic of demonstration is inherently WASP and inherently offensive to ethnic peoples."  Tim Sampson...said"...you had in the neighborhood an infrastructure...churches, ethnic organizations," long time residents.  "That's infinitely weaker now.  ...if our task is to create the infrastructure of the damn society...that's a hell of a problem."
      Tom Hayden said, "It's the first time the right wing has been able to move from social...to economic issues and start to channel...low-...and middle-income people  into a campaign."  The collapse of the center is producing a view of obsolete social welfare.  By the time of Watergate...New Right theorists and publicists...had decided the Republican Party was probably dying.  They thought of a new coalition, some considering leaving the party behind when Ronald Reagan resolutely insisted on keeping his challenge strictly within the framework of the Republican Party...  There was discussion of forming a two-party coalition of conservatives to seize control of the House of Representatives.  As for the re-election of moderate Republicans, in hopes of achieving a congressional majority within the GOP.  "I really think they're smoking something when they believe that," Weyrich remarked of such GOP leaders.  - Broder
     Two glass coffins were placed in the center of the nave.  "This is supposed to be a saint..."  A special exhibition entitled "The Church is an Organization for the Exportation of the People" showed that baptisms, funerals, religious processions, and...ringing of the bells were used to fill the coffers of the church.  On a red flag which was hanging on a wall were inscribed the words, "Against God, Liquor, and Illiteracy."  ...the central Anti-Religious Museum in the former Monastery of the Passion in Moscow showed...the raping of minors by clergymen.  ..."Beshoshnk" (1935, No. 12) wrote: "...the Priest Koralev came to the Third Fish Smoking Plant of Lenningrad...  He did not wear his priestly garb, nor did he have long hair.  ...sufficient proof by the directorate of the factory to accept him as a member of the workers' association.  No one seemed to think to ask the stranger for his workers' documentation.  Soon the priest was issued ration cards...  When he ...had not been unmasked, he began to propagate his religious views...  Some...were persuaded to take his place at the workbench...when he went to church...  We ask, Where was the watchfulness of the working class of the Third Fish Smoking Plant?"  - Iron Curtain Christians, by Kurt Hutten, 1962
     As we enter the Eighties...the Catholic Church has gone...from being..."part of the colonial system" to being a part of the political self-realization of the Hispanic community.  "...if you were a young executive, they told you; 'We need you to be a part of community life here.  This is part of your job.'"  - Broder
     Our world is characterized by greed and selfishness.  In such an environment, some people find it difficult to be different.-Exodus 23:2  Satan.a rebellious spirit creature is "misleading the entire inhabited earth."  (Revelation 12:9)  He thrives on manipulating humans.  He may craftily manipulate a person's natural desire for material comfort and financial well-being...  Does that mean that we are mere puppets in Satan's hands...?  - The Watchtower, 10/1/12

     It's the Sunday before Thanksgiving.  I'm waiting for a bus home from just up the street.  A young guy comes strolling up.  He has teardrop shades and a Megadeath T-shirt.  I haven't heard from Megadeath in a couple of decades.  The stop is right in front of a big Vietnamese restaurant.  He turns to me and sez: "Goddamn, that smells good."  A drunk I recognize follows him over, and they appear to know each other.  The following day, at the same stop, I am waiting for the same bus with a girl who was on the previous bus with me.  She has a small dog in her black and white tiger-print purse.  She was asking the passengers if anyone had a phone which she could use.  She now has her thumb out for the indifferent traffic.  One heel is in the street, now another.  Someone in a passing car yells at her, "Suck my duck."  When we get on our connecting bus, she asks those passengers is anyone has a cell phone...

     The home has two main media rooms.  There are seven patios on various levels of the home.  In the master bedroom, the 55-inch TV resides in a custom cabinet with a motorized lift, so it can disappear completely...and the 13-foot tall windows are covered by a motorized drapery system controllable by the room's ever-present iPad.  Fireplaces throughout the home can be controlled by iPad apps, as can the water feature in the back yard.  ...a setup in which they could enjoy multiple games simultaneously.  "We mounted thre 42-inch and two 60-inch HDTVs, plus a projector with a 110-inch drop-down screen.  The system has the ability to matrix out five different feeds simultaneously...  The couple has five different  feeds simultaneously...five different DirecTV boxes...  - ListenUp High Definition Sight & Sound

     The Sunday after Thanksgiving, I am in Walgreens.  A girl behind the front counter is talking to a customer, introducing a guy twice her size as her brother.  She tells the customer that, eleven girls jumped her, and her brother kicked their ass.  It's five days later.  I'm out and about on my day off, to the drug store, to the bank, to the post office.  Walking to the bus stop, I am passed by a guy in his sixties in a Winter Olympics scarf.  He asks me matter of factly if I "have any spare change or extra food?"  Food is what one may expect to be an immediate concern if homeless.  It's just that, this is the first time I've had a request for food of any kind.

     ...fascism...considered the creation of Protestant "subjectivism"...  The Russian Orthodox Church became an important factor in the Pan-Slavic movement and in Communist world propaganda.  In July 1, 1949, the Vatican published a decree against Communism.  The Holy Office had decided that Catholics who had...published Communist literature, or made contributions  for these purposes, or had spread and read them, would no longer be admitted to the sacraments.  - Hutten
      "We're all in this together.  I mean, it's the exact same profession.  All trying to seek beauty, truth, and justice...to save the free world from Communism...and make these United States a social paradise..."  - Broder

     After work I am at the train station.  I see a long, neat line of people, perfectly organized and standing in front of a train ticket kiosk.  One by one, they are each staring at it as if they have no idea what to do with it.  This is why the line is so long.  These are not the 9 to 5 riders who are here day in and day out.  These are the ones who never ride the train, except for occasions such as tonight, when there is a Christmas parade downtown.  Their slow progress ensure that there will be room for myself on the next train home.  On the train is a guy who says, "My brother drives a bus.  They can pull you off the bus for a drug test at any time."  At the station where I get off is a similar line in front of the ticket kiosk.  People you would never otherwise see at a train station, except on Fridays to go downtown for dinner and drinks.  On the bus home from the station is a grey-haired woman.  She is speaking to someone on her phone, telling them about problems with her cable service, when she says, "I'm goin' gay.  I'm fuckin' serious.  I'm serious.  I'm serious.  I'm lookin' for someone to fuckin' love me for who I am.  I love you baby."
    

October 2012

        It's my day off.  I'm at a bus stop across the street from where I live, waiting for a bus just up the street to grab a bite and get some film developed.  Sitting on the bench is a normal looking young woman.  From across the street, hobbling through noon traffic on a weekday, is a local drunk.  He sits down next to the woman and begins talking to her.  The two obviously know each other.  He saying something to her about returning home, I only vaguely am able to make out his hoarse monotone.  She appears to become emotional.  When the bus shows up, I get on and hear commotion at the front as I am taking my seat.  The driver hits the brakes and puts the bus into park as I fall into the cushion.  The drunk has come on to grab a plastic trash bag from a bunch next to the driver, saying, "'Scuse me 'scuse me..."  The driver gets out and points his finger an inch from the drunk's face, telling him, "That's the second time you've done that today.  You do that again, and I'm gonna kick your ass."  The drunk shrugs with his mouth open.  With that, the driver takes his seat and we are on our way.  I can't tell if the drunk took an empty bag for his crap, or grabbed a bag with trash in it.  He pulls out a brochure announcing proposed schedule changes for this coming January, offers it to the girl, and smiles at her.  Did he engage in some theatre to try and cheer her up?  She looks at him with distrust.
     A couple of days later I am walking up the street to catch an even earlier bus than usual.  At 4 a.m., a teenaged guy is walking across the street.  It's the first morning this Autumn in the 30s.  He has his coat open and halfway off.  As we pass each other, we both stare at the other one.  The next morning at 5 a.m., I am at a train station with a guy who sounds as though he is singing drunk.  We get on the train and fly through the first snow of the season.  He's sitting on a seat before he changes seats.  He's in constant motion.  He's going through his pack for several minutes.  He looks up several times with a puzzled expression on his face.  He's endlessly moving his head back and forth.  Then his expression is pained.  He takes something out of his back pocket, puts it in his pack.  His upper body over several minutes is one constant non-stop series of movements back and forth and all over.  Most of it is digging in his pack.  He makes a happy face and swings his head back and forth.  Someone he appears to know gets on and sits across from him.  He begins monkeying with a wire (I-pod?).  He stands up, moves his pack around his waist, moves it again, moves it a third time.  He crosses his legs as he talks to his friend, making gestures with his hands and smiling.
     The next morning is another Saturday, and a different pre-dawn train.  In front of me is a sleeping guy with sunglasses.  It's spitting snow, and will be all day, never getting bright enough for shades.  Next to me is a middle-aged guy in a hoodie with an American flag patch on the right shoulder.  Behind me is a man with a black handlebar moustache and a cane.

     At one time, a city's cultural identity was tied mostly to what...(symphonies, opera, ballet companies, theater companies) did, and they mostly performed the canonical works of Western Europe and North America.  We tend to...easily curate for ourselves through technology based on our own idiosyncratic tastes.  - Westword Fall Arts Guide (2012)
     ...drives a Lexus, is married to an attorney, has two children attending private schools that require uniforms, wears high-end designer suits and custom shirts, attends charity dinners for the arts, travels frequently...is an avid cyclist, invests in an art gallery, has a personal trainer, has had cosmetic surgery, uses a Nordstrom personal shopper for clothes, and has Frette linens for the home.  - American Drycleaner, 9/2012
     Most Denver residents might be taken aback at the thought of opening an establishment where occasionally it can be a bit like Sesame Street, with the occasional strange character strolling by...
     Almost all end-time predictions have...a way to be saved.  Those who have consciously prepared...will survive and even prosper.  They will be able to adapt, accept and move beyond the trials and tribulations of the purification.  Working on self-purification now...to position ourselves to flow beyond the hard times.  This year's prophesies are planetary, not nationalistic.  The end of time is a cross-cultural myth...  - Out Front Colorado, 9/19/12
     "We're going to be at the epicenter," he says, "We believed in the city of Denver enough to mortgage ourselves fully...and we're still here, and that bet is still paying off."
     "...that's why it's such a true, fabulous urban space, recognized nationally as the best in the country.  If you just stand out there and take it all in, it's really marvelous.."
     ...Mayor Michael Hancock...telling Westword that some of the people who formerly slept on Denver's streets and sidewalks have returned to their  homes and families as a result.  Lucy...has opted instead to move further from the public eye...  "I mean, I'm certainly not shopping."  - Westword, 10/4-10/2012

     It's another Monday.  I'm out the door and across the street to the bus stop.  A few yards from there, in front of the gas station, standing in the dark are a couple of women.  A white van pulls up and drops off a guy, who they appear to know.  One asks him if he has a lighter.  The next morning, I leave the house a bit late, and catch a slightly later bus up the street.  Many of us get off and cross the boulevard to the stop for the crosstown bus.  This early, there is hardly any traffic.  We approach the stop through the middle of the street, all of us walking in a line, a kind of human wave assault.  Most of us are in black hoodies.  On the bus, right above the windows are public service advertisements on thin cardboard.  One of them falls onto the floor.  From the bus to the train, where I get off the train, there is a guy on each side of the platform.  One is headed northbound, one southbound.  Both are wearing knit jackets of man-made fiber.  Both are holding travel mugs at their waists.  The morning after, I am at the same bus stop across the street from where I live.  At 5 am, it's 41 degrees F.  A young guy goes running past the stop, into the gas station before coming out to catch the bus.  I never see anyone run anywhere in this neighborhood.  He's wearing a T-shirt which reads, "got milk?".  On the bus, I hear a middle-aged guy speak to the young guy in what I think is Spanish.  The kid mentions something "tripping me out."  When we get off, the kid runs across the street to the crosstown stop with his plastic grocery bag from the gas station.  I stand across the street from the deathburger to watch employees walk up to the locked door, and have to knock on the window to get someone to let them in.  I watch this for fifteen minutes after they are supposed to be open, until I have to catch the bus crosstown.

     ...the next ones in a leadership succession...  They saw the premature close of what their parents had called "the American century"...  They have embraced a good many heroes, and discarded most of them.  "...people can't have an anti-government mood for a prolonged period of time.  The government is the servant of the people, and there should be some measure of goodwill..."  ...his answer, I'm afraid, came unintentionally close to parodying Doonesbury's parody of Governor Brown...  "Thinking for the year 2000.  Where does America fit in?  ...the planet is filling up with people and technology...  I think people want leaders to discuss the big picture..." he said, the words tumbling out at an accelerating pace, "How do we maximize quality of life...consistent with...other people in other lands?"  We were mow far removed from...worries about...social programs...  "...if the person is right for the historical period ahead, the people will listen."
     "In the Sixties and early Seventies, many..." former senator W. Scranton said, developed "a tendency to love diffusion.  The idea was that if I'm different from anybody else, therefore I'm good...  They got terribly turned off...  But now I think they're digging back in...rather than being revolutionary from the outside."  His son, W. W. Scranton III, said "In my father's...and my grandfather's generation...any kind of personal concern they were always uncomfortable with.  I think this generation saw that the world couldn't be fixed that way."  President Carter remained aloof from the fervor...over the Vietnam war...  The alterations in the sexual and social relations...the structure of the family, the church and community.  ...Carter evoked the traditional values of a disappearing America.  He was welcomed by many as a...churchgoing...businessman, with a devoted...wife, linked by history and the networks of an extended family to his land, his community, his nation and his God.  - Changing of the Guard, David S. Broder, 1980

     It's Friday morning, 5 am at the train station.  A middle aged couple is waiting for a westbound bus.  The guy has on his yellow and black Steelers coat, and he has a yellow and black pack.  I hear what I think is the sound of a soda can being crushed.  This is exactly what he is doing, crushing cans against the ground, and putting them in a clear Ziplock bag.  I get on the train, which stop at a private university.  Standing at a bus gate is a big, young guy in a T-shirt which reads, "MAN UP."  Period.  A bit down the line, a guy gets on.  He's wearing a generic football jersey.  His arms are crossed, as if he is cold.  His red face has the weatherbeaten look of the homeless.

     ...to the emerging leaders is an acute self-awareness...as broad as having grown up in one of the frontiers of American society; the Sun belt...or the kaleidoscope called Suburbia.  ...their destiny in their race or in their gender or in their condition.  ...meant something different in the period of...the 1960s and '70s from what it had in the 1930s or '40s.  ...in this nation...we function as parts of identifiable clusters or networks of peers...bounded by geography, history or common loyalty.  ...those networks of young people, forged there in the 1960s and '70s, will shape our politics, government and society increasingly...until the end of the century...when they, in turn, will give way to those who are barely teenagers today.  In moving from city to suburb a family is...asserting a desire to throw off...political disciplines.  ...choosing a more homogeneous environment, where there are few clashes...  "...the very difficult transition of Fresno becoming a major American city.  ...as I go and talk to high-school groups and college groups, I sense a very negative attitude about government, and I think that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."  - Broder

     I step off the bus at the train station.  There in the lamp lights, I can see, spanning most of the distance from the back door to the front one is an advertisement.  There are photos of a woman running through tall mountain grass.  She's in shorts and a pink windbreaker.  A guy is on a mountain bike.  Young women are in a yoga class.  Another guy is in snowshoes on a snowy trail.  At the end is a girl on a swing.  It reads, "New homes from the high $200s to over $1 million.  Green Living + Economical Living."  I step off the train at another train station.  A bus pulls into the station.  On this one, on the opposite side, is a message the size of one on my bus.  This one reads, "Move out of your mom's basement.  Riders save $10,000 a year."  In 20 years, this guy will have enough to begin living green.

     As a 10-year board member of Visit Denver, I'm very aware of the competitive nature of tourism...  ...we have to constantly invest millions...to create and preserve positive images.  ...Colorado's venerated reputation may be soon overshadowed by the marijuana industry.  Remember, this is NOT your father's 1960s marijuana...  - Washington Park Profile, 10/2010
     ...Centennial Statehouse, received the Jury Award for Best Documentary Shrot Film at the TriMedia Film Festival earlier this month.  ...has been screening across the state of Colorado all summer (I never heard of it) telling the story behind one of the great architectural treasures of the American West.
Rosa Linda's Bombarded by Hate Mail  Rosa Linda's Mexican Cafe would like to apologize to every one we may have offended concerning Mitt Romney, and the article in Westword.  We did not refuse him service recently.  That is false.  - Denver News, 10/10 - 11/10/2012

     It's my day off, and I'm on my way home from the bank.  I needed to go there before I figured out  that I actually didn't have $150 less in my account than I thought I did.  On the bus home, a kid got on behind me who didn't have fare.  Starving, he says, on his way to a job interview.  In a seat, watching him and smiling in sympathy, is a young woman in a tube top under her coat.  Her young daughter is next to her.  I hear the young mom on her phone.  It sounds as though she's speaking to her mom.  She's talking about...the girl's father?  She saying that "he wont be in forever..."  ...(jail, that is?  or worse?)  After speaking some Spanish, she them mentions something about a psychic.
      It's a cold pre-dawn Saturday.  I'm coming from the deathburger, toward the bus stop.  Before I cross a side street, I can see a car coming.  It sounds as if it has a flat tire, as if the tire may be dangling.  I hear a rattling.  A small hatchback turns the corner.  Its right front tire is completely missing.  I watch it driving on a bare rim as, having come from as far as I can see down the street, It continues on as far as I can see down the boulevard.

     ...White House...occupants were not that emotionally involved...in particular causes.  Most of them were not marching in...protests of the Sixties...  Bert Carp said the salaries offered by private business...mean that "most people like me are going to be lost to government by the time we reach age forty."  - Broder

     It's a couple of days before Halloween.  I have a long walk to the train station.  I am thinking about the lives of the people I see on the streets of my own neighborhood.  So often they appear so unconcerned about anything, solely aware of their own confined existence.  A couple of Sundays ago, I was on the bus to the grocery store.  A young guy was describing the neon beer signs he got for his home windows to a derelict guy.  The derelict guy, because he "has three kids," has no choice but to "hustle all the time."  It's a striking reason, making street hustling appear as a kind of prison rather than some kind of lifestyle statement.  I heard an author on CSPAN describe the economy of the 1980s as a time when a credit bubble, together with moms entering the workplace, both defeated inflation.  I live in a place where the street people have been transported from the 1970s.
     On my way home, I stepped off a bus at the train station.  Lurking at the elevator was a guy in a golf shirt and slacks, and his son by the hand.  In a voice like a whisper, he asks me for a dollar.
     Halloween 2012.  A quarter to 8 PM.  At the train station, waiting for the bus home.  There are a couple of random passengers dressed as "costumed characters", as the sci-fi con puts it.  When I step off the train, a guy dressed as a witch, with a shovel handle, is looking around the train to the other side.  "Hey Brandi, did you get on the train?"  Three drunks wander by, sharing a cigarette.  I recognize a short, middle-aged and weatherbeaten guy who has a hat too small for his head.  A couple of guys in the parking lot are tossing a football back and forth.  The local football team is on top of the western division of the league.  To the east, a harvest moon is rising.