February 2015: "The rock is taking care of your bags..."

     ...my neighbor...had his car broken into.  There was [sic] 4 of them trying to steal the car.  My neighbor and his friends chased the kids and were able to catch 2 of them.  What I understood was that "street justice" was served in the old fashion [sic] way.  - Nextdoor Westwood, 2/1/2015
     Operating with a jarring combination of Marx and the Mafia, the Huks blackmail...buy up...officials or police, slaughtering...to make an example.  ...known...by presenting the legs of an enemy to his wife and the head (wearing sunglasses) to his mother.  On the other hand...no man steals..or rapes a girl.  Their...force has been supported by...peasants ignored by government, beaten by corrupt police, and robbed by landowners.  - Bloodworth

     Monday.  Groundhog Day.  My sister's birthday.  I am at the train station where, every morning about this time of a quarter to five AM, a small white pickup comes driving up.  It's just small enough to fit on the train platform.  A couple of guys get out to power wash the concrete and change the trash bags.  On this illustrious pre-dawn, one trash can is on fire.  It is the first one I can remember running into.  The plastic bag is being slowly consumed and a small but steady stream of smoke and cyanide is wafting out.  The truck comes right on time, stops a few yards away for a moment, then pulls right next to the can as usual.  Still the driver does not see the fire, until a guy in a big cowboy hat comes walking along to point it out to him.  Just then, my train shows up.  The last thing I see is a guy in a cowboy hat grabbing a double-handed scoop of snow off the ground.

     ...through this stone jungle...with...Western correspondents, Indian, Polish, and Canadian diplomats and generals of the International Control Commission, Chinese merchants and shopkeepers...doctors and lawyers with sophisticated tastes, taxi girls, street hawkers, Corsican entrepreneurs...who were sticking their ground, even a complete Filipino cabaret orchestra.  - Bloodworth

THE LAST HAND
Future looks bright for gaming towns
Can you imagine what our mining towns will look like 100 years from now?  Modern day casinos will be the center of activity.  ...young and old...playing...for profit and loss 24 hours a day.  The cities will have professional sports teams...  There will be at least a dozen large hotels...a rapid transit system...many housing subdivisions.  ...an overhead rail train...  Some of the mines will reopen...bringing back the mining business across Colorado.  There will be...a state-of-the-art hospital where gamblers can get their implanted chip checked...by a computer that will dispense...super pills that will treat and cure most diseases.  ...what is important for growth.  The most visible answer is the construction of hotels.  When the gaming towns become a destination...everyone benefits.  ...we'll have more stores, antiques, novelties, special restaurants, and arcade areas for children and adults.  I'm going to make my reservation for 100 years from now at a local hotel.  Those computer chips are going to keep us alive a whole lotlonnger and there is no better medicine than a "21" at a blackjack tale, today or tomorrow.  - The Colorado Gambler, 2/3-16/2015
     Communism is poverty's child...until the day arrives, if ever, that it makes its own million.  Half the shop fronts were coffined up with wooden boards, and the other half had the impersonal, empty look of the dying.  It was always Sunday, it seemed.  ...traffic was orderly, for there was no traffic.  ...central cooperatives were filling little retail shops with cheap goods from China - tumblers and matches and pictures of Mao and Ho, vacuum flasks and vodka, shoddy shoes and exercise books and plastic air-travel bags - an odd miscellany of bric-a-brac upon which it might be possible to create a new and strange way of living.  ...Hanoi had once been a smiling little place.  But in December 1955 it seemed inconsolably mournful.  - Bloodworth
     Sunday morning my neighbor heard a loud bang...  (My basement window had been) kicked so hard that the entire frame of the window landed all the way across the room...  - Nextdoor Westwood, 2/5/2015


     Saturday evening.  I worked a closing shift at a store in the heart of one of the city's largest and wealthiest neighborhoods.  It's twilight now, and lights are coming on in enormous windows of mansions stacked together like desert macrobiotic soil.  These mansions tower over long fences, a fraction of their height.  This is the land of the mega-church and eco-friendly supermarket.  There are nail salons, stores which buy gold, fast food, pet food, Whole Foods, ice cream shops, and orthodontists.  Before my shift, I stopped into a bagel place for lunch.  I sat next to a larger table, around which at least one family was gathered.  Everyone appears to be dressed up.  The father unit is asking a teenaged guy how life is treating him.  The father, a grandfather, and the guy are all wearing suits.  The guy has on a bow tie.  Everyone at the table besides the father and teenager is quiet, even the grandfather.  It appears to be a traditional practice of deference to the head of a family.  Beyond that, I am not sure what this scene is all about.  This evening, we are rolling along the winding road.  It's dark now.  At one stop, a middle-aged guy gets on.  He has with him a bad transfer and a 30-can case of beer.  The driver asks him not to step out n front of the moving bus to get her attention.  She then asks him if he has the fare.  He tells her that he has a transfer.  When he shows it to her, she informs him that he can not use a transfer from the same route back the other way. This is, in fact, a transit system no-no.  She then reminds him that this is the second time that she has mentioned this.  Then, she asks him to pay the fare.  He claims that he has only one more fare left on him.  She lets him know that, should he again attempt to use a fare from the same route, she "will have to call it in," and the proper authorities shall then track him down and issue a $100 ticket.  He responds that he will soon be back to driving.  After he departs, I tell the driver that she should have let him on for the price of a beer.  She tells me that, during the previous week, he brought along his 90-year-old mother in her wheelchair.  She was along for the ride to draw out money for him to purchase beer.  She mentions that, on this route, the number of people trying to come on her bus without proper fare is nothing compared with those who do so on the route she drives...on my very own boulevard.  Out my way, she describes this hustle as happening, "All day, every day."  When you meet those without bus fare, it must be a small city.
     Sunday morning.  I am at the bus stop in front of the supermarket I go to.  Someone has buried some enormous rocks next to the trees and bus shelter, perhaps to sit on.  I elect to put my grocery bags next to one of the huge rocks.  Along comes a guy who sounds as though he is drunk.  He says to me, "The rock is taking care of your bags..."
     Monday.  The paradigm hasn't shifted so much as it does not appear to be operating this morning before 5AM.  The bus that everyone complains about missing, this morning we have made it on board.  But for the first time since I have been riding it, it's crawling along the highway bridge instead of customarily hauling ass to the train station.   And here's the twist: no a single rider is complaining.  We get to the station late.  The only response I hear is a single woman in front of me, who watches as her train passes by, and whispers, "shit."  ...that's the entire protest from anyone on the bus?  THAT'S IT?  Not to worry too much about the paradigm.  It's alive and well at the deathburger. Here comes Mr. "Fuckin' ass bitch" sauntering across the lot.  He finds the front door locked, and he yells "FUCK YOU!" at the employee inside.  A minute after this protest, we are all standing inside the lobby.  Another guy sits down at the booth next to the front counter.  He turns to a stranger standing next to him, to begin discussing the law supposedly coming down on the side of his ex-girlfriend.  She broke into his house a year after their breakup.  The stranger begins asking him questions about the situation.  The guy then mentions, "So, the bus made me late.  My boss says, 'OK, so you're sick.'"  (As in, 'take a sick day'?)  On my way out, I spot the guy standing behind the employee, asking, "Where's the girl I see on the weekends?"  Looking over her shoulder, he acts surprised at the cost of a breakfast sandwich.  An hour later, I am on my last connecting bus to work with a couple of guys who are talking about one particular bus route.  One of them claims that, "It's always late.  How can the first bus (at the beginning of the day's schedule) be late?"  He says that, one morning, it never came at all.  Another guy mentions one of the routes on my boulevard, about how it's always late.  That bus, he says, is the one which he takes to go to work at the bar.

Radical Self-Care for Men:
Men - Are you ready to move forward into your life with clarity of purpose, renewed passion, and authentic power?  ...join other men willing to work from the inside out.  Through...movement, co-created ritual and council, we will affirm the true strength of our clear, generative masculine nature.  As a community of men, we will explore what it means to face, uncertainties, distractions...  - Shambhala Mountain Center, Spring/Summer 2015
     "...now, more than ever, our youth are totally at a loss of...how to keep themselves safe.  Our youth are afraid of cops...  ...the intersections between racism , homophobia, and police violence."  Protesters held signs including..."Denver Police Hands Off Queer Youth Of Color." - Out Front, 2/4/2015
     Denver is the perfect mix of small town friendliness with big city amenities.  Being the world-class city that we are, residents and visitors should feel safe walking in all parts of the city.  As the city changes, so do our communities.  The rest of the nation is looking at Denver as a model of social freedom.  - Washington Park Profile, 2/2015
     ...the Lao...is not afraid of death...  The Lao word for death is the same as for Nirvana...  It is dangerous to mourn, for mourning may bind the spirit of the dead to this illusory world.  However, a man must be sure what he is dying for, the Laos would say.  Buddhists believe that fate should not be tempted lightly.  You do not play chicken with God.  - Bloodworth

     Tuesday.  I am working a closing shift.  I'm on a bus when a guy gets on.  He has a long, white beard and a cane, and is wearing a striped polo shirt and Velcro sneakers with no socks.  The skin on his ankles are dry and chapped.  He's telling a story, about getting into an argument with a bus driver, to a guy in a wheelchair with no legs below the knee.  Another passenger's phone goes off, to the tune of "Sweet Child of Mine."  The guy with the cane says, "Turn it down...Jesus."  Wednesday.  5 AM.  Rain and snow mix.  I'm at the bus stop across the street from where I live.  I watch a guy in sweat pants and a hoodie come across the middle of the street.  He's tall and lanky, and in his gear he looks like a sprinter.  He goes over to the gas station before he comes by the bus shelter.  He asks me for a cigarette.  I tell him that I don't smoke.  "Right on, brother," he replies, before disappearing back across the middle of the boulevard.  An hour later, I'm on a train to work with a couple of other guys.  They both mentions how nice it is to be working again.  One has been employed for a year and a half.  He mentions a halfway house, and says that he has a union meeting that night.  Thursday.  I am working a closing shift.  I'm at my old bus stop at a quarter to nine AM.  A middle-aged guy has dropped by.  He's in black sneakers with no laces and red socks, and black and grey-striped spandex pants.  He's wearing an open, long camel-hair coat, and has a bike with him.  He reaches into a trash can, and he pulls out a tall, empty beer can.  From the floor of the bus shelter, he grabs an empty plastic grocery bag.  He puts the can into the bag, and hangs the bag on a handlebar.
     An hour later, I am on a bus some miles away from this scene.  Under light filtered through a hazy February sky, I am rolling past clusters of mansions lining the crests of valleys as far as the eye can see.  In front of this backdrop, we come to a stop for a young woman with a grin on her face for the driver, who she recognizes.  The entire scene is some kind of idealized vision.  She brings on board an iced tea in a covered plastic tumbler, complete with ice and tea bag.  At first, I think that she has a nicotine patch on the back of her hand.  It turns out to be the label on the end of her tea bag string.  I can't hear over the noise of the bus engine, but I can see her speaking into her phone.  I can tell, watching her lips move, that she is speaking Spanish.  Later, on a bus home, the guy who takes his wheelchair-bound 90-year-old mother with him to purchase beer gets on.  She is with him.  He tells the driver, "Last time I gave you a five, so are we good?"  She informs him that he still has to pay fare to get a transfer.  I wonder if she is aware of what goes on around her?  Is she good?

Valentines Day Is For Families And Roadies
     Saturday is Valentines Day, and the morning finds me at my old deathburger before a shift at work.  The place id full of guys in suits.  At a table next to a large, dressed up family is Tom, the loud mental guy.  At one point, he stands up and yells across to the front counter, "Heeey caaan I haave two break fast sand wich es?"  In comes a lesbian couple.  One is in a grey sweatshirt, and the other is in a camouflaged coat.  They join everyone in suits.  A trio of guys come in.  One has a T-shirt under his coat which reads "I'm Hot Stuff."  At my old bus stop is a mom and her two teenaged kids.  The boy has a Chihuahua in his hoodie.  The girl has another in her bag.  A larger family waits in front of the bus shelter.  One of the kids, probably bored waiting for the bus, says, "Oh my god the bus driver is gonna kill us all."  The mom admonishes one of her brood, "She didn't do shit, she's just standing next to Lily."  The bus comes and we and the two dogs all get on.  One of her young sons is wearing a hoodie covered with green skulls.  A teenaged daughter says something about "playing chicken with cars."  We get to a blocked-off corner of the avenue, next to some train tracks.  A backhoe is digging next to the stoplight.  About the construction, she says, "It's about time."  The mom says, "The train tracks are broke."  A guy with his arm around her has a tattoo on his neck and a long goatee.
     We reach the train station about 9:15 AM.  On the platform, I watch a skinny, grey-haired guy with shades on his phone, asking directions to downtown's new transportation hub.  He is gesturing with his arm.  He's in a Pink Floyd T-shirt and a leather jacket, and he's with a younger guy who remains silent.  The guy with the phone stiffly approaches a woman with red hair, and Camelback pack with a bike helmet attached.  "Hey do you know where the bus station is?"  She ignores him.  "Excuse me, can I ask you a question," he poses.  She waves him off.  He turns to his pal and begins gesturing as he appears to map out their course of action.  Perhaps his valentine is downtown.
     Monday.  4:30 AM.  The streets are covered with unplowed snow.  The bus comes out of nowhere.  If I hadn't waved it down, I would have missed it.  At a stoplight, it begins to fishtail, and at the green light, has trouble going again.  I make it to the train, and to a bus at the end of the train line by 6 AM.  A guy on the bus mentions being out on work release.  A woman, who sound as if she is familiar with a work release lunch, asks him if he has a sack lunch.  He describes some meat and a cookie being wrapped up in something, so that is does not get soggy.  Tax dollars at work.  I wonder how early he gets out of his facility to be here at 6?  Tuesday morning.  I am working late shifts until Saturday, when I work all day, and will have to walk the last half hour to get to work and then back to the bus stop.  The crosstown buses don't run this far south on the weekend.  I am back at my old deathburger, sitting across from a guy with a long, grey beard.  He has a few scraps of paper on his table.  I watch him as he comes slowly back from the front counter.  As he carefully sits down, I can see how thin his legs are through his jeans.  His hands are brown with grime, and he carries a shiny chain of keys on his belt.  A few hours later, I am on a bus with a woman who I usually see talking to the driver.  She says that she will soon be out of her halfway house.  A half an hour later I am in the neighborhood where I've been working.  I have lunch at my first ever Chick-Fil-A.  I made it in just before a small crowd of wealthy Caucasian high school students.  It's something of an odd gig, especially for fast food.  The woman behind the counter carries my tray to my table for me.  She won't put it down until a skinny girl cleans the table.  A middle-aged guy comes out to ask me how my meal is.  The Caucasian, middle-aged crew appear to all wear black knit nylon, as if they are locally hip.  As if they may be of the world rather than in the world.  Yet I expect nothing here such as the late Dr. Leary called any "unauthorized thought."  Everyone appears as if they could all belong to the same church.

     ...the cloistered Therevada monk who withdraws from the world...avoids taking sides, for fear of becoming the victim of rage and ambition.  He sees capitalism and Communism as crazy...obsessions with matter.  ...he...thinks he can be master of both.  He does not ask for an affluent society or a welfare state.  ...not necessarily...final bliss through nationalization - the economic Nirvana in which the egoist personal initiative merges into the Oneness of the state.  American prejudice...for capital, property, and...initiative...can only see the politician who may best reflect the modest dreams of backwards millions as a dangerous radical...  - Bloodworth

     Wednesday.  I am back at my old bus stop, with a young guy on his phone.  He is talking about being "charged with a first degree.  How can I be charged with something that is no longer constitutional?"   Three hours later, I'm at a bagel place.  I am sitting next to a young man and an elderly woman.  She is non-stop talking to the man about his accomplishments.  I hear him acknowledge that she is his mentor for student teaching.  Among her copious advice are some job interview tips.  She suggests that, in interviews, he lean forward and then back again.  Tell the interviewer why he is excited about the school to which he is applying.  Overall, she suggests that he be somewhat less intense.  And intense this dude is.  He has a buzz cut, a goatee, and a serious overbite.  Too often, the description "on LSD" is used to describe any manner of mundane behavior.  In his case, it's perfect.  He responds to each of his mentor's points with "oh!" and "yes."  It's as if he has an uncontrollable cauldron of emotion which he can barely contain, as if she is zapping him with powerful flashes of insight after insight.  He tells her that everything she says is correct, that he's grown, that his intensity is something that he is working on.  Yet he can hardly control his expression as he tells her, "That is the spectrum!"  When she gets up to refill her beverage, a guy at another table asks him if he is involved in film production.  He tells him that he is working on a short film here, because "so much of this area is cinema graphic."
     Thursday.  I am back in the neighborhood where I've been working.  I stop into a sandwich place for an early lunch.  It has a couple of flat screen TVs tuned to ESPN.  A handful of tough-looking blue collar guys are munching pickle spears.  On TV is an anchor who is a dead ringer for ICE T, along with a woman in a red dress who appears ready to give birth.  On the train home after sundown, I listen to a couple of guys.  One tells the other that he has been on probation since he was fourteen.  The other tells him that he did ten years in a Colorado town called Lymon.  "They wanted to give me 25, they gave me 15.  I did ten."  He doesn't "sell dope or stick up kids anymore."

     ...owners who wanted...exacting care afforded their siding panels as...applied to their patios.  Atop the snug, weather-protective HardieWrap skin...a high-quality...half-inch Rigid insulation board.  The home's expansive skirt was hemmed with a thick course or dry-laid stone, creating a strong visual foundation for the handsome jacket of virtually indestructible Hardie fiber cement siding...  Completing the exterior picture with a striking triple-stacked fascia.  ...with a warm and woody knotty-pine front entrance.   "Even the inspector complimented us on it."  - Lifestyles, an advertising section of Evergreen newspapers, 2/2015
     I took way to big a hit.  I'd just cleaned my bowl after roughly 4,000 years and almost sucked the entire nugget...into my face.  (Tokers know the feels.)  "The-e-e-e-ere it goes," I remember saying...  The familiar shift of a changing headspace lit up the mush between my ears...  ...the length of a sitcom, which means four  seconds in pot time.  ...like I was watching through a pinhole in another dimension.  I was way too high.  (Awesome.)  - Out Front, 2/18/2015
     This session will also include life paths, changing past lives and interaction with parallel universes.  ...we gather and experience a psychic sound offering...  - Body Mind Spirit Celebration

     Friday.  I'm at the train station, on my way to work a short late shift.  I watch a blonde on crutches, with her hair in two small tails on each side of the top of her head, swing her cast across the northbound tracks.  It's the same spot, at the same station, where I saw the woman wave away a couple of guys looking for the bus station on Valentines Day.  She is wearing some kind of mohair-lined coat over a green summer dress.  She appears as if she may work at an Irish pancake house.  Just as he train shows up, she asks me if this train goes to a particular station.  She's asking about the very next station south, which is visible from this one.  Every train both goes to and comes from there through here.  Top o' the mornin' to you, las.

     Swat team & police were just shooting at a house..  Happen right in front of me & my kids.  I even gave some young lady a ride home..she was all scared & shakey..  - Westwood Residents Association FB page, 2/20/2015

     Saturday.  I have a nine-hour day ahead of me.  I'm at the train station with a guy who is pacing around in circles.  He is holding a bundle of papers to his chest with both arms.  We get on the train, and he sit down and looks around, bewildered.  We both get off at a stop in a private university.  He walks to the street corner as he looks around, over to a posted bus schedule, and then heads my way.  He wants to know which direction he may proceed to get to the other side of the interstate highway we are next to.  He has a five o' clock shadow, and his jacket is unzipped, exposing an unbuttoned shirt collar and chest hair.  He's like some absent-minded retro '70s guy.  Eleven hours later, I leave work in a blizzard.  After a half-hour hike to the end of the bus line, the bus picks me up.  It's having transmission problems as we lurch back and forth on the snow-covered avenue.  We pick up a guy in his fifties or sixties with a Mongolian hat and a stupid grin.  When he tries to put his fare in the box, the driver waves him away.  He tries to grab any railing he can, and the driver impatiently tells him to sit down.
     Monday.  I does not appear that the streets have been plowed for a couple of days.  Either this, or the snow has simply continued to fall.  From the train station, I follow Mr. Tina Turner Hair halfway to the deathburger before he stops, pauses, and retraces his steps.  Upon retracing my own, back at the station, I make it ahead of him.  He comes by, and says, "Snow for two days.  No weather report?"  I don't understand the question.  From across the street comes a grey-haired guy on his bike.  It's 18 degrees F out here at 5 AM, and this guy is not wearing his hood, just a ball cap.  He is literally coughing non-stop.  We get on a train, and several stops down the line, I watch him disembark.  He has an unlit cigarette in his mouth.  The next morning, around 8 AM, I head across the street to the bus stop.  A slobbering little guy with missing teeth in his grin asks me if I have 75 cents.  When I tell him that I have no change but instead use a bus pass, he tells me that I "at least" answered him "respectful.  How about a cigarette?"  I tell yet another street person that I don't smoke.  "Dang, dude, you got it good."  "Yeah, I guess," I reply.  He takes his leave of me as soon as the bus shows up, telling me, "Well, god bless."  Forty-five minutes later, I'm on a connecting bus shortly before nine in the morning.  A couple of guys with tattoos are sharing their woes.  The younger one appears to be in his twenties, and he has a tattoo on the left side of his face.  I hear them discussing being picked up for outstanding warrants.  The older one was in jail for eight days.  "I made it up to population.  My homeboy is the sheriff.  I was working in the kitchen.  I brought something back.  He didn't want to search me."  A girl who he knows mentioned about someone, "I boned him."  He tells the other guy, "I got her name tatted.  She asked me, 'Why is it so big?'"  He talks about "stomping" a guy after "smashing" him, when he was with some others at one point.  Did I hear him say that they were in an Arby's?  "We had our rags on and shit.  The customers were screaming.  The manager tells me, 'You can't do that in here.'"  I suspect that screaming customers are an occupational hazard.  He says something else about being on Facebook.
     Wednesday.  On the bus up the street, I listen to half of a conversation between a woman and her phone.  "Does he know Social Services were there?  Does he know that Social Services is coming to his house?  Is she depressed?"  I head over to my old deathburger.  I follow a guy who is a regular there and at my old bus stop around this time.  He has long grey hair and a grey beard, and he strikes me as something of an intellectual.  As we pass my old bus stop along the way, he sets down what appears to be a plastic shopping bag full of frozen dinners inside.  He puts it down in the snow next to a wall before proceeding.  Parked outside the deathburger is a shopping cart full of I don't know what, and a walking cane hanging on one side.  Inside, it's none other than Mr. Footlong Goatee.  All the hair is gone from his face.  A couple of days later.  I wake up.  I don't want to get out of bed.  5 1/2 hours of sleep, and I have a 12-hour day ahead of me.  At 4 AM it's 6 degrees F.  Out in the freezing dark, all I see are people without hoods, gloves, or even knit hats.  They have on ball caps or hoodies, or leather jackets.  A couple of hours later, I make it to my last connecting bus to work.  The driver is talking to a passenger about the monthly employee meeting.  "Don't exceed your capabilities," they are told.  "You see this face," she wants to reply.  She worked last night until nine, and then had to be at work today at 5 AM.  Mentioned at the meeting was something about the company having some extra funds from somewhere.  "What should we do with this extra money?" the company asked.  The driver suggests to us, "How about an ice machine (in the break room) that works?  There's a big mural, of a bus, on the (break room) wall.  How much did that cost?  It isn't doing anything for me."  A passenger asks, "How about more money for buses that (won't) break down?" to which she concurs.  The next day is Saturday.  My first Saturday off in 24 years.  And, that's all folks...

          The watchwords of the government were "discipline," "survival," and "rugged society."  On TV...pretty little speakerines...warned the public weekly against dirt, dodging the draft, bad driving, too many babies.  - Bloodworth
     ...the place is busy...with...an LGBTQ square-dancing troupe.  Most of the congregants...are white, middle-class college graduates.  "And that speaks to privilege, in terms of class and race..."  - Westword, 2/26 - 3/4/2015
     This...Denver police Lt. ...lives downtown and walks his labradoodle to brunch on weekends.  "This is our city," he said.  - Denver Post, 2/22/2015
    

Burroughs: The Movie

     I was a junior at a midwestern public university in 1986.  That year, I tagged along on a road trip to Dallas, with some people I knew to see a reading at a place called the Caravan of Dreams.  The author was William S. Burroughs.  Knowing nothing about him, my memories of the reading are at the end, when audience members were lined up for autographs.  One young woman let out a "Woo!"  I was mesmerized my the admiration for this author.  A guy with his leg in a cast stood aside of Burroughs and asked him if he didn't "have anything nice to say?"  What a goofball.  One of the people I came with (and who knew the guy putting on the event) asked this heckler (and who heckles an autograph signing?) if he wanted him to break his other leg, his arm...  The guy who put on the reading said to the burnout, "He's not a nice guy."  There's something odd about a situation such as this, happening in a decade such as the 1980s.  What had William Burroughs become to those willing to waylay a dumb guy in a cast?
     Back at school, someone I knew on the school newspaper asked me to write a review of the the author's performance.  I don't remember if anyone knew...that I was unaware of William Burroughs' legacy, or even that he was a Beat.  So I wrote this.  What he does is...make ex-hippies laugh.  Every other word that came out of this...guy's mouth was "fart" and "s---" and "a------" and "f---."  The ex-hippies really dug  Wailing Willie.  I mentioned his shoes.  I described one fan taking a photo with Mr. Burroughs as a dork with an obnoxious hat and cheesy moustache...  (Didn't I have anything nice to say?)  Sounds like me, but my uninformed perspective was so out of tune, it's delicious.  If the campus newspaper received any death threats, they never mentioned to me.  The reaction to my review showed me that, if nothing else, this author most likely had much less in common with Willie Nelson that I thought.
     And I haven't seen Willie Nelson live either.  A decade later, I would enjoy the film version of Naked Lunch.  Regardless, none of this came to mind when I went to see Burroughs: The Movie, a one-time screening in town.  At the beginning of the film, Burroughs describes the places where he is holding readings as "punk rock clubs."  It follows him on a trip back to a St. Louis suburb of his childhood.  Joining him on this stroll, on a beautiful day, is his personal assistant and significant other.  Together with Burroughs' other friends, this guy strikes me as an odd man out in his sock tie and slacks, the aloof way he talks about feeling like Burroughs' son.  We see Burroughs with his older brother on wire chairs surrounded by the green of a garden.  The physical difference is striking.  His older brother sitting next to him appears somehow ten years younger, filled out, healthy.  Out from under the spotlight, Burroughs looks gaunt, frail.  The way he hangs on tight to family photos the pair are looking at, he almost looks timid.  Out front of his parents' old home, he remembers learning to "call frogs."  St. Louis amused him, but he says that the social life would not have allowed him to live there.  Yet more than one of his friends in the film describe his decency, with an original fellow Beat telling us that he probably has the same values as the Boy Scouts of America.
     I remember someone helping Burroughs out of his chair in Dallas.  The guy with the cast asked him if he had any children.  He replied, quietly, that he had a son.  Had.  His son had just passed away a few years before, during the making of the film.  There's a scene where he visits Burroughs in an apartment.  His son had his own appreciation of the streets of America, and collected his insights in manuscripts which were discovered after his death. The entire film, especially the scenes from NYC, feel like some kind of time capsule.  My memories of that goddamned decade still plays through my own head.  Had I in fact found William S. Burroughs?  In this film, he strikes me as moving though his life apart from the events depicted.  He is taken for photos with Laurie Anderson, shown the way to the stage, gently encouraged before he recounts stories from a party decades past.  Perhaps I reacted to this in my newspaper review.  When he does interact with life, it's through his work.  It's when he will walk onstage and sit at a desk with a light and a glass of water...  And when he spoke, he knew how to wail.

OMNI, August 1980

Film/The Arts, by Jeff Rovin
If we think of Hollywood as a great and giving ocean, and every genre a bay into which it washes, there is no inlet more polluted than science fiction. ...Kirk Douglas...has given us a pair of science fiction films this year.  ...Saturn 3...  "I wanted to be able to do a science-fiction picture of some kind, and this...intrigued me.  Everyone jumps on the bandwagon, including myself."  ...while we can allow Douglas the commercial zeal that helped put $11 million worth of sludge on the science-fiction screen, it is harder to justify...The Final Countdown.

Video/The Arts, by Stephen Demorest
...home video has crept into the middle class.  ...Universal and Walt Disney Productions brought suit against Sony...against the sale and manufacture of the video copier...  The court denied the plaintiffs...  Now you can saunter into Macy's, check out 75 varying models tagged as low as $700 - about the cost of a decent stereo system...  Last fall Billboard published its first Video Top 40...Fotomat inaugurated video-cassette rentals ($8 per movie); and Time-Life fanfared its brand-new mail-order Video Club.

Repeaters/UFO Update, by James Oberg
The only reason why UFOs were discussed at the U.N. at all was that Prime Minister Sir Eric Gairy of Grenada has insisted  upon bringing various UFO specialists to the U.N. under the umbrella of his...nation's delegation.  When Gairy was deposed in a surprise coup d'etat last year, the topic of UFOs vanished quickly from the world body's agenda... 

Continuum/Wind Farm, by J.D.
The Boeing Engineering and Construction Company, with the Federal Department of Energy (DOE), NASA, and the Boneville Power Administration (BPA), is constructing a "wind farm" at Goodnoe Hills...  Right now the DOE has other wind generators - all test models - running in New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Puerto Rico and Rhode Island.  ...the Boeing generators...will be the world's biggest and will produce the most power.

Universe Red, by Craig Covault
...the news media fail to grasp the economic and functional importance  or aerospace technology.  When did you last see anything on television dealing with Soviet space research?  During the last three years the Russians have learned to accommodate humans in space for long periods.  This new ability furnishes the USSR military and civil powers...  A new Soviet killer-satellite system now threatens several of our low-altitude spacecraft.

Tanking, by John Gorman
...the Isolation Tank.  Paddy Chayefsky's book Altered States tells me I'm heading into a chamber of inner horrors.  Dr. John Lilly, developer of the isolation tank, says I will find the perfect sublime setting for, in Shakespeare's words, "Mending the ravelled sleeve of care."  Robert Tynhurst, managing partner of Samadhi Tank Works, which has sold more than 1,000 tanks in the past few years, calls isolation tanking, "the opportunity for complete privacy" that will "someday be found in every skyscraper and home."  "The sensory-isolation experience," Dr. Jay Shurley, a psychiatry professor at Oklahoma Medical School who has worked with the tanks for 25 years, says, "should be part of the curriculum growing up, offered in the late teens or early twenties to persons who want to facilitate their own personal growth.  In a world where 'future shock' is a growing problem..."

Interview/Denis Hayes, by Eric Rosen
 Omni: What's slowing the solar transition?
Hayes:  There's enough blame to go around.  ...for promising tax credits and then dawdling around for eighteen months before passing them.  Lots of people postponed their decisions...others are now waiting for their states to pass supplementary credits.  ...government...delays have forced many small solar firms into bankruptcy.  Some of the early solar installations leaked; some froze; some melted; some were installed backwards.  Many solar firms viewed the market as limited to wealthy  and upper-middle-income folks who like to be venturesome.  So they advertised solar technology as sexy and daring.  ...it must be acknowledged to be just one more appliance like a refrigerator or an air conditioner...

SPACE The 'Cancelled' Frontier?
...the United States "is not" taking full advantage of the new age of industries and settlements in space.

January 2015

     He was only twenty-two, and he had done it all - except that he had never helped to build a commercially important...new computer.  "We know how you fellas work, and we will remind you...to take your vacations."
     ...he would say to himself, "you're designing the sexy machines."
     "A plug.  You gotta have one."  It was the age of specialists.  Should the machine turn on with a key or a button?  He drew portraits of members of the team, ones to whom he had scarcely ever said good morning.  He knew their hobbies.  "The postpartum depression on this project is gonna be phenomenal.  These guys don't realize how dependent they are on that thing to create their identities."  - Kidder
     If I could display poems in my head...it would be the apartment I lived in or the woman I had been with.  Instead of words it would be a room, an abandoned house with dozens of syringes on the floor and no water. It would be me looking into this really dirty mirror all the time.  People are asking too much - they want some piece of me and...  ...I don't feel like I am worth giving a piece to anyone.  The poetry was honest but everything else wasn't.  Coming from a place where I put myself so far away...and then there is that moment: when I am not that guy asking for money and there is that connection.  I don't know how to get that.  I don't get it from drugs or idle conversation.  I get it from music.  I get it when I talk to my youngest son.  ...maybe...it is spiritual...  Poetry is the truth in a half way decent vocabulary.  How can you strip down your soul and serve it up to someone?

Nickels and Dimes
Alone I speak to dozens people each day
In my best "I am a nice guy I swear to God" voice
My hat (if I have one) held humbly in my hands

Nickels and Dimes
About one in fifty stop and listen to me

...among the throng of clones
A couple who understand...
Or a bright eyed girl walkin' with her man
Who rolls his eyes, checks the time, glares at me
And makes sure I see him put his hand on her ass

Eric Richter Johnson, a.k.a. "Fuzzy"
September 2, 1973 - November 20, 2014  - Denver Voice, 1/2015

     It's the second day of 2015.  I'm at the train station at a quarter to 5 AM.  Some haggard looking guy with a dark, dirty face gives me a wave with a cigarette in his hand.  I walk away.  The day after is the first Saturday I can remember, in which I don't have to be at work in a plant in the morning.  It's been a lot of years working many businesses, but the new owners of my company have discontinued production on Saturday.  And the things which I have missed...  Down my street around 9:30 AM are a couple of police cars with their lights on, and a section of street blocked off with the old yellow tape.  The following morning, I would see on the local news that there was a couple blockaded in a home behind the house of someone I work with.  They would surrender to SWAT an hour later.  They fled a home invasion a few streets north of where I live, not far from the house of someone else who I work with.

     Sources of revenue are in the hands of speculators who use the [government] party to mask monopolies...  The economy is the very foundation of society...  The government must destroy all the obstacles standing in the way of economic development, must abolish all forms of monopoly and speculation...  ...should put an end to all forms of human exploitation...  Then...society will be reconstructed...
     ...nations...will...move in their own ways and in their own time toward human freedom and political democracy.  The diffusion of power is the basis for freedom...  It will be victory of men...over...forces which wish to...exploit...aspirations of modernization.  - Raskin and Fall
     In 1994...the city's first light-rail line, came through the area...  "All you could do was ride it downtown or to Littleton."  The train..."made the area more attractive for developers, but harder to redevelop.  It took out a lot of parking, and a lot of mom-and-pop...businesses actually struggled right after the light rail came in...  It certainly wasn't the panacea people had hoped it would be."  ...the neighborhood's blight designation went through, the Colorado Department of Local Affairs...handed out $287,000...  Most of which went to six private consultants  doing "a comprehensive study of which kind of development would work...and why," says...an economic-development specialist...  From their work...a thirty-page Community Vision Plan and 140-page Revitalization Strategy Report outlining the area's existing infrastructure and the community's...vision...  "...market analysis, development and feasibility plans."  ...public money invested..."has...created a reasonable base for some future use.  The task is now figuring out what is a reasonable use."  The area's demographic is changing as quickly as its aesthetic.  ...you can't create an economically viable redevelopment around what was.  ...the city's...Landmark Preservation Commission..."believes that our landmarks can and should be altered and modernized...  ...in today's financial environment, you have to build to accommodate density..."  - Westword, 1/8-14/2015
     The process of urbanization...is extending to the so-called underdeveloped areas.  ...under capitalism and in areas of socialism.  It seems to be...inescapable...of growth and population increase.  Urbanization in this nation is different only in degree and detail...  It is, of course, too soon to assert that movement back to the central city is a major trend.  We are developing heavy concentrations in the central cities of the poor, the old, the discriminated against.  Our cities, by their very nature, tend to inhibit...mobility...when the fare box will not support a good transit system, service is cut back.  ...in the last decade about fifty or sixty cities have lost all forms of mass transit.  - The Urban Complex, by R. C. Weaver, 1964
     As Americans we believe we are from an essentially good nation and our government would never do things governments is lesser countries would.  And so to challange that belief is to challenge our identity.  We have what's called a "sacred mythology" that explains who we are and why we're doing what we're doing.  - Washington Park Profile, 1/2015
     ...the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance (IHO)...  ...ensure that developments are...in "geographically appropriate locations"...  - Washington Park Profile, 1/2015

     Someone on my neighborhood social network website reports that they had their 2002 Jeep stolen out of their driveway.  "Love this neighborhood," he writes.  There is a bank up the street which may not even be a year old.  It was robbed.  On Wednesday, I am at a bus stop at 4:30 AM, waiting for a crosstown connection.  A construction guy sows up.  He recognizes another one in the bus shelter.  "Where you been?"  "Same place you have!  I've been sick.  I'm never sick.  My roommate is always sick.  He goes out at night.  Stays out until one in the morning.  He's out in that night air."
     Thursday.  There's trouble on the bus headed  up the street at 4:30 AM.  As we approach the stop for the crosstown bus, I hear someone in back say, "Let's go, c'mon.  You're driving this bus at fucking twenty miles an hour."  When he gets off at his stop, he gives the admonition that "Buses suck..."  We get off at the connecting stop.  The crosstown bus shows up from the north, instead of the west.  Either there is a detour, or he went the wrong direction.  I hear someone onboard yell "Go!"  I get on to see the driver consulting a map.  It seems to me as if he hauls ass to the stop across from the train, as if perhaps he is behind schedule.  A new driver?  He's one who I don't recognize.  The passenger (who I presume yelled "Go!")  says, "Well, there's my train."  He's missed it.  "Now I have to wait because of a STUPID MOTHERFUCKER!"  He's referring to the driver.  The driver responds into his microphone, "We're not going to start having these problems, are we?  Have a nice day."  The passenger has some more words for the driver, ending with, "...YOU HEAR ME BITCH?!"  One middle-aged guy up front is on his phone, telling someone that there is a passenger yelling on the bus.  "It's same one as yesterday."

     Ready to write something for publication?  That's awesome.  Because the outdoor industry needs to hear from more fresh, exciting voices...  ...allow me one simple plea...  Please don't be boring.  Please don't...avoid revealing something...personal...  And most of all, please don't worry about pissing me off.  The next writer who refers...to any spot where they...drink beer, panhandle...as "the local's secret," should have their Wi-Fi blocked for a month.  - Elevation Outdoors, 12/2014

     Tuesday of the following week.  I am at a train station after work, shortly after nine PM.  When the bus shows up, a young woman gets on with a guy.  She appears to be dressed for a night out on the town.  He appears to be wearing a hoodie.  As she rummages through her purse for bus fare, the guy sits and watches her.  The driver asks her, "Have you got the fare?"  She tells him to hold on, that she is digging out all her change.  The pair leaves before we take off.  Thursday morning, around 6 AM, I am on a bus to work.  A waitress gets on and recognizes a friend.  It turns out that they both work where I have been going for a few mornings for breakfast before work.  The first is talking about not getting home until after midnight the night before.  "We got so fucking busy.  An eight-year-old kid called me a piece of shit.  Her parents said, 'Is that how you talk to the waitress?'  The kid was like, 'No, but I don't care.'"  Friday morning.  4:30 AM.  At the bus stop across the street is the small middle-aged lady in the red coat.  The woman who I always see smoking, who doesn't wear her hood on cold mornings, who sometimes doesn't have bus fare.  This morning, she gets on the bus and tells the driver that she lost her bus pass.  I wonder where it is that she goes each morning?  The next day, I am on a train after work, headed home shortly before 7 PM.  Seated across from me are a well-to-do pair of middle aged ladies.  One has frosted hair, and the other has a scarf which looks like an American flag.  They are discussing dog breeding and "rednecks."  The frosted one is talking about someone she knows who complains all the time.  "Everyone has financial problems, but if that's all you talk about, then you sound miserable all the time."  The other one mentions a relative or friend who is elderly.  "I have a leg brace," she lampoons this senior, "I have a walker..."  The frosted one tells the other that perhaps "it's time to take her out behind the barn and shoot her."  As I get off at my stop, they both break into cackles.

     Pilot's Wife.  Mother of five.  Business owner.  Author.  Motivational Speaker.  Life Coach.  Radio Host.  And I am just getting started!  - Colorado Parent, 1/2015
      In the early morning of Sunday (yesterday), one of my vehicles...was side swiped.  I installed cameras a few months ago...to see that it happened at 3:33 am by a vehicle just FLYING...wit no headlights...  The vehicle...ran into a trash barrel and dragged it in front for at least 300 feet before the barrel was pushed into my daughter's vehicle...  Trash was strewn all over the place...  I tried to file a police report online but it was rejected since they classify it as a collision...  - "Another day in paradise," Nextdoor Westwood, 1/19/2015
     ...the truth shall burst forth in irresistible waves of hatred on the part of...people...  It shall sweep away the ignominy and all the injustice...  ...we don;t wish, in all sincerity, that our Fatherland should have to live through these perilous days...  ...we have...let the Executive act as it wished.  But now is the time of the essence...  - Raskin and Fall
    "Right after 9/11, I remember talking to my women's group and saying I just don't think this could have happened without someone knowing about it and allowing it to."  A retired psychotherapist...sent a summary to her Representative...and met with the congresswoman's executive director.  "He took me very seriously, and that got me on a roll.  You have to look in a scientific way at the theories and ask: which one does the evidence support?"  - Washington Park Profile, 1/2015

     Monday.  Martin Luther King Day.  I'm at the train station at 5 AM.  A young guy shows up in the dark.  He is wearing hospital scrubs and has a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.  At his left temple are a couple of bloody knots.  We get on the same train car, and before we get to my stop, perhaps because I carry a duffel bag to work, he asks me if I have an extra coat.  I am without an extra one.  We both get off at my stop, and he disappears into the same dark.
     Wednesday.  I am staring down another payday at the end of this week.   It feels as though two weeks have vanished somewhere.  This morning, at 4:30 AM, I am on a bus up the street,  As we get within visual range of the infamous crosstown bus, I hear a passenger quietly say, "There it is."  As if they are awaiting the resurrection.  When it appears that we have a chance of catching this other bus, someone shouts, "Honk at that bus!"  A honk from one bus to another is a signal that passengers want to transfer.  A chorus of voices join the plea for a honk.  The driver begins madly honking his horn.  Where I work these recent weeks, I'm in an entirely different world, miles from my neighborhood.  In a coffee shop next door, a woman is asking a clerk about renting the shop for her Rotary Club.  Back in my store, I listen to a couple of customers discuss having "to be mentally tough all the time."  I decide that they are talking about a new movie about a U.S. Army sniper.
     Friday.  I'm at the bus stop across the street from where I live.  There's a guy who I've never seen before.  He's in a hoodie under a leather coat.  He says something about, "Hey bro, the bus comes at 4:26 AM."  That sounds about right.  He's shuffling slowly around.  He heads over to the gas station and then comes back again.  He says the same thing to the next guy who comes along.  A chilly wind blows.  It's been a icy month.  The bus comes.  He gets on and slowly lumber to the back.  From the bus to the train to the bus.  At one stop, a pair of middle-aged guys each have a bike.  One of them asks the driver something.  Perhaps they have no fare.  As one of them walks away, the driver says, "C'mon."  They put their bikes on the rack and get on.  The younger one is carrying a pair of work boots, tied together at the laces, over his right shoulder.  I get out of work in the early afternoon.  It's a beautiful afternoon.  Across the street from the bus stop are a couple of guys with a dolly.  A passing truck honks at them and one of them throws something at it.  They get the bus, and a ways up the street, the guy who threw something at the truck gets off.  He tells the other, "Be safe and shit."

Hello all
does anyone have any details about the shooting and victim that happened Friday afternoon (in my neighborhood)?   - Nextdoor Westwood, 1/25/2015

     Saturday.  After being called in to work all day on my day off, I am at a train station around 7:30 PM.  There is a Caucasian guy listening to techno hip hop.  He has ink on his left hand, a 32-oz. cup from Wendy's in his left, and a jacket with embroidering on the back.  "db  Drive By."  Off the train, I am at a bus stop with another pair of guys with bikes who appear homeless.  One is telling the other, "I know Missoula.  I was district manager..."  The bus comes and takes me back to my own neighborhood.  Waiting at a stop for my last bus, around 8 PM, a loud woman comes along with her boyfriend.  She asks someone if they have a light.  When the bus comes, I get on and walk past a kid in a seat.  He's reading "Combat Magazine."  His mom has on a knit cap with little mouse ears.  Just before the bus takes off, she realizes that this is their stop.
     Tuesday.  It's fifteen after four in the AM.  I head across the street behind a couple of guys, one of whom is pulling a suitcase on wheels.   In their down jackets, they could otherwise be just a couple of dudes headed to the airport.  But they way in which they shuffle along belies their countenance.  They head over to the gas station to look into the trash can.  The one without a suitcase goes out into the middle of the parking lot and inspects the ground.  They both turn south and disappear into the dark.  A guy comes along and waits at the stop.  He's wearing red pants and what appears to be a college sweatshirt, and he is doing some stretching.
     Wednesday.  I step out of my front door at 4:15 AM.  From down the street comes a couple.  The guy is angry.  "Fuckin' blah blah fuckin' blah blah...  Do whatever the fuck you want to do," he tells her.  "That's what you're gonna do anyway.  So go do it!"  His voice echoes off the buildings and into the dark.  They arrive at my bus stop to wait for the bus.  He is silent, she is quietly talking..  I see the guy get on the bus by himself.

LAKEWOOD NEWS IN A HURRY
     At...the Light Rail station near the Federal Center...  ...a man...had exposed himself to her while riding the train.  She further indicated that the man was still at the station and pointed him out to the agents.
 Where the head goes, the body will follow
     Readers are encouraged to send their mental-health-related questions to Ask A Therapist and - space permitting...therapists will answer them.  Our brains are wired to react to intimidating situations with...shutting down any systems that are "non-essential"...  In today's stressful world it seems intimidating challenges are around every corner.  ...stress...makes us sedentary and slouched...  It makes us crave junk food...like we need to use mood-altering substances...  Set aside time each week...ignoring your responsibilities...   - Lakewood Sentinel, 1/22/2015

     Friday.  4:30 AM.  We are northbound through my neighborhood.  At a stop on a corner, a guy with tattoos on his neck, a knit cap, and a water bottle gets on.  He wants to know how far north we go.  Then he tells the driver that he has less than half the fare.  The driver tells him to get off.  An hour later I am on my last connecting bus to work.  A middle aged guy with headphones and a backpack walks up to the driver.  I hear him say something about two buses passing him by.   "Jesus Christ," he says.  He does not appear to be able to sit still.  He changes seats, he slouches, sits back up, twitches.  After work, I am on the same bus back north again.  It's 11 1/2 hours after my journey began.  I spot another middle aged guy who I rode the bus down with.  He has a slow, loud voice, as if he is mentally impaired.  This morning, he was talking to a couple of young guys about watching cage fighting on TV.  "That's real fighting.  They go all out," he tells them.  He was asking the driver how far it was to various unintelligible stops along the way.  This afternoon, he is on his phone with a marijuana place, asking "How much for an ounce?"  He claims to know a Ramon Valdez.  It is not obvious how this is relevant.  He asks the driver how far it is to a particular avenue.  Another guy gets on.  He looks like a bum.  He begins talking about marijuana.  At first, I think the mental guy is saying the word "pants."  He is in fact telling the other guy that he has 24 "plants," as in marijuana.  From what I can make out, he claims that his medical marijuana card allows him to have these.  My understanding is, with such a card, one is allowed to cultivate up to six plants.  Presumably not exceeding this number.  "I go through a lot of weed," he tells the other guy.  "I go through a quarter (ounce) a day."  He mentions that he does not have a "licence" because he has seizures.  I hear him say something in the same sentence about two-by-fours and his head.
     Saturday.  I take the 4:52 bus up the street with a little guy who sounds as if he is chewing gum.  He gets off at my stop.  On his phone, he slowly moves between three different corners. When my bus comes, he is still there.  Another guy comes along.  He walks with a limp and is wearing sunglasses a couple of hours before the sun will rise.  Some nine hours later I am again heading north on my street, this time heading home on the bus.  At one stop, a guy gets on and waits at the front door.  I see a forlorn look on his face.  I am sure that he was asked for his fare, and, alas, he is without it.  He slowly disembarks.  If this happened at 4:30 AM, everyone would be yelling at the driver to "Go!"  You hear me bitch?

     ...knowledge...if often limited by the distance they can paddle or walk in one day.  There are "villages" where the ordinary voter may not know the name of his own  country, or where it is, or that other countries exist at all.  ...his...normal cronies are two baby-faced Chinese communist militants and a fierce little Indian Marxist...  I somehow sense that for him the fight is over.  More than violence or votes, most...had simply wanted  their independence.  And now they had it.  ...their first own native Paramount Ruler moved into his new palace, a fortress-like mansion...  - An Eye for the Dragon, by D. Bloodworth, 1970

December 2014, The 3 Stiff-Necks of Christmas

     He seemed to be saying that he had to "make" himself believe that dire consequences would ensue if his team missed its deadline.  "It just gets so scary I can't even talk about it.  I may have to...work on that thing myself twelve hours a day.  ...purely me faces me.  I better be up here, just cracker jack, every morning...  Every morning I gotta wake up and think, 'Oh, Christ, can I do it?'"  Most engineers...consider...the...right environment...one, in which only right and wrong answers exist.  ...the computer might be its paradigm.  The prospect is alluring.  ...If you're ugly or even half crazy, if you produce the right results i this world, your colleagues must accept you.  It's an exciting environment to contemplate; you can change they way people think if you can provide the right reason, and you can predict the way in which others may change you.  - Kidder
     ...I try to get into the office as much as I can.  I love talking with the vendors, and...it is a continual perspective check.  We have another vendor who always brings food to some of the younger kids who congregate on the mall.  He knows that these kids are doing drugs and not eating much.  They are there to...just be a community for each other.
     The Northside became the Highlands...Five Points and Globeville became RiNo...  In recent years residents have started noticing their neighborhood being referred to...a labelling  coined by real estate agencies to try to drive up the neighborhood's value...  ...people...now find the streets full of luxury vehicles and pop up houses.   ..."a section of town that has denied revitalization for ages."  ...refugee populations...are the next big leaders in the community.  ...if we truly ant change, we have to create it within the communities that live here.  At almost the exact center of this neighborhood...sits what used to be...an all-nude strip club...  ...after the construction of I-70 the location eventually devolved...  "It has to be this building...if I can get this building, I am crazy I have so much passion.  I choose my future...  When I get this place - people will recycle their lives.  The recycling company for human life."  They do not want...Chipotle, or...T.G.I.Fridays.  "There are certain restaurants...that absolutely need to continue to be part of the fabric of our neighborhood."  ...changes that can benefit local residents, not real estate companies...  - Denver Voice, 12/2014
     What's happening throughout Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia is this. Old societies are changing their ways in order to create and maintain a national personality on the world scene...to...benefit...their people...  The process is truly revolutionary.  The introduction of modern technology brings about...a new style of family life...   The beginnings of national politics...  The power of the landlord is reduced...  Power moves toward those who command...modern weapons.  ...scavengers of the modernization process...believe that the techniques of political centralization under dictatorial control...will persuade...men...of surrendering human liberty.  - Raskin and Fall

     Wednesday.  I am working at a store in an office park.  I am here until further notice.  The company is under new ownership and my old job description is up in the air, along with everything else.  I notice that I did get my first raise in seven years.  This neighborhood is far from my own.  At 5:30 AM, the deathburger here has a small handful of quiet, middle-aged Caucasian men.  There are countless flat-screen TVs everywhere, but it is almost silent in here.  I order in Spanish, and then I observe that were are speaking Spanish here in this office park.  The lady behind the counter gives me a sonrisa.  Thursday.  At the bus stop across the street from where I live is a small woman in a red coat.  She is having a smoke.  When the bus comes, she gets on and puts her money in, telling the driver that she is "short fifteen cents."  This does not appear to cause any trouble.  Friday.  I'm on a train downtown to my bank.  A guy gets on, a little guy with grey in his hair.  He's having trouble keeping his balance on the moving train.  He announces out loud his query, "Does this train go to Federal (Boulevard)?"  That's where I am going.  I assume he does not mean Federal Center, which is at the end of one bus line.  On this train, three different buses from two different train stops, or at another stop a free shuttle to the train he wants will take him to Federal.  Yet I suspect that, in this guy's brain, the server is down.  A young woman stares at him.  He stumbles over to her and says, "Hey dude, does this train go to Federal?"  She gives him simple instructions' one particular stop, one particular bus, and he will be standing on the very boulevard itself.  His response is, "How do I get to Federal."  (Due to high call volume, please try again later.)  A tall young man, with his sunglasses on the back of his head, comes forward to show him a map above the exit of the train line and its stops.  Saturday.  5 AM.  Inside my old deathburger is a guy who I saw here once before.  Last month, he was using the wi-fi.  This morning, he has with him a fire engine red Fender Stratocaster, without any case.  He puts it against a table in the seat and goes to the counter.  When I get home from work, it's the early afternoon.  I head up to a bus stop at a busy intersection, to grab a bus to meet the mom and sister for dinner.  There is a drunk who appears to be friends with a burnout.  The burnout tells her about campaigning for legal marijuana.  The drunk is yelling at a family of kids playing on a bench, "DON'T JUMP OFF THERE YOU'LL BREAK your bones.  That's what happened to me; concussions!" I watch as a pickup drag races a new issue Mustang Mach 1, another couple of pickups drag race each other.
     Sunday.  Late afternoon.  I am waiting for a pizza in a place behind where I live.  The small place appears to have a crowded lobby with the smattering of customers.  In comes an odd-looking guy, in a stocking cap hiding his head and a loose-fitting jacket surrounding him.  When he sees me, he asks me about a particular Bible verse before asking me if I have a Bible.  He leans on the counter and calls back to the kitchen, "Hey O. G..  Hey Old School," before someone hands him a couple of pizzas.  He exits and disappears down the sidewalk, into the dark.  Glory be.  On Monday I'm at the train station at 5 AM.  A little guy with grey stubble exclaims in a weathered voice, "That fuckin' bitch..."  His voice sounds as if it's coming out of a bad speaker.  The next morning, here on the same platform, Mr. Tina Turner Hair has returned.  I watch as he approaches a waiting passenger.  He says the same thing he always does, "I'm a spiritual man..."  If he recognizes me, this may explain why he hasn't told me this since the first time I saw him.  His frightwig of black hair is concealed underneath his hoodie.

     ...he...seems to embody assertion...has the appearance of one to whom all things come easily.  ...he couldn't look messy if he tried.  You'd never see a vinyl penholder in his breast pocket, and you wouldn't find him hanging around the basement after work to play Adventure...  He doesn't spend any time thinking about what people do with computers.  - Kidder
     ...$300 to spend on food for the parish's 32 families in need.  She founded the food back three years ago and has operated it on a shoestring ever since.  To keep the project going, she has to find bargains - and the best are nearly five miles away.  When she shops for herself, she buys ingredients for boiled dinners...  The stacked cans and boxes soon tower over her head.  A cop once fined her $90 because she had a pine deodorizer hanging from her rearview mirror...  Father Felix never joins her on these drives.  "I wish he would," she says.  "That would give him a better idea of the needs of the food bank and how much we do for the church."  ...she wants more money for these trips.  The church does not reimburse her for gas...  She met a man from the Denver Department of Community Planning walking through...photographing properties block by block.  ...he said the city was planning to revitalize the neighborhood.  ...expanding the interstate...fifty homes...will have to come down to accommodate the plan; she doesn't believe the government will pay them enough for their losses and is skeptical that they will be relocated within the neighborhood...  The North Denver Cornerstone Collaborative, a project of the Denver Mayor's office, has dubbed her neighborhood part of the Corridor of Opportunity...  - Westword, 12/11-17/2014
     Why dollars and not cans of food in 2014?  Because each one dollar raised has a multiplicative effect that we cannot achieve through a food drive.  You will see our information in your building common areas...  - Denver News, 12/10/2014 - 1/10/2015
     If you understand...a narco state, then the fact that opium production production has...increased while counterterrorism efforts and troop numbers surged...  A completely failed state...really thrive in the drug trade.  Traffickers have no reason to pay off a toothless government or a nonexistent police force.  ...a libertarian paradise...  It's not...a...conspiracy at the center of government, but rather, in the absence of the rule of law, officials start to orient themselves around a...political economy.  Big drug barons...take over trade.  ...an empty stretch of desert...was developed into farmland...and drew support from  USAID, as a part of the Cold War...  ...its fields became fertile with...opium poppies. - Rolling Stone, 12/18/2014 - 1/1/2015
     I spent my adolescence rebelling against my state and dreaming of far off, "more interesting" places.  ...only recently...I began discovering all of the great things this state has to offer.  ...Denver has a really intricate system of neighborhoods...   ...Denver is in a constant state of transition...  ...as my city continues to figure itself out, I think 2015 is the year to celebrate what's great about it right now.  - Westword New Year's Eve Guide 2014
     "Priority number one is to win today's fight..."  ...space will no longer be an uncontested environment, but a place needing constant protection.  ...satellites we are operating today are threatened...  "...folks...don't think very much about these threats today..."  - Buckley Guardian, 12/18 - 12/24/2014

     I am working the first full week of twelve-hour shifts in my working life, and the first time I've taken a cab home five nights in a row.  On Wednesday, I am picked up by a Caucasian driver in his sixties.  He has a Bluetooth, and both a phone and a GPS mounted on his windshield.  Friday.  Train platform.  Mr. Tina Turner Hair is back.  He has a routine he sticks to; walk down the platform, cross the avenue, turnaround, come back.  He appears as if he is younger than I am, retracing his steps out here before the December dawn.  You can't keep a good man from his routine.  At work, a customer comes in and begins talking about the decision to move here.  She refers to the state's beauty, "God's country."  I have yet to hear this description from either the state's governor or the capitol's mayor.
     It's the week before Christmas.  I am working a couple more 12-hour days.  On Tuesday I am on an evening bus home.  There is a young woman sitting up front with snow boots which reach up to her knees.  She appears to be silently talking to herself.  At one point, she acts as if she is choking some imaginary foe, before wagging her finger.  From there, I take a train to another bus, on which a woman is talking non stop to a guy about the miracles resulting from the Bible verses which she has been reciting to individuals she meets.  She talks to a guy about his blood clots until his nephew gets on.  His nephew lives on the streets, he tells the lady.  She tells him that she had been given a diagnosis of schizophrenia as well as bipolar condition.  "But I'm not," she proclaims.  "No one is."  The Lord showed her that she has been "stiff-necked, stubborn, self-reliant..."  Just your everyday mental competence versus dependence.  I'm reminded of something which Al Franken once said to Dr. James Dobson.  "You know, it must be nice to know the absolute truth."  The next morning at 4:30 AM, I am on a bus up the street with a shaggy, grey-haired guy.  He goes from sitting still to quickly extending his arms and fingers and throwing a left jab.  It's always the grey-haired guys.  I feel as though I have been visited by the three stiff-necks of Christmas.  I get to the train station where Mr. Tina Turner Hair, the spiritual man himself, is just back from his morning power-walk.
     Saturday, I'm on a train downtown after work.  A college-aged woman sits down with a guy who appears to have dentures.  They act like lovers.  He is wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses, and has a thin ponytail held together with elastic bands.  He smells like beer but does not appear intoxicated.  He has a water bottle with ice floating in a beverage.  It has "Denver Urban Debate League" printed on it.  The girl sounds as if she is immature for her years.  She has with her a plastic case, with a picture of Super Mario.  The next day, I am out to breakfast with my sister, who tells me that a couple of teenaged girls were involved in drag racing down my boulevard.  They both lost their lives in an accident, just about the time that I used to catch the bus.
     Monday morning.  It snowed overnight.  The mountains are getting blasted.  I catch a train downtown before work.  Where the train connects to the electrical wires, it's sparking green from excess moisture.  I grab breakfast at a bagel place.  Along with some folks who strike me as morning regulars, there is a homeless guy is sitting at a table.  A tall guy comes in.  He's grey-haired, balding, and has granny sunglasses on.  The homeless guy gets up and goes to the men's room.  The other guy mentions something about checking the men's room for used syringes.  On my way back to the train, I pass a couple of young guys, one of whom is making a confession that he has "never screwed my friends or family.  Well, okay, once I pawned my mom's fuckin' lawnmower..."  After work, I am on a train home.  It's around 8 or 8:30 PM.  In a seat are a middle-aged couple examining a pipe full of marijuana.  As they are excitedly fawning over this pipe, two transit security officers come down the train.  They stop and ask the guy what he's doing.  The guy responds with surprise.  When the officer mentions the transit systems no tolerance policy for alcohol or marijuana on its property,  the guy then responds with "Yes sir," and, "No, sir." When the officers go on their way, the pair begin what sounds like a scripted dialogue about how the transit system actually belongs to the people. 
     It's Christmas Eve, across the street from where I live.  It's 18 degrees F but feels much colder.  I'm still cold in some of my warmest gear.  At the payphone is a guy who puts a single coin in, before he begins banging on the side.  He's wearing an open leather jacket and a football jersey.  He takes the coin from the return slot and puts it in again, before he returns to banging on the side.  The pay phone takes at least two quarters.  When the bus shows up, he comes running from the gas station.  He gets on and asks the driver if he can give him "a ride up the street, bro?"  After work, it's much warmer.  Sitting on a dry patch of sidewalk at a bus stop, I watch as a pair of lazy hawks turning circles in a grey sky on a quiet Christmas Eve afternoon.  After a couple of closing shifts in a row, I am falling asleep on the train downtown to meet my sister for an early dinner.  I am goddamned tired.  We head over to a lounge.  At a table is a couple with their adult daughter.  The mom says, "She thinks ISIS is coming."  They all share a laugh.

     Denver Union Station...its first New Years Eve event since the...building's $54 million renovation.  The New Year's Eve Bootlegger Ball...   three floors of entertainment with two different access levels.  "We're going to change they way Denver does New Year's Eve."  Also, tucked away behind the red door on...Larimer Square, The Crimson Room is an elevated underground lounge serving Denver's elite.  Designer for discerning clientele seeking a lounge/nightclub experience amongst their peers...  Solving the dilemma of what to do after dining downtown...  ...the most sophisticated nightclub in Colorado...superior sound and visuals inspired by the unbridled lust we have for freedom.  - Denver News, 12/10/2014 - 1/10/2015
     ...plans for a..."Crisis Solutions Center" set to open July 2015 in...an older neighborhood in southwest Denver.  The center will provide short-term behavioral and mental health, chemical dependency, housing and other services...connect individuals to longer-term resources and treatment programs.  ...the city would find a local non-profit to facilitate and run the center under a three-year agreement.  - Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle, 12/2014
     People who are unconventional in some way fit comfortably in a diverse urban area...  ...homeless people...are predominant in a public space that is mot used and therefore not meaningful to everyone else.  I believe that's typical of a..public place such as a government center...stimulated by the...banishing of those...people from many residential and commercial areas.  - Life on Capitol Hill, 12/2014
     ...without a temple, there is no community, and without a community, there is no future and no identity...  ..to narrate the past, beautify the present, and inspire the future.  - Asian Avenue, 12/2014

     'Tis the Saturday after Christmas.  'Tis 5 AM.  'Tis ten degrees F.  There is a little guy, bundled up, inside the gas station across the street from where I live.  He has a coffee in his right hand as he stares out at the cold and dark.  He appears to be inside to get warm, as if he has no other place to be.  His expression is one of complete disengagement from the closest surroundings.   From everything and anything.  It's as if he is watching the world turn without the slightest ability to understand even the smallest or the least significant part of it.  On Sunday, I return home to see a Vietnamese and her kids having made a small snowman, complete with twigs for arms.  When they are finished, the all destroy it before going inside.  There must be some Vietnamese tradition of which I am unaware, concerning the building of a snowman.  Monday.  Tomorrow is New Year's Eve.  I am on a bus to work a late shift.  Around 9:30 AM, we pull up to the last stop out of a train station.  It gets going after someone gets on.  Just as it does, a little guy comes shuffling up to the door.  All the way, he is holding his transfer above his head.