On Sunday, I am on my way downtown to see the band Blues Traveller, appearing at the last summer festival in a park between the executive and legislative buildings. I head over to a train station with a new condo complex. One guy digs through a trash can. Another sits on the concrete with his head and arms inside his T-shirt. I hear him sniffling, and next to him is a spray can. I take a train downtown, where I navigate the pedestrian mall past pedicabs, new low-emission shuttles, EMTs on bikes and pedestrians. I grab dinner at the deathburger/homeless central. The usual crowd of derelicts are mixed this evening with young adults in costumes. I wonder if another event is happening simultaneous with the festival. At one table, six or seven young men and women appear to be comic enthusiasts. A big guy is ordering the others around, telling one of them to stay put. He goes to the counter to order before returning. "Found my Joker jacket," he tells the others. "Online...three X." I head over to the park by a circuitous route around street closures. I park the bike and head into the fest. The band will be on the main stage. Twilight falls on a cloudless sky. The show is fantastic. John Popper, harmonica like an intergalactic slidewhistle, along with fuzz funk guitar and keyboard "a walkin'," brings down the house with a set of long space jams.
(My) Boulevard, a notorious street for drag racing. ..incredibly wide lanes... ...as wide as 16 feet, an alarming width for an urban street. - Streetblog Denver 8/31/2016
sunday nights. (My boulevard) is a war zone. It's like The Puge. I'm racing to get my family off (my boulevard) and inside. ...the activity on (my boulevard) itself is insane.
they're always racing right through the 4-way stop in front of my house...
...with drinking and drug deals. Every Sunday night I see it out front
...racers we gotta be careful.
a mi me vale vergaaa
I used to call the non-emergency # almost every Sunday. Now they don't answer.
Y'all some real ones for this one hahaha
Let them...kill each other off...
...arrest someone related to Kill Da Streetz... - DPD Twitter feed, 9/4/2016
Graffiti on a wall? Pothole in the road? Trash piling up...? I continue to be surprised...how few people...tell me about these things...and...how quickly...the city can jump...and get them fixed when they are reported. I think people don't how to report it... - the profile, 9/2016
Hi
Extreme Community Makeover is adopting (my neighborhood.) - Nextdoor Westwood, 9/2/2016
...the pattern of wealthy white developers dismantling historic Latino neighborhoods and replacing them with plywood Dog Yoga studios could be "viewed as gentrification"...
(Downtown Denver's) LoHi (neighborhood) back in 2000... There were a significant number of Mexican-Americans up here, but also a lot of white folks moving in - so people were kind of walking by each other on the street, and it could feel a little uncomfortable. We started talking about how important having a community gathering place was... - Westword, 9/8-14/2016
...a perfect storm...a form-based zoning code, the surge in popularity of Denver...density and...micro-housing. The result: neighborhoods that can instantly double in population density, neighbors that have no influence on...a decrease in the quality of life. ...prison-like architectural style... - the profile, 9/2016
These are not your florid-faced tipplers...on martinis at lunch or...who lost their tech jobs... The vast majority...have been living on the streets for the past year or more, many have been there for decades... More than half have some form of mental illness. "Our main objective was, 'Don't re-traumatize people.'" "This is a sub-population." "This just gives you some time, without all the collateral activity on the streets, hustling for nickels and dimes..." "When I was on the street, I was drinking because everybody else was drinking." The remoteness of this place...turned out to be...reassuring. And...it's not Denver. ...the effort..."represents the first time that the State of Colorado has acknowledged any sort of responsibility for dealing with homeless people." - Westword, 9/1-7/2016
We're some real ones for paying a mortgage homie. Ha ha.
Labor Day. I head over to the Chinese place across the street from where I live to grab some dinner. Next to the restaurant is a n old building which has been renovated into brand new apartments. Sitting on a concrete slab against a rear wall, in the alley, are three drunks. They don't appear inebriated now. Just your average trio of three middle aged people who otherwise appear completely unrelated to each other, sitting right next to each other. I recognize one of them. We look at each other, and we all know that I know that they don't live there, or perhaps anyplace else. The female whispers to the other two before telling me that she likes my hat. Tuesday. I pulled a late one at work, leaving at ten to 9 PM. A few minutes later, I am at the train station. A couple of exchange students and their hosts are taking a group selfie in the dark. I hop on a train and head up a few stations, disembarking and coasting under the train bridge with a skateboarder. It;s going on 10 PM when I stop at taco stand next to my townhome complex. I talk to the chef. She tells me that she feeds the homeless with her tacos.
He steps into the coffee shop, lean, handsome, youthful. An easy smile...and his eyes are as luminant as always...his conviviality and ability to put people at ease. ...dark eyes are alive with passion and resolve. ...nearly half of eligible Latino voters are millennials. "Often, the people who are most anti-Latino are also the exact same people who are anti-LGBTQ." We belly-laugh like the late-30-somethings we are, and a few heads turn our way. No bother. He mutes his ringing phone without even seeing who's calling, never breaking eye-contact with me. - Outfront, 8/17/2016
...I find myself looking around Denver - a city I've called home for more than a decade - with a visitor's eyes. Which chefs sum up the energy of this incredible town of ours, flush with millennials and entrepreneurs and the headlines of the New West? What spots are most likely to sweep me off my feet with their sheer sense of localness...so much a product of time and place that they'd feel like an imposter anywhere else? ...in RiNo, the turbo-thrusted neighborhood that's the envy of many a city-planner. Gratuity is built into the pricing, in line with the owner's socially minded outlook. Pot smoke wafts through the bar's wide-open garage door... ...a proud exclamation: "Everything here came from the Union Station market today!" Or they're delivered sheepishly... Such service extremes say...much about our current scene...
...years of trauma experienced during on-and-off homelessness, incarceration, heavy drug use, multiple occurrences of rape, and being subject to a kidnapping... ...local drug dealer...offered to loan her...cash... ...a blond-haired, blue-eyed drug dealer named Kid. ...paid off whatever money...believed owed... ...talked about some of the other girls he'd owned... ...taken to a motel room where a number of men were waiting for her. ...traded by her "owner," Kid, to the Surenos. "I was either going to be a sex slave or was going to be gangbanged to death." - Westword, 9/8-14/2016
...the son of team owner...had been sentenced to...mental-health evaluations... ...accused of...hanging up the phone when...his girlfriend...called 911... "As the blood of the city, I'm telling you right now, nothing is wrong. She is leaving my house. ...I'm a man of the city, a friend of the mayor, and everybody knows exactly who I am." - Denver Herald, 9/8/2016
...inside Corridor 44 on...Larimer Street... Thomas ...headed across Speer Boulevard... The quaint but classy champagne bar...dimly lit... ...he wasn't holding court. He never did; that wasn't his style. "...that play... I don't think you realize what it meant to Denver, to the resurgence of the Broncos. That was the stuff that used to happen at old Mile High. Trust me, that play makes you a hero in these parts." "...you don't have a lot of resources down there, or opportunity. You're either playing sports, or you're going to stay there the rest of your life." - Mile High Sports, 9/2016
Wednesday. My new usual bus stop to work. A quarter to noon. A homeless guy who appears to be a senior is here, and in possession of a new lavender Schwinn. I wonder if it is stolen. "This will be my seventh winter outside," he tells another guy. "(The problem here within city limits is) you can't have a fire." He has been talking about his health as related to his posture , jumping up and showing the other guy how he used to walk or stand. At the corner is a car accident. It's directly in front of both lanes of the avenue. Our bus approaches from the other side of this barrier. The driver speaks through his window to a fireman, who moves a loose bumper out of the way. a couple of hours and one lunch later, I'm at Starbucks, watching a weirdo middle aged Caucasian guy in a brown suit. He has his crap, a date planner and a cloth briefcase, at his table, and he is either pacing or slowly, slowly walking back and forth between his table and that of a couple of people each with a laptop. After work, I am at a train station, on a bench with a few minutes before a train arrives. The train shows up, and as I head toward the door, I see a young guy sitting cross legged on the concrete. He has a leather jacket on and punk rock hair. Standing next to him is a transit system security officer. The guy on the ground is yelling at the top of his lungs. "YOU ARE REQUIRED...BY LAW...TO GIVE IT TO ME!" Perhaps a half hour later, I am across the street from where I live, at the gas station. In the parking lot, a guy calls me Pizano and speaks to me in Spanish, and to another guy, who tells him that he doesn't speak Spanish.
Thursday. On my way home through a Caucasian neighborhood. Twilight. On my bike, I approach two moms, three kids, and two dogs in the middle of the street. I coast past several homes from which I can hear people cheering for the city's football team. I round a corner and happen upon a couple with two small kids, all on bikes. I pass a homeowner laying timbers for a new brick walkway. Down a side street, two more people are walking two more dogs. Around another corner, I listen to a mom as she and her sixth-grade son are walking the dog. "You act like you're being sent halfway around the world for six months," she says to him. "It's a camping trip for six days." Shortly after 8 PM, I'm approaching the trailhead. I pass a guy with long hair and a beard. He is leaning on his bike as he walks slowly along. I can see from blocks away that the local police helicopter is shining its light down on my neighborhood again. On my street I watch a bus come along. It doesn't belong here. Must be a detour due to an accident somewhere on the boulevard. When I get home, I watch the helicopter directly overhead.
Friday. Coming from the dentist and heading to work, I'm riding through my neighborhood of years past. I happen upon a post office when I realize that I need stamps. Inside, when I get to the window, the clerk tells me that he has the stamps I want as long as the other clerk didn't take them. "Did you see her over here?" he asks me. I tell him that she was probably too busy to come over here. "Ya think?" he replies. "At this station, ya think?" I pay with my card, and he asks to see an ID as I did not sign my card. He holds up the back of my card to show me that I did not sign it. Saturday. My presence is required at another store, the one where I worked for a year, and haven't been back to since May. I approach the bus stop where, out of the corner of my eye, I think that I see the largest coyote which I've ever seen. It turns out to be a regular passenger with a bicycle, the streetlight reflecting off of the aluminum wheels.
...in the Enchanted Fairy Realm...your inner child...plant and animal friends... Enter the God space... ...the ultimate dimension...Angelic Beings assist with Esoteric Operations...Tachyon energy... ...why it got so "dark" all of a sudden...Creator Gods...Manipulations... ...vibrational essences of the Godfather... ...a second generation Evidential Medium...along the path of the energetics.... Discover the inner intelligence of your "bodymind"... ...a nationally recognized Empath... Open youself to the reality that the body may be temporary... Tune into the elders of our planetary hierarchy and bring about the needed transformation of our society... ...the...quantum physics behind psychic abilities... The animals - those in physical form, those in spirit, and as the Animal Collective... Connect to "feel good frequencies"... ...Roger Ringo of Modern Spiritual Living... - Body Mind Spirit Celebration, 9/9-11/2016
It's been a very busy year for...a veteran grassroots Peace Corps volunteer and past staff member with the United Nations and the International Rescue Committee. ...he's helped...efforts in Nepal and...small farmers in Nicaragua. The Lakewood-based nonprofit organization is named after a "namlo," a sturdy strap wrapped around the forehead...to support a basket... The Namlo store features arts, crafts and textiles from the women's cooperative... Namlo staff and volunteers typically set up a vendor tent...at...Denver metro area...festivals, neighborhood block parties, and college and university campus events. - asian avenue magazine, 9/2016
The Celebration Sunday was engaging. This was the first year I rode my bike here. I stopped for lunch at a busy café across the street, where the single waitress on this busy lunchtime asked me to take her out of there on my bike. Last Sunday, my sister and myself had lunch at a place in a big deal upper class residential and outdoor mall neighborhood, where it took more than an hour to get served. A smarter couple than ourselves showed up and left before ordering. This café in north Denver has one solitary waitress, who gets me my food ten times faster. I'll take her anywhere she wants to go, but I'm not sure she wants to go to the second of year's biannual Body Mind Spirit Celebration, a clearinghouse of pyramid power, psychic readings, UFO lore, and more. Though the individual vendors take credit cards, the $7 entrance fee must be paid in cash, and attempts to use a credit card will be met with directions to an ATM machine on the opposite wall. 'Twas another enjoyable celebration. Though one vendor was out of a poster I wanted, she ordered it and is having it shipped to me. This was after pitching me an eight color print and, failing that, a woodcut. As she was busy ordering, I was fascinated by a young woman doing a tarot reading for a client. The woman was dressed all in white linen and had bare feet. Though my ride home resulted in a flat tire, I blame this neither upon stray sparks of energy nor a sliver of copper from any of the pyramid frames.
Monday. Bus stop across the street from where I live. 4:20 AM. My turn to work all day this Monday. It's a deathly quiet morning, after the beginning of yet another footballs season and school year. On the early morning after the 15th anniversary of 9/1, the crickets rule the neighborhood at this hour. In the bus shelter is the usual guy in a winter jacket, trying not to fall asleep but to stay upright on the bench. I watch as the usual guy comes from across my street. He has a cane, a hat, and a toothpick. When I get up the street to my old bus stop, it's covered with litter from the nearby deathbirger. The entire corner is trashed. There's a discarded T-shirt on the bench. It's as if there was a party here. A guy comes along and sits next to me on a low concrete wall. He lights up a smoke and tells me, "I really don't know where to sit over there." An hour later, I am at work where I notice that one of the clocks has stopped. I head over to the gas station across the lot, where a guy comes in who appears as if he could be 70 years old, but who I suspect is younger. He's in a Harley Davidson hoodie, has no shoes, and his hair is in a short ponytail which appears dyed blonde. He is purchasing a small bag of chips. Another guy, in a yellow vest, asks the clerk, "Is it just me, or do you think that the kids in here earlier should be in school instead of working?"
Tuesday. I am at my old bus stop at 10:30 AM, on my way to get a flat bike tube replaced. On the bench with me are a couple of guys. One is blasted drunk, with a walker loaded with plastic bags full of crap. The pair are blathering back and forth about the drunk's pot pipe he can't find and about the other one's pension. The latter has a lit cigarette in hand, and his smoke is wafting my direction. A younger stelf-styled street guy comes along and asks the drunk what he's up to. "Oh...gettin' loaded," he replies. He speaks slowly, like a drunk on a television program. "Ohhhhh daaaaaamn. What a bummer." The younger one leaves briefly before returning to take a seat at this roundtable. He saw which pocket the drunk's pipe is in, because he says he has "3-d vision, like Superman." I hear that there are glasses like that... A kid comes along and shows Superman his ,marijuana buds, which Superman calls Jack Frost. The kid says that he's selling his collection of "big ass nugs for thirty-five." An hour and a half later, I am stepping off a bus downtown, next to an old transit system hub, of which I have memories over the past 25 years. It's currently behind a construction fence and is now a pile of rubble. It waits to be an entirely new building. An hour later I am at a train station to make my last connection to work. On a bench is a guy in a Walmart vest. I go to grab a newspaper and he's there. he asks me, "Sorry to bug ya' but do you have a dollar thirty for the bus?" This is an odd amount. It's exactly half of the full fare. I've seen some drivers allow passengers to ride for this amount. When I tell him that I don't have it, he says, "Oh, shit." Some seven hours later, I am at another train station, sitting on a bench, waiting for my last connection home this evening. As twilight falls, I am looking straight toward the direction of my neighborhood, about a twenty minute bike ride distant. I can see our trusty neighborhood helicopter shining it's light on the ground from this far. Anyone here can watch it spotlighting where I live. If I ever forget hoi to get home, I can just follow the police searchlight. Who says crime doesn't pay? I get on a bus with a couple who discuss some facility, and how it's so crowded that it's a chore to get "to the back to se a counselor." I get out on my boulevard, across from a stop where a couple of guys are lighting up some marijuana. I stop into the gas station across the street from where I live. One guy tells the clerk that he is purchasing cigarettes for a woman with an infected tooth. The kid behind him is talking to another guy about his "piss test." On my way home, I notice the first residents I've seen come out of the building across from where I live, newly renovated into apartments. They are a young Caucasian couple. It appears as if they have landed. They are probably not whoever the police helicopter is searching for. The chopper is doing circles above my head, shining its beam somewhere behind my home.
Wednesday. At a quarter after 4 AM, it's in the 50s or the 60s out here. If it was any colder, I would say that I smelled snow in the air. I've been called in to open another store. The boss is sick and working a double shift herself. Yesterday was her birthday. At the bus stop across the street, I don't see the guy who sits and tries not to fall over asleep. Up the street, at my old bus stop, there is the usual guy asleep under a blanket in the bus shelter. This morning, his walker has no cap on the seat. Near his head is an empty can, at his feet an empty M&Ms bag. I hear him cough. I wonder if he's the drunk I saw yesterday. The bus comes along, and I sit across from a guy in a hoodie, on the front of which is, "Working out is therapy." At one stop, an overweight guy gets on. He appears to be dressed as a police officer. He has a kind of vest with gear on over a polo shirt. At his left shoulder is a badge, and at his right is a zip tie. The bus takes us to the train, which I take to the next station. It's 5 AM. On the platform, a trio of young adults show up, including a girl in a blanket. She shuffles along with a bulldog on a leash. They sit on a bench and appear to attempt to grab some sleep. Twenty minutes later, another train takes me a couple of stops further toward work. On this platform is a woman in a pleated plaid skirt. With both arms, she clutches an umbrella. Another twenty minute wait and my final bus arrives. The driver is newly minted, and being supervised by an instructor I haven't seen in a while. Ponytail and his keys on his belt.
...these remote kingdoms of the Middle Nile...of the Christian world... ...were strong enough to...threaten Muslim positions in Egypt, making a treaty with the Caliph of Bagdad in 896 and occupying Southern Egypt in 962. These monks and kings had stood for a valid and vigorous culture. Yet they were identified...with the life and manners of their towns. ...these Nubian Christians can seldom have been very sure about the loyalty of the peoples of the countryside, immersed...in the older beliefs of pre-Christian times. The support of monasteries, for example, implies the existence of secular labor...all around...the possible monastery site...in distant Darfur...are the simple hut foundations of a numerous village population. When Muslim missionaries and invaders appeared on the scene they will surely have found willing listeners among the humble folk who labored for the minks. ...a culture becomes dominant. There is a rebirth of learning nd literature. ...Greek and Coptic religious works translated...a beginning of the writing of history. Biographies of local noblemen are made. ...kings...preside over...energetic growth of a truly national culture and self-consciousness...warriors and reformers who carry on the wars against...raiders or neighbors...while ruling at home with an iron hand. ...this distant Christian ally. ...a Papal delegate entrusted with...submitting the...church to the authority of Rome rather than Alexandria, while an Italian painter...arrived...painting the infant Jesus on Mary's left arm, considered less desirable in Africa than the right arm... ...the forth son of Vasco de Gama led a military expedition to the...king facing...invader from...a Somali state. ...came to rest on strong foundations. They supported a structure of lord-and-vassal stratification which was far more rigid than elsewhere, and gave...a remarkably 'feudal' social atmosphere... ...an anointed king surrounded by a court of priests and army commanders... - Davidson
In the early morning darkness of April 29, 1978, army captain Pacha Mir Khan and his squad of soldiers stood a lonely vigil around the rim of a ditch on the Pol-I-gon plain... ...the communist officers now commanded the brigade. At 5:00 in the morning a truck drove up... ...communist soldiers opened the back of the truck to reveal...the fully clothed victims of the massacre at the palace. Khan...recognized...President Daoud. The fourth was Daoud's youngest daughter, Zarlasht, "Golden Branch," age twenty-three. Her green pants and youth caught Khan's attention. - Tomsen
From Sept. 12-19, about 110 Up With People cast members - of "Uppies," as they were once known - will be living in and volunteering around Aurora. Once free, cast members now pay a fee to participate in the program. Founded in 1965, the group has roots in the Moral Armament Movement of the 1960s. Up With People...moved its headquarters to Denver in the early 1990s after piquing the interest of former Gov. Roy Romer... - Aurora Sentinel, 9/8-14/2016
Thursday. Going on 9 AM. I am on my way to the dentist through a part of my old neighborhood in which I haven't been through in fifteen years. On one residential corner, a taxi has parked, blocking the road. The driver is standing behind it talking to a couple as cars are backing up behind them. After the dentist, I stop at the bank, where I get a compliment on my bike. The day has warmed up enough to go swimming. I just don't have the energy today. I grab lunch at a pizza buffet. At a table are a couple of guys, both in the same striped button down shirts and khakis. It sounds like an interview of some kind. One mentions that he was a college recruit, and that his girlfriend teaches at a science school. "Shawn took over. I was learning a lot more than I think I ever thought I would. ...a different sales process. Mostly formatting, training the last couple of months. Fast track stuff. I was talking to Irene, what she's working on." It reminds me of back when I was in high school, as perhaps the kind of conversation my dad was expecting me to have as a grown executive. I have no clue. The following morning, I'm off to work with the moon setting over the mountains. I'm headed for a morning shift in a neighborhood other than the one where I usually work. I'm at a shopping center where the supermarket carried a self-published magazine, the topic of which is President Obama's 'destruction of the economy.' This morning, I'm in a deathburger in which two male managers are both in button down shirts and ties. That evening the moon is coming up behind me. The next morning, I see it setting again.
...business groups were flush with volunteers for charity drives. Two-parent families were the norm, and fatal drug overdoses were...rare... The buckling of social institutions fundamental to American civic life... "When you loose the family unit and you loose the church community..." - The Wall Street Journal, 9/16/2016
The...revolutionaries were honestly trying to reform their country. ...they pursued matters along an unsustainable...path in a feudal society with deep vestiges of tribal foundations and the predominance of the Muslim religion in all spheres of public life. They promoted a mission...for which there was neither a social nor an economic basis nor was their support from the masses... ...with regard to religion, alienating the people from the revolution. - Tomsen
We look at French administration in Algeria and Tunisia...then to the wastes of Libya, the youngest country in the world; inspect revolutionary Egypt...and sketch the outlines of British policy and rule in East Africa...glance at Portuguese Africa... ...the nationalist note is being sounded almost everywhere...There are independent states, self-governing dominions, quasi-dominions, protectorates, colonies, trusteeships...and large areas which...are still purely tribal or feudal. Is the white man finished in Africa? Are Africans capable of self-government? If imperialism is dead, what is going to take its place? - Inside Africa, by John Gunther, 1953
Sunday. It's a non-stop freaking day. Workout, swim, breakfast, five homeless guys on the corner where we eat at the bus stop which smells like urine, grocery shop at a madhouse supermarket we never use with one guy in the parking lot asking for change and another carrying an open and almost empty bottle of Jack Daniels, and bike wheel tube replacement, all with the sister. Bike ride to the pharmacy under a couple of F-18 Hornet fighter jets headed for the stadium. Back home and across the street to grab dinner where a kid with an extra T-shirt slung around his neck and sores on his face is asking, "Exschuse me would to have any shpare change?" The next morning, I am headed back to the store I opened on Friday. I'm out of the door at 4:30 AM. On my corner I watch the tiniest kitten cross the street, headed for a guy waiting either for a ride of a bus to his construction job. I'm under both the moon and Orion. I cruise down a residential street, past a slew of bungalows. In the dark, all the trucks are lined up in driveways and every space on the street. In one tiny front yard, the sprinkler system comes on. An hour later I am at the end of the train line, exiting a busy train station. A procession of vehicles enters the lot. Another hour and a quarter later and I am back at the shopping center where I was on Friday, at a deathburger. Two older men and an older woman are at a booth, discussing a book she's reading which sounds as if it's about conspiracy theories of WW II. One of the men calls FDR a "prick," and says that the mafia killed German U-boat troops on the Atlantic coast of the United States. I don't know about that, but I do know that happened in one episode of Star Trek Enterprise. The season ended with the Enterprise NX-01 coming out of the expanse and going back in time to an alternative WW II, when the Nazis were helping an alien race construct a wormhole on Earth. I don't remember the U.S. president being a prick...
Real-estate developers and brokers are increasingly using food festivals, private dinner parties and other epicurean events to sell high-end homes. The affluent tend to be food enthusiasts with cosmopolitan tastes, they say. Food festivals...tap into a need for social affiliation... "Food and wine is the new golf." ...Music to Your Mouth, a five-day...event...with celebrity-chef demonstrations... "We got to know people and get the vibe of the community." ...at the Seattle event...close to Amazon.com' headquarters. ...agents were targeting millennials, and the food trucks at the festival were "Part of that fabric." - The Wall Street Journal, 8/16/2016
...the owner's decision to close the mobile home park in June 2018 and sell the property for redevelopment... "In two years, I'll be homeless,"...who has paid tens of thousands of dollars in interest on her mobile home and said she will not be able to save enough to pay it off before the park closes as owners are raising the rent. In a note to residents...property managers...wrote they no longer wish to run the mobile home and are ready to retire. "They can't sell it to an investor with us here. ...'Screw you, be homeless.'" Fay Cline, who closely monitors the activities of residents by patrolling the grounds in a golf cart, repeatedly declined to comment... The owner of the mobile home park for 30 years, declined to specify what he planned to do with it... "It's my property."... ...residents...say... Raccoons and feral cats can be see scampering between trailers come sunset. ...their vehicles are towed at random from the property. - Aurora Sentinel, 9/15-21/2016
...622... Within...twenty-two years the movement...set going by Muhammad had won the whole of Arabia and Syria, engulfed Egypt, seized the Byzantine forces of Babylon...captured Alexandria... In 670...Muslim rule over most of...Tunisia...weaving with confident prophetic hands the fabric of an entirely new civilization...turning...Roman pillars and capitals...to Muslim use and purpose. Far more remarkable were the political stability and economic recovery which followed in their wake. In Africa, Spain, and Asia these victories laid the groundwork for a civilization that...did unite men of religion, learning, and philosophy from the Mediterranean to Arabia, from...Sudan to...China, and bore a light of tolerance and social progress... ...the Muslim conquests came in the wake of long...turmoil. ...the barbarian riders...had shattered the great imperial systems which had governed Roman Africa... Yet these...Vandals and Goths, Franks and Visigoths, had failed either to engraft themselves into the Roman system and relaunch it...or to build any...system of their own... They remained...men of clannish loyalty for whom the nations of a universal culture...capable of embracing many peoples and glowing with the vision of a new society, long remained beyond their grasp. Local loyalties soon thrust up through the surface of a system which, for all its ideological promises, could in fact do little or nothing to change the inner structure of the societies... ...during the rule of the fourth caliph...'Ali had married...the Prophet's daughter. A dissenting group emerged in Syria in 657 when...governor of that country, became 'Ali's successful rival. ...the Sunnis accepted him and the Shi-ites...did not... A hundred years later...the center of the greatest Muslim power shifted from Damascus to Bagdad... Within another hundred years...the Islamic community...divided among many loyal dynasties... ...an Utopian picture of...the tenth and eleventh centuries...the prototype of that 'Rightly-Guided Caliphate' in...equality and justice. But...in the very wake of this era...the 'golden age' of Islam...lay during the earliest years...in von Grunebaum's words...'an age in which human society had come as near perfection as could be hoped for...' The golden age was an illusion. Islam possessed no ideological tool that was adequate to the leveling of a society embarked upon...deepening internal division between rich and poor, weak and strong. ...hierarchical differences among the faithful...became sharper as Islam faced the wear and challenge of power. By the outset of the ninth century...Muslim societies of the Near East were divided into...'the ruler, those distinguished by wisdom and domination, those whom wealth has placed aloft; and the middle classes...attached to the other three classes by their culture; while the rest...is mere scum who know nothing but food and sheep.' '...I shall not pray to God as long as I am poor,' wrote one...around AD 1000. "...it would be hypocracy to pray.' A...period begins with the thirteenth century. It follows a long confusion...invasions...the rise and rivalry of the successor states. (c. 1312-37)...Islam now appears as the great religion of progressive government. It opens the way to a literate bureaucracy, to effective diplomatic links...and to the inner reorganization of power among lines which cut across...traditional religion. ...Islam...assured them of their livelihood...given them up-to-date and efficient set of commercial customs and credit procedures...not...available before. ...the actual practice of Islam...sometimes differ greatly. ...Mali in the fourteenth century...the nudity of unmarried women and the sociable self-confidence of wives... Even great rulers who became caliphs were obliged to...maintain non-Muslim ceremonies at court. - Davidson
Tuesday. I am too damned tired to ride my bike anywhere, and I need more transit system tickets. Which is why I find myself back across the street at the bus stop. I watch as one motorized wheelchair goes past. The second one comes along and stops. It's piloted by a grey-haired woman who is selling roses. Or so it appears. She is almost unintelligible, perhaps because she has no teeth. The bus whips me up the street, to the train station, where a couple come along the platform. The guy has an open can in a brown paper bag, a couple of tattoos on his neck, and one of a bear paw on his hand. He's in black leather Pumas, black shorts, and a black hoodie. They take a seat as the guy mentions something to the lady about "concurrent" and "jail." He lights a partly-smoked cigarette to take a few puffs, before he tosses it onto the train track. The train whips me downtown, and after the bus station and the bank, I'm at a Chilis. Someone comes running past me to say that Tony will be with me. Tony arrives to ask me if he can get me a cold beer. I ask for a diet soda while I peruse the menu. "No worries," Tony says, "I'm on your schedule." If I get a burger with an egg here, the egg is "cage free." At the Mecixan restaurant across the street from where I live, when I get a burger with an egg on it, I call it "hamberguesa loca." I watch another waiter here who looks like the bassist for the band Metallica. Tony returns to take my order. he asks, "Remember me?" I come off a pedestrian mall, flush with a population's unknown individual motives, into this place of order and direction. Tony is on my schedule.
Wednesday. It's a trying week for my boss. With employees quitting she needs me on the way to work at twenty after 4 AM. At the bus stop across the street from where I work, a regular is on the bench, a woman who appears to be seventy but I believe is younger. At the bus stop up the street, a middle-aged guy shuffles past. "Mornin'," he imbibes, like some kind of TV character. He's in a tie-dyed T-shirt and bandanna tied over his head. A rubber bracelet around his wrist. On the bus is a guy who is also familiar. Pulling into the train station, he wakes up a guy who is so quiet, I never even noticed him. He's in camouflaged pants and a Mexican knit pullover, and he has a bulldog with him. He wakes up and asks where he is. After a long day, I am sitting at a bus stop outside of work, after sundown. Along come a trio of bicycle riders. Black lycra, ten speeds, and helmets. They all cruise down the bike lane, one without his headlamp on. I get back on my street around 8:30 PM. I hear yelling from the Chinese restaurant across the street from where I live. It echoes off the building across the street, giving the false impression that there's an argument between people on opposite sides of the street. In a hidden side of the restaurant are a couple of young guys with their arms locked around each other. I go inside to grab a scoop. Someone (one of the pair?) comes inside to offer to sweep the parking lot in exchange for a scoop. Someone else comes into the adjoining gas station, asking something about lighters. I get my scoop and exit. When I get outside, it almost sounds as if the pair are arguing about which one has exclusive rights to panhandle there. "You on my block now nigga."
Thursday. I'm back on the bike trail for the first time since I can't remember. Huge lawn mowers are being piloted among the fields along the trail through my side of town. Out along the river route, three women straddle the trail as they walk, blocking traffic in either direction. Before this route goes over a bridge, it passes through a construction zone where a handful of bike riders must negotiate each other. Part of the construction is a huge playground next to a sizeable bank along the river. A big bear statue, a log cabin, and extra logs are wrapped in orange plastic. A trio of cyclists are stopped to discuss this. I hear taxpayer money mentioned. Across the bridge and down the trail, I pass someone out for a stroll. He's in black slacks, an open Hawaiian shirt and a hat with a brim. I cross another bridge where directions have been inscribed in colored chalk for what I assume was some kind of group bike ride. I approach an underpass where a skinny kid stands in the oncoming lane, phone in one hand, energy drink in the other. At the top of the hill, on the other side, is an old woman pulling a suitcase on wheels along the trail. She's in sunglasses, a hoodie, and a backwards baseball cap. Yellow leaves are blowing through the air. From there I pass along a park. On the sidewalk at one corner is another kid. This one is dressed in a black buttoned down shirt, untucked, and black pants and shoes. It appears as if he is ready for combat, or perhaps some kind of ultra right wing march. It sounds as if he is on the phone with his parents, responding to a scolding. Whaddya gonna do with your right wing kids these days? ("Are you still wearing that outfit? Your father and I bought you some perfectly good clothes...") Coming out of the park is a rather typical-looking mom in a sweater and honey blonde colored hair, toddler in hand. The third member of this trio is a twenty-something guy in a leather jacket with the sleeves pushed up, circa the 1980s, and a hat with a skinny brim. The girls stroll to their car with this guy from Miami Vice, who has attitude in his stride. Some distance later, I am pedalling past the pool I went swimming in. A neighborhood resident is out for a stroll. He greets me with, "How are you?" After work, shortly after 7:30 PM I pas the same park on my reverse route home. On the same sidewalk is the same Third Reich kid on his phone. When I get to the trail on my side of town, I hear a Roman candle go off on someone's street. I say street because I hope that no one is lighting fireworks on grass. As for the firecracker...did the city win something? When I get back to my own corner, I am there with two Caucasian couples who prepare to cross the street. I make a couple of assumptions. One is that they don't live here. The other is that they just ate at the Vietnamese place next to where I live, the only place here where I see any other Caucasian folk. I watch them cross the street, and I wonder why they are not parked at the restaurant's lot. I watch as they walk over to a Mexican shopping center across the street, and into a paleteria.
This has always been a place that has prided itself on order, consensus and a can-do corporate mentality that turned a locale with no real geographic reason to exist into one of the hemisphere's financial dynamos. ...a reputation for racial amity... ...the fatal police shooting...are among bumps...that have shaken...sense of self recently as it emerged from a successful small city to a more complicated larger one. ...it willed itself to big-city status... ...poverty...came to coexist alongside the comfortable New South reality enjoyed by the city's business class. ...consensus and power-sharing within a moderate band of business-friendly political expression. - The New York Times, 9/23/2016
A tribal leader...is chosen to protect and increase tribal assets, not to surrender them to...rivals. If he gives ground, he puts his own leadership position at risk. It would be better...to die fighting for the tribe's possessions than to bargain them away. ...to eliminate "the unjust patriarchal and feudalistic relations which exist between husband and wife." ...prohibited the tradition of gift-giving... ...requiring the bride's consent for marriage. ...ushering in a society "without hostile classes and free of exploitation of man by man." Young...cadres with military escorts were sent to the countryside to implement...reforms were expelled from villages, kidnapped, and sometimes murdered. ...sloganeering on...radio broadcasts, and the introduction of the new flag...stirred popular resentment...to foist atheism on the country. The...regime's omission of the standard...invocation...from radio broadcasts... ...a combined jailhouse, prison, torture-chamber, and execution ground for...liberal politicians, intelligentsia, professionals, teachers... ...the regime had executed more than 50,000... - Tomsen
...'the Vicar-General and some of his Franciscan fathers came ashore carrying two crosses in procession and singing Te Deum. They went to the palace, and there the cross was put down and the Admiral prayed. Then everyone started to plunder the town of all its merchandise and provisions.' Two days later they set it on fire. ...'gold, silver and pearls. ...rich silk and gold-embroidered cloths were seized...' ...what finally undermined...nearly all...cities of the southern stretch of coast... ...the Portuguese set about trying to reshape the ancient trade between western India and eastern Africa. ...having found it beyond their strength or understanding to restore the customs and contact of...enterprising countries. They did their best to stop all maritime enterprise not conducted under their own flag or sovereignty, and...proved fatal. In less than a hundred years...they had gone far to ruin the work of centuries. - Davidson
Sunday night. I was having dinner, reading a short story in a magazine from 35 years ago. The story is about a herd of cars with computer brains which travel by themselves and are hunted by one man. Out on my boulevard, it's bumper to bumper street racers. I watch as a tow truck hauls away a maroon SUV. The following morning, I am surprised to awake being rested. Not only do I need to get up early to open the store today, but I had no choice but to eat right before I went to bed last night. "Tis a rare Monday before sunrise when I feel like riding the bike to work. I'm off the train and headed through a neighborhood where some of my customers must live. As I approach a bridge off the residential streets and over a creek, I hear a dog begin barking just to my right. I turn my head to see a figure with appears to be the shape of a tweed hat. He has two dogs on leashes and is completely obscured by darkness. I head up to the bridge and look back to see him walking his dogs toward it. Our 'Operations Manager,' or GM, stops by my store before she has to start her day. She lives in my neighborhood, and she's more tuned into it than I am. She tells me that the police have put up white signs on my boulevard, letting street racers know that upon particular infractions their cars will be towed. I've read that local neighborhood businesses have decided to close on Sundays. She tells me that on Sundays the street racers not only traverse both directions of the boulevard, but they turn around at the south end of their weekend trek in the parking lot of a Mexican supermarket. Along with racing in an operating parking lot of a busy supermercado. The boss tells me that the police had the lot taped off on Sunday. This week, I've seen not more police but redeployed on the streets of my neighborhood.
On Tuesday evening after work, I step off the bus just up the street from where I live. I watch the police helicopter pass over my home. Along the short walk there I pas by a Vietnamese CPA office. On the step is someone inhaling something in the dark. The following evening, around 8 PM, I am again back in my neighborhood, cruising along the street with every available curb and driveway filled with a vehicle. To my right, hear a barking dog. To my left is the shadow of a teenaged kid with hair from the 1970s, strolling along silently under the starlight. Far out man. The next morning, I am out of the door at 9:30 AM. Here at the end of September, the afternoons are still temperate, but the mornings have a bit of a chill which hasn't burned off yet. I'm in a hoodie and for the moment I am cold in my shorts. Halfway to the corner, a guy sits on the curb with his legs stretched out into the street. But the real show is on the corner. A middle-aged guy comes along on what may be a stolen bike. The guy is in cutoff denim shorts and...no shirt. A couple of things suggest that it's stolen. The bike looks as though it could be a girl's bike. When the light turns green, he's blocking the way off the sidewalk and across the street as I scoot around him. He crosses perpendicular before crossing back again, as if he's trying to figure out how it rides.
Friday. I am out of the door at 12:30 PM. Both last night after 8 PM and this afternoon. The police are patrolling the streets of my neighborhood. 5-0 in the hizzy. I am passed by a cyclist in a buttoned down shirt and slacks. Down the street he passes me again. When I get out on the trail, another cyclist in a buttoned down shirt and slacks goes past. I follow another trail which splits off the first. Ahead is an underpass, where a young guy sits to the side of the entrance. He is playing guitar and screaming, "...BE A LOVELY DAAAY!" After work, it's going on 7:30 PM as I cruise through a neighborhood where the residents own golf carts. One such cart has its headlights on as it illuminates a father sending his two little boys out in the yard to catch a pass. An hour later, I am back on my own corner. To the south, the boulevard is completely blocked off by police. There are no headlights, as far as I can see. All southbound traffic is turning east or west, and backed up who knows how far north. My own street is bumper to bumper. I watch a southbound city bus haul itself over the curb as it turns down my street. Headed south down the boulevard is a tow truck, an ambulance, a fire truck, and another fire truck. And there goes the month of September. Have A LOVELY DAAAY!
