July 2017, The Psychedelic Canoes, 'Developing a Better Identity,' and "Our Little Hill Here."

Which TV mom would you add to your mom squad?
     Frankie Heck from "The Middle."
     Ree Drummond, "The Pioneer Woman"
     Joanna Gaines from "Fixer Upper!"
     Aunt Vivian from "The Fresh Prince"
     Pam Beasley from "the Office,"...a working mom and...would be a fun person to have around and share mom stories with.
     Hands down, Claire Dunphy from "Modern Family."  She has goals, is a high-achiever, and she's married to a lovable man-child...she'd be a fun mom to unwind with over a glass of wine.  Like so many of us, she just wants to be everything to everyone.  ...she gets stuff done.  - Colorado Parent, 7/2017

     Welcome to the new quarterly "Englewood [, Colorado] Magazine!"  This consolidates our multiple publications...  We have a wonderfully unique story...    Please joins us...the last Friday of every month for..."Final Friday" art, food and music night.  ...a..."Signature Event"...  We also plan...to develop better identity...
     "In our neighborhood, there are generations that live near each other.  Neighbors get together and have block parties."  - Englewood Citizen, summer 2017

     Brazzaville, capitol of...French Equatorial Africa...businesslike, packed with bourgeois wealth, proud of its bustle, and almost totally devoid of grace.  Brazzaville is still an African city, loosely constructed, colorful, relaxed...everybody smiles.  "Gabon."  Among early explorers was...the...English lady Mary H. Kingsley, who - in Victorian petticoats - made in this region one of the most dangerous expeditions ever known.  It cost her her life eventually...  - Gunther

     The person shot to death [at a park a few blocks from where I live] on Sunday night was a 26-year-old woman.  Another man was shot...in critical condition.  The pair was [sic] found in a car...  ...the first report of the shooting came at 7:41 p.m..  - 9news.com, 7/17/2017

     Sunday.  I'm on a bike ride out to a festival, for which I have the date wrong.  I won't discover this until I get to the particular park where it's supposed to be.  This has happened to me before with this particular outdoor festival. The park is there, but the festival won't be fro another week or two.  This will result in a decision to see a movie I was debating to see, and my spending the entire afternoon riding back and forth across the north end of downtown.  Before this however, I am still on my own side of town.  I slip onto the bike trail just long enough to get under and onto the other side of the avenue.  In the darkness, on the trail under the avenue, a guy crosses the path right in front of an oncoming bike.  As I pass through I smell marijuana.  I get downtown and am headed for a street with a bike lane which will take me directly to the park with the non-existent festival.  In a neighborhood surrounding the state capitol I happen upon some kind of groovy dive diner.  The more I ride in proximity to downtown, the more I stumble upon these places.  The bike, part of the diet and exercise plan, is bringing me to new places to eat.  It's up to me to see to it that the two end up congruent.  I lock the bike up next to a flyer demanding freedom for a large collection of anarchists.  Their mug shots cover the handbill.  The place has salads, eggs, tofu, and lots of waffle plates.  But no bacon or sausage.  Everyone in here appears to be in their twenties, young enough to be my children.  There's a seat available at the bar, which is also "full menu."  I'm sitting next to a guy n a crew cut, a twelve-inch goatee, and a bowling shirt.  The place has no diet soda and I have a specially-flavored iced tea.  I'm going with flow of the Caucasian hipster.  The bar has dim lamps with big shades, making it hard to read.  Fortunately, I'm next to an open back door.  The bartender has a perm and is in a striped tank top.  "Hey, barkeep, 1985 just called.  It wants it's wardrobe back."
     After lunch, I get to the park and all is revealed.  With 2 hours before the movie, I ride to the library to put a hold on a DVD before returning to the theatre.  The African-American families, young couples, and gay men are out for a stroll.  The homeless asleep out on the lawn of the capitol.  The homeless are everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.  As many as there appear to be in proximity to the capitol, I never hear the mayor mention them in any of his ablutions to the city, and his beloved "creative class."  I don't know how you can be homeless without being creative, they must be the most creative ones around.  On my ride home after the movie, I pass them, there in the shade of trees on lawns next to apartment complexes.  A drunk in an alley sits in a parking space, mumbling to himself.  On a street with turn-of-the-century homes is an empty parking lot, grass coming up through its cracks.  A big camping trailer sits in the lot.  A family is outside of it, and it's obvious that they live there.  The following day is the day before the Fourth of July, and the beginning of another work week.  At least for me.  At 9 AM, I am at the stoplight of an intersection with a busy avenue and an even busier highway.  Standing just to my right is a panhandler flying a small cardboard sign.  He's stepping with his cane and holding it toward the traffic on the highway, the majority of which is unlikely to slowdown anywhere near enough to hand him change.  He may not even be in his forties yet, some fifteen younger than myself.  What is a guy this young doing with a cane, out here standing next to a highway?  He's in a hat with the name of a town in the mountains and a T-shirt for the World Wildlife Fund.  As he stapes around the corner, it sounds as if he is mumbling bible verses.

     The aim...is to perpetuate colonial rule forever.  The press is censored, the secret police are proficient, and elections do not mean anything...  ...no faintest idea exists of development toward...self-government.  ...gradual economic betterment.  "It takes a long time to change human beings.  You cannot enter the social patterns of a people by legislation."  "Three things run the Congo: Belgium...the Roman Catholic Church; and big business.  The Belgian Governor General...has no local Legislative Council or...assembly to check on his powers, because representative government does not exist in the Congo.  Belgian District Commissioners in the hinterland...keep every element of rule under their fingertips.  The essence of the Belgian system is to buy off African discontent by giving economic opportunity...social services, and a...high standard of living.  If you have a healthy economy...other problems will...solve themselves.  ...that it is madness for the British to let the Africans vote [while still] economically submerged, and worse...for the French to...try to fit the African into...an elaborate abstract political system...  A Congolese Negro can become a first-class carpenter or mechanic, but not an engineer.  He can be a bishop, a journalist...a civil servant, or a pharmacist, but not an architect of attorney.  ...the Belgians do not want...Congolese...to see how Europeans live in Europe.  ...to become dissatisfied.  "We have a duty to these people.  We want to treat them like human beings.  ...it would be a disfavor...to communicate the achievements of European civilization 'before they are ready.'  Will it not ruin them...?"  ...of an African middle class.  Belgians do not want Negroes at their dinner tables...but...to have economic opportunity.  This serves the national purpose.  It increases purchasing power.   Why not let unmitigated colonial rule proceed indefinitely?  "If we ever do have to go, at least we [shall be] leaving [behind] a rich country."  ...the people will sooner or later be in a position to demand change.  Once a certain standard of living is reached...  "...discontent is the price of progress."  "Industrial revolution is fast pushing the Congo into new economic patterns . .  For industrialism in the Congo...lifts thousands or Africans out of...poverty, out of...their ruined tribalism...  Africans in the Congo begin...to be 'people like everyone else," [in the eyes] of the Europeans for whom they work.  The ethnic medley is so inordinately complex over such a wide area with such hopelessly bad communications that a cohesive nationalist expression is impossible.  The idea of assimilation must...result...in the creation of a mixed society...  Let the next generation worry about it.  The French know that they have to bring Negroes into the functioning of the state "somehow."  - Gunther

     ...water-treatment plant engineer...blames the UN sanctions committee...  The amount of drinking water...to the public is half what it needs.  any villages...depend on brackish wells.  ...victims of an arbitrary system...party loyalists, tribes, and the military.  I wander through the mass of people...  ...as I pass by some whisper..."My son, gone twelve years."  "My husband, eight years."  "Where are they?"  Within seconds...the police...hustle me away.  ...in the West Bank I often resorted to Russian...  And...in Israel...Russian is more useful than Hebrew in many neighborhoods.  [As it is in Iraq.]  A CNN reporter who speaks Arabic balks when I ask for help.  She can't afford to be seen assisting me.  Thugs try to block photographers' cameras.  They infiltrate the group shouting pro-government slogans.  Some Western news [reporters don't cover] the event, fearing they could jeapordize their visas...  Television [journalists] have...money...large staffs, and...make a lot of noise wherever they go.  ...concern here over a possible war [is] taking its toll on the country's small private sector.  Many Iraqis have stopped purchasing...  ...young people are frustrate with no jobs, no money...  ...these young people who have grown up knowing only war and sanctions, feel they have been condemned...by the United States.  If left alone...Iraq will get rid of Saddam in as little as a year.  Most in Iraq...search for...the BBC, Radio Monte Carlo, or the Voice of America.  The Iraqis...jam VOA's...Arabic language source...forcing it to jump frequencies...  Some reporters...buy officials expensive gifts.  "...revolution after revolution have brought us to destruction."  Many of Iraq's best and brightest have fled the country.  [A] Forty-one-year-old...professor of political science...says...a war in which Iraq could be dismembered or dissolve into ethnic or religious conflict..."would be a terrible mistake."  ...her third...child ..says she identifies with Palestinian children who...are suffering...just as she is...  ...Islam has come to play [an] important part here...result...of despair.  [With oil revenue during the 1970s,] Iraq appeared to be joining the rest of the world.  The departure ritual [for visitors to Iraq] requires...shopping bags...of...dinars [to the hotel] and...sums of dollars in...fees to the Information Ministry...  The process takes hours...    ...in Afghanistan...Geraldo Rivera...recast himself as a war correspondent...  He was catered to by an obsequious entourage...also surrounded by a contingent of armed guards he had hired.  He had not yet announced that he...was packing heat...  ...he was playing by...rules that blurred the lines between journalist and combatant.  ...and I didn't want to be in his playpen.  I didn't tell anyone in the hotel about my plans because...about the Afghans...hanging around the lobby.  It was impossible to know...where their sympathies lay.  [Of] Amer...  Ahmed is jealous...  Amer says he...could lose his commissions.  ...he doesn't have the protection of close relatives in the Information Ministry and can't risk moving into Ahmed's territory.  The manager [of] the "National Restaurant'...offers me some red wine...with a can of Pepsi next to it for camouflage.  Under Saddam's current rules...booze is only to be imbibed at home.  ...he hates the regime, but he is scared to death that what might follow could be even worse.  Iraq is afraid of the aftermath, assuming the country will fragment and dissolve into a vicious civil war.  After...he murdered or resettled restive ethnic groups, Saddam feels the need to woo them with...perks, money, and goods if they behave.  ...there is an Iraqi identity...they have aspirations to regional leadership.  Again and again they indicate that they feel they are an ungovernable mixture of peoples...  - Garrels

     July 4th.  I'm in the town of Golden to get breakfast with the sister before we head up to a natural cold springs.  We eat with some local residents before I stop into a coffee place.  The shop is packed.  A woman sits at an outdoor table.  She has Botox in her upper lip.  The place is full of cyclists, neo-hippies, and hipsters.  A woman in a Lycra shirt is in pigtails, another in a colonial skirt.  A guy with white trimmed stubble is in a black tank top and a necklace.  At the pool, we are waiting to pull into a parking spot.  There is a line at the entrance and almost no parking.  A middle-aged guy in a brimmed hat and buttoned down shirt is holding a coffee mug.  We wait for him to let us pass.  He lets up park and when we get out he asks us if we think he should have stayed home.  At the pool, one guy has a tattoo on his chest of a schooner in a storm, and a lighthouse breaking in half.  It looks like a bad painting.  Later in the evening, I walk out into my parking lot around a quarter to ten, and I spend an hour watching fireworks in every direction.
     Wednesday.  I'm headed into work early, around 9 AM.  I'm down the street from where I live, at a residential intersection.  On the corner is an elderly guy in a straw sun hat.  He has a big dog on a leash.  The pair begin crossing the street in front of an oncoming vehicle.  After I am some distance down the trail, I happen upon a guy standing with a cane in the other lane.  He has a long bushy grey beard and is looking out across the Platte River.  He's in a faded T-shirt with "America" across the front.  I believe that he is America.  Around a bend and across a couple of bridges, and I am rolling past the open river out of the woods.  Bike after bike after bike goes past me, coming and going.  Since the last week of June, this trail has been full of bicycle traffic out of nowhere.  Half of the bicycles on this trail today are reclining ones.  One of those comes along, this one with what at first appears to be the first 1/4 of a U.S. flag mounted on a mast on the back.  It must actually be some kind of short U.S. flag banner.  Just past the guy on the bike is someone on this hot morning in a flannel shirt, pushing a bike.  The bike has two full enormous trash bags attached to a rack on the back.  The bike is being pushed by someone with a the face of a seventy-year-old woman.  As I pass, she says hello.  Just down the hill from her are two other women and a guy, all three dressed as if they work in an office.  The trio, the women in colorful print dresses, are out for a stroll.  I turn onto the connecting trail, past a sign which reads "Rid Safe,"  I come upon another "cyclist."  Either that or dehydration is causing hallucinations.  This one is riding what appears to be a gymnasium stair machine somehow assembled into a kind of bicycle.
     I leave work at 7 PM and travers a couple of opulent residential streets before I arrive at a horse trail.  There are kids out on bikes.  Then, from around the bend, comes a group of four or five twentysomethings and both parents, all on bikes, in a pack.  The ladies are in halters and have long straight hair., and everyone leisurely pedals along.  It a scene straight out of some '70s TV show.  I wonder if they will have some Jello when they get home.  From here, I hit the trailhead, switch trails, and am halfway home from there when I pass yet another stair machine bike.  Someone must be advertising these.  When I come pedaling up to my own parking lot.  I spot the guy I've been seeing lurking around here since the end of last month, a big guy in his thirties.  He's sitting in a lawn chair in front of a carport.  I park the bike and he says, "Let me ask you something.  I see you riding aaaaall over the place.  How far do you do?"  I mention the corner where I work.  He's never heard of it.  I tell him it's south of the nearest highway.  He introduces himself, and tells me his name again when he goes back inside.  I can't remember it.  (Evan?  Don?)  The first thing he asks me is if I've heard that his wife called the police on him three times for a domestic dispute.  I tell him that I don't recall the last police car I've seen in out lot.  He tells me that he's been living here for 2 years, and he "can't believe" that he hasn't met me before.  This may be, but the first time I've seen him sitting outside on summer days was a few weeks ago.  He asks me if I have a "problem with bugs?"  I haven't.  "Really?" he replies.  He claims that one of his next door neighbors is "infested," and as a result his place is infested.  He says he tried to get his neighbor to go in on fumigation or something but the neighbor isn't interested.  So every six months he has to put out money to have someone come in and debug his place.  He walks slow and, together with sitting outside in the evening, strikes me as something you do if you're an old man.
     Thursday.  I'm back at the waterpark.  It's a routine.  I swim in the sunshine, and when I get to work, it's overcast.  This time, the army of children coming out of a school bus are all in orange T-shirts.  These shirts have "Fun in Foothills."  It's an organization for kids sponsored by the Parks and Recreation Department.  Next to the bus, a vehicle from Animal Control is here also.  When I get inside, another line of kids are marching along.  These kids are in blue shirts with "Discovery Link" on the front.  The waterpark must be supported by group ticket sales from kids' organizations.  After my swim, I am overjoyed to see my bike is still here, as I went running out of the house without my bike lock.  My compliments to the honesty of the residents of this neighborhood.  I've been eating lunch on the way to work every day, and am determined to find someplace less expensive than the shopping center where I work.  Delicious as the food has been.  I venture to the next closest shopping center, not far from my own.  I run in to a supermarket and grab something from the salad bar.  With no bike lock, I take my bike inside and lean it against a trash can.  I return from the salad bar to find it has fallen over.  It impacted a gift card display and bike three hooks off.  No one else appears to have even noticed.  On the way from there to work, I pass a church.  In the parking lot, what do I see but a van for Avid Adventures, the mysterious organization I spotted in another church parking lot last month.  I will later look them up online.  Actually, their name is Avid 4 Adventure.  (Hey, you try reading these names from a moving bike.)  Next to the van is a trailer, loaded with perhaps ten canoes, all psychedelic orange.  It's not the journey, but the paint job.
     On my ride home, I approach a traffic circle at the intersection of the bike trail with traffic from carts at a golf course.  I can see, sitting on his bike, a middle-aged guy in the middle of the traffic circle.  He's looking at his phone, and he isn't exactly in the way, but from where he is the rest of the world must go around him.  His bike is the color of the psychedelic canoes.  About a half hour later, I'm riding through a neighborhood back on my side of town.  I hear a mechanical kind of whine over my shoulder.  A young guy comes running around the corner with a remote control in his hand.  He says, "Oh shit...oh shit."  I think his drone just crash landed on a neighbor's roof.  Friday.  Mid-morning and I enter the trail.  Across a bridge from the trailhead is a kind of shelter.  On some evenings, I've seen it piled with belongings which I suspect are owned by homeless.  This is the second morning this summer when I've seen a collection of Lycra-clad cyclists gathered to begin a ride down the trail.  I turn past them just as I see an oncoming cyclist headed for the group.  I suspect he is homeless, as he's riding in pants which almost appear to be dress pants, and he has no shirt on.  This morning, I am taking the train to the street with the office which has the season passes for the waterpark.  I've discovered that the waterpark is actually run by the city, not a private company.  I tell them that this is pure genius.  Pass in hand, it's off to swim.  Today's buses parked at the waterpark are from the Boulder YMCA.  After my swim, it's off to work, and after work I am headed home.  Of the handful of characters I pass along the way, the most striking is the woman in her sixties.  Just down from my own boulevard, she is walking in the street.  She's wearing a black T-shirt with a white skull on the front.  As I pass her, she asks, "How's it goin'?"
     When I was told last month that I needed to go to a city office to get a season pass to a waterpark which I thought was a private company, I was perplexed.  When I understood that the waterpark is, in fact, owned and operated by the city; I recognized, to quote Col. Kurtz, "the genius of that."  When I arrived at the city office, I mentioned this to them.  In my discussion with two clerks, and my reading of some information about the local area, I realized that it would be in my interest to establish a bit more of a relationship with the place.  This office also has a gymnasium where I can work out before going to work, and it appears that after the dust settles from the transition in ownership of my place of employment, that I may be working around here rather than elsewhere.

     Dr. Schweitzer is a profound moralist, but he has...little interest in human beings...  The hospital...  Some visitors find in it all that they are looking for spiritually...  Others...do not...regard it [as so.]  Discussion at mealtimes or in the evening hardly exists...  With his eyes closed, the Doctor tells them..."Do this," or "I want no more of that"...  ...many African workers seemed unhappy...  ...the hospital area swarms with animals...  He seems fonder of the animals...than the human beings...  ...the hospital gives [the] atmosphere of...a kind of abstraction, almost an exercise in penance.  - Gunther

     Sunday.  I am headed to the outdoor festival which I was headed for last Sunday.  Only, this Sunday is the actual day of the festival.  Right.  I am coming under a train bridge.  Up ahead on the sidewalk is a guy pushing a shopping cart loaded with crap.  Behind him is a woman pulling a wagon.  His "buggy has a full size U.S. flag waving from a pole.  Hers has a smaller U.S. flag.  We all get to the corner and cross the street to the train station, where they have a seat next to their wheeled possessions in the hot sun.  His shopping cart has a big sheet of poster board affixed to the front.  It has something written on the front which I don't stop to read.  I take the train downtown to Chilis to grab lunch.  The hostess shows me to my seat.  The next thing that happens is, a middle aged woman in a Sheriff's uniform (with three stars on her collar and a Glock o her hip) brings me a diet soda.  The place has a handful of Sheriffs, with aprons tied behind the handcuffs on their tool belts.  My waitress comes along and I tell her what I think I just saw, and that I haven't had any alcohol to drink today.  She explains that today is "Tips for Sheriffs" day.  They are collecting cash donations for the Special Olympics.  I order, and just after my plate arrives, a young sheriff comes to my table with a big kid.  He tells me that the kid competes in the special Olympics and gives me an envelope for any donation, "a dollar or two," I may wish to provide. They can't be making much money from this.  I tell him that I don't have any cash with me.  He tells me that they accept checks, or else he will "catch you next time."  I hear other patrons thanking the sheriffs for what they do.  (I read that police in Louisiana or in Dallas or someplace are suing Black Lives Matter for inciting the shooting of officers.  I will see several of Black Lives Matter T-shirts for sale at the art fest.)   I take the envelope with me, after I chase my waitress for napkins.  And silverware.  And a refill on my diet soda.
     After lunch I am headed across town to the art fest.  Along the way I pass four homeless guys in the shade of a building.  One guy has his shoes off.  He sits on a walker with a cigarette in his fingers, staring tiredly at the concrete.  He has a T-shirt on with "Manhattan Soccer" on the back.  I make it to the fest and stroll the grounds before returning to downtown.  On a corner, a couple of guys on bikes and a woman on foot are crossing the middle of the street.  The woman's skin is orange from the sun and she walks as if she either has heels or no shoes hidden beneath the cuffs of her jeans.  There is what appears to be a black flower in her hair.  When they are on the other side of the street, one of the guys (a tattoo from the side of his neck to the side of his face) appears to be directing her where to go.  I wonder if he is her pimp?  I go to grab an early dinner at a place which is decked out as if it's a happy hour locale for office types.  On one flat screen which is not showing sports is a female reporter in a helmet and flack jacket.  Something makes her jump and the camera turns to a helicopter blasting someone or something on the ground.  As the place gets full, it gets louder.  At the table(s) next to me, both young and middle aged women show up one at a time and are ecstatically introduced to the others.  Some are from out of state.  It almost sounds like a gathering of sorority chapter representatives, but I hear one of the seven women mention that she "worked as both a counselor and a educator."
     The following morning, I am out of the door at 4:15 AM, off to work an open to close shift.  It's been a while since I was on my way to work under the stars.  I am strolling up the boulevard toward my old bus stop.  In the dark I'm walking past an apartment complex which is a halfway house for ex-cons.  Siting there on the front step, silhouetted against the interior light, is a thin guy with shaggy hair under his cap.  I assume he's up at this hour because he can't sleep.  A few steps later and I'm hit with drops of water from a sprinkler.  He tells me to watch out for the water.  I see, he's a maintenance guy.  Thanks.  After the drops od water, I am along the next block with a parking lot full of broken glass and cans.  Meandering in the lamp light of this lot is a little guy.  He's in a button down shirt which hangs off of his frame, along with a backpack.  I see him bending down to pick something up.  I kick a can and he turns to see me.  He mumbles, "There's bottles and cans everywhere."  Bottles and cans and just clap your hands and just clap your hands.  He doesn't look like a Beck fan...  The broken glass and discarded bottles and cans go on for three empty parking lots.  Reconquista.  I reach my bus stop, where a guy is reclined on his back, his head against his backpack.  When I show up he lifts his head.  he looks like a guy waiting for the bus, not like a homeless guy.  When the bus comes, he doesn't move.  The bus drops us off at the train station, with its new condo units.  A handful of homeless sit at the base of one unit.  One guy lies under an outdoor bar of a cocktail lounge.

     Feudalism...in a rigid Moslem area...  broadcasting has to be done in the simplest vernacular.  ...the most rudimentary question about government, people will not understand.  [At the movies, it's not easy] to hear...the audience shouts...in surprise..."Look, a horse!"  As a rule women in the new adult education classes...have to be, prostitutes.  No other women exist to recruit from.  A doctor needed assistants...and prostitutes were the only women he could get.  ...of the Gold Coast...  Politics here are more advanced, stable, and sophisticated...  If the Gold Coast turns out to be capable of...enlightened self-government, then it will be difficult to deny [independence] for Uganda, or Kenya...  The Gold Coast is, [Gold Coast nationalist native leader] Nkrumah thinks, a forerunner of...the emancipation of all Africa...  "We are building on the old heritage of the chiefs.  ...our movement rises from people who understand our goals."  His behavior in prison was exemplary, as it was in court.  The British like him for this - he "plays the game"...  In 1949, Nkrumah stood for immediate and complete independence "outside" of the Commonwealth.  Today he is...prepared to [be] within the Commonwealth.  The British...the hated imperialists, became popular even with...nationalists.  ...a tranquil, politically adult, Gold Coast...  The Gold Coast has, like Nigeria, a handful of noisy Communist intellectuals...  Sometime ago, Nkrumah began to take measures against further Communist penetration.  "It is not in the best interest...for any nationalist . . . to be...used by a Communist organization."  ...on the Gold Coast...the industrial proletariat is small.  ...Communism is regarded in the Gold Coast as a "white" movement...  ...in a society largely uneducated, the government has a duty to protect those who might become Communist dupes...  He has to draw a line between those who are capable of reading...without being inflamed or seduced...and those who cannot.  ...Communist books have been banned...only after scrupulously careful investigation.  ...most likely to be outlawed...mix half truth with truth.  ...the varied influences of Nkrumah - Christianity, Marxist socialism...civil disobedience from Ghandi - Roosevelt and the New Deal, and...African nationalism.  - Gunther

     I wonder if NPR [National Public Radio] is a pariah [in Iraq now] of if my rejection of [my previous driver's sexual] overtures is the issue [why he is no longer my driver.]  Amer says [about him, he] was caught raking in too much money without sharing it with his superiors, and...ordered to cut back on his clients.  [My new minder is] half-Iraqi, half-Serb, and...her heroes are Milosevic and Saddam.  ...degradation...can be seen every day...in Liberation Square.  ...with sellers of second-hand clothing, plumbing fixtures, plastic sandals, and cheap Chinese radios.  The traders include teachers, engineers, lawyers...   They prepare...fish grilled over an open fire...it requires...precision to suspend the fish...  ...families would stroll down to the Tigris to a row of restaurants serving this delicacy.  Now such forays are too expensive, and most of the restaurants are closed.  filmmakers and artists...have [a] pact with Saddam...to...produce their art.  Baghdad was like any European city.  "We are a place of culture."  "Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, and Baghdad reads."  ...a city too proud to welcome an invading force.  But if Saddam goes, they are afraid fundamentalists will move into the power vacuum...  My editor...and I...agree it's important to give some context even at the risk of being expelled.  New portraits of...Saddam...have been placed throughout the country, and new songs composed in his honor.  ...in military uniform...patting the head of a child...in a three-piece suit...in traditional Arab attire defending the Palestinians.  He is all things...  He has promised to make his country great.  His intelligence services have infiltrated every crevice of society.  ...banking on Saddam surviving.  ...organizing an exhibition of Saddam portraits...just when war is likely to start.  - Garrels

     Mayor...Hancock...launched Safe haven...  ...20 churches...have signed up and received training to serve...anyone...to receive support...following a critical, gang-related incident.  Following an incident, the closest participating church is activated for three days, and church members...volunteer...to support a community healing process.  ...trained in psychological first aid, disaster spiritual care, critical response training, and asset-based community development for churches.  - Denver Urban Spectrum, 7/2017

     We sophisticate our tastes in order to tap dance [past] hassles and shove the poignancy of "bring downs" into impersonal shadow.  We focus everything toward the transcendence of daily consciousness: macrobiotic diets, hallucinogens, eastern and western aesthetics, philosophies, etc.  ...always quick to contrast ourselves with middle-class man.  ...almost to the same end: personal, national, or racial success.  The hipster...a mockery of "straightness' and his alienation from the social norms of morality and dress.  ...liberated from...bourgeois conformity and established in a packed class...which combines the highest material pleasure with a total lack of commitment to middle-class humanism.  He is hated, feared, and envied.  He is a man who can sing about the evils of the world...from beneath a satin pillow while margining profits into war economies and maintaining his comfort on a consumer level of luxury.  - Kornbluth

     I am the youngest member of the Denver City Council, but even at my age there are times where I have to squint to see Denver as the same city that I grew up in.  ...two 30-plus story towers...a favorite shop...the quiet church...or the single family home...being torn down to build something that feels completely different...  With almost all...projects, City Council never has a opportunity to review or to vote on them.  Churches...embedded in neighborhoods on residential streets...  Most...are currently zoned [to allow] congregations to sell [to someone who can] tear down the church...and build homes...  ...kids today will find it nearly impossible to afford...the city where they grew up.  - the profile, 7/2017

     Tuesday.  It feels as though it is incredibly hot outside, over 100 degrees F.  I will later be told that it's only 90.  I do my first workout at a gym on the way to work, and have no time left to swim.  I stop at a place for lunch and drink plenty of water.  After work, I'm riding home in a light rain shower.  Along the creek off the bike trail, I spot a guy in a Harley Davidson T-shirt coming out of a tent.  He has another T-shirt hanging off a branch.  The following day I have a doctor's appointment to get a prescription for a refill.  I'm headed toward the train station, rolling down the sidewalk of a busy avenue.  I come up behind someone who does not strike me as homeless.  A guy in clean clothes does appear as if he has just woken up.  He walks slowly, perhaps because he has no shoes or socks.  His left arm is inside his sleeve as he scratches his side.   On the way home after work I have just entered the trail.  On one side of the trail stands a guy.  Across from him is his shopping cart.  Just over a bridge, off in the bushes, is another shopping cart.
     Thursday morning.  I'm at my new gym along the way to work.  Lifting weights are two or three firefighters.  They all wear matching navy shorts and navy Polo shirts with their logo on the breast.  A middle-aged one is telling the other can he isn't lifting more than 275 lbs.  He mentions another fireman who is, "younger.  He can [go ahead] lift 500 [as far as I'm concerned, but not me].  I'm gonna leave this [machine] at 225.  You can move it..."  The seniors at my usual gym never mention this kind of stuff.  A walkie talkie is broadcasting the dispatcher's voice all over the gym.  I also hear a couple of "civilians" in conversation.  One is giving the other advice about having a social life.  "You have to know groups to know groups."  A third firefighter is talking about doing construction on his home.  The dispatcher comes over the radio, calling for an ambulance because a firefighter broke his hand.  On my way out of the place, I watch a line of small kids come in for their swimming lesson.  They walk in a line, holding hands.  I exit the place behind a tall guy walking very slowly.  He has two wallet chains on his jeans, an orange T-shirt, and a leather top hat.  He slowly, slowly walks to an old Chevy Suburban, and he sits in the driver's seat with the door open.
     I'm down the street, on the trail, and headed for the turn to the waterpark.  On the other side of the bike trail, from the bridge to the waterpark, are gathered on the grass a collection of children in matching purple T-shirts.  I get to the ticket window before they do, but I am not as fast as a bus load of school kids.  After an adult (some ten or fifteen years younger than myself) tells us to back up, and we all bump into each other, we pass through the entrance.  A girl checking my bags lets me know that I cannot bring inside a small glass jar of mushrooms.  She doesn't see the other jar.  But I don't make fun of her because she strikes me as smart, just like the physician practitioner I saw yesterday.  They are both women after my own heart.  Not to mention the girl in line at the waterslide, who is perhaps taller than myself, with strong legs.  She is perhaps a college freshman.  She looks quietly fearless, with round wire-framed shades tinted brown.  I like her style.  The first one held my mushrooms for me.  I like a girl who holds my mushrooms.  After a swim and a slide, I'm back on the trail to work.  I pass a middle-aged woman in a tank top with "love" on the front.  She's walking a tiny dog, and she greets me as I pass.  Not far behind her is a guy dragging a camouflage pattern tarp and a two by four.  Not far past he, at a familiar spot under a bridge, I see a bedroll and an empty shopping cart.  On my ride home, I pass the bedroll again.  In the long shadows of early evening, an open umbrella sits shading where someone's head may perhaps be.  I spot people off in the woods.  I pass a young bald guy walking along, his shirt over his bare shoulder.  The trail takes me to another which follows the river.  Money has been spent on a large section, turning it into a paddleboard coarse.  Stopped in my lane of a bridge is a grey-haired guy.  he's taking a shot of paddle boarders.
     The following morning I am headed into work, having been called in early.  Late in the morning, I am pedaling down a long residential street.  Walking in the street is a lanky guy with a walker and an oxygen tank.  Some ten hours later, I am headed home after work.  At an underpass, where I usually see the bedroll, is the guy I've seen standing on the other side of the trail.  He is laying off the side of the trail, on the concrete with his hands behind his head.

     In the '60s...flush with oil wealth, Iraq was joining the developed world.  Baghdad was booming.  Buildings were going up on every corner.  There were extraordinary improvements in education and healthcare.  A teacher...delighted to practice her English.  Asked if she might contact me at the hotel in Baghdad...  Minutes later she ran up to me...gave me back my business card, saying it had been a terrible mistake...  Clearly, someone had gotten to her.  She didn't dare even hold...my name...  Chechnya is a reminder of how quickly events take on a life of their own and determine the future.  ...from a once comfortable middle-class life...  His business...couldn't survive the sanctions.  His savings are gone.  Now the neighborhood has slid into poverty.  ...Iraq needs a strong leader to unite the...competing tribes...  Residents [of Baghdad] are too poor to go elsewhere.
     The Russian hookers...have disappeared.  [Of] the reporters...left in Baghdad I am struck by how few Americans there are.  ...sixteen, including..."The New York Review of Books" among them?  The absence of...large American networks has created an intimacy and a lack of hysteria in the coverage.  ...this is a precious time that will undoubtedly never be repeated.  ...Iraqis have remained tied to their clans...subsets of the larger tribes that divide Iraqis.  ...large, extended family grouping numbering in the hundreds.  [During the U.S. advance on the city, there are] many injured civilians.  Some were n their cars when the tanks appeared and...their vehicles were turned to toast.  ...a...four-year-old...pronounced dead on arrival.  In the hospital morgue...corpses dumped in a walk-in refrigerator, among them...the Al Jazeera correspondent, still in his flak jacket.  ...Baath Party members, steely-eyed security, and police have vanished.  What has followed has been an orgy of looting.  ...a column of Marines approach...  ...I shout..."Hey, guys."  One turns around with an M16 pointed at me.  I raise my hands...screaming, "I'm an American."  Iraqis are afraid of anarchy.  They are afraid of themselves...  ...wannabe Iraqi politicians...dressed in ill-fitting camouflage, have come in with the American troops.  ...they are distinguished by...FIF (Free Iraqi Forces) on their sleeves...   [At city hospitals, there is] no idea how many patients have died...in recent days...  ...at...a small private hospital...a lack of supplies and electricity could soon be compounded by looting if the United States doesn't do more.  ...a young Marine screams out, "Hey, weren't you the lady on the bridge the other day?"  He confesses he nearly killed me.  More than a month after entering Baghdad...  Thieves have taken over the streets.  Aid organizations cannot operate...  I hope the United States [ensures] that this war doesn't spawn another.  - Garrels

     ...the Church ceased to exist as an organized institution...  Here on display was the whole domestic and agricultural wealth of several prosperous gentry families, all of which had been transformed by bitter struggle into "fruits" belonging to the people.  The total value of all the  goods available...was first figured as a grain equivalent.  Then every family was put in a "grade" based on need.  - Hinton

     There had always been individuals who felt that the mechanized urban areas were ugly...  ...humanists began to realize that society had...reverted to Byzantine or Late Imperial times, and who therefore withdrew to save their souls...  ...policy...was supposed to get most people "off" the land and speed up urbanization.  Meantime there were obvious signs of over-population.  Urban costs mounted geometrically...  ...in a densely populated area...the inhabitants were becoming poorer and poorer.  The middle classes, who had options, fled to the periphery to avoid taxes and the lower classes.  (I say "urban areas" because there were no longer such things as "cities."  I say "dwelling unit" because there were no longer such things as "homes.")   ...the government responded with noble speech, confused programs, and enough actual money to finance several reports by sociologists.  Departments of urban affairs were opened at several universities.  It was at this time that one of the junkies...was heard to say, "Zap!  This urban area has put the whammies on me!"  "But man," said the friend, "like how you gonna score up there I that mountain, where a stream runs?"  "Zap!  I say Zap!"  A coed said, "I am tired of having  premarital intercourse in urban areas."  - Kornbluth

     Sunday.  On my way to the swimming pool, where I went when I lived on that side of town before moving a decade ago.  After lunch, I stop into a supermarket which was around at the time, but this may be the first time I've been in here.  I go to a coffee bar.  When my drink comes up, the young woman says to me, "Job well done," about her work.  She asks me, "Where were you?"  Where was I?  "You look like you're..."  Oh, I'm in my cycling gear.  I tell her I'm on my way to the pool.  "Oh.  I misjudged you."  It's a lovely swim.  It's a cloudless sky overhead, and I watch thunderheads build on the horizon.  I used to come here on the weekends during the first half of the previous decade, to swim and read.  On my ride home, I dart onto a sidewalk and come up behind a couple of people on some kind of motorized unicycles.  Across a boulevard and a highway, I'm walking my bike up a steep residential hill.  A couple sits in chair outside the front door of their tiny bungalow.  Standing in the doorway is a young smiling guy who watches me.  He asks me how it's going, and if I want a soda.  I don't want to know why he is offering me a soda while the older pair look as if they could care less.
     The following day I have a doctor's appointment to try to discover why my testosterone level, which was perfect, has dropped significantly.  At my doctor's office their computer system is down.  This does not prevent the physician's assistant from determining the reason.  I mention that my original instructions were to apply the testosterone cream to my shoulders and chest.  I tell the P.P. that I stopped applying the cream to my chest because I developed acne there.  She does some checking and tells me that this is the culprit.  My chest has a 50% rate at which it absorbs, as opposed to one of 6% for my shoulders.  No wonder my level dropped.  Though I'm not sure that I like the fact that my chest has such a capacity to absorb, I'm happy the answer is so uncomplicated.  After I grab breakfast up the street from my doctor, I decide that the train is a more direct route to work than the bike trail maze between here and there.  I get back on the train to the closest transfer station to the line for train to work, the same station I rode to this morning.  When I get out, a woman on the platform comes out of nowhere.  "Sir, can you spare a few dollars?  ...emergency..."  She walks as if she stumbles.  She is either too tired or too drunk to realize that she left some words out of her sentence."  I answer, "No thank you."  I grab the train down the other line and get out at the gym.  After a workout, I am on the trail to work.  I go under the underpass where, today, the bedroll has someone sleeping on it around noon.  When I come back this way some seven hours later, there are four guys sitting here listening to a radio.

     CAOITALISM IS A FAILURE!  It creates overpopulation, slavery, and starvation.  I have escaped politics.  ...introduction of technology to non-technological nations, colonial nations are directed to produce products desired by the West.  They are trained as consumers of Western material artifacts.  The Culture is extinct!  The last sentry at the gate has pressed the muzzle to his forehead and pulled the trigger!  POLITICS ARE AS DEAD AS THE CULTURE they supported!  Politics are theories regarding the speculated laws of power...  - Kornbluth

     Monday, when I get to work, I discover that  another one of our stores is closing.  This particular store has a combination AM/FM radio, audio cassette dual deck, and CD player.  Something you can't find anyplace anymore.  I realize that I must save it lest it be tossed away.  I call the store to get an OK for me to come and pick it up.  I decide to attempt the transport by bicycle.  I have my largest bag with a strap along with me, not knowing if it will be large enough.  I leave the house, breakfast be damned.  I head to the train which takes me to the end of this particular line, one final time.  I used to come here on my way to any one of three different stores.  I've already made my last trip to two of them.  This is my last trip to the third.  I elect to take my bike on the bus.  By bike from here or by bus, either way it will be the last time.  I've been driving a van to this store and back for a decade.  It's only during the past couple of years that I have been biking the trail along the C470 business loop highway, or riding the bus through past the manicured lawns described in last's month's post.  Only in the past two years have I explored the shopping centers surrounding this store, an adventure in itself.
     I arrive on the corner and run into the bank to deposit my paycheck.  Then it's onto the store to pick up the radio.  I have a couple of bags which fit over my shoulders.  The speakers come off, and I remove the left one to place into a smaller bag.  The rest goes into the big duffel.  Then it's over my shoulders and once more onto the bike lane along the parkway.  Our late seamstress, under the previous owner, worked at this store.  Her passing precipitated the sale of the company, and two and a half years later it prepares to change hands yet again.  She used her decades of experience to do the alterations for the previous owner's 19 locations, right up until cancer prevented her from doing so.  I wonder if this is her radio?  I will soon and unexpectedly find out.  All I need do is follow this boulevard to work.  The bags hang comfortably.  I can't believe that this is working.  I try to put anything I don't want to bounce around on a bag I wear.  Milkshakes and martinis are good for the bike rack.  The road will shake those up.  I stop at an Applebees before proceeding..  I ride up this boulevard for the first time in a good decade, and I probably will never come this way again.  Past the road which, just down the street, will take you to the plant I worked at for ten years.  Which will be evacuated at the end of August.  On this corner is Arapahoe High School, where one winter I watched some students have a snowball fight. as I waited for a bus   Every time I came this way in a van I would see the students crossing the street for lunch.  This is where one student shot another in one of the metro area's infamous shootings.  I was at work at the plant that day.  I  haven't worked at the plant in two and a half years and I never will again.  I am a kind of travelling anachronism.  I'm on a bicycle, carrying an audio cassette and CD player, yesterday's technology moving along old memories.  I get to my own shopping center at 12:30 and I am still hungry.  I guess I just ate breakfast, and I will have lunch at a seafood place before work.  And after that, I roll into work with the radio safe and sound.  Unbelievable.  My last stop is in a yogurt place, where the first person I see is someone who used to work for the previous owner, at the store from which I just came.  She worked together with the seamstress.  She now works at a clothing store here in the center.  I let her know that her old store is closing, that I have the radio.  I ask her if it belonged to the seamstress.  She says it did.  I ask if she would be okay with my having it, and she assure me she would.  This entire adventure has been like some kind of reclamation, repurposing of a past which has little to no meaning save a very few of us who carry it with us.
     On my ride home there is someone else now stopped on the same bridge where the other guy was photographing the paddle boarders in the river.  This guy is doing the same tonight.  At the other end of the bridge, a couple of guys come along.  No shirts and swimsuits, they are each carrying a big black inner tube.  They walk as if they are surfers with boards.  The following day I am off to pick up a prescription, work out, and hit the water park before work.  At the pool today is a microbus from Smiling Faces Academy.  Some eight hours later I am across the street from work and headed to the trailhead.  It's raining and I'm in a poncho.  Along this residential street comes a guy on a bike in a T-shirt.  he is turning slow circles on the width of the street.  At least he has a helmet on incase he slips and cracks his skull on the wet pavement.  I'm through the neighborhood and onto the trail.  Under the bridge with the bedroll, there is an old guy on the ground, another guy sitting down, and a young guy walking around.  I'm down this trail and onto another.  Along an industrial stretch of this trail, someone has pitched a tent.  Not between the trees and the river, hidden along the bank, but on the grass next to a road in plain view.  I get home around 8:30 PM.  I watch a guy walking from the back of my parking lot, where there is no exit of entrance.  He doesn't look like he lives here, and he carries something in a brown paper bag.  He takes it to the parking lot of the apartments across the street and stands off on the stones with another guy.

     ...we judge all politics and all public speech and ideology by...the...anger...therein.  All present political parties propose violence to resolve our confusions...  - Kornbluth

     Thursday.  I didn't get to sleep last night until late and woke up late.  No time to swim.  I'm out on the trail and headed past someone asleep on the grass in the shade of a tree.  Next to him is a bike with a trailer on the back, loaded with crap.  I head for the train station, where there is another guy on a bike and a child-carrier hooked up to the back, loaded with crap.  This guy has the homeless skin and hair thing going on, together with a short sleeved buttoned down shirt with a bright blue flame pattern.  He's talking to someone on a bench, and for longer than it takes to ask for change.   On the train platform, in the shade of a roof are three street guys.  The youngest appears in his twenties, in pants roughly scissored off at the knees.  On the other end is a guy perhaps in his thirties.  the middle guy appears the most weathered.  he has a lit cigarette and his jaw appears to spasm in tiny motions, as if he is silently stuttering.  A fourth street guy comes along.  He almost looks like a kid who disappears in his loose-fitting long-sleeved shirt and loose jeans.  The jaw guy is suddenly tapping his lighter hard against the bricks he's leaning against.  When my train comes, he get on with me and without the other three.  He takes a seat and talks to himself as he loudly taps his lighter against his hand.  I notice that he's in a T-shirt with a silhouette of a bicycle on the side.  He gets out at the next stop.  On the back of his shirt, it reads, "Ride more, eat hamburgers."  I get out at the stop after this one, and ride down the street toward the trailhead.  It's a street with industrial warehouses.  Yesterday and today, I see who I believe are secretaries who work in these buildings.  They're on the sidewalk, perhaps out for an early lunch.
     Friday.  4:30 AM.  I'm on my way to work a full day at another store, but first I make a stop at an all night diner.  Just before I got here, I passed a young guy on the sidewalk across the street.  In the dark, he yells at me, "Hey bro, got any change?"  I suppose any passerby will do.  At the diner I am sitting in front of a pair of twenty-something couples.  They are loud, and talking about taking mushrooms, and about Mexico.  One of the guys has shoulder-length hair and a European accent.  He uses the F-word.  The girl next to him is laughing non-stop and is putting on an English accent.  She has hair so dark that I wonder if it's dyed, and a lot of makeup on her eyes.  Young hipsters at an all-night diner.  And then there's me, with five or six hours of sleep.  laughing girl says, "Yeah, we're supposed to be in Miami." This diner is nowhere near the airport.  Whenever I come here, I think about a story I read online, was it this year or last?  A woman stepped out of a cab here and was immediately kidnapped by meth users who also were holding other women.  An employee comes along to dutifully replace silverware and sweep under the tables.  He appears as if he may be originally from Mexico.  The guy in the other couple at the table quotes the movie Dumb and Dumber.  The hair guy mentions, "If you have money in Mexico you can live the best life ever."  He tells the others that he is from California by way of Mexico, and he has family in Spain.  He's interested in locating an "after party.  let's go to the mountains and have some beer."  How European.  This morning before I left, I turned on the TV to see a preacher and his wife soliciting donations for clean drinking water for residents of Mexican villages.  "Use your credit card as a 'miracle card,'" the preacher says.  I've seen video footage from decades ago of this guy on stage with former President Regan, decrying homosexuals.  It sounds odd now, 'decry what?'  I hear the hair guy tell the other guy that he sounds like Tom Sawyer.  If that's true, then hair guy's date sounds like Kate Middleton.  I finish my food, pay the bill, and exit the joint.  I see the two couples through a window, which has a sign next to it inside which reads, "do not raise blinds."  The hair guy is kissing his date's neck as the waitress looks on.  The scene is like a Mark Tansy painting.
     For a guy with only five or six hours' sleep I feel pretty good, especially after eating something.  We will see how I feel after a 12-hour day.  I hit the train station as the dawn creeps up.  On the platform are train and bus operators waiting to be transported to their respective routes.  one of them watches me write these words in a notebook.  "I didn't think anyone used pen and paper anymore," he tells me.  My train arrives.  The driver gets out and greets the other operators.  The train gets going and we climb the track elevated over a boulevard.  In the distance, I see the sign for the place where I just ate.  I see it again reflected in the window of a passing building.  On the ride to the end of the line, we stop at stations along the way, some of which I have been to during the past decade.  I disembarked at them, on the way to stores which are no longer open.  At 7:15 PM, I am back on the same train, sitting and waiting to embark back to my own train station.  I remember being here thirteen and a half hours ago, before the sun was up.  Tomorrow morning I expect to have had more sleep, and I will be at a store which is closer to home.  And I won't have to be at work until an hour later than today.  Regardless, I will turn around and do this all over again.  The train ride is about a half an hour.  I get out and ride past the diner I was in fifteen and a half hours ago.  Sometime around 8 PM, I am back in a neighborhood just across the boulevard from my own.  I watch as a couple of young skinny guys ride past on what appear to be ten speeds.  Both have "capes" tied around their necks.  One has an American flag.  The other guy, with a man bun, has a dark grey shawl.  They both go rolling down the street after dinner.  Another block along, and a drunk in a cowboy shirt is making his way slowly through the crosswalk.  On the other side, he steps off the curb and suspects he may have made a mistake.  Headed up a street toward my own, a kid asks me, "Excuse me, ca I race you?"  I'm too tired tonight, but I like that kid.
     Saturday.  The end of the week I have been taking the bus to work.  It's a break from the bike trail.  If I didn't have laundry to do after work I would take the bike and perhaps go swimming after work.  I am out of the house at a quarter to six AM.  I run into the gas station for a diet soda and meat, both on my diet.  I pass the bus stop across the street from where I live.  The one guy who appears as if he is on his way to a job is a grey-haired guy in an apron, standing at the stop.  There are a couple of guys on the bench in the shelter, one laying down.  It's the guy standing off to the side, leaning on a liquor store fence, a grey-haired guy who looks familiar; he holds himself as a panhandler.  He appears to be sizing up the people around him, and his red nylon fleece almost looks like a disguise.  Three more blocks along is an intersection with four bus stops, a pair for each direction of one route and a pair each direction for another route.  Sitting at one stop is a woman who says, "Hi," to me.  In this neighborhood, this is unusual.  Perhap she is simply happy to see someone who appears as if they speak English.  At the stop across the street is another woman.  This one ran to the stop as if she spotted a bus coming.  No bus appears as she moves anxiously on the spot where she stands.  When a car turns the corner, it appears as if she is trying to thumb a ride.  My own bus arrives and whisks me away.  We come to a bridge over the river, and I see either steam or smoke rising from the bank.  I wonder if it's a homeless campfire.  WE arrive at the station, and on the train platform I see a little grey haired guy leaning on a cane, smoking a vape.  He's in black pants and a black T-shirt with classic cars on the back.  Around his shoulder is a bag with a single strap. The bag hangs below his butt.

     ...a queer rapper who identifies as bisexual, uses the volatile nature of hip hop to create a unique, raw form of self-expression...  "...my parents; they'd always take my sister and I...to Disneyland.  I found out later that my parents were regularly dropping acid when they were on those trips..."  ...Disneyland also represents a point in his life when he was unable to be fully himself...  "I started to develop a dependency on ecstasy...when I was 14 or 15...  When my mom took us to Disneyland...my serotonin levels [were] totally out of whack, [I was] just depressed and semi-suicidal and craving ecstasy.  I never wanted...to...do 'Drag Queen Rap' or anything.  "...Young Thug...wore a several thousand f*cking dollar dress on the cover of the best rap album of last year..."  - Outfront, 7/5/2017

     ...an enlarged family unit will emerge for many citizens...as the Zen Buddhist anarchist anthropologist, Gary Snyder observed, with matrilineal descent as courtesy to those saddhana or hold path is sexual liberation and teaching of dharma...  ...with theory on acceptable community sacrament.  I am...proposing official blessing for these breakthroughs of community spirit.  Among the young we find a new breed of White Indians...dancing Nigerian Yoruba dances and entering trance states to the electric vibrations of the Beatles, who have borrowed shamanism...  We find communal religious use of ganja...sacred to Mahadeva (Great Lord) Shiva.  ...someone will have Mantra Rock over the airwaves.  - Kornbluth

     ...the landlords, the rich peasants...fled with the intention of returning to take revenge...when the great offensive, being prepared...with American support [to turn] the tide of history, [crush] the Liberated Areas, and put the traditional rulers back in power.  With all the manpower of South, Central, and West China...with thousands of American officers...with all the surplus weapons of the Pacific War...and...the arsenals of America pouring in new arms all the time, the gentry felt confident...  Should all these fail, America still had...the atomic bomb?  If they could not hold China, then they could destroy her.  - Hinton

     Sunday.  What do you do when you only get six hours of sleep?  Well...  After the grocery shopping, I turn around and ride downtown to see a movie.  I had to go some distance crosstown on another one of this month's hot days.  The theatre was featuring an annual GLBTQ film festival and it was something of a casual afternoon gala.  I got my ticket and concessions and went to the men's room, where I took my beverage cup and filled it with cold water.  Which I proceeded to pour over my neck and head over the sink.  Once I figured how the handle for the water worked.  This is not a blog about health.  It's about shopping carts piled high with homeless belongings. parked in some weeds.  But I  am pursuing travel by bike, not simply because I don't own a car., but it's a part of my stumbling into the healthcare system.  And rather than a story of some kind of paperwork nightmare, it's a story of sweat running down my neck and the sights along the way.  I made the movie with no time to spare.  After the movie, I grab some food and realize that a swimming pool is on the way home, which I am able to hit.  I decide that I am less interested in the Denver County Fair, which is more like a county fair cult with it's collection of hardware company vendors and manufactured craft authenticity.  It's a long way to go for a warehouse kind of experience.  Sorry Denver County Fair.  Maybe next year.  I think that's fair...
     Overnight I do get some sleep, and I am out of the house early.  At the gym is a guy who appears as if he has been burned on much of his body.  His hands look as if the fingers are gone up to the first joint of every finger.  The two middle fingers appear fused together.  After my workout, I am at the waterpark as the gate opens.  Sitting outside the gate, under a shady table, is a huge guy with Downs Syndrome.  He is with a caretaker, and he is making loud noises as if he is afraid., covering his face with his hands.  Here on this morning, the kids with the coordinated shirts have yellow ones with the name of their summer camp.  Over by the lockers, a mom comes in and asks her kids, "I love these tiny lockers.  Who can fit anything into these lockers?"  The next mom comes along and tells her kids, "I have to pee.  Who has to pee?"  I head for the pool, where I hear one guy tell his wife he can't swim.  Another young couple stands with their kid as he goes on the waterslide.  The guy has a chiseled body and tattoos covering his chest and arms.  I swim for almost an hour and am heading back to the lockers.  I see the Down Syndrome guy headed for the water.  He has a huge stomach and walks with his legs spread as wide apart as they can go.  His arms are out from his sides as he moves.  He appears almost as some kind of creature with a desire for the swimming pool.  His suit is falling down, almost completely revealing his butt.  I wonder what he has been doing for the past hour, and does he swim?  I exit the park past a dad coming in.  He and his son are hauling a heavy cooler.  A guy comes walking up, talking into a telephone mic I can't see.  He's in too much of a hurry to take the sidewalk all the way around to the employee entrance. He steps up a low concrete wall and treks across the landscaped stones.  His own gait communicates that he's a waterpark, parks and recreation head honcho.  A few minutes, a couple of teenaged employees come along and do the same thing.  I'm securing my bag to my bike as a mom standing nearby drops her phone.  Her young daughter says, "You're not supposed to drop your phone mom."  Minutes later, Head Honcho comes outside, is in his truck, and on his way.  On my way out I see a shady spot inside the park with tables and umbrellas.  The guy with Down Syndrome and his caretaker are sitting there.  The guy is now making sorrowful noises.
     After work, I am headed for the trail.  A guy on a reclining bike comes off the trail and turns to prepare to get back on.  He's in some kind of space age sweatpants and long sleeved Lycra shirt.  It's a hot evening after a hot day and I elect to ride without my shirt.  I pass him and a woman on the trail.  She's the first person I remember seeing walking the trail with a walker.  She has a huge purse on the seat of the walker.  Perhaps the walker is for her purse?  Across a bridge or two and the guy on the reclining bike coasts past me in his Formula 1 cycling suit.  The guy usually sitting under a bridge is in the weeds next to the road.   I pass a guy who looks like a granddad-aged guy, slowly stepping along in a black Lycra tank top.  Down this trail and onto the next.  A third person is stopped in my lane on the same bridge, watching the paddle boarders in the river.  Someone should be charging admission to this bridge.  Many cyclists on ten speeds and wearing racing shirts are pumping along.  Up the trail and across another bridge, a young dad has his child in a stroller with a damaged left wheel.  He's pushing it while he's on a skateboard.  I don't know, can you be young and old at the same time?  Down the trail, on the street, and I am on my own corner.  I hear an ambulance coming from down my street.  It comes along with a police car ahead of it and two more behind it, all with their lights on. 
     The following day, I have the day off.  I head downtown to have lunch wit the sister.  On my way to do a bit of shopping for a new swim suit, I am on the pedestrian mall.  An elderly oriental woman approaches me to tell me, essentially, that what I am wearing is uni-sexual.  Okay.  I head over to a sporting goods store and purchase my suit, n impending birthday present from a relative.  From there I head back to the major transit hub to purchase more discounted coupons with which to ride the train.  Inside, I hold the elevator for a guy who I think is coming inside.  he pauses at the door and asks me if I "know how a Cub Scout becomes a Boy Scout?  He eats his first Brownie."  When he approves of my smile, he tells me that he tried that joke on "the guys upstairs [at the entrance], and they just stared at me."  The door closes without him.  Not everyone upstairs has anything going on upstairs.  Some of the guys who hang out at the entrance, I believe, have mental health issues "in the membrane.  Insane in the brain."  I take the train headed to my side of town and the pool with a twisty slide.  Another guy follows me on with his own bike, and a cap which reads "Navy Seals."  He sits down and, before the train gets going a third guy this one younger with dreadlocks and a goatee, opens the door to see both of us already at this end with bikes.  A pudgy guy in khakis and a dress shirt holds the door of another train car for him.  The Navy Seal dude starts laughing.  "I guess he didn't want to bring his bike on here," he says.  he goes on to say that his backpack is full of prescription drugs, and he hasn't had a drink in about four months.  "I could sure use one now," he tells me.  He must have been with Seal Team 0.  I hop out at my stop.  On the corner down from the platform are a couple of young guys who look exactly the same.  Caucasian, hair from their caps down their backs, and knee-length shorts.  In the hand of each is a disk.  These are frisbee golf players I immediately realize, without ever actually seeing one.  I haven't heard of the sport for some three decades.  I get to the pool.  It's closed for another 35 minutes because of a party.  Then thunder arrives a few minutes later and they must close for another half hour.  Time for me to pick up some overdue photos and attempt to swim at a pool closer to home.  It's a pool where an empty vehicle was found fucking submerged in the lake.  That's one way to keep the repo man guessing, and wash your car at the same time.  I call first, and they say they may open in twenty minutes.  Twenty minutes later, I show up.  They have decided to shut down for the day.  I have the hardest time swimming at the pool closest to where I live.  Perhaps that's why I have season passes to Denver County public pools, Englewood County's water park, and an amusement park downtown with a water park.  I decide to swing by my girlfriend's house to see if she is home.  No one is there but her daughter's dog, which barks at me until I leave.  Someone driving a grade school kid goes past, and the kid yells at me through the window, "Teddy Boy!"  Wow.  This kid was somehow in Liverpool fifty years ago.

     Everyone was jawing about what NoNeck and the punk had found, but Rushmore's filters were clogged, and he had retreated to the place where he always slept when he passed this way, wedged into...the ruined overpass.  The trouble was that the hobos, cut off from the network of television and computers that linked the isolated hugger homesteads, lived in a world of rumors and superstitions as primitive as Cro-Magnon man's.  Rushmore hadn't known the punk long enough to trust her...  Crazy...was a Communist or a revolutionary or whatever and claimed the huggers had forfeited their rights by deliberately letting welfare go down the can in a postwar crash, and anyway all wealth came from the earth, which really belonged to the whole human race.  Crazy wanted to organize the hobos...  He was...hiding out from the FBI and he didn't understand hobos for shit.  The last thing a hobo wanted was to get organized.  The whole point of road jocking was freedom.  "...you lazy scarfers  steal everything that's not nailed down.  That's why you're vermin, and every honest person thinks you ought to be hunted down and exterminated like rats."  Mooching a meal was easier with one, and you alone decided when to move, how fast to go and in what direction.  Absolute solitude was absolute freedom.  - "Angel At The Gate," by Russell M. Griffin, OMNI Magazine, 6/1981

     Wednesday.  I am out of the door early to get a workout and a swim in before work.  It's a cloudy morning.  Around 8 AM, I stop for breakfast at a diner on the way.  At a pole on the corner, in front of the diner, is a locked up ten speed.  The tire is off the front wheel, and locked with the rest of the bike.  The tube is missing.  Someone had a flat.  Inside, I'm sitting at a table next to a couple of young guys who mention working at "the kitchen," wherever that is.  They don't look like cooks.  One has long curly hair and a laptop.  They're just in for some coffee.  When they are done they get up, give each other a fist bump, and say, "See you later, Homie."  In another section, someone is using the F word.  "Youthinkyouthinkyouthink NASA's gonna build a fucking satellite?  I'll show you what Japan is doing."  He sounds drunk.  Another guy yells, "You just fucking said! 'What is the escape velocity?'"  "Exactly!  You don't give a shit!  You don't fucking need statistics!  You can just fuck off."  Looking out my window, I can see a guy now carrying the bike and the tire over his shoulder.  I can't see below his waist, but he is moving along as if he is on another bike.
     As I am just down the street from the train, I head there and hop on one for a few stops to the gym.  Coming out of the entrance is a white haired guy with a cane.  His T-shirt reads, "Nice try, heart.  I'm still here."  Indeed.  It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.  The gym sells T-shirts, and on a flat screen in the lobby is an informercial for a "super molecule."  The host of the phony show has a grey goatee and a dark bouffant.  In the lobby is a guy talking to a mom, telling her about a novel about the antichrist.  he tells her that he didn't like The Hobbit that much.  The mom's little girl stands next to her.  The guy says hi to her and the mom asks her if she is shy.  She must not like the antichrist.  I'm sure she would get more out o The Hobbit than he ever will.  I pick up a shirt on my way out.
     This morning the waterpark is host to five different groups of color coordinated kids.  The Wave Warriors, Sheppard of the Hills Summer Camp, Discover Camp, as well as two bus loads from the Poudre School District and a bus from the St. Vrain Valley School District.  The schools sound as if they are well past the metro area, out on the plains or up in the mountains.  I'm in line at the short slide, behind a couple of kids.  "Can you swim?" one asks the other.  "Yes," he replies.  "You're good," the first says.  Hey, you got to be good.  There are camps and schools here with T-shirts of every color there is.  There's even a guy who looks like a parent, who is standing over at the deep end.  he's in a tank top which claims that he is a Lawn Dart Champion.  In an emergency, he can accurately throw the victim a lawn dart.  After a swim and some short slides, I'm down the trail to the trailhead, and make my way to the top of a steep hill.  At the top, coming out to get his mail, is the first ever resident of this neighborhood I've ever seen.  He's a senior who says, "Morning."  He asks, "How do you like...our little hill here?"

     ...a microcosm of the clashing needs and wants of living in an increasingly population-dense Denver.  "...this oasis in the city is going away."  ...desire for affordable housing, open space, more retail and an event center - and...concerns that the neighborhood would change if a buyer builds affordable housing on the campus. One resident also worried about crimes...because of...population density.
     ...Denver Mayor Michael...Hancock said it "cuts me to the core as I witness my friends and family members get priced out of their homes and entire minority neighborhoods struggle just to get by."  ...the state of our city...is not strong for everyone," he said.  ...he finds the pace of development and change "shocking" - even though he has a lot more control over what that looks like than most Denver residents - and he also reiterated his long-held belief that Denver's economic prosperity can be made to extend into every corner of the city.  Hancock promised...major displacement efforts...announced...new department of Transportation and Mobility...also...a Multi-Modal Citizen Advisory Committee...  ...to pay for this.  ...raising the cost to park downtown.  ...creating the city's own transit authority.  Hancock said the city is "pulling on every lever" to create more housing that is affordable...  Hancock also announced a National Western Center Community Investment Fund...and the communities of Globeville, Elyria and Swansea will decide how to spend it, Hancock said. On Denver's role on the national stage  "It's time to stop threatening our cities, stop targeting innocent people, and get to work on real solutions to bring hard-working undocumented people out of church basements, and out of the shadows.  We have marched for women.  We have marched for science.  And every time, we have marched together."  To thunderous applause...  Asked afterward if he was considering running for higher office...
     ...a historically low state unemployment rate of 2.3 percent, the lowest in the nation...  "It used to be that the typical ad you would see for employment was 'help wanted, rock stars.'   Nowadays it's more like 'help wanted: warm bodies.'"
     ...hundreds, maybe thousands, of Coloradans...sell homemade goodies under the auspices of the Cottage Foods Act, a set of guidelines designed to grease the wheels for home cook to sell their wares at farmers markets, community event or even out of their driveways.  "...cottage foods means freedom."  Getting set up in cottage foods isn't difficult...    - Denver Herald-Dispatch, 7/20/2017

     ...one of the staple artists of the once-flourishing River North arts community.  Soon, that neighborhood will be home to a World Trade Center, a light rail stop, and many new apartment complexes.  ...her art is still visible on the streets of RiNo, and the remains of her work can be found in the tubble of the buildings that once housed many galleries but were torn down to make room for Denver's growing population.  One [piece] features a woman wearing an American-flag Hijab...  ...she pulled up a photo of her hijab piece after it was defaced, the words "stop female genital mutilation" scrawled across the image.  [She] seems positive about the fact that her audience is reacting to and interacting with her pieces.  "I think that's part of why I like making art in the streets.  It's a semi-military enterprise but sometimes you interact with people."  The process of pasting..."there is something beautifully low tech about it...it's very liberating..."  ...making her way through RiNo, she passed the location of the future World Trade Center and the new condos that will surround it.  "All of that over there used to be studios; it was where I had my studio."  - Outfront, 7/5/2017

     One hundred square feet...the tiny house movement...building tiny house villages to temporarily house...growing homeless populations.  Denver joined the movement...  ...zoning permit requires that they move...every 180 days, so the houses are on wheels...  The permit also limits the village to a maximum of 20 people.  ...St. Andrews [church] has ambitious plans [for] a Mental Health of Denver facility...  Enthusiasm for the project is lower among St. Andrews neighbors.  There have been numerous complaints from neighbors about some unsavory activities by homeless folks that St. Andrews allows to sleep on its grounds.
     By [council person whose committee approved the Urban Camping Ban], Denver City Council...
     One of the most divisive issues...is gentrification.  ...these neighborhoods tend to be more desirable by affluent whites because of their proximity to downtown.  ...'gentry' meaning privileged class.  Ruth Glass coined the term in the early '60s.  ...these areas need 'public' investments: good roads, sidewalks, parks, etc.  - Capitol Hill Life, 7/2017

     August can be the best month of the year or the...worst, depending on whether you are 35 years old or 10.  ...the waning days of summer...make August bittersweet.  ...a race to squeeze in every ounce of pool time...  Now mom and dad...  After a summer of camps...breathe a sigh of relief.  ...our award-winning Calendar of Events.  ...packed with more than 250 ways for your family to...make the most of August.  - Colorado Parent, 8/2017

     Thursday.  This morning's coordinated child's T-shirt colors here at the waterpark are red and blue.  The blue ones are for Mead Summer Camp.  The red ones have on the front..."Best Summer Camp."  In case you were wondering, now you know who the best is.  There are also a couple of buses from the Boulder Valley School District, which makes me feel better because I know where Boulder is.  Friday.  Ride home after work.  I am approaching the bridge on the trail where riders stop in my lane to watch the paddle boarders on the river.  Before I get to the bridge, there is already a rider stopped in my lane, watching them.  After a full shift tomorrow and the following two days off, I'm out of this month.

June 2017, "...so breakfast seems like a no-brainer," The Empire Strikes the Bike Trail, and Bison Buddy Summer Camp

     Upon this first day of the month, I awake to find that I have the day off.  I decide to put it to good use.  I woke up in the middle of the night and I don't remember going back to sleep before getting up for a couple hours and then dozing off again.  It's been some time since I slept until 7:30 AM.  I am on my way to the bank before the gym.  I'm trucking down the old sidewalk when I spot a parked hatchback in a secluded corner of the supermarket parking lot.  It's not a clunker, it appears to be new.  The doors and hatch are open.  A man stands next to it drinking from a plastic bottle.  A bulldog on a leash lay on the ground.  Behind the dog is a woman with a big unzipped suitcase.  Clothes surround her on the ground.  After I deposit my paycheck I am in the bus shelter with a guy having a smoke.  He's wearing a U.S. Army hat with a brim and digital camouflage.  On his lap is a Chihuahua in a tiny service dog outfit.  The bus arrives to scoop us up.  Onboard is a young blonde in horn rimmed glasses and a black cutoff tank top.  She almost appears as a celebrity attempting to hide in plain clothes.  She has a dog on a leash.  After the gym I'm at the stop for a bus home.  Along comes a young punker couple.  They are adorable.  The girl has a cutoff top the color of my own neon yellow shirt.  She's in skinny black jeans rolled above the ankles and black high tops.  Her hair is in two tiny tails on top of her head.  And she's got the euro specs.  She looks like a Dan Clowes character, this geriatric church-going, truck driving neighborhood's intellectual.  Her boyfriend would look scary if all I knew of the world were these fenced in blocks.  He's in black, head to toe, shirt with sleeves and bottom torn off, and a head full of stubble.  The same bus comes along to whisk us back to my boulevard.  Along the way, we pass a one-eyed SUV with it's right front corner and headlamp gone, either a victim or perpetrator of street racing.  Later on I head over to the Mexican place, across the street from where I live, for dinner.  At a table are perhaps five Caucasians and a Latino.  The guys are in suits and laminated badges on straps.  The women are dressed for the office.  Their friend brought them to my side of town?  'Cause there ain't no office buildings between here and downtown.  They are drinking the largest after work mixed drinks I've ever seen.  They get up to put on suit jackets and head out.  Shortly thereafter, a pair of Mexican couples do the same.  A senora pauses to look at the size of their drinks on the table.  The other couple laughs.
     The next day is my younger brother's birthday.  Out on the trail to work, past someone's comforter hanging over a railing on a bridge, the colorful spandex cyclists are out in force.  I pass a line of twenty riding together, and another line of six go past me.  "Passing...a group of us," someone says.  A little way along is a group of homeless, all sitting at a stone picnic bench next to a frontier-themed playground along the river.  On the other side of the trail, on a gravel shoulder, are three shopping carts.  One is empty.  The other two are piled as high as myself standing up with an assortment of stuff.  On top of one is a freaking sewing machine.  Two wiry guys come slowly over to pull them down the trail.  Another three homeless are seated at the table with bikes and bike trailers.  I ride to a waterpark where I grab a swim before I arrive at work.  Shortly thereafter the sky opens up and dumps some rain.  Six hours later I am on my way home.  As the setting sun casts long shadows across the parks, and the air has turned chilly, there are no more lines of brightly colored cyclists in artificial fibers.  I pas but one lonely guy on a bike.  He's in a brown hoodie.  His face is covered halfway between stubble and a full beard.  A cigarette dangles from a corner of his mouth.  I pass the place where I had a swim before the downpour.  A bell at the top of a crow's nest rings.  Pirate's Cove the place is called.  They may not have season tickets there (they are sold only at some recreation center down the road [?]) but they have a bell, and a row of giant cannonballs at the entrance.  No doubt to inspire swimmers to jump off the diving board.  (Get it?  Cannonball...)  I decide to take the train home; earlier to bed and hopefully more sleep to come back this way tomorrow.
     The train whips me closer to home.  Just out of the station, I'm rolling down a brand new sidewalk next to a fenced off and big empty field.  There is a weirdo couple standing alone in the middle of the sidewalk, next to a busy avenue.  The woman is in a blouse with a skull print design, and has mirrored teardrop shades.  She appears to be anticipating dancing to music from the guy, who is holding an acoustic guitar in both hands, fingers on the strings.  She kind of half spins around.  He's in some kind of matching grey outfit and hat.  As I pass them, I never hear any sound from the guitar.  They proceed down the sidewalk, the guy still holding the guitar as if he's playing.  The pair stops again at one point, as if anticipation of beginning a performance, before going to the corner and quickly moving through the crosswalk.  No doubt they are headed back to their time machine, to return to San Francisco of just about fifty years ago.  I hope they don't run into Inspector Callahan.  I get across a highway and am walking my bike up a steep hill, the one which I'm sure ate the brakes on my other bike those days I came down this way.  The hill is full of tiny post-WW II bungalows.  In one gravel driveway is an SUV parked near the street.  There is a sign on each back window.  These may be folks who have trouble with English.  Instead of putting up signs which read "for sale," they put up ones which read "yard sale."  Or it could be that they couldn't find "for sale" signs, but I suspect that this is unlikely.  The signs list the vehicle for sale at a mere $400.  It looks in much too good of shape to let it go for that.  Then again, I'm no mechanic...

     The...status of these "cities" as sovereign.  I say take away their mayors, city councils and home rules, and let Denver spread its wings and become the mighty empire it should be...annexing these faux cities.  Then...podunks like San Diego and San Antonio will no longer be considered "bigger" than our great metropolis.
     ...crawl to the speed of the ever-present police cars.  Life in the slow lane is what the government wants, even if it keeps the world away.
     As Denver's population swells...residents...worry about...affordable housing...basic aesthetics subsumed...  ...local historian...will address...'Denver's energy economy and...How does Denver's sports fixation affect its future?'   - Westword, 6/1-7/2017

     ...came to the U.S. on a tourist visa in 1996, fleeing...Islamic extremists in Indonesia.  A Lutheran who had been in Christian student movements in his native country.  ...also a member of a persecuted tribe...his family who stayed behind was threatened.  "...a known Christian leader...returning from the United States...could lead to much more than harassment."  ...his request for asylum was eventually rejected, but he was able to stay in the U.S. with his family...until last week.  ...in...less than two days -  they deported him from Colorado...  - Aurora Sentinel, 6/1 - 6/7/2017

     ...as tightly strung as a piano wire...in consequence of the Mau Mau rebellion which has completely dislocated the normal life of the colony.  Mau Mau means murder among other things, and I have never met people so trigger happy as in Kenya.  ...ladies...in diaphanous evening dress, carried revolvers in their gold mesh bags...  A youth...said with...pride that he had shot and killed five Africans...and hoped that there would be more to come.  The struggle for power...a coalition between government and the moderate white settlers...and...a plural society...on the other...white supremacy, no matter what the cost.  Whole provinces of Africa were decimated to provide eunuchs for Turkish harems, or levies for Moslem armies all the way from Baghdad to Bengal.  ...commercial exploitation "preceded" political acquisition.  White settlement in Kenya began with...  Hugh Cholmondeley, third Baron Delamere...who dominated the country singlehanded for almost thirty years.  [His story is told in] Elspeth Huxley's White Man's Country.  One must not forget how astonishingly new most of Africa is.  Nairobi is a chic little city...  Your doctor is a Pole, your manicurist an Italian, your tailor a Hungarian.  It has...smart office buildings, night clubs of European genre, day clubs rigidly...colonial...  This is not Benghazi or Addis Ababa by a million miles.  Nairobi was, and is, the focus of an international smart set...  ...it attracted the corrupt rich...  ...seething forces were transforming Kenya minute by minute...to an arena choked with blood and hate.  - Gunther

     The day after is another sovereign Saturday,  I keep doing Sunday's chores on my days off, such as going to the gym twice a freaking week, now laundry I'm doing during the week.  Tonight I will go grocery shopping, all because this Sunday the plumber is coming.  And I must pick up my bike which is finished being tuned up.  The shop called to let me know that the cost will be closer to $300 because I need new bearings somewhere and a shifter cable is fraying.  And I want to go to an outdoor festival downtown.  And there is a library book sale in another county.  As I get older, my life I hardly slowing down.  Even with a schedule of two days off during the week and usually working afternoon shifts.  Then again, I'm no mechanic...  I'm out on the trail around 6 AM, later than I like to be on a Saturday.  It's an hour and a half ride each way.  With the tune up of my primary bike, I'm realizing that the other bikes I rode surely wore down just the same way.  They were all much less expensive ones, and rather than spending money on a tune up, I would end up salvaging them for parts.  Now I am spending money to have every part on my current bike taken off and cleaned, for close to the cost of the bike itself.  I suppose this means it's not that much better than the others.  To quote Woody Allen, it's amazing how relative it all is.
     The afternoons and evenings on this trail abuzz with a parade of humanity.  With the rising sun this morning, it's just me out here.  Down the first trail, I notice a flat tree stump with a collection of cairns made of small stones from the river.  I've seen cairns made with larger rocks on hiking trails, where there is no other distinguishing  features marking the trail.  I don't know what this thing is.  I head off the trail and to the train, which I feel like taking today.  I have an 18-minute wait.  A middle-aged woman wanders onto the platform.  When she gets to my end, she points at me and asks, "You don't happen to smoke by any chance, do you?"  I give her the bad news, and she wanders back the way she came.  She sure is up early on a Saturday, jonesin' for a smoke.  The train comes along and whips me a short distance, where I take a road down to pick up the trail.  I ride it to the end, where a woman is walking her dog.  They are both watching a shiny blue star-shaped balloon, slowly rising just above their heads.  It has no string.  I ask and she says it isn't hers.  "It's just doing its thing," she says.

     ...one school year with a black teacher can be so beneficial for black students.  Make Your Mark got nearly two dozen teachers of color "in the door" for the 2016-2017 school year.  ...it's a start.  ...says Mayor Michael Hancock...  "If we are going to build a world-class education system...we must have teachers who...are culturally responsive."  "We want more high-performing seats..." says...executive director of the Office of Children's Affairs...  Make Your Mark could best be described as a collective.  "...collaboration...between district and charter schools."  "When I spelled my name on the board, I threw the accent mark over the e, and all the students lit up.  That last name went a long way in developing the culture in my classroom.  People outside of Colorado don't necessarily think of Denver as a community with a large population of...color."  ...building a brand that showcased Denver as a place where people of color can have rich, full lives.  ...to recruit at national events such as the Alumni of Color Conference at Harvard.  "..to capitalize off existing national efforts..."  ...an amped-up digital marketing campaign...  ...and..."a lot of myth-busting.  People don't expect that we have an African-American mayor.  ...are there salons for me?  ...churches and spiritual communities...?"  ...a city where low teacher wages are exacerbated by a high cost of living...  "We can't just say 'diversity.'  We need to have tangible practices."  - Westword, 6/1-7/2017

          Require every school to create an Equity Plan, "designed to strengthen relationships between African-Americans and schools,"...  Ensure curriculum is culturally responsive ...  The recommendations...have...not..."been evaluated for legal compliance"...  ...required new teachers to take a...three-hour course on culturally responsive teaching...  - Denver Herald-Dispatch, 6/8/2017

     After the Orlando nightclub shooting last June, a gang of bikers rode its motorcycles from a local bar to the parking lot of the Metro North Denver Islamic Center in Northglenn.  Women in the group flashed their breasts.  ...most of the mosque's members...came to the U.S. in the 1990s to escape the Bosnian genocide.  Bosnian Serb forces persecuted and killed some 80,000 Bosnian Muslims.  - Denver Herald-Dispatch, 6/1/2017

     ...Moslem women...are...prisoners or drones...languid, pudding-shaped...  - Gunther

     I had to filter everything I did and said ultimately to make them comfortable...  ...I had worn a façade all my life.  ...I always had to be perfect and wear a smile.  My dad was like, "I have nothing to say to you right now," and he got up and walked out.  They compared me to murderers and pedophiles...  ...the relationship continued to erode from there.  There passive-aggressive behavior...  When I got married, they realized I wasn't going to change.  ...a few months after that we cut ties completely...  - Out Front Magazine, 5/17/2017

     Sunday.  I got a call yesterday that my primary bicycle is ready to pick up.  After grocery shopping, I take a couple of buses to the shop to pick it up.  Unbeknownst to myself, I'm there a half hour before they open.  I head up the street to find a place to get something to drink, with which to wash down my day's vitamins.  There on a corner is a café.  The outside says 1970s urban decay, but to step inside is to rush back to the present.  I'm so used to eating in my own neighborhood, which is only a short city block away across the tracks.  This place is full of Caucasians, and all their...culture.  I'm sitting next to a table with a young couple, dressed as perhaps 'business casual.'  In fact, every table looks as if it has a young couple like this.  It's a business casual flash mob.  The guy has red, white, and blue socks which catch my eye.  Not from the U.S. flag, but more like from a Pepsi can.  I hear him tell the lady, "Oh yeah, I remember I have a free haircut."

     ...a disabled peddler hawking snacks and beverages outside the ballpark,,,  Over Memorial Day weekend, police issued seventeen citations to peddlers at Coors Field...described by city officials as part of an ongoing effort to improve the safety and security of..."soft targets" for terrorism...  ...their wheeled devices were deemed uncompliant, they weren't moving around enough...  "...they just kept saying, 'Tell it to the judge.'  When we move around, that's when we get in people's way."  Department of Excise and Licenses Public Affairs Director...notes that...  "The whole point of a peddler's license is they have to be moving.  The law is pretty clear about that."  ...the police...  "They are on heightened alert.  There's no question about that.  They are looking at taking appropriate action toward these soft targets."  - Westword, 6/8-14/2017

     ...as white settlement spread, more and more Africans became displaced.  ...it became impossible for [natives] to support life on the amount of land they had.  ...four hundred to  square mile...  Their reserves became overcrowded to suffocation.  A kind of plantation system developed.  They...were a...tenant farmer class.  ...as a result of the Mau Mau crisis it blew up.  ...even before the Mau Mau outbreak.  ...thousands of Kikuyus there led a kind of double life...a half life - with their roots still on the land...  Because of lack of housing and intolerable social conditions in Nairobi most left their wives and children [for] their jobs in the town.  ...and so became a kind of floating semi-urbanized black proletariat in a white city,  This has...produced...a "spiritual convulsion"...  Thousands upon thousands of families were broken up.  The British fear...educated Africans [with] an educated Indian leadership...  ...Africans have traditionally "known their place" and are less foreign.  ...substantial white settler population...system is...unworkable...  The countries getting along best in Africa today do not permit large-scale white settlement at all, even if...run by whites.  Most white settlers...are frontiersmen, and resemble closely American homesteaders...  ...where an African was just a damned nigger and an Indian a wog.  ....they wanted "Africa" - its open spaces...  They dislike...a governor who has no fixed residence in the country...an by a parliament in [England.]  Two policemen steadily made their rounds...but...nobody knew whether they were to be seriously trusted or not.  At dusk...the assembled company pulled out their revolvers and propped them next to their cups of tea.  The guns, cocked, were actually laid out on the table.  ...Europeans...were murdered by their own servants of by Africans in whom they had complete trust...knifing them...in a bath...  After dinner, a puppy nibbled at a lady's handbag, and she shrieked; the loaded gun inside might go off.  [The] Leader of the European Elected Members on the Kenya Legislative Council...does not think it will ever be possible for Kenya to have an exclusively African government.  Every schoolboy knows the old maps, showing British areas in a nice rich pink all the way from Egypt to the Cape.  ...Indirect Rule...transformed...Africans...from savages to civil servants.  It also helped to preserve African institutions...  The white settlers...will never tolerate a free African electorate...  ...the Capricorn Society..."rejects both white colonialism and African nationalism in favor of...western culture and the Christian religion [as] dominant.  The organization has almost mystical fervor...  - Gunther

     It's Saturday.  I'm working at the shopping center with the pancake place which has the powder blue coffee mugs with a gold crest on the side.  Shortly after 7 AM, there is a customer at the register.  He tells a waitress, "I'm gonna get a little crazy."  He orders a $100 gift card from the restaurant.  He has a red crew cut and a T-shirt for a diner somewhere.  He's in khaki shorts with New Balance running shoes.  And New Balance socks, the short kind.  An elderly couple comes in.  A Mexican waiter recognizes them and comes over.  The husband and waiter embrace, and the husband asks him about his daughter.  On the trail home I pass a guy with a collapsible shopping cart full of stuff.  I ride to the train and get on board.  A couple of stations along, I can see on the platform a guy in a wicker sun hat tied with string under his chin.  He's hauling his own cart full of stuff, with a dolly on top.  The following day, I am headed to the pool in the afternoon, down the sidewalk of a busy residential street.  Walking slowly on the shoulder, in the street, on the other side are three people.  One of them is leaning on another collapsible shopping cart as he pushes it along.  Earlier, in the morning, I'm at the stop for the bus to the supermarket.  Around the new bench is a still life arrangement of the bumper from a vehicle, a whisky bottle, and a milkshake spilling from an overturned cup.  I bend over to snap a photo of this arrangement when I hear a voice behind me.  "Loose somethin'?"  I turn around to see a figure who can only have walked out of the 1950s.  He appears as if he could be my age with greased hair, a white T-shirt, jeans and black shoes.  He could be from a prison movie from six decades past, except in his left hand is a big unopened can of beer.  I let him know that I haven't lost anything.  {And what if I had...?)  "Are you sure, you look like you lost something."  What do I look like, one of the squares?  I reassure him and he makes his way back toward the direction he came, first on the sidewalk and then on the shoulder in the street.  As quickly as he materialized, he evaporates with the temporal energies of his tachyon particle device.

     ...we're branching out into suburbia.  I'm really excited and nervous...  There's Hashtag [a restaurant]...  People enjoy breakfast.  They work from home a lot more or have no set hours, so breakfast seems like a no-brainer.  And then there's...my take on comfort food that's a little elevated, with a rock-and-roll vibe.  So it's really understanding the neighborhood.  ...people thought I was nuts, but I sat and watched...and I could see this business clientele that wanted something a little more upscale.  With Mister Tuna [restaurant], it was about doing something fun and edgy in the RiNo neighborhood.  We need to...let the dust settle...  Denver is going crazy.  ...our partners...want us to do more in their buildings all over the U.S., and finding the real estate is half the battle.  ...I can get to any restaurant right now in fifteen minutes.  But that's what growth is all about...  ...Colorado identity...makes up special and unique.  Denver has grown to be very eclectic but very real.  "Top Chef" is here, so you know we're doing something right.  The growth of the city has been really cool; a lot of chefs have more than one restaurant...  I think that's fun for...the city...  Denver - they want that...  - Westword, 6/15-21/2017

     ...cutting-edge social justice music education programs, and governor John Hickenlooper has launched...an initiative...that every kid has access to an instrument and music lessons.  The scene is...exploding with festivals...  ...musicians [are] feeling economic pressures from gentrification.  "Denver had a downtrodden, dark vibe before developers tried to scrub it clean with their twisted dreams of 'urban improvement' and language like 'Aurora on the Rise.'  We all remember when Denver had grit and a mood that meant you could find and even create your niche.  Now the niches are being stuffed with the filthy lucre of opportunistic neo land-grabbers."  "Most of the artists and musicians that made the neighborhoods cool can't afford to live there anymore."  "Things are getting more and more expensive."  "...local musicians who are moving forward courageously without the help of rich parents or an Ikea-style guidebook to the music business."  - Westword6/22-28/2017

     The morning of April 21, after the Annual Denver 4/20 Rally held in Civic Center Park, the city woke to a sea of unattended trash.  Reports...indicated the presence of individuals opening and rummaging through trash bags and a man with a knife threatening cleanup crews.  ...Denver Parks and Recreation Department wrote it is "imposing a...penalty...of $11,965, an additional $190in damages, banning the event...for three years, and rescinding their Priority Event status."  ...the City now has...a new public event policy finalized Oct. 25, 2016.  [The Overland Park golf course, which I ride past to and from work, will be host to] a multi-day music festival, organized by...Superfly (responsible for Bonnaroo...)  ...how the city and her RNO handles the community outreach and consensus building efforts around the festival.  ...everything seemed to be happening after a decision had been made.  ...the City knew about the festival over half a year before [the Overland Park Neighborhood Association] report hearing about it.   [It] feels the city used the runup to "manufacture consent' among community members before approaching the community.  ...Denver City Councilman for District 7, which includes Overland, says [OPNA] asked for a level of notification that doesn't exist...the city does not go out and leaf and flyer every resident.  - the profile, 6/2017

     Tuesday.  It's complicated.  Yesterday and today I am working open to close.  At a store with no air conditioning.  Sunday night I got only 5 hours sleep.  It didn't hit me until after lunch when I began dozing off.  This morning, I've had much more sleep.  You would think that my problems would be over.  I leave my house some time after 4 AM.  While I am still in my parking lot, I realize that I have managed to do something for the first time in the ten years I have been living where I am.  I just locked myself out of my house.  Which would not be an issue as someone will be here to let me in when I get home.  Except the store key is inside.  And I should probably have my wallet with me as well.  This morning is the first time I've climbed over my back fence to try to break into my back door.  The good news is that no one is getting in my back door.  The bad news is that no one is getting in my back door.  Panic in the dark at 4:30 am.  This morning is the first time I've tried to climb onto the roof to reach the bedroom window to wake someone up to open my front door.  This doesn't work either.  I ring the doorbell.  A light goes on in the window I was attempting to reach.  My front door opens and I have my keys and wallet.  I'm off to work.  In the middle of the parking lot has appeared one of my Vietnamese neighbors.  He's a young guy who I've seen silently walking slowly, slowly through the neighborhood.  Saying nothing, looking at everything.  I otherwise never see him going to or coming from work.  Now, at twenty to five in the dark, he is standing there and staring at me.  Motionless.  He's dressed as if he has been awake.  I wonder if he walks around in the middle of the night?
     On the way to the train station I stop at a 24-hour diner for breakfast to go.  I sit in an orange plastic booth as I wait for my order.  Next to me is a guy so large he has to sit sideways instead of his legs fitting under the table.  He listens to another guy at the table.  The huge guy takes bites off a plate with his hand in between answering "Yup." to the other.  His breathing is labored.  His friend tells him, "They're goin' up to shoot their guns."  "Yup," he replies.  Two waitresses wait at the kitchen window and tease the cook as they wait for orders.  They are both dressed in white blouses, skirts, and shoes with orange aprons.  I feel like I am on an episode of Alice.  Fifteen hours later, I am headed toward my parking lot.  There is an unusual amount of cars parked on my busy street.  Next to one of those cars, on the street side, are a couple of young and stylish bohemian Caucasian guys.  One is in a tie-dyed T-shirt and a bandana on his head.  He reminds me of fraternity guys I saw when I was in college in Oklahoma.  The other is in a maroon sweater and a knit cap, in June.  He appears to be vaping, blowing big clouds of smoke out into the air.  If these guys aren't careful, they will be run over and stabbed, in that order.  The following day I have off.  I go to the gym and then to a swimming pool I used to go to fifteen years ago, when I lived in that side of town.  It's the cleanest pool I've been to.  I ride all the way back home.  Headed toward my street, I see yet another Caucasian come out of a home.  He's in a Polo shirt and has a laminated ID on his belt.

     Business in the area has exploded over the past few years...taking over every available storefront and home prices in surrounding Baker soaring...  ...affordable apartments, a rarity in this part of town where they were plentiful two decades ago.  "I still remember robberies and some pretty serious crimes close to our doors.  Now I see some young girl jogging with her dog on the same street.  ...we were all helping out each other...  Look at a picture in 2008 and look at it now.  We saved that area in a lot of ways."  ...a city historically in the middle of here and there that now has a light-rail line...thirsty for a comfortable, low-key place to get a nightcap.  The new apartment building going up...seems to have driven out the drug addicts...  ...while an epicenter for...alternative culture, he laments what he calls the 'homogenization of [Denver's] Broadway" [Boulevard].  "We're definitely seeing something detrimental happening...on Broadway, we want to keep individuality going strong.  We're trying to build a community..."  As you drive farther south on Broadway, the street's characteristically quirky string of dive bars, secondhand shops and auto garages gives way to Audi dealerships, pseudo-wood houses and neighborhoods with names like Mansion Pointe.  This is it: You've reached the suburbs.  ...the real suburbs of Denver: Highlands Ranch.  ..you might as ell be in a different country.  After miles...unfalteringly straight...Broadway begins to weave left and right as studio-quality green lawns and tall, rustling trees roll up on either side...  And then, just like that, Broadway ends.  ...you...find yourself in front of a large, opulent-looking visitor center adjacent to a pristine pond, where a pastel, polo short-wearing grandfather sits.  Broadway has suddenly become Back Country Drive.  Inside the Discovery Center, shining oak walls are ornamented with serene, black-and-white nature photographs of...river stones...fairy-tale phrases like, "There is still a place where sunbeams trace the land."  The gated community boasts hundreds of large luxury houses worth as much as two million dollars...the information guide...proudly promises, this area is dedicated to "recreation purposes" and the..."enhancement" of open spaces.  For a non-resident to hike...the private trails, you must fill out a form at the Discovery Center that indicated which homes you might be interested in and when you would want to move in.  Broadway has met its long, lonely end:  "It's serene...without fully disconnecting from the world you left behind."  But the world of Broadway seems a million miles away.  - Westword, 6/15-21/2017

     Yes, I am familiar with Broadway Boulevard, and with what I've described as the kingdom of Highlands Ranch.  I've written about it here.  I first learned to drive a delivery van, by myself at age 39, on these meandering 45 mph parkways.  I've worked at a store in the heart of the place.  It can be fun, like some kind of theme park.  When you walk into Chick-Fil-A, you know that the employees all go to church.  The pictures on the walls are homogenized.  The Whole Foods has cooking classes.  You walk and you wonder.

     Police in Denver are looking for a baton-wielding man [two blocks from my home on 6/6] who they say intentionally backed into the victim's vehicle...got out...and threatened the victim with a metal baton.  He shattered the victim's rear window before the suspect took off in a stolen Subaru Impeza...  - thedenverchannel.com, 6/13/2017

     A 19-year-old man has been charged with two counts of attempted murder...in a parking lot near [my home] early in the morning on March 20.  [Two or three people were asleep in the parking lot, and he a started kicking them.  One was found unconscious in a pool of blood.]  - kdvr.com, 6/22/2017

     Marketplace Survey Information [for the shopping center where I work]  6/13/2017  Satisfaction Comment  Comment: My sister nearly died from a ruptured aortic valve after a massage from your company.  Would you like to be contacted about your recent experience?  Yes, by phone  Idiot  Stupid  - (printout found in the shopping center parking lot where I work)

     Friday.  7:30 PM.  Train platform after work.  I will try to get home and get sleep before I turn around and do a full day tomorrow.  Here with me is another cyclist who is engrossed in his phone.  He has grey hair and no helmet, but he does have a tie-dyed T-shirt with the original Woodstock flyer design on the front.  He is waiting for the train at the place for the door directly behind the train operator.  Cyclists may board and stand inside at one end of each train car...except for this one spot, directly behind the train operator.  The train comes and I get on with my own bike, and the back end of the first train car.  He must have realized finally that he was at the wrong end of this train car.  The doors close and I see him still out on the platform.

     Illustrated propaganda leaflets were passed around, and, still squatting on the ground like school children, the Kikuyu read these intently.  At last a truck drove up, and a witch doctor arrived.  ...the native witch doctor...would administer the cleansing oath.  "If I am forced to take the Mau Mau oath, I will report and confess.  If I fail to do this, let this oath slay me.  I will do everything I can to help the government suppress Mau Mau.  If I do not, let this oath slay me.  If in the future I do not supply to the government any information...let this oath slay me.  I swear that I....always will be a loyal subject of Her Majesty's Government and Queen Elizabeth."  British troops and - much later - RAF units - arrived, and have been in action ever since.  The Mau Maus hid in the Aberdares and on the slopes of Mount Kenya, and were almost impossible to track down and root out.  ...there must be...land reform...an attempt to build up villages and a middle class.  ...white capital will not come into the country unless it is peaceable.  - Gunther

     ...in late '67...those consulted  in the Harris poll felt that militant protests hurt the cause of peace.  But many of the young...could smell a cop-out...  ...democracy...totalitarianism at the center.  ...the disillusionment of the young quickly becomes cliche'...how many of them...find anything to live for?  Meaning is among the rarest of our country's commodities...  ...cut your hair, turn down the music.  ...be suspicious of drug use if the child spoke of God, love, or peace.  ...school psychologists...cooperate with the deans, and the deans seem glad to indulge the federal authorities.  ...only the youth seem interested in rock music...  That explains the popularity of the "underground press."  ...written by the alienated for the alienated.  Judges mutter about possible censorship when advertisers promote intriguing sexual devices...  ...readers will...learn who's to be trusted, who's to be ignored.  ...the war in Vietnam and the attacks on...dissent kept the papers alive, and the general trend in world politics encouraged others...  High school students, prohibited from criticizing...in official papers...started mimeographed news sheets...  [One underground newspaper] was removed from newsstands by [the] mayor...and the free-speech issue was void.  Forty arrests later, [this paper] was still without a street permit and still in operation.  ...it's...an attempt to legitimize dissenting reporting, to develop a constituency for radical politics and...an audience to well versed in political and cultural affairs to enjoy the mindlessness of mass journalism.  ...the issues are serious, the alternatives few, and the political for genuine rebellion is omnipresent.  - Notes From the New Underground, 1968, ed. by J. Kornbluth

     Sunday afternoon, and the park between the state house and capitol is this weekend's host to the Pride Fest.  The boys show off their underwear, the women go nude, and everyone wears the state flag as a cape.  A couple of young women were in elaborate "costumes," though the characters they were portraying are themselves.  Most festival attendees are young, as are the nude women.  I watched one topless girl whose body was in complete command of a hula hoop.  Another young woman I watched get up off the grass completely nude and put on a dress.  The one image which stayed with me is of a woman closer to my age.  Her nude curves are the ones I remember, as she stood behind a merchandise booth.  Monday I was given the day off.  At 7:30 am I am headed to a dental appointment.  Along  the gutter of a busy avenue I see a long line of discarded plastic forks and spoons.  Coming out from under a train bridge, I turn onto Broadway, well north of the Audi dealerships.  Across Broadway, I can see in the distance a group of colorfully clothed children on the lawn of an Episcopal church.  As I roll past them, they are joined by as many adults, all in T-shirts with "Avid Adventures" on the breast.  One young, tall, and thin Caucasian guy has a huge mop of dreadlocks down his back, under a wide brimmed hat.  I make it to the neighborhood where I lived for 16 years, and still have my dentist.  I head over to a favorite Breakfast place, just down the street from a couple of homes I lived in which no loner exist.  I head to the dentist, and have lunch at the "world famous" shopping mall across the street.  I have been here off and on when I lived here.  My favorites always used to disappear.  A Greek place is still here.  After lunch I am on a bike trail to a pool I used to go to 15 years ago, when I also rode this trail daily to work, which is also another business now.  Sprinklers splash the concrete as the water turns to steam.
     I get to the pool as some kind of seniors' aquarobics class is finishing up.  I take the time to apply sunscreen.  It's an absolutely beautiful day.  Hot.  I ride to the train and take it on the way home.  Back home around 2:30 PM, I turn around and go to the gym an hour or so later.  Instead of stopping for breakfast along the way, I stop for dinner.  When I get home from the gym, it's the end of a long, hot day.  The following morning, at 5:30 AM, I am on the phone yelling at someone in Bangladesh who can't authorize my account without my giving him the right information.  This means I can't find out why I haven't had internet for three days.  he hangs up on me.  I call the same number again and someone else suggest that I turn my modem on and off.  This does the trick.  Open the pod bay doors please Hal.  My boss calls me three hours later to ask me to go into work early.  I go to the bank to deposit the funds to pay for the filling to cap the root canal, which I paid for yesterday.  I then wait for a bus which doesn't show up.  The next one takes me to a stop for my connecting bus.  From around the landscaping on a private university campus comes a young guy in jeans, a plaid shirt, and a cap with digital camouflage.  He asks me when the bus comes.  When I tell him I don't know he asks me how my day is.  When I don't answer, he asks again.  He tells me he will call and find out when the bus comes.  He tells me when it will be here, and when I don't answer him he says, "Sir?"  We both get on the bus when it comes and he begins talking to someone next to him.  He works part time doing prep work at a short order place, where he "don't have to deal with the customers at all...", and works afternoons at a Chik-Fil-A.

     ...10 a.m....  Somehow (thanks Advil), I stumbled out the door in time for our rideshare.  ...my hangover and endorphins began to do-si-do...  Denver's post-WW-II zoning laws aimed to keep families in the city...so many were headed to the suburbs, so...unmarried adults were prohibited from living together.  Capitol Hill...had the loosest zoning laws, due to its density...it...attracted queer people who wanted...discreet lives together close to downtown.  ...attending coming-out classes together at First Unitarian Church.  ...where the Mattachine Society met before the Denver PD...shut [them] down.  ...alleys where trans women were...killed by police.  ...acor-yoga...vigils...  ...where people explored new substances, invented new kinds of relationships...  - Out Front, 6/7/2017

     ...one of the most desirable communities in metro Denver to live, raise a family, start a career, retire, run a business, enjoy lunch with friends, or have a fabulous evening out.  ...a high quality experience...   - Kentwood Gallery (real estate brochure0

     ...164-unit, $165 million luxury, two tower apartment project...will also include 55,000 square feet of ground floor for retail uses.  ...rooftop deck with pool and cabanas, a clubhouse and concierge services.  ...will set a new bar for luxury living n Denver.  - Denver News, 6/15 - 7/15/2017

     They're the hip and the homeless and they're both facing...finding an affordable place to live!  ...skyrocketing cost to rent an apartment or buy a home in Denver.  ...thousands of people find themselves on Denver's streets.  Others are on the brink...or being pushed out of the city.  Studio apartments in Denver rent for $1,196 a month.  A studio averages 507 sq. ft....  - Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle, 6/2017

     CitySquare...has...changed from its...role as a food pantry.  City square now offers...physical and mental services, public benefits, lockers...computer access, and...a...bike sharing program.  If the bike has mechanical problems, guests are welcome to bring it back and have it repaired.   ...service...helps...not just those who are housing unstable.  "We're creating a community where people can recognize faces and remember names."
     ...class certification...granted...to a group alleging the...camping ban...violated the rights ...homeless individuals.  ...people who have been pushed to the outskirts can no longer access resources they relied upon...  "A lot of people are really hungry because there's not a lot of food out there.  It's hard to get to appointments that folks need to get to.  ...Judge William J. Martinez...in his ruling...expressed concern [the plaintiff attorney] was so "thoroughly convinced of the moral righteousness of his clients' cause that he was suffering from "confirmation bias."  Such a lawyer tends to...ignore...the opposing party's specific arguments and instead...shame the opposing party for choosing to oppose."
     "There are counties in Ohio where...kids go to a court hearing and they're given a garbage bag to carry their stuff.."  [Kids who "age out" of the foster care system when they turn 18 years of age.]  ...many of them will become homeless, unemployed, pregnant or end up in prison.  - Denver Voice, 6/2017

     Whole provinces of Africa were decimated to provide eunuchs for Turkish harems, or levies for Moslem armies all the way from Baghdad to Bengal.  ...as white settlement spread, more and more Africans became displaced.  ...it became impossible for [natives] to support life on the amount of land they had.    ...four hundred to a square mile...  Their reserves became overcrowded to suffocation.  A kind of plantation system developed.  They were...a...tenant farmer class.  The struggle for power...a plural society [vs.] white supremacy, no matter what the cost.  ...a kind of floating semi-urbanized black proletariat in a white city.  Thousands upon thousands of [native] families were broken up.  Narobi...is not Benghazi or Addis Ababa by a million miles.  ...the focus of an international smart set...  The British fear...uneducated Africans [with] an educated Indian leadership...  Most white settlers...wanted "Africa" - its open spaces...  [One white settler holding office] does not think it will ever be possible for Kenya to have an exclusively African government.  Every schoolboy knows the old maps, showing British areas in a nice rich pink all the way from Egypt to the Cape.  ...Indirect Rule...transformed...Africans...from savages to civils servants.  It also helped to preserve African institutions...  Until the Mau Mau crisis...white officers but black troops, did the job.  ...The Capricorn Society..."in favor of...western culture and the Christian religion would be dominant [in African government.]  The organization has almost mystical fervor...
     Came the April, 1953, general election.  [In the nation of South Africa.]  By removing the possibility or serious parliamentary opposition [as one party gained a majority of both houses] it opened the way to frank totalitarianism.  Most Afrikaners are strict Calvinists...of the Dutch Reformed church...  "Hate is their religion," I heard it put.  ...the power of the state is given by God...to be against the government is to be against God's will.  The Church...teaches...Negroes are...inferior...  ...violently anti-Catholic.  "Anglo-Jewish imperialism"...  Women are nor allowed in bars...  Dancing is frowned upon...  ...scientists are forbidden to attend anthropological conferences abroad...that citizens will learn too much of...the world outside.  "The Population Registration Act," 1950...people...identified according to race.  "The Immorality Amendment Act," 1950...making illegal any sexual relation between Europeans and...non-whites...  - Gunther

     Wednesday I hit the annual library used book sale.  As I am browsing the sale, no one attempts to steal my books this year.  With books in tow after the sale, I head to the stop for the bus to work.  It's at the edge of the park where the Pride Festival was last weekend.  Lined up along a sidewalk there are a collection of homeless.  They are spread out in a line as if they are waiting for something.  Maybe someone is scheduled to come along with food or something.  At the stop, I notice a street guy I used to see in my own neighborhood some five years ago.  He goes by Richard Spotted Bird.  Back then he was drunk on beer.  I've seen him since, and he currently appears sober.  Today he's walking with a limp.  On the way home from work on Friday evening I am rolling through a tunnel.  I hear music on the other side.  Suddenly, rat the other end are a pair of skateboarders.  One jumps off his board and grabs it out of my way.  On Saturday, I am up and out on the bike to work.  I wonder if I will make the 6:10 AM train.  Where I turn for the station is a time and temperature sign.  It reads 6:16.  Funny.  I think it was last Saturday, I arrived at the station and just missed the 5:40. And 6:10 seemed at the time like a long way away.  Well, it's chilly, but an otherwise beautiful morning for a ride.  It's been forever and a day since I rode the entire way to work.  It isn't long before I pass a couple of guys sleeping in the weeds next to the trail, in the shade of the trees along the Platte River.  Their shopping cart, or "buggy" as it is referred to on the street (or the trail), is full of a couple of wheeled suitcases with handles and other stuff.  Just over a bridge is a couple, each one with a shopping cart of their own.  They are awake and standing on the trail.  The guy looks middle aged.  Among the stuff in his cart is some long PVC pipe.  The woman appears to be in her twenties, with heavy eye makeup, and...  She is wearing a kind of cloth one piece outfit.  Printed on this jumpsuit is the image of a stormtrooper uniform from the Star Wars movies.  Her pajamas?  As long as I have been riding these trails...I'm still being surprised.  A father and his red-haired son come along on bikes.  I warn them about the sexy stormtrooper.  She looks like the son's age.  What a morning.  There are bikes and dog walkers all over the trail this early Saturday morning.  Members of the Rebel Alliance, no doubt.  After a short spell, I turn onto a connecting trail.  I shortly watch the 6:10 go past.  Looks like I beat it.  Further on, I spot another pair of guys off in the woods, with their own shopping cart.
     On the way home are a couple of logjams out on the trail within yards of each other.  One involves a couple, a child, two dogs and three oncoming bikes.  Up ahead is a guy hauling a wheeled suitcase uphill on the trail.  I get around him right before three more oncoming cyclists.  There are people all over the trail this evening.  A girl with green hair and tattoos walking past the dog park, where a guy in a British cap flies a drone.   Turning onto the trail along the river, there are fishermen and paddle boarders.  And more cyclists.  Over a bridge and along a golf course, I come upon a grey-haired woman in a denim jacket and ball cap.  She is walking along the gravel between the trail and some woods.  She is carrying a collapsible dolly and drops it onto the gravel as she keeps walking.  A guy twenty years her junior comes toward her on the gravel.  He says to her, "Don't let the bus fly into your eye.  Don't let the bees fly into your head."  ...and don't let the stormtroopes shoot you in the ass.

Tales From the Waterpark
     Monday.  The plan is to grab breakfast, go to the bank, to the waterpark, and then lunch before work.  I'm headed down a residential street as a motorized wheelchair is coming my way.  It's in the street on the wrong side.  In it is a smiling woman.  Shadowing her on the sidewalk is a guy on a bicycle.  I stop at a small diner.  Another woman in a motorized wheelchair comes in.  She has a cat in a pet carrier.  Behind her is a guy with a cane.  They take a table, and get gets out of the wheelchair to go to the women's room.  Just another morning, out with the cat.  After I eat, I hit the bank before heading out on the road.  I decide that I can avoid a huge hill by riding the short distance to the train, down the sidewalk of a busy avenue  The sidewalk is eventually closed due to construction.  I get into a turn lane for both directions of the street.  I don't get a chance to make a right before it turns into a left turn lane.  Mid-morning traffic in both directions is nonstop.  Another car waits behind me to turn before I get a chance to go right through the intersection.  Before the next block, I sneak through traffic to get back to the other side of the street before I cross the bridge over the interstate.  What a crazy ride.  I just make a train which drops me at a street to the trail, and a short ride later I'm at the waterpark.  At the entrance, just past fifteen giant black cannonballs, is a group of teenagers and adults.  They all have T-shorts on with "Firefly" on the front.  The teens have yellow shirts with "Matey" on the back,.  On the back of the adults' shirt is something about '"inspiring lives."  These Fireflies, it appears, get in the pool with other kids and play with them.  I see a couple of teenagers who I am convinced are autistic.  Then a long line of entirely new kids comes along the pool, some in red T-shirts and some in blue.  Then a third group shows up.  These kids are in T-shirts which read, "Bison Buddy Summer Camp."  These shirts have an illustration of a bison head on the front.  During this parade of shirts, one of the buoyed ropes comes off one end of the pool and a couple of park employees arrive to repair it.
     A handful of high school seniors in bikinis make their way to the pool deck, moving along with cool detachment.  It appears that most everyone is in line for the waterslide.  A fat guy does a backflip off the diving board.  And high above it all, a couple of Blackhawk helicopters make circles through the ether.  This crowded collection of signifiers points to an authentic nationalist kind of scene.  If either Russia Today or an Iranian mullah were to choose an example of the animal pleasures of the West, it would surely include these very elements.  Along with a dash of altruism, as conservatives refer to it, as well as faulty American hardware.  Many shirts, but one sky, and one world...  The open swim area is getting crowded and I slip under the end of the broken rope, held by a woman with sunglasses and a walkie-talkie, into the lap lane before I'm ready to call it a morning.  I shouldn't have had lamb in my eggs for breakfast..  I think I'm seeing a parade of age groups segregated by color.  It's like Brave New World on LSD instead of Soma.  With Buddy Bison.  I get out and head to the three lockers full of all the crap I haul back and forth to work.  And I complain about homeless with shopping carts...  I notice a teenager with no chin slowly walking with his arms crossed, near the entrance.  He's in teardrop shades, a Star Wars cap, and his own T-shirt.  On the front is a DJ at his mixing board.  On the back, it reads, "Jesus is my Lord."  I know a young woman on the buke trail he may want to meet...  I'm back on the trail and off to the shopping center where I work.  I grab lunch at a pancake place, on the outdoor patio.  A chopper rumbles down the street.  It has a pair of metal crutched vertically mounted behind the seat frame.    At the table next to me is an elderly couple and a middle-aged guy.  The husband mentions the crutches and says, "If your neighbor is going to own a motorcycle, it should be a BMW."  Okay.
     The ride home in the evening is solely for lovers.  Every cyclist on the trail walks or rides in a pair.  Two pairs of riders come at me, each of the pair taking up a lane before they move over.  Standing at the end of a bridge is a young Caucasian guy in sunglasses, his arms folded on the rail as he looks out at the river.  He makes it appear to be the cool thing to do.  Four more pairs of cyclists pass me going either direction.  The last of these I come upon.  They pull off the trail.  One of them has pants which are falling down, and no underwear.  The other is pushing his bike.  What's left of his gear assembly has come off the frame, and is being dragged along by the chain.  I've had a flywheel go spinning off into the dark, but this is the first entire gear assembly I've seen fall off a bike.  A fifth pair passes me.  They are young, and the lady looks good in her black shorts and white top.  The last pair goes by after I exit the trailhead.  They appear to be bohemians.  I suppose it's appropriate that they are headed toward downtown, and its bastion of hipsters.  This week appears to be the beginning of bicycle season on this trail.

     ...the Dutch encountered...the Hottentots...a pre-Bantu people...  Most were wiped out by...smallpox...in the eighteenth century...  As to the Bushmen...they were a totally different people.  The Dutch...killed them off like animals...  ...settlers from Great Britain began, after the Napoleonic Wars, to stream into South Africa.  ...the struggle for power became...between Boer, Bantu, and Briton.  in 1836...to move into new lands...resentment of the British abolition of slavery...  The Boers wanted...to make their own Native policy and they resented bitterly having to give up their slaves.  In 1836 began...the greatest romantic event in Boer history.  Several thousand Boer farmers and cattlemen with their families, traveling by ox wagon, struck inland...  It cut the Boers off [from] the age of enlightenment that generally distinguished European communities...in the second half of the nineteenth century.  In 1852, the South African Republic...was established by the trekkers...  ...one of the indisputably great men of South African history - perhaps the greatest.  As a child he went into religious trances.  ...as a boy of eleven...fought against the Zulus.  He wore as a rule a wide stovepipe hat, and had a face like a knot of solidified mucilage.  He believed until the end of his days that the world was flat...  Cecil John Rhodes...had a dominating idea all his life.  ...that the English-speaking peoples were the master "race" of the world..."to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity."  The Rhodes scholarships have...rendered...a service of goodwill...among the English-speaking peoples...  - Gunther

     Tuesday.  I'm late out of the gate, but had a great sleep.  Woke up at 7 AM.  Two and a half hours later, I'm hightailing it to the train.  Just across my boulevard, I come upon a skinny guy with no shirt pushing a lawnmower down a residential street.  His shorts have a flame pattern and he also carries a leaf blower.  A short time later I hit the trailhead.  Across the bridge, next to an open kind of metal shelter where homeless like to pile up their belongings, there is a group of six Lycra-clad cyclists with their bikes.  I wonder if ever twain shall meet.  There would be a diversity goal the mayor may not have considered.  On an underpass is a single running shoe.  In  o time I'm on and off the train, and after a short ride am standing at the waterpark.  A yellow school bus is full of yet another group of children in color-coded T-shirts.  I looked up Buddy Bison online.  It's an elementary school with a summer program, or "camp", located in the same county as the name on the bus.  below this, the bus has a quote; "Learn today, lead tomorrow."  As if leading by example, at the back end of the bus is an advertisement for Lakewood Plumbing and Heating LLC.  The camp may require immunization cards, but the plumber has free estimates.  The kids all have the same pirate-themed beach towel that I bought here.  Over by the lockers is a grey-haired guy in a T-shirt with an image on the back of someone who could be him.  The image is of a guy with golf clubs, and written there is "Happy Father's Day."  He appears to be using all his golfing strength to shove his bag into the limited space of the locker.  There's also a middle-aged Caucasian guy, who I wouldn't expect to have a popular Inuit kind of native tattoo on his shoulder.  But, then again, what do I know.  Learn today, kids, lead tomorrow.
     On the way home I pass bike after bike, including a child on a scooter, which is not supposed to be on the bike trail.  I ride past the waterpark, still going shortly after 7 PM.  I don't by any means want to leave the impression that this is some kind of stinky little waterpark.. It has plenty of fun for the kids, and nothing from me but gratitude that it's here on my way to work.  Last summer, I was working out this way the entire work week, and had planned to come here every day, before I was moved to another store for the entire summer.  As I pedal the stretch past the waterpark, on a hill on the other side of a stream and open grassy field.  I hear the bell on the pirate's crow's nest, lifeguard whistles, and the kids.  I've been riding out this way since October of 2015, and this evening is the first time I notice that there is a part of the waterpark I didn't know existed.  I will see this part for the first time tomorrow morning.  It has a "lazy river" and a complex of three long waterslides...the slides which have been clearly visible from the trail for the year and a half I've seen them.  They are right next to a couple of fake palm trees.  I see bike after bike down this trail and onto a connecting one.  I look up and see bicycle traffic in both directions.  There are people out here!  I pass a young couple walking strolling the trail, each with a dog.  They appear as if they could have stepped out of 1979.  I pass more bikes.  More riders out here than I remember ever seeing.  I round a wide playground.  A guy sits on the grass with his dog.  His T-shirt appears to advertise a biker gang, but is actually a ski club in Utah.  Parked next to his is his motorized razor scooter.

     All Africans in the western region of Cape Province (178,000) will be moved out...according to a government announcement early in 1955.  This will be the largest experiment in geographical "apartheid" yet to take place, and will constitute one of the biggest forced movements of a population in history.  Excuse for the measure is that the African population...is "too close" to the adjacent Colored population.  The Zulus...are thoroughly docile now.  ...they live on a reserve...  There are Africans...distinguished...  There are Africans who write sound English prose...also Africans by the hundred thousand who cannot read...  There are tribes...sternly upright...and tribes greatly addicted to homosexuality...  "...in order to keep the black mass submerged, the white rulers must inevitably become totalitarian.  ...the only effective African answer to this will be to turn to Communism."  ...there are hundreds of thousands...of Natives...not yet politically minded.  - Gunther

     ...President Saddam Hussein announced a "full, complete, and final amnesty" for tens of thousands of prisoners [which] marks the first time Saddam's government has acknowledged imprisoning opponents of the regime...  ...families broke through the gates into the prison...  Several were killed in the stampede.  As night fell some family members were still searching in vain...  ...the underlying message is clear.  ...life, death, and freedom are in the hands of the man who has ruled...  ...work conditions...will remind me of the former Soviet Union, where raising a camera has the same effect as raising an M16...  - Naked in Baghdad, A. Garrels, 2003

     Wednesday.  It's the third morning in a row I've slept well past 5:30 AM.  I'm headed for the same bridge over the interstate, on the busy avenue.  Coming from the direction underneath the bridge are three twenty-somethings, one of whom is pushing a forth with her legs crossed in a wheelchair.  As he pushes her along he is kissing her cheek.  She stares at me blankly.  They all follow me over the bridge and to the train station.  On the train and down the street, and I am back at the waterpark.  A big school bus slowly winds its way through a tight corner in the paring lot.  Three other vans and small buses are here.  One is from Little People's Landing, another from Colorado Learning Academy,  and one beat up little bus is from The Stanley British Primary School.  None have plumbing advertisements.  Inside the gate, bags are checked by twin girls.  I ask them if they are sick and tired of being asked if they are twins.  They laugh.  I get some chicken strips from the concession.  They taste as if they were processed from chickens which were run over on the highway.  I'm not used to being around so many people at once.  It's like I'm at a family reunion of someone else's family I don't know.  I take a gander at the big waterslide complex before I opt for the smaller slide back at the pool.  Perhaps sometime before the summer is over I will try the big slide.  After a swim I am back outside.  A guy comes to a fast stop on his bike.  he sends off my 'homeless' alert.  He asks one guy next to him, and then  gestures to another farther away, and finally asks me; do we have a light.  After striking out, he doesn't park and go inside.  Of course.  He takes off and disappears.
     It's not a long ride to work.  I head to a place for lunch where, before my current diet, I used to go all the time.  I notice they have a tasty salad which works for my current diet.  At another table is a couple.  The guy mentions to the lady something which he says is 'fucked up."  He tells her that his doctor prescribed various medicines in an attempt to treat his irregular heartbeat.  After lunch I grab a sugar-free hot chocolate, and I sit outside where I can keep an eye on a clock through the window.  Parked in the lot is a vehicle with "Do it for Derk" on a bumper sticker.  Derk must be...the late Derk.  On the ride home after work, shortly after 7 PM, I'm headed along some woods.  Just off the trail sits a long grey-haired guy in a sleeveless buttoned down shirt.  Next to him is a small shopping cart with tied grocery bags.  He may have in fact just come from the supermarket.  And kept the cart.  An hour later the sun is going down, and I am back on my own side of town.  Coming up a hill, I pass a woman in a beat up car.  In back are a pile of clothes and a cat.  She is parked in front of a flatbed full of scrap wood.  Friday morning, I will pass this same flatbed and the vehicle will be gone.
     Thursday.  I have the day off.  Some time after 6 AM, I awake to the sound of a helicopter above my street.  I will continue to hear it throughout the morning.  I get up and get out to breakfast and a workout.  On the bus back up my street, a guy with a cane gets on at the bingo place.  His pants are too long, and rolled and pinned into cuffs.  Inside the cuffs he is carrying cigarettes and other stuff.   I step off the bus on my corner.  At a liquor store, a beer delivery truck appears to have attempted to turn into the parking lot at the same time as a much smaller car.  The two have collided and are parked, the beer truck sticking out across both lanes of one side of the boulevard.  On this boulevard, it's an opportunity for traffic to accelerate around yet another vehicle.  In the early afternoon, I make up my mind that I will pay my first visit, in the 27 years I've lived in this fair city, to an amusement park which I didn't know has a waterpark.  It's most likely the closest waterpark to my home.  I have been to the big one, some hundred blocks north, with...a wave machine.  Little do I realize that the closer one has its own wave machine.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  It's a brief ride to the station for the train which will take me there.  Crossing a busy street, I see a guy with caveman hair slowly carrying what appears to be his laundry.  At the station is a guy in a bright blue felt Fedora, not an old guy but one in his thirties.  He's with an older couple, standing and swaying before he sits and gets on his phone, tapping his foot.  The hat comes complete with feather.  Some more passengers show up.  I'm sitting on the ground next to my bike when one of them alerts me, "Hey man, the train's comin'."  It's going the other way than the one I want, but I notice mine coming shortly thereafter.  Well then, let's boogie.
     I take the train because there is a stop for the park, which would require some circumnavigation to otherwise ride to.  And there is a pedestrian bridge with an elevator.  So there.  The livin' really is easy.  The sunny day saw a sky-sized cloud move in, and it's now grey.  A ticket to the park for the day is $50, while a season pass is $69.99.  I opt to pay the extra $20.  If I go one more time this season, it will have paid for itself.  I'm thinking, 'all this just to swim.'  But this is about expanding my swimming experience.  I purchase the pass, which I take through the security gate where I put my bags on a chute.  Someone tells me I need to go to another window to get the pass, and I exit through the metal detector which makes a low hum as I do.  I fill out name and address, and phone number, "but not your email," I'm told.  They don't have time to send me emails I suppose.  They have enough to do.  They take my picture...which appears nowhere on the pass.  And with that, I am inside.  The interior is like a small shopping mall.  In this part is mostly keychains and shirts, Colorado booster stuff.  Then you step out onto a street from the nineteenth century.  The clapboard shops here sell "old time candy," swimwear, toys for kids.  A sign advertises a soothsayer.  There's an 'opera house which puts on a show of the "hits of Broadway."  A big sigs announces, "If you haven't seen" this amusement park, "you haven't seen Denver."  Okay...I've seen Denver.  Thanks.  Oh but, I'm just getting started.
     As I step along what feels like the set of Gunsmoke, the people remind me of who you would run into at any state fair. There are no British primary school buses parked around these parts.  It strikes me as more of a crowd after carnival thrills.   I pass a couple of portly twin 6th grade boys.  Each has a basketball, which one is dribbling, and each is in a shirt with the band KISS on the front.  At 12 years of age, I'm not sure what they make of a 40-year-old band.  My choices for lunch are pizza or a turkey leg.  Or old time candy.  The turkey leg is congruent with my diet.  I keep seeing signs which tell me my pass is good for one free meal a day.  I ask at the turkey leg stand.  I'm told that I don't get any free food with my pass.  The leg is greasy and perhaps underdone.  I eat most of it and am off to "Adventureland," or whatever the waterpark is called.  Lockers for your belongings rent for $11-$13.  I have to pay at a kiosk and put in a code which "only I know" before I get my locker assignment.  Open the pod bay doors please Hal.  I have a dip in a big gradually deepening pool, which I don't recognize as a wave machine pool.  After a swim I get out and have a look at several waterslides.  They all have lines, and each person must wait forever before going down.  I decide to get back into the pool.  I'm at the deepest end when the horn goes off, when I immediately realize that...it's a wave machine.  The crowd goes wild, as they say.  This is the first time I remember attempting to swim in big waves.  I almost don't make it, which I am able to conceal.  Pay no attention to that man taking a breather at the side.  Shortly thereafter, a lifeguard announces that we all must vacate the pool for the time being.  I decide I've had enough "fun" for one afternoon.  I take a look in the shops.  The last one on the way out is the mini-mall, where I find a keychain of a skull with a U.S. flag design. It immediately reminds me of the cover of H. S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing On the Campaign Trail.  It's a book which is even older than KISS.  I don't go home empty-handed.  So long for now amusement park.

     No one was found inside a vehicle that was submerged in [a lake in the park with the swimming pool closest to where I live.]  The vehicle was reported in the lake...just before 6 A.M.  - kdvr.com, 6/29/2017

     The following morning, I am called into work to replace another employee.  Toward the end of my bike ride there, I pass under a bridge on the trail.  Someone is asleep under a tarp, just off the trail.  A hiking pack at his side.  After work, I'm headed home.  On a horse trail, I'm behind a young woman running.  The sun silhouettes her figure, her ponytail shines.  On the bike trail behind a thin young woman in mirrored shades, carrying a skateboard.  Behind a guy with a bushy grey beard who holds his shorts to keep them from falling down as he walks.  Approaching a young guy in a shirt which reads, "Get your Colorado on."