February 2019, The Flying Dutchman Shopping Cart and "Mr. Dennis" Fucks Up My Salad

     ...RiNo is millennial paradise...  Just off the newly polished Brighhton Boulevard...  ...pride themselves on getting...in the nitty-gritty of growth, serving on neighborhood boards...and backing the gentrification-hating opposition...  "Over the last few years, we've hopefully built up some street cred..."  ...ignoring his coffee, for an hour and a half he rail against Denver's car-loving  infrastructure, its lack of affordable housing, and...the dearth of ...vision at the mayor's office.  ...says Councilman Brooks...called him a Black Panther, "except my efforts were directed toward the city."  - Westword, 1/31-2/6/2019

     In a stunning turn of events, Hilltop residents...through an intricate petition process, were able to force the Denver City Council to require a super majority in order to approve a...condominium project...  - Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle, 2/2019

     "...we have far too many people using weapons to settle disputes at this time in Denver's history...  Nobody's gonna be upset if you see someone arguing and call us.  We want to restore order and peace."  More people than ever live and play in Denver, stretching the blue line thin.  The city's growth is another reason for the heightened violence...  An unprecedented number of people and events have put "a lot of stress" on law enforcement...  ...violence begins before anyone pulls a trigger.  Mental health problems and drug use often fuel crime...as do[es] poverty.  - Denver Herald,1/31/2019

     We have a program..."Stay In it To Win."  It's a dropout prevention program.  We're trying to reach these kids through stories.  ...an unbelievable story.  ...still living at home, and...playing professional football.  ...winning at the highest level, it's remarkable.  ...our problems can be solved when you take emotion and aggression out of it, so that you can think rationally.  I can't rely on solely me.  As a competitor, it's hard to do that sometimes.  In philosophy, there's no right or wrong.
     ...truly tone the body without adding unwanted bulk.  ...transforming some of Hollywood's hottest bodies...  - Mile High Sports, 2/2019

     ...courageous Colorado makers that put themselves out there, took a leap and ended up creating something we outdoorsy go-getters can't live without: killer gear, apparel, food products...  To those Colorado creatives featured in this issue and to the rest of you sketching and shaping in your basements and garages, dreaming of transcending craft to career...
     ...escape from the bustle of city life.  Multiple levels of stone...  ...a balance of shared space and intimate alcoves.  ...$27,000 custom-made 11 Raven ping-pong table.  "If you don't have pops of color you're going to run into something really boring."  ...the black with gold streaked cascading Belvedere granite countertop might be considered a bold addition, until you look up and see that the distressed wood on the ceiling mimics the same color and movement patterns.  - Breckenridge, Winter 2018-2019

     ...we're all about devouring the Colorado experience as often as possible.  You might say, "we love us some Colorful Colorado."
     "Making wine in Colorado is chaotic.  It's my job to make order out of chaos."
     "We do forward-thinking happy beers and forward-thinking pseudo Belgian-esque sour profiles, and we have been unapologetically adherent to those specialties."  - Thirst Colorado, January-February 2019

     It's a new month.  I'm out of my door and on my way to work.  Down the sidewalk comes yet another Caucasian walking a dog, this one a young woman.  I arrive to work, and after a couple of hours I am at the Greek diner next door on my break.  I spend my break standing in line with other customers.  We're behind a woman who appears to be ordering for her entire office.  Welcome to downtown.  Her issues with her order are unknown to the rest of us.  The deficiencies of Greek food are the secret of a single Caucasian office employee.  While I am standing, and standing, a conversation reveals itself.  A couple more Caucasians are here, two middle-aged men sitting at a table.  One, in a buttoned down shirt, listens in silence.  The other has a shaved head and a black long-sleeved T-shirt, and he's prattling like an endless voicemail.  He sounds like one continuous sentence.  His story is that he was incarcerated, but says not where.  He claims he had a view of a golf course, and mentions something about "ten weeks."  I can't make out what this refers to.  His incarceration resulted in his being minted as a Jesus crispie.  He uses an amalgam of words, the likes of which are all too familiar to me after my hours spent recording 'Christian' radio.  "...bondage and darkness and hopelessness..."  I'm surprised he doesn't say that he "was searching and running."  Naturally, his bondage and darkness and hopelessness led him on a high-speed wireless link to Jesus, who gave him "lungs to speak."  The other guy must be waiting for his own lungs.  I haven't heard him say anything.
     I'm out of work early and use the time to take care of grocery shopping.  I'm at the stop for the bus to the supermarket.  A trio of Caucasians arrive, surely from the apartments across the street from where I live.  They are in overcoats and shined shoes.  Three detectives looking for the bodies.  Actually, I'm sure they are Jehovah's witnesses.  When we board the bus, a passenger says hello to them.  He then realizes who they are and says he thought they were Transit System Police.  One of them begins talking to a passenger, asking him how it's going.  The passenger is on his way to work.  What does he do for a living, the Latter Day detective asks.  The passenger says he models.  The guy responds with "cool.  Yeah, yeah..."  Tuesday of a new week.  On my way to work through the neighborhood between my home and the bike trail.  I pass a Caucasian couple out for a cold morning walk.  In the same neighborhood is a new big condo-like dwelling I spotted earlier, which appears almost to have dropped out of the big White sky.  When I will be headed back home through here after work, I will pass said condo.  It's not yet occupied and i can see inside the enormous front window.  There is a huge light, or range fan over a counter or stove, and a designer faucet.  A developer who doesn't  have it already sold, and expects to sell.  Or, a test of this neighborhood as a potential market?  This morning, I'm down the street, on the trail, over the bridge, and downtown.  I stop by the deathburger homeless central.  I'm reading a local neighborhood newspaper story about the police response to a rise in violent crime in the city.   Past the window comes a guy in a bright lemon yellow jumpsuit.  He's carrying a sign I've seen before which appears to be handmade.  It reads, "FUCK COPS."  He comes inside and appears to know one of the customers.  His sign folds up for inside dining.  I listen to a few seconds of him talking to the other customer.  He's smiling and sounds as if he's sympathetic to daily homeless life.
     The following day.  More snow.  When I come home from work, I see the guy I've seen outside smoking and looking at his phone.  Before I've been coming home from work early from my new job on these snowy days, I've only seen this guy a few times over the past couple of years.  He's out here again this evening, in the cold and the snow.  Sitting on the same concrete block.  On Sunday, I am on the way to pick up some odds and ends which I forgot yesterday at the supermarket.  I'm back in the neighborhood with all of the Caucasian dog-walkers.  Today I am rolling past a young guy with his shaggy hair greased, and in a light brown jacket worn by The Fonz on Happy Days.  And he's walking his dog.

     "In the new world of mobility solutions, the wants and needs of customers and cities are changing rapidly."  ...a micro-transit company...  The Cherry Creek route was filling in a need for people working in the area...  "Cherry Creek is one of the largest employment centers for lower-income workers...  Employees struggle getting to and from Cherry Creek because it is too costly to park and transit is somewhat limited..."  "Most people in Denver don't go more than three or four miles a day..."
     Last month, The Denver Foundation awarded a $20,000 grant to...support the Irving Street Women's Residence...located in [my neighborhood] helps chronically homeless women with disabilities or mental health issues.  ...also victims of domestic violence....  - Life On Capitol Hill, 2/2019

     It's all personal if you're alive...  It's also always political.  ...the personal...the political and the present and the historical...can never...be separated.  When more voices are published, when more stories are told.  ...read on the subway and talked about in book club and are not silenced and are not censored and are not said to be unworthy, we have a better chance at achieving an equitable democratic state.    - Westword, 2/21-27/2019

     ...union negotiators made clear...that there are better ways to improve...high-poverty schools: smaller class sizes, less punitive discipline policies, hiring more teachers of color, and an evaluation system that doesn't penalize teachers for low student test scores.  - Denver Herald, 2/21/2019

     Monday, I watch striking teachers walk past where I work.  They're headed to a rally.  On Tuesday, I am leaving the house when I hear traffic honking at someone or something on my corner.  It's striking teachers lining several yards of my street corner.  They are chanting and cheering.  When I get into downtown, I'm on the pedestrian mall.  Anyplace downtown, it's hardly unusual to see homeless or the mentally ill.  I'm not surprised by a guy who comes along shouting about something.  he isn't angry, but rather upset and in tears.  When I spot him, he has laid down on the sidewalk and is slapping the tile with his hand.  He gets up and says something unintelligible, he's so upset.  I can only make out the word "disability," and I get the impression he's saying something about a government check.  If he is without an address, this makes it problematic to get such payments.  he has an open would on his forehead, which many street people have on their heads and/or faces.  He has a grime-covered face and missing teeth; nothing unusual there.  It's the fact that he's so upset while he has a cigarette between two fingers.  It makes the entire scene that much more odd.  The following evening I am on my way home along the bike trail after dark.  Up ahead, I spot a couple of trail-users.  One is walking a bike.  The other is pushing a shopping cart and holding a flashlight which is on.  As I pass the pair, I can see the latter is in his early twenties.  He has bushy eyebrows which, along with his other dark hair, contrasts in the sharp light against his white skin.  He looks like the homeless son of the Wolfman.  In a couple of days, I am out of work early.  Some time after 7 PM, I'm at the stop for the bus to the supermarket.  I can see a Caucasian on my corner, out for a run with his dog.  As he waits for the light to change, I see he has his own light on his head.
     Sunday is an adventure to drop off film at the only place which processes black and white, which is crosstown.  I'm almost there, turning up a residential street where a trio of sisters are playing basketball.  I'm in my balaclava and mittens.  They are in hoodies.  One is in bare feet on the concrete of the driveway.  These guys are my heroes.  A couple of hours later, I connect with a bus for a short ride down my street.  A guy onboard begins asking individual passengers if they need his bus transfer.  No one appears to respond to his unsolicited offer.  He says louder, "Transfer!  Anyone need a transfer?"

     ...heeding the advice of a local coffee shop owner...  A woman...drove over the Colorado National Monument, with CPR's classical music station blaring out her windows...  Colorado became her home on that fateful morning...  ...the winter holidays are a welcome reminder of the camaraderie in our community.  We are all connected by a love for western Colorado, and the lifestyle...
     When I...don't need to have a guard up, or feel that I need to impress.  - Spoke + Blossom, Winter 2018-19

     ...the district kept schools open throughout the strike using...paraprofessionals, substitute teachers, and redeployed central office staff.  But about a quarter of students stayed home, and some of those who did go to school reported...overly simplistic lessons to chaos.  At several large high schools, students walked out in support of their teachers.  - Denver Herald, 2/21/2019

     Monday.  It's well below freezing.  It's spitting snowflakes.  The snowfall from yesterday has all but melted today.  I have a cold and the medicine does not appear to be helping.  I'm homeward bound as the hour of 8 PM approaches.  Right before I turn off from the trail, I see a ghostly figure under the streetlight, approaching from the other direction.  It's a little old guy slowly pushing a shopping cart.  It's piled with stuff which is completely covered with a white blanket.  The blanket almost appears to be billowing.  It gives the cart the appearance of the Flying Dutchman.  The following morning, I've had some sleep.  I still feel sick.  When I get to work I will barely be able to stand up.  For now, I am across the street at the bus stop.  It's freezing cold again today, and it continues to spit snow, which it will do through to the evening.  Along comes shuffling a guy who has a pair of earbuds for sale.  he claims that he "found them on the bus," but appears to know the brand and other details.  I turn out not to be his mark.  On the bus up the street is a homeless Vietnamese guy I recognize.  This morning, he is speaking in Vietnamese.  He steps aboard and takes a seat.  At one point, he yells a word in Vietnamese.
     The following day, I wake up after three hours of sleep.  In spite of this, I don't feel nearly as sick as I did yesterday.  The sore throat is gone.  I ride downtown, stopping at a Circle K before heading over to the gym before work.  Today is perhaps the coldest day this winter. Before I left home, my backyard thermometer read ten degrees F.   When I get to the Circle K, for once, I'm early.  I go inside for a snack.  In line is a tall guy in a camouflaged jumpsuit and cap with the same design.  He has an unlit cigarette between his lips.  The manager is stocking a low shelf behind the register, and this guy tells him something about how he "must be having fun."  He purchases...whatever he's purchasing before he goes to his vehicle and sits inside with the window down on a ten-degree-morning.  Outside, at one corner of the place, is a woman who is unloading the contents of her car.  She's placing a collection of cleaning products onto a towel she's laid on the freezing concrete.  Cleaning products, spray bottles, sponges, a vacuum cleaner.  Mine is not to question why...  I'm off to the gym, where I wait along with a basketball coach and a handful of her teenage players.  She asks them, "What'd you guys do during the (teachers') strike?  Watch Judge Judy and all that stuff?"

My First Marijuana Dispensary, ISIS, Pajamas, and a screaming kid speaking in tongues
     The morning after, I am headed to work a little early.  The boss needs me in.  I stop at the deathburger homeless central downtown.  I order in Spanish.  The cashier responds by asking me if I know anyone who can help her with a visa.  I get to work just as a homeless woman comes to the back door.  She tells me that it "smells good" inside where I work, which is a drycleaners.  She asks to walk through our business to the front door, because it's warm inside.  When we decline, she then goes around and comes inside the front door.  She wants to know if we have a lost and found.  I ask her if she left something inside of our business.  She claims that she slipped and fell outside and, presumably, her coat fell off and she couldn't find it.  I tell her we didn't see any coat outside.  She takes a piece of candy.  Friday, I get another ride home from work, as we are slow.  It's the manager who takes me home, but first we must stop and get his sleeping pills.  He mentions them to me for the first time.  I think we will stop at a Walgreens, but we pull up to the first marijuana dispensary I've been inside.  There is a tiny lobby, such as a doctor's office except with groovier magazines.  To enter the shop, we must present IDs which get scanned by a kid with hair and a beard so long that he appears as if he's a character from some story.  The manager where I work is purchasing his CBD drops when I'm approached by a middle-aged employee.  He and the hair guy are dressed in the identical T-shirts of the dispensary.  They both appear as if they are on the same church softball team.  He's characteristically overenthusiastic.  'Do I have any questions?'  "Yeah, where are we eating after the softball game?  Village Inn?"  As I have no questions, this father-and-son-looking duo go stand in their matching shirts and watch the flat screen on the wall.  The program is some kind of female "athlete" in an obstacle course covered with a lot of foam padding.  She falls and they both exclaim, "Oh no!"  After I get home, I get out to the stop for the bus to the supermarket, just as tiny snow flakes just begin dusting the earth.  Before I begin shopping, I hit the customer service desk for some more discounted transit system coupons.  The clerk behind the desk is talking to the guy ahead of me.  She may be my age, or younger. Her hair is dyed white and moussed to appear like she's deceased and frozen outside on the ground.  It looks the way I feel this week: I have a cold and don't have enough sleep.  Another customer gets in line behind me.  He's in a hoodie with the name of the city's football team on the front.  I haven't seen any heavy duty outdoor cold weather gear, London Fog or even Patagonia stuff, not in this neighborhood.  I don't know what it is about the groovy Caucasians in this town who love to where shorts when it's cold.  They think this makes them local I guess.  For the rest of the neighborhood residents, hoodies are the gear of choice for snow of below freezing temps.  ...and plenty of camouflaged pants and jackets and hats.  A favorite of the customers who come in here from the trailer park next door: half pajamas and half camouflage.  It's almost as if, once they are finished performing in an ISIS video, they're ready to jump back into bed.  The customer behind me is talking to himself about the one ahead of us.  "Don't take too too long..."  He mentions how "It sucks that they only have one person (working customer service.)"
     The clerk is smiling and chatting happily with the guy I'm behind.  She's telling him about her ex, who beat her up, would call the police and make false accusations about her, and still comes around to tell her he loves her.  She's grinning, flirting with another employee.  Somewhere else in the store, I hear a little kid.  He's alternately making quick screaming noises and unintelligible sounds.  He would fit right in with the mental passengers on the bus which runs my boulevard.  When I come out of the supermarket, it's coming down snow leopards and arctic wolves.  Speaking of the bus, and the kid, he's out in the shelter for the bus home with a young guy who I assume is his dad.  An avuncular-aged stranger has attached himself to the young father and is blathering nonstop to him.  We all board the bus when it arrives.  The dad and kid sit across from the other guy, who says, "I've done plenty of warehouse work.  Some is better than other kinds.  I worked in a warehouse where it was 20 degrees (F) all the time.  During the summer, that's not good for you."  The kid is making rapid vocalizations.  The guy says, "Some religious people would call that 'speaking in tongues'.  They'd tell you that you need an interpreter."  I.m reminded, as I so often am, of one particular quote from the late George Carlin.  "I am a professional comedian...as opposed to the kind...you meet at work...ALL...DAY...LONG!"  The kid does a short loud piece of a scream.  A passenger in back responds.  Along the way a drunk gets on.  At the next stop, a kid on crack gets on.  He has no coat.  He gets out at the next stop, as a couple steps on.  When the kid is half running and stumbling though the drifts, the lady mentions him by name and tells the guy he has no coat.  The guy replies that the kid "will be okay.  I talked to him."  It turns out that the drunk also knows the couple.

     Saturday, I'm working.  I decide not to fight the snow with my bike.  I take the bus downtown.  I stop into Jeremy'e the manager's coffee place.  i see a guy someone refers to as Jeremy.  He doesn't look like the Jeremy who introduced himself to me, told me to move my bike, and rousted a couple of homeless.  He isn't, and when I ask him, is unaware of any other Jeremy.  I am at last on the same page with the manager of this place.  He and i are both just as confused.  After work, I take a bus home down the avenue to a deathburger where I will catch a connecting bus home.  I run inside to grab dinner.  I've been stopping by here off and on over my almost three decades in the city.  I don't remember it as a place with service worse than any other.  This evening, the employee in charge appears to have found himself stuck with the unceremonious duty of running the place for the time being.  He doesn't sound happy about it.  He's using profanity with his kitchen crew.  "Are the machines not working?" he asks.  A customer tells him that he ordered his food for here, not to go.  I find myself complaining about this on a regular basis.  The employee interrupts him as he tries to hand him a plastic tray.  "Here's a tray...here's a tray here's a tray."  I order at a kiosk.  He gives me my food.  I ask him for my beverage.  He gives me a water cup.  When he is distracted, I go behind the counter and grab a cup which is the size for which I paid.  He has his hands full with not having any skills, and there's nothing more tough on the hands.  The guy behind me has trouble speaking and asks to see a manager about his order.  It sounds as if it's a breakfast order.  It's going on 7 PM.  He asks his crew, "Did someone promise this guy this order?"  I exit stage left.
     The following morning, I awake with enough sleep for the first time since the beginning of the previous work week.  I head across the street to the Mexican place.  The place which serves traditional Mexican.  Pulled meat.  Menudo.  No coffee.  No kale juice.  This morning, I am presented with a new extra menu separate from the regular one in Spanish.  This menu is in English.  It's the first English which I've seen within these walls.  It has items such as "country potatoes"  and pancakes.  They have created an emergency menu for the newly transplanted Caucasians who wander in here for breakfast.  I have a conversation with my waitress in Spanish.  I'm not bilingual, so I don't understand much of her answers to my questions.  But I believe that she tells me they are serving more Caucasian customers, and that only a small number of them enjoy traditional Mexican food.
Monday.  I'm headed to work, first through the neighborhood between my own and the bike trail.  I approach a corner in this residential area.  Sitting on the curb in a middle-aged homeless guy in a hoodie.  He's with a dog and a cane.  I think that the look on his face says, 'I know I don't live here.'  It's just a short ride from there to the bike trail.  As soon as I'm on it I approach an underpass.  Squatting underneath is another homeless guy.  He has a small propane tank he's left directly in my path.  I can see at the other end of the underpass is a Parks and Recreation pickup truck being maneuvered by the driver.  I come out the other end and pass the truck.  Immediately behind it are another pair of homeless guys.  One grey-haired guy looks familiar.  He stares at the truck with a mostly toothless open mouth, as he tucks his shirt into his snow pants.
     On my way home Tuesday, I'm off the bridge over the light rail tracks.  I enter the trail from a small parking lot where you can park and ride or walk the trail.  In the evening, shortly after 7 PM, there is always one car parked right at the entrance to the trail.  Sometimes the engine is running.  Shortly after I get on the trail, there is a stone picnic bench.  Usually, the same homeless guy is sitting there with his cane and his dog.  One evening, it was a guy with two cats.  Tonight, he nods at me.  Tomorrow evening, he will say "Hi."  This evening, I am approaching the place where i exit the trail.  I'm coming up behind a guy pushing a shopping cart full of stuff and with a blanket draped over everything.  I wonder if it's the same Flying Dutchman Shopping Cart?

"Mr. Dennis"
     Thursday.  I'm at work when I run over to the Greek restaurant next door.  It's standing room only for lunch.  I grab a menu with the phone number and phone in an order.  A disembodied voice answers the phone.  I mention the name of the restaurant  to make sure I have the correct number.  The voice verifies that I do.  I place my order, a salad with beef and lamb meat.  The voice tells me it will be ready in 20 minutes.  In 20 minutes I go back over to the restaurant.  It's even busier and there is no salad.  I leave and return a few minutes later.  Still no salad.  I call again from work and this time reach the cashier.  She's unaware of my order.  She explains that there is a "Mr. Dennis" who answers the phone for her when she is busy with customers at the counter.  He is supposed to write orders on a sticky note and give it to the kitchen, which he probably forgot to do with my salad order.  I replace the order with her, which she tells me will be ready in five minutes.  I head back after 5 minutes but forget my wallet.  I leave the restaurant but the way through the patio back to work is blocked by a trio of homeless friends.  I hop over the patio railing, grab my wallet, return to pay, and take my salad back to work.  I discover that it's not a beef and lamb salad but a chicken salad.  i consume it before I return next door to let the cashier know it was not the salad i ordered from Mr. Dennis.  She tells me that, on the phone, she thought I ordered the salad she gave me.  She tells me that they will make me the one I wanted for no charge.  Nice guys which they are.  I wonder what Mr. Dennis does when he isn't taking the incorrect orders.  My late father's name was Dennis.

     Later in the day, a mental "customer" comes into work.  He's frantically looking at the computer, at the counter, everywhere.  He claims we 'altered a pair of pants and that's it right there (points to a blank wall) and it should be like these and I'M A SURGEON AND WHEN SHIT HAPPENS I DO IT FOR FREE...'  He is told to call the manager here in the morning.  This is enough to get him out of the door and back off planet Earth.  The month ends with what couldn't be a more quiet scene.  I'm on my way home in the evening, on the bike trail.  In the distance, where I usually leave the trail, is perhaps the Flying Dutchman Shopping Cart.  But there is no cart.  It's just a little guy standing on the trail.  He has a backpack and grey whiskers on his chin.  He's standing and having a smoke.  Just standing there in the light from the street lamp, on the trail.

January 2019, Instead Of Sex: Mental Illness In The City, and The Teachings Of Jeremy

     ...to argue that Benedict had been unduly pressured to quit...  ...to declare Francis an anti-Pope.  ...cardinals and bishops...to call an enclave and elect a new Pope.  Unless Francis resigned voluntarily...and if Benedict was still alive...  Schism would be inevitable.  Once released from doctrinal constraints, bishops in one...area might ordain women, while...unrecognized in another.  ...conflicts between parish priests and their curates...parents and siblings...all aided and abetted by social media.  - Vanity Fair, 12/2018

     ...upholding pillars of faith for a community that has been traumatized by police brutality, economic inequity, and spiritual warfare.  ...at a mental health facility...patients...simply had no anchor...  "I didn't know if psychology could fix that..."  ...exploring the historical and social realities of liberation theology...  ...people of color were being pushed out of the community by the prohibited cost of living, and...redefined the church's role...  In 2014, Montbello was ranked as one of Denver's most dangerous neighborhoods...inaccurately...and significantly limited its growth.  ...its only high school closed its doors...  "In today's climate, I feel like I have a responsibility to be proactive  in helping people  see the issues of race, inclusion, diversity, and equity are not fringe issues that we deal with aside  from religion, but they are core values of...God's people."  ...to discuss issues of race and progressive resistance to solve social and political problems within the community.  "The church should be actively working to change the community and the world, as well as training people to respond to the hate...permeating our society."  - Denver Urban Spectrum, 12/2019

     "Overturning...convictions is part of Denver's multi-pronged approach to correct the social injustices caused by the war on drugs."  Advocates have criticized...the onus on people with convictions...either by filling out an online form or attending an event.  The [attorney's office will ask the court to eliminate convictions and have state agencies update records for background checks.]  Advocacy groups...work with people hamstrung by old marijuana convictions.  A past conviction "is a jacket that you wear the rest of your life," said...executive director of Servicos de la Raza.  The nonprofit group focuses o Denver's immigrant and refugee communities...  ...even minor drug convictions keep people from working in well-paying industries, improving their credit and finding housing.  T Marijuana Industry Group...is helping cover court fees.  - Denver Herald, 1/17/2019

     ...the Denver City Council took a massive step towards making Denver...the first U.S. city to open a supervised injection site.  ...for people to legally inject drugs such as opioids.  ...at the annual Homeless Persons Memorial on the steps of the City and County Building...the reading of 233 names of [homeless] who died in 2018.  Of them, 27 were due to drug overdoses...  ...there is a strong correlation between addiction and homelessness.  ...resources for those [homeless battling addiction] below the poverty line...continue to dwindle.  Denver is a city of innovation, of growth and progress.  Supervised injection sites are our opportunity to continue that reputation...
     ...the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found the life expectancy of persons experiencing homelessness to be just in the 40s.  ...chronic illness, infections, violence, poor mental health, and substance abuse.  Arapahoe House, the largest drug and alcohol treatment center in the metro region, closed its doors in January 2018.  Nearly 90 percent of its patients received little to no income.  [Of those homeless who died in 2018,] physical trauma accounted for 23 deaths, heart disease for 13, and the rest of the 91 confirmed deaths were...due to alcohol, hypothermia, pneumonia, or other diseases.  ...a memoriam to those who had died [reads,] "We're people who have contributed the utmost with our sweat, our tears, our lives."  - Denver Voice, 1/2019

     ...somewhere between...Lincoln Park and Sun Valley...south of Mile High Stadium.  ...the area had been frequented by homeless campers since the...camping ban in 2012, forcing people to sleep in more hidden areas, and I do start seeing shopping carts...  ...under I-25; up and to our left is an elevated ledge shielded from the sky by an expanse of...concrete.  [The transit system] recently built a chain-link fence around the ledge to deter campers, but we notice a rope hanging from the fence, perhaps fifteen feet in length, with knots spaced out every few feet.  ...underneath the Sixth Avenue viaduct, next to [a] climbing gym...  This is where Lewis lived in a homeless encampment for the better part of  seven years.  "I mean, you were like the mayor down here."  Lewis...saved...people from overdoses.  "People used to literally drive up and drop people off by my tent here.  Other times they'd carry people to the edge of the camp and yell, 'Vernon!'  One time we were in this building here...and someone literally threw this chick who was OD-ing through the window so I could help her."  - Westword, 1/24-30/2019

     ...the tendency towards paternalistic authoritarianism, the inclination to...the civil service...the unquestioning obedience of authority...exclusive concentration of politics in the capital...  The perfect state and the perfect society...  The failure on [the] part [of the Dutch colonial power to establish] a national bourgeoisie...to think and act for itself [resulted in] the elite [drifting] away from the masses...and were unable to cope with independence...nationalism [grew] without cohesion...  - Shaplen

     That 71 percent of African Americans distrusted the 2004 [presidential election] results was perhaps not a surprise...victims of organized disenfranchisement...  But 28 percent of NASCAR fans?  Twenty-five percent of born-again Christians?  Twenty-two percent of currently serving members of the armed forces?  ...shutting the blinds on the loathsome old common landscape to tinker with their own self-tailored...highly paranoid recipe for salvation and for revolution.  - Insane Clown President, M. Taibbi, 2017

     New Year's Day.  A diner down the street is open.  I head out in the snow to the bus stop.  It stopped snowing and the sun is trying to come out.  At the bus stop is a cross eyed guy with a snow shovel.  I ask him several time to repeat himself before I understand him.  He's telling me that the transit system is free all day today.  It's a city tradition.  Coming through a crosswalk at a snail's pace is a skinny guy.  He's in a hat with ear flaps, an unzipped winter coat, and insulated pants which are falling down.  I think I hear him yell, "Fuck!"
     It's Thursday after New Year's.  I'm on my way to pick up my bike before work, which is ready.  When I dropped it off, the tech thought I had spilled blood on the frame.  I told him it's hot chocolate.  I hit the transit depot for some ride coupons, grab breakfast at the homeless central deathburger, a brownie at a convenience store, and a sugar free hot chocolate at a coffee place, all on the pedestrian mall.  It's a short walk to the stop for the bus to the bike shop.  A  middle aged guy in a hoodie step in front of me in the line for the bus.  When it arrives, we step onboard.  He pays his fare but doesn't realize that it's gone up.  He put the rest in before he puts down a seat in the handicapped area.  Another passenger alerts him that a wheelchair is coming onboard, and he will have to move.  "Well, the driver shut the door," he tells her.  "I didn't know.  Don't yell at me."  I'm out of the bus at at the bike shop, where my bike is less than quoted.  A guy who can hardly walk holds the door as I take my bike away.  He gets a head start down the sidewalk but I make it around him.  The following day, I'm out back of where I work.  I like to have a snack outside rather than inside before I start my shift.  A young, soft spoken guy approaches me from the alley.  he carries an air pump, which he refers to as an "air compressor."  He must have noticed my bike.  I assume that it's stolen.  I decline his offer.
     I prefer to have a snack behind where I work, rather than eat inside.  This is where I am late in the morning on Friday.  A young, soft-spoken man approaches me from the alley.  He carries an air pump which he refers as an "air compressor."  He wants to know if i "would be interested in it."  He must have noticed my bike.  An air pump I already have.  An air compressor would turn my bike tubes into bombs.  Saturday.  I step out of a connecting bus to work.  I'm at the edge of the park between the capitol and the state house.   The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has a sculpture installation around a fountain.  As I am snapping a photo when a guy comes along.  He asks me if I have a clean pair of spare socks.  They're...in my sock drawer.  It's a short walk from there to the deathburger homeless central.  Out front are a couple of police cars and an ambulance.  After work, which has been nuts lately, I get to the supermarket downtown and to the stop for my first bus home some time after 8 PM.  A guy in a fleece-lined hat with ear flaps, and shorts, stands playing hip hop on a sound system.  A friend of his ride up on a bike to ask him if the guy has seen his phone.  The bus arrives and he asks the driver if he can use a transfer which expired 20 minutes ago.  She mentions that the transit system provides transfers which are valid for a full 3 hours, and then asks the guy, "That's still not enough time?"
     Sunday.  It's been quite a morning.  A quick breakfast, and a stop at the only supermarket with one kind of low fat cheese.  I come out to find yet another flat on my bike.  It's not far to the bike shop open on Sunday.  When I get there, I discover the shop opens at noon.  I trek to the train, which takes me to a bus, which drops me a few blocks from another grocery.  This one is the only place which has a second kind of low fat cheese.  As I approach the entrance, I can't miss a couple who is dressed in matching lime T-shirts.  The pair stand against a wall.  The guy has a beard, a cap, and an i-pad.  He asks if he "can borrow me for a minute?"  He introduces himself, shakes my hand, and asks me what I know about the Nature Conservancy.  I thank him and turn to get some cheese.  He tells me he's not done.  I suggest that we are.  Cheese procured, I leave nature boy and take my flat back to a bus stop.  A guy approaches me.  Another guy sits at the stop.  The first guy tells me he's going to take a knife from the other, and do i "have" his "back?"  He then tells me he's kidding, and then greets the other guy who he knows.  Back on the bus.  Back on the train.  back to the bike shop which has just opened.  In no time, I have a new tube, a better tire, and an adjusted bike rack.  A woman comes inside with a bike, which she says belongs to her boss.  It needs a different part according to her boss, who hasn't been on it in four months.  Her boss is out of town.  It appears that her boss did not take the bike along.

     Worked on pedestrian/cyclist safety on [my] Blvd.  Sponsored traffic-calming community art  [where I haul groceries from one bus to another Saturday evenings].  - Happy New Year from Councilwoman Debbie Ortega

     After three accidents...  The Hornet [restaurant] hosted community meetings...for speeding enforcement...  "You can sit here and watch cars, and half of them are going 55, 65 miles an hour.  It's a 30-mile-an-hour street."
     While critics have said [the city's new school superintendent] shoulders some of the blame for...test score gaps between students of color and white students, [she] "didn't avoid the controversy, but she leaned into it.  We all knew that [she] was a deep listener."  "...truly interested in soliciting community voice."  ...to be creating equity...  Her husband...is a banker who helps charter schools get financing for construction projects.  - Washington Park Profile, 1/2019

     ...little electric scooters owned by venture capitalists and giant car companies...  Lawmakers charmingly dubbed the transport option "electric mobility scooters."  People on scooters can use bike lanes.  ...can use sidewalks...if the street's speed limit exceeds 30 [mph], and if no bike lane is available.  ...can park anywhere on the sidewalk...as long as they don't impede pedestrian and wheelchair traffic.  The companies...must redistribute the vehicles to bus and train stops every morning.
     "It's more than just responding to the culture here..."  ...the market for food and market halls in suburban communities...depends on population density.  "...built-up demand exists."  "There are...market efficiencies if you create the right spot in the right neighborhood.  The real opportunities are in the outskirts, and it makes sense from all of the various stakeholders.  I don't think this is a trend going away anytime soon.".  - Denver Herald, 1/17/2019

     Front Range Ride Guides curates fat biking tours for families...and provides bikes, helmets, backpacks, and snacks.  After reviewing technique and safety tips, your guide will get you and your family on a trail...  "We'll pause to make snow angels and have hot cocoa."  Fat biking is "conditions limited," meaning...a short window of opportunity...  - Colorado Parent, 2/2019

     ...you get to that spot where you leave your everyday life behind.  Could what you're experiencing only happen here, and right now?  Is it a singular...sometimes transformative experience?  There is not a business sector that is not getting involved.  It is simply the new way of design.  ...and they all think they're the Lone Ranger.  It's a commodity, then a good, then a serve, then an experience...  - Westword, 1/10-16/2019

     ...social art as a way of simultaneously helping to create and enter into a sacred space where each person...holds the wholeness for themselves and all.  The anti-social aspects of consciousness, antipathy, and critical intelligence, are held back...  ...it is about holding a space for the spirit where there is an awareness of more than the physical realm...  Our biographies provide the content for the process of social art.  - Lilipoh, Fall 2018

     ...the outdoor community, a collection of varied, sometimes odd, always brave individuals who find common ground both individually and collectively out beyond the constraints of human society and limits.  It encompasses everything from Sunday night crit racers to bristly curmudgeons who think the term curmudgeon cramps their style.  - Elevation Outdoors, 1/2019

   Tuesday.  I'm on my way to work, just across my boulevard and to the north.  I spot another Caucasian, a young woman walking  a pair of dogs.  To my left on the bike trail this morning is an informational sign about the "early peoples" who inhabited this river area.  Approaching me on the trail is, at first I think, a Muslim woman in chador.  In fact, it's a guy pulling a shopping cart, which is not unusual out here on the trail.  But along with the bright red stolen shopping cart from Target, he's in a black hoodie and black pants, and has a trench coat which is off his shoulders and dragging along the concrete.  A short ride from here is the other end of the 8th Avenue bridge.  After work, around 7:30 PM, I am approaching that end of the bridge headed back the other way.  I'm across the street from the bridge entrance, from where I can see a guy some fifty feet above the train tracks,  He's shadow boxing  in a camouflaged jacket.  New Year's resolution: shadowbox fifty feet in the air on a pedestrian bridge after 7 PM in Winter, check.  Shortly thereafter, over the bridge and on the trail, I pass a huge full plastic trash bag.  The next morning, I pass the same bag going the other way.  It's being carried by one of two Parks and Recreation employees in a truck.  Thursday.  A guy comes into work off the street .  He's selling items stolen from a nearby supermarket.  In the evening, I am riding home through the neighborhood across the street from where I live.  I see yet someone else walking a couple of dogs.  It's dark, but my money says Caucasian.
     Friday.  It's wet snow this morning.  Along the way to the bike trail I'm getting soaked.  Once I turn north onto the trail, it's hitting me in the face.  I'm off the trail, over the bridge, and within the block of a deathburger up the street.  I begin to run into homeless out in force.  I assume that they are prevented from either sitting or lying anywhere as it's wet on the ground.  At the deathburger, it's filling up with homeless.  A couple of bikes are parked outside, along with my own.  One bike is covered n talismans; laminated Virgin Marys, windcatchers.  Inside I dry out as I grab breakfast.  Several hours later, I step out back of work.  Riding through the alley on a mountain bike is a homeless guy in a winter coat.  He appears drenched and carries a burlap bag in his arms full of I know not what.  On the way home, once again I am approaching my neighborhood.  I see someone else yet again walking a pair of dogs.  Another Caucasian?
     The following day is the first Saturday which I have off at my new job.  In the evening, I am at the corner outside of my home.  There is a little guy here with a 10-speed bike and a grey beard.  In one of his hands is a handful of plastic black rosarys.  We both cross the street and head over to the Mexican place, where he attempts to make whatever he can by selling these instruments of faith.  One guy at the register declines his offer.  Another tells him in English, "No, man."  Be has a rest before rejoining his sojourn.  The following day, I spend my afternoon at the International Sportsmen's Expo.  Lots of shiny new off road ATVs with hard covered interiors.  Electric hunting bicycles.  Lots of camouflage and beards.  There are guns, knives, and bows.  Animal call devices.  Hunting tours are for sale.  A $4,700 package to Africa or a $450 Texas hog hunt.  At one fur and leather booths, customers are tossing around items with hundreds of dollars.  A couple of kinds almost knock over a display while chasing each other.  Next to a tactical firearms training booth is an insurance booth.  There are (tank tread) track mounted wheelchairs for hunting.  I see my first "Make America Great Again" hats.  After the show, I ride to an old bus transfer station and pick up a bus home.  Along the way, a young guy with a tattoo on his face step onboard. He sits in the back with another guy who is telling him that he just got out of prison but has to go back.
     Monday.  There's a bridge over the bike trail which I usually ride under on the way to work.  It's an avenue which leads to the train station.  Today, I turn off the trail onto the bridge, as I am pressed for time this morning.  Up on the bridge is a guy who has a push broom.  He's using the opposite end of the handle to scrape clean a joint between two concrete sections of the pedestrian part of the bridge.  I don't believe that he's with Public Works.  I arrive at the train, which takes me to the rec center.  It's in a park where teenagers like to gather and smoke marijuana.  There's one kid with a group of perhaps ten others.  He mentions that he has a picture of his parents smoking marijuana.  The following morning before work, I'm downtown at a Starbuck's.  I don't have it locked up but rather on the patio.  Inside, I'm waiting for my sugar-free hot chocolate.  More "blood" to spill on my bike frame.  I'm approached by a young guy in a ball cap.  He introduces himself as the manager, Jeremy.  He also has a trimmed beard.  At first he compliments my bike, telling me that it "looks fast," before asking me if I could take it off the patio.  If one person begins keeping a bike there, the domino theory will become reality.  As I step outside to move it, I see a couple of homeless guys coming inside.  They don't appear dirty, more creepy.  When I'm back inside, I'm in time to see Jeremy offering the pair an opportunity to not hang around inside.  They retreat to the patio, where they are free of bikes.  I wonder about the homeless I've seen in here on Saturday mornings and wonder about their fate under Jeremy.  I collect my beverage and take my own seat on the patio.  Jeremy exits and bids them farewell.  One is in a lather jacket and watch cap.  He asks Jeremy twice, "You want me to follow you?"  Jeremy does not reply with any rejoinder.  He disappears breezily down the pedestrian mall.  I head down the opposite way, passing a young guy with blue lipstick and on a skateboard.
     Wednesday.  I'm travelling to work through the neighborhood across the boulevard from where I live.  I spot yet another Caucasian walking yet another pair of dogs.  I join up with the trail, to the bridge to downtown.  At the other end of the bridge, I wait with traffic for a couple of drunks to make their way across the street.  The slower one isn't stumbling or weaving, he's just extremely slow.  I turn north for a couple of blocks.  Sitting on a curb is a guy with a red and white scarf wrapped around his head.  He says, "fuck," he lays down and repeats a sound over and over again.  A woman walks past and keeps an eye on him.  An SUV pulls up to the stop sign.  He laughs and points at the vehicle, asking an occupant to 'suck his dick.'  A couple blocks further and I run into a gas station.  There is a line and the place has nothing for me to eat.  When I come out, I run into a kid asking everyone in sight for money.  He wants to eat at the deathburger across the parking lot.  I head over there myself.  The woman behind the register is kind enough to break a $100 bill for me.  In comes the kid, with a girl.  I guess he got his money.  I hear the woman tell him not to grab a cup from the stack but to wait until she gives him one.  He collects his order, hands it to the girl, and they are on their way.  At a table is a guy with piercings and skinny jeans.  Sitting across from him is a grey-haired guy in a black suit, paper napkin on his thigh.  I wonder if he's the first guy's dad, or perhaps his lawyer.  I run over to the coffee place.  When I come out, a guy in a blanket asks me for a dollar.  I head over to the rec center, which is in a park.  At the curb is a minivan with its flashers on.  A middle-aged couple stands next to their vehicle.  The woman calls to a group of ten teenagers gathered around a picnic table, one who stands on top of the table.  She's asking them to help her break into the van.  Some nine hours later, I am headed crosstown, into an area of homes squeezed between the river and a renovated area of downtown.  I find myself behind the guy riding the bike covered in both Native and Catholic iconography.
     So, what is it like working around the corner from downtown?  The place where I now am employed just happens to be on a major artery into the heart of the fair city.  The sister picks me up for breakfast before work one day this week.  We drive past the place.  Next door, she points out a halfway house.  It has a big sign out front which reads, "space available."  I wonder if you can squat in a former halfway house and if that's like transitioning back to homelessness?  Those who file past the front windows where I work will alternate between a group of guys in suits, to a group of homeless, to another group of guys in buttoned down shirts.  One regular appears to be a woman who is pushed in what appears to be a broken motorized wheelchair.  A nearby gas station has a steady procession of weird urban bohemian wannabes, truck drivers, homeless, and the occasional grandfather.  One Caucasian guy in a powder blue nylon fleece jacket came inside, distraught that the store had no coffee lids.  Thursday.  I'm at the downtown supermarket before work.  A female shopper pushing a cart is going up to displays and touching individual items for sale, without even looking at them.  In the afternoon, during my shift at work, I step into a Greek grill next door for a slice of tiramisu.  The girl behind the counter takes her time ever so carefully placing it in the to go box.  "Do you want it heated?  Do you need plastic silverware?  Anything else?"  Magazine?  Shoe shine?
     Friday.  A homeless guy comes into work.  "How much to clean a shirt?" he wants to know.  Can we give him an express bag?  Ah, he wants something to carry his stuff in, possibly something waterproof.  It's snowing outside   Bags are for customers who do a certain amount of business.  Can he shovel snow for us?  It's wet snow, and it's melting when it hits the ground.  No.  Do we need a delivery driver?  No.  He grabs our business cards and claims that he will hand them out.  He runs out.  And then it's Saturday.  I'm on a shuttle headed down the pedestrian mall downtown.  It's perhaps 8:30 AM.  In front of me is a kid with a sign stating that 'girls can do anything.'  It has streamers.  There are young women everywhere up and down the mall today.  It's the annual Women's March.  Behind me is a young homeless-looking guy who smells faintly but literally like shit.  He's including "fuck" in his monologue, which includes what sounds as if it's a parody of a female somewhere in the sojourn of his life.  When he impersonates this female, known only to him on this shuttle, his voice twists into an inhuman squeak.  I step out of the shuttle and into the deathburger homeless central.  I stand in line next to a pair of middle-aged women sitting in a booth.  One mentions "the five behaviors" to the other.  They sound as if they study education.  Behind me is one homeless woman in an airline company winter coat.  She tells the pair in the booth that they both sound as if they are "egecated."  The woman asks them about taking a test for her high school diploma online.  A couple of women wait for their food.  They each have signs with statements about the struggles of women and appear to feel surrounded by the vibe of the literal unwashed.  After breakfast I run into a doughnut place.  A pair of teenage girls exit with neon pink signs as big as they are.  I then go next door to a coffee place, for a sugar-free beverage.  More women, more signs.  No "sign" of the manager Jeremy.  Work Saturdays?  Him?  Hah!
     From there, I hike to toward the bus stop.  The mall shuttle comes to a stop and a couple of guys step out.  One is chiding someone inside; the driver?  "That's why your life is so petty," he proclaims.  "That's why your life is so petty.  'Oh, I'm calling the police.'"  At the bus stop is a notice in a sheet of paper taped to a pole.  The bus is detoured past the march.  It looks as if I will be making my own march to work this morning.  Actually, it's how I usually get there from here.  It's only 6 blocks, past a park between the state house and the capitol.  It's nothing if not a biweekly civic experience, at least from the viewpoint of the homeless who fill the park.  Democracy deferred.  Our elected representatives should stop into the deathburger which is standing room only with those without a roof over their heads.  It's about half the distance of my walk from here to work.  I remember when the Occupy movement was camped out on the capitol lawn several years ago..  I also remember my visit to this park during the Democratic National Convention a good decade ago.  The "Don't feed the liberals" sign.  The Falun Gong, to whom I bowed.  The Communist booth, the only vendor which recognized Pat Paulsen on my handmade shirt.  I wasn't on the pedestrian mall for the protest march of Hillary's convention delegates.  This morning, vendors with T-shirts and buttons line the sidewalk.  Six days after I see my first Make America Great Again Hats in person, today I see my first "Fuck Trump shirts and pins."  In case hate isn't trumped, if you can't beat 'em...  The street is closed a block and a half from where I work.  Women park at the meters out front.  Some head to the park.  Other women, their signs, and their dogs return from there.
     It's a long and a busy Saturday, as usual.  It's just me and another guy, who refers to us as the varsity team.  Almost an hour after we close, he gives me a ride back to my boulevard.  It will be nice not to have to walk from work to the supermarket downtown, from which I would otherwise have another hike (with groceries) to a bus stop, and a wait for a bus to another wait for a bus before finally landing home at last.  Instead, around 7:30 PM, I step into a deathburger for a quick dinner shortly before I do my grocery shopping a short walk away.  At a table are a couple who are both drunk.  The table is piled with assorted trash and a loaf of bread.  They also have some food which they ordered from here.  The woman is discussing someone she knows who is in jail.  She's in a camouflaged jacket and has a perm which looks like it's long overdue for a shampoo.  I order and eat, and return to the counter for a quick dessert.  In front of me is the female.  She is holding a single slice of bread in one hand.  Sh'es absolutely motionless for lack of energy.  The manager asks her what she can do for her.  She asks the manager to butter the bread for her.  Instead, the manager gives her some butter.  The female says, "I was going to get a drink...but I don't think so."  She wanders back to her table.  The manager says something to me about the vice of alcoholism.  I tell her that I hope this pair is ready to leave when the place closes.  She makes a face as if she intends to say a prayer.
     Monday.  I'm on my way home after dark, across the boulevard from my side of the street.  I spot a couple of young Caucasian guys next to a metal fence, in front of an embankment leading down to a shopping center parking lot.  Even in the virtual absence of light, their race precedes themselves.  Both are in shirts and ties, one in an overcoat and blow-dried hair and the other in a down vest and knit cap.  Jehovah's Witnesses?  No se.  A couple of days ago, I noticed a big metal staple buried in my front tire.  Seconds after I run into the guys, my tube decides to go flat.  I don't even have to look, I can feel its performance immediately go sluggish.

     ...on HUD's fair Market Rent (FMR) calculations...for Denver county were...over $200 short of the average one-bedroom rental price...  ...average rent in the city is $1,535...  "We simply can't place veterans in housing that they can't afford."  - Denver Voice, 1/2019

     ...the neighbors were fed up with what had become an overly rambunctious spot...  ...which had really earned its spot on our Best Dive Bar list [but] was closed by the city as a public nuisance.  Now the space [will reopen under] a stipulated agreement worked out with city officials.  They'll be adding plenty of TVs, as well as purse hooks and plugs for phone chargers...  ...and the outdoor murals covered over, per the agreement with the city.  "We're really excited about the changes we see coming to East Colfax..."  - Westword, 1/24-30/2019

     Wednesday.  I'm at the post office on the way to work, to grab some stamps.  Two people wait at windows and another is boxing a package at a table.  I'm the only other customer there.  I'm the line.  Until three others come inside at once, file past me, and form another line.  When one customer is finished, I step up to that window.  The clerk asks me if I "cut the line."  I ask her if she saw me standing there.  She says she didn't.  I'm in a hurry during the morning when i didn't used to be, because I start work earlier at my new job.  I have half hour to get to ride to the rec center, which somehow I do with a couple of minutes to spare.  A coach and her basketball team waits for the place to open so they can practice.  During the wait, she is telling someone about the public school teachers voting on a possible strike.  "If the [new] governor says we can't strike, he's done."  I get to work, and a couple of hours later, I next door at a Greek short order place on my break.  When I'm leaving, I hold the door for a woman who I think is coming inside.  She is instead going to mingle with others out on the patio.  Just then, a crazy walks past yelling profanity.  "I'm goin' home!  Fuck it!"  Someone says, "Poor guy..."  Later on, on my lunch, I'm leaving through the back.  In the alley is a guy with a shopping cart piled high with I know not what.  Next to the cart is the bottom half of a coat rack with red and silver streamers wound around it.  A homeless guy is sweeping the area around them with a broom.  I saw him out front earlier.  Later on, I see him out front again.  Instead of the shopping cart, I see him pulling a bundle of stuff, topped off by an overturned table with its legs sticking up in the air.    It sounds as if there are castors underneath some kind of dolly which he pulls with a lone cord.  From his camouflaged skinny pants to his bright purple winter hat, he appears as some kind of homeless technicolor dream coat.
     Thursday.  Light snow, but it's accumulating.  And it's slick.  I'm fucking sliding all over the place.  Last week, i was soaked from wet snow.  This morning, I may end up breaking my neck.  I do go down next to a parked minivan.  Weather aside, I was coming through this same stretch of neighborhood across my boulevard from where I live.  I was coming from somewhere or going somewhere.  Along a residential street full of bungalows and detached single family homes is something which almost appears as if it's dropped in the middle of the neighborhood direct from outer space.  It's a brand spanking new two-story duplex, complete with wrought-iron bars on the upper floor windows.  And now that I work downtown, I'm beginning to see the emerging bones of a city's aging skeleton.  On Friday I spot old tenement buildings and restaurants from the 1930's.  These structures stand alone now, surrounded by condominiums not even finished.  They appear almost as museum pieces, vestiges of a previous market and an entire previous kind of reality as much as examples of architecture.  If you are a college student, or new to this country, or simply poor.  Where do you live?  Where do you shop?  What do you do?  My own neighborhood is home to a lower-class economy.  It serves its residents.  It makes me wonder if all the residents, including the Caucasian ones, interact with this economy.  The Caucasians are running or walking their pairs of dogs.  Apart from hipster weirdos both young and old congregating at the Vietnamese restaurant behind my home, they are the ones whom I know not what they do.  It's the opposite of downtown, from where, according to what I read, they are coming.
     Saturday.  I'm off work today.  I'm on the bus for a short ride to the supermarket.  I hear a Caucasian voice asking for directions.  Someone asks him for money.  I have a late start to the day and breakfast late.  After shopping, I'm off to another used book sale, this one all the way on the other side of town.  It will be the beginning of a six-and-a-half-hour round trip odyssey.  I get on a crosstown train with a middle-aged passenger.  He has long thick sideburns.  He asks me, slowly, if this train goes "to Pine Bluff?"  I tell him twice I don't know where that is.  The only Pine Bluff I've heard of is Pine Bluff, Illinois from the TV production of The Martian Chronicles.  He asks someone else before he has a seat.  He says that he thinks the train does go there.  Be both disembark at the furthest point east.  After the book sale, I return to the train, which takes me to some where for "lunch" after five PM.  I'm seated before I get up to ask the hostess if I can move to a table which isn't in the dark.  I don't have anyone to make out with me.  I stand in front of the hostess after she seats one party and is in the process of seating another one.  A waitress arrives with no menu to get my drink order.  She returns with my drink, as well as two waters.  She says she doesn't know if I'm waiting for someone else.  I moved to a much larger table, with a light.  She still has no menu.  I get back to my neighborhood to eat dinner after 7 PM.
     The following afternoon, I am coming back from another late (but considerably earlier than yesterday) lunch.  I am across the street from where I live, looking at the corner upon which I have lived for what will be 12 years this coming April.  It's been long enough that I am aware I never will see everything, so I shouldn't think that I ever will.  This afternoon is one of those days.  I see a trio of police cruisers parked at that very corner.  In the middle of several police officers is a lanky-looking white-haired 70-year-old Caucasian.  He sure doesn't appear homeless, just the opposite.  His hair is trimmed and neat.  He's in a mustard-colored zippered sweater.  He looks as if he could be the father of a college student or an HOA president.  'Is he having trouble standing?' I ask myself.  Nope.  They put him in handcuffs and into one of the cruisers, and with that he is off on the short ride to the district police station, just across the street from my supermarket.  He didn't appear to have anything with him, no bags.  I don't see any car he drove there, giving me the impression that he could be a local resident.  Not even the local Caucasian retirees can be trusted in my neighborhood anymore.
     Monday.  It's snowing and blowing  this morning worse than last week.  As soon as I take a seat on my bike, I decide also that it'even more slippery than last week.  I step onto a bus up the street to my old stop.  I sit in front of a passenger who is giving a passenger a phone number for work shoveling snow.  In any other universe beyond this boulevard, this would perhaps be absolutely the most mundane of momentary tasks.  But this is not another universe.  The guy with the phone number happens to be drunk, and he asks the other to come over where he is sitting.  "He'll pay you $22.50 an hour to shovel snow!" the drunk yells.  The other passenger, who appears to be sober stands up and comes over.  I don't know what to say about a sober guy who seeks work from one who is drunk.  As a passenger is standing up in a bus crawling along a street upon which it is dangerous to travel, the driver asks the sober passenger to take his seat.  A third passenger sitting up front then asks the driver, "We can't stand up?"  It would otherwise be the stuff of which revolutions are made, perhaps in that elusive other universe, if instead most of us did not have jobs to go to.  What is it the late Jim Morrison wrote?  "Trading you hours for a handful of dimes."  I often think of this, just never actually at work where I am usually too busy.  "He'll work you every time it snows," the drunk professes.  Maybe this is a problem...if you're drunk.  In fact, he goes on to say that he's "supposed to be at work today," but he can't make it.  He does not elaborate, but I suspect he's implying that the inclement weather makes it too difficult for him to go to work...shoveling snow.  I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry at that one.  He then explains that today is his birthday, and he's taking the day off.  It's my own layman's understanding that snow and alcohol don't mix.  But I've never been a drunk prospective snow shoveling laborer "Ha ha.  I'm gonna be hittin' the bars."
     I change buses and none too soon.  On the crosstown bus is a passenger who is talking to the driver non-stop.  It's one endless collection of Christmas memories, of facts such as it's not snowing in Phoenix, of wonder at what downtown Denver must look like while it's snowing.  A few minutes from now, I will be there, where I must say it looks like a shitty mess.  Finally, another passenger tells him to calm down, stop talking to the driver, and let her drive.  The chatty guy pauses before he actually asks, "Who said that?"  The stuff of stillborn revolutions indeed.  The other passenger pauses himself before answering, "I did."  I know it's just a city bus.  But, as I've heard it said, 'Check and mate.'  The gabby guy's reply is, "She's goin' like two miles an hour."  I can't help having the unaccustomed feeling as if I've learned something.  The following morning, I'm late and I still don't trust that the streets are worth the risk of attempting to navigate.  Again, I am at the bus stop across the street from where I live.  There are a pair of twentysomething guys and a child in a stroller.  I smell marijuana and one of the guys has a lighter in hand.  When we board the bus, one of the guys has a transfer which expired yesterday.  Hours later, I leave work a couple of hours early as we are slow.  I get home earlier than I ever have for the past five years.  I spot my neighbor, who I've seen recently, perhaps for the first time since last year.  He's sitting on his familiar spot on the concrete berm in the parking lot, apparently on his phone.  I don't know if he's out here this time each evening.  As I continue along the sidewalk, I spot an SUV parked in front of my townhome complex.  It has a bullet hole in the front windshield.  Today is recycle day and I am pulling the residents' recycle bins from the curb back to the parking lot.  One has a number "6" on it.  I put it on the side of the even-numbered townhomes.  He doesn't see me place it there, but he comes along and spots it, asking me  who it belongs to.  I tell him...number 6.  He replies, "Six's is in front of number 6."  He then asks me if I put it there.

The Teachings Of Jeremy
     Wednesday.  I'm on my way to the bank and the coffee place BEFORE I hit the gym.  My only hope is the train, which drops me in a neighborhood of new condos under construction next to ancient row houses.  This means that longtime characters of the previous neighborhood are hanging out at new benches in front of the new condos.  It's a freezing cold morning.  At one corner of a new condo are a couple of middle-aged guys who appear as if they have both seen better days.  One asks the other, "How do you get four queers to sit on a bar stool?"  I can't remember wither the last bar joke I heard, or the last time I heard the word 'queer'.  "Turn it upside down."  I wonder if he knows that the state just elected the first gay mayor in U.S. history?  I haven't heard what he likes to sit on.  Whatever he wants to, probably.  I head into downtown upon whatever streets or sidewalks are clear of frozen amalgams of ice and compacted snow.  I reach the coffee place and circle around back, where it's away from the patio and I can keep an eye on it through a window.  I'm here at Jeremy's store.  He's the manager who keeps bicycles out of the patio area.  He will teach you this through an approach to conversation which I can only imagine he learned in some kind of management seminar.  Or webinar.  A guy comes from across the plaza to let me know that I can't have it back there either.  This is not a coffee place issue, but a plaza issue.  He's security for the plaza.  He suggests the bike racks on the sidewalk across the street.  I am familiar with these rack.  And they are...across the street.  "We've had a problem with bikes," he cryptically mentions.  Even Jeremy gets to the point eventually.  But then again, Jeremy isn't a security employee.  I park the bike outside the patio. and head inside.  On the patio, however, is another bike.  I mention this to a barista, and I tell her what Jeremy told me.  She tells me that the employees don't notice bikes on the patio if they are busy.  Now, I am making fun of Jeremy.  But I have the wrong audience for such a joke.  I order a sugar-free hot chocolate, and no sooner do I turn around when the barista  has somehow located the customer who owns the bike on the patio.  He appears to be a guy perhaps in his sixties, who like to come in here a sit and read with a coffee.  She imparts the teachings of Jeremy about the patio.  He's taken aback.  he tells her that's he's there almost every day.  The next thing I see is the barista moving his bike outside of the patio.  Did he refuse to move it?  When I pick up my beverage, I mention to someone that Jeremy didn't move my bike for me.  The employee has no idea what I am speaking of, and tells me that the store has nothing to do with the security guy who told me to move my own bike.
     Perhaps I will have better luck at the bank.  I get there and lock my bike where i did before, on a railing along some steps from the plaza in front of the bank.  When I come out, someone has locked my bike to the railing with another cable.  A note has a phone number on it.  Before I can dial it, a grey-haired guy in a knit cap with "SECURITY" on the front comes along.  He doesn't explain why he locked it, but unlocks it.  Then I unlock it.  I understand this is confusing, and perhaps I am the only one.  I ask him where the bank's bike parking is.  He gives me the identical answer as the other security guy.  I have twenty minutes to make it to the gym.  I manage to navigate the uneven ruts and patches of ice and snow.  Somehow I make it.  When I do get to work, I step out front after a while to grab a newspaper.  A guy has just crossed the middle of the street to ask me for fifty cents.  The following morning, I step off the bus at the train station.  A guy in an orange reflective vest is asking everyone over and over, "Anyone have a cigarette to sell?"