June 2010

     ...the religious faith...is...a part of the disposition to make complete stories about the universe and about the tribe.  ...one of the most powerful forces in the human mind, this tribalistic, myth-producing force.  These stories are overpowering, they are magnificent, they are the source of many wondrous parts of our own culture, they can't be abolished.  But they are almost always false...  Science tends to wipe them out, one after the other.  Whenever science comes into contact with these more traditional mythologies they are destroyed...  The trick is to capture religious energies.  This is where I think the natural sciences and the humanities will really come together at last.   - E. O. Wilson, OMNI, 2/79
     If there is a religious worker on the staff...  A person's religious therapy is left up to him...  The chaplain...is shoved so much in the corner that he cannot instill faith into his clients.  Unless the person in need finds some outer force to enter into him...to overcome his problem, then the psychiatric approach is more harmful than helpful.  The psychiatrist...becomes a substitute savior...  The patient helping patient approach means they are using one another as priests and lords.  Coffeehouses.  These are points of contact with hippies, runaways, tourists, students, and anyone who wants to talk.  The Gospel is presented to ghetto children who will become the addicts, alcoholics and muggers of the future...  ...have staff live in the community and become fused with the people.  This method has been used with good results by the Young Life group...amid the slums, garbage, vices, poverty...  - The Untapped Generation, by D. and D. Wilkerson, 1971
     "Permanently homeless people...feel they...will always be homeless.  What should we do about this population?  This is where sociological perspectives are important to solve the problem"...  - Denver Voice, 6/12
     The doorbell rang on my day off, what would be the day that the first U. S. governor in history to survive a recall election.  It was the person who, as a result of shifting voting districts, my new State Representative here to introduce herself.  She is the second politician who I have ever met.  The first was Diana Degette, twenty years ago this year, who rang my bell at a home which no longer exists.  The woman before me today tells me that her old district is more conservative, and she mentioned to me that she won that district by more than half the percentage.  She also mentioned that the latest special session ran rather late for her, and that the House Leader (who like to send bills to the wrong committees) was rude to her.  She asked me if she could count on my support for an upcoming ballot election, which she doesn't understand why she needs.  Considering this a vague question, I answered with, "I don't see why not."  She put me down for a yes, whatever this means, and asked to put a sign in my yard.  I told her that, being in a townhome, I wasn't sure where my yard is; and belonging to an HOA, I don't recall what my covenant says about it.  At no point did she ask me if I am registered to vote.

     It's after work.  I'm on a bus waiting to pull out for home.  I'm listening to another middle-aged guy with a bandanna covering his head.  He's wandering the train station, yelling at I know not who.  Perhaps it is a cry for help.  "Do you know where the zeroes are?  I'm looking for the zeroes!"  He means the buses which run the route #0.
     I'm up on a Friday morning.  The streetlight, a few yards from my place, is throwing shadows of branches blowing back and forth, against the orange light coming through the animated leaves.  To the east, against the dawn, is the blue form of a thunderstorm with occasional flashes of lightning.
     What to say about Father's Day weekend?  Sunday I was off to Colorado's first ever Comic Convention.  At the Colorado Con, the focus is on the comics, although there were both a Stargate prop and a backdrop of the Millenium Falcon available for photo ops.  There was also the orange Charger called the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazard, and the car named Kit from Knight Rider.  I knew a kid in the 7th grade who would sit at his desk in Algebra I, and enact his own Dukes of Hazard scripts.  From the same town, I knew a guy in high school who met the actor who played Knight Rider. He told a story about slapping the Knight on the chest and asking him, "Want to trade sunglasses?"  Milling around the cars were young people dressed as characters which I didn't recognize.  They appeared to be more interested in the local Ghostbusters vehicle than the muscle cars each from its own decade.  I didn't watch those TV shows, but it was fun to see the cars.  There were costumed characters to take photos of, as well as everyone else who appeared to be the 2012 version of the nerd, which appeared to almost be its own kind of costume.  To be a nerd, it appears as though you must be a heterosexual male with facial hair, glasses and clothes which send the nerd vibe.  There were the popular zombies, including a zombie kid.  As I came in, I saw one kid who had made his own costume out of cardboard, a robot from the TV show Doctor Who called a Dalek.  A tall woman came into the hall.  She radiated self-consciousness and lack of security, almost as if she didn't even consider herself to rise to the level of the nerd.  She is by no means bad looking.  She just didn't have the nerd energy.  I sat at a table in the hall cafe, next to a young mom with her two small kids.  I asked her for the time.  Her son asked her why I wanted to know the time.  I said that I was taking time-release cold medicine.  She told him, "See?"  He told her that he liked Wolverine.
     I exited the Con, and made my way through record 100 degree F heat to the Pride Fest.  I would later read that the previous day had been a "cool" one.  Not today.  Someone puts a sticker on my shirt which reads "Shine your love.  Love your shine."  I get a pen for donating a dollar to something.  There appears to be no such thing as a gay nerd.  I see shirts for sale which have "Legalize Love" on the front.  I saw a booth for gay Jews and went to look at the photos they had.  One was of a crowd with the Star of David on a rainbow flag.  A woman came up to me and stood there silently.  I asked her if I can get one of those flags.  She shook her head no.
     I'm on an early shift for a couple of weeks, getting over a cold.  I have lunch over three or four days at a deli in a white bohemian neighborhood.  I'm sitting next to a chatty woman on her cell, setting up some kind of church conference.  When she gets off, she begins discussing the minutia of setting up a church service.  Pastoral prayer, at what point in the service to mention "the names," will it be minister led or lay led?  The last one "should be up to the board" (of directors), "but they have no clue..."  The next day, I am back here, this time next to three people closing a deal on veterinary equipment.  The day after, I am back again, this time next to a couple who is purchasing insurance from a salesman.
     Somehow, yet again, it's another Saturday.  There's drama on my street this early morning.  I'm headed up the street to the bus stop before sun up.  In the dark, I hear Spanish from an angry male voice.  I make out the word "all."  ("You can have it all!"?  "Take it all!"?  "I don't like it at all!"?)  He's walking ahead of a young woman in a black top which only covers her chest, and black pants.  When I get up the street, a car quickly goes by.  The passenger says, "Fuck you, bitch."  I pass a deathburger parking lot, where a truck is parked.  The weight of the entire truck is leaning way over on the front left wheel, which is resting on the edge of of the wheel well.  It has a dealer plate on the back.  Did it come from the dealership next door, which was the hookah lounge?  The truck's front bumper is also damaged.  I catch the bus to the train.  Where I get off the train, on the platform is a young guy, using "fuckin'" to describe I can't hear what.   He points at a sign displaying the time when the next northbound train will arrive.  He goes to a ticket kiosk and punches a button.  He ponders a ticket, gets a bottle out of his pack, takes a swig, spits over the rail of the bridge he's on.  I get on the connecting bus with a young couple.  The girl is wearing orange cutoffs and a lime tank top, and has a blonde perm.  The guy has a name tattooed on the back of his neck, and is wearing a cap from Walgreens.  On a bus home, I'm seated behind a woman eating chips.  She's banging her head to her iPod, and has a tattoo on her right bicep which reads "DANZIG."  A roommate introduced me to danzig in the late 1980s, and I listened to them through the 1990s.
     I've been working an early shift which I occasionally work.  To get to work, there's a stretch of street I walk to get to the train station.  It's always in the dark.  This morning, I hear voices in the direction of the new condos and old Victorian homes of a bohemian neighborhood.  Usually, at the end of the street this time of the morning, there is an ambulance parked along with a police car, or a couple of police cars.  I look in the direction of the voices, expecting to see a couple of guys on a porch.  In the middle of an open field of scrub brush and clay dirt are a couple seated on the ground, chatting and laughing.  They are taking in the view of...the ambulance and police car in an otherwise empty parking lot in the dark.  When I get to the train station, there is a young white guy laying on the grass.  He appears to be asleep.  It's no surprise, this morning is a beautiful one with a cool breeze.  He looks as though he could have stepped out of The Brady Bunch.  Down the drive to the light rail station, I see a mule deer trotting down the street.
     I take the bus downtown to the bank after work.  A couple of young guys get on.  The first one has a ponytail, a button down shirt, and bedroom slippers.  The driver is waiting for the fare from his friend.  he tells the driver, "He's my caregiver."  As he heads toward the back, he's telling his friend about where he purchases narcotics.  His friend is telling him, "Calm down, calm down."  What a caregiver.  I stop to drop off film, which I wait for at a deathburger.  Sitting outside, next to the wall, is a woman who looks like a bohemian drifter with a pack on each side of her.  She's reading a magazine.  A guy who appears to be her significant other, with a greying buzz cut and basketball short, looks as though he is attempting to turn on an outside water tap, unsuccessfully.  A customer coming in stops to talk to her for a while.  He gives her the change in his pocket.  Another customer comes in in a pink shirt which reads, "I'm a bitch.  Just not yours."
     Somehow, it's another Saturday.  Tomorrow is a new month.  I take a bus for the short ride up the street.  I get off at a corner where a car, with conversation going on inside, pulls up next to a police car.  The car with the conversation makes a U-turn in front of the police car, a passenger makes a dog noise ("woof"), and the police car ignores it. 

May 2012

     ...what, it asked would become of the stagnant, class-divided society of late Victorian England if allowed to evolve along existing lines into the indefinite future?  The Time Machine, like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, is one of the great parables of Western industrial man.  - P. A. Carter, The Creation of Tomorrow, 1977

     HI READERS,  ...there are many activities and events to enjoy downtown and in the surrounding neighborhoods.  So get out there...  Ice cream socials, outdoor concerts, fairs...5 & 10K races...  Love Samantha  - Denver News, 5/10 - 6/10/12

     After a closing shift at work, I'm on a bus watching the setting sun throw rays of light over newly blooming trees, green again on this May day after being completely bare only a month ago.  This scene, and this time of evening which I hardly see anymore, takes me far back in my youth.  I hear my past calling me to forget that I am an adult.  When I get to my street, I see a guy who usually panhandles across the street from me.  This evening, I see him lying on the sidewalk for the first time.  A guy comes down the alley, pushing a stroller, to ask him if he's okay.  he sits up and lays back down.  He acts as though he is drunk. 

     Throughout the story there has been an implication that persistence, courage, and imagination...have the moral edge over the paternalism, self-rightousness, and stagnation...  ...to assert that there is no human free will, and do what one must although the heavens fall, is existentially to affirm it.  Or to accept what Freud once said..."In vital matters...  The decision should come from the unconscious...the deep inner needs of our nature."  Such a perspective transcends socially defined good and evil, and goes beyond rational self-preservation.  - Carter

     I'm at a train station after work.  It's 8:20 PM.  A guy in a ponytail, shorts, and a polo shirt wants to know if I have ten cents.  Ten cents.  What is he going to do with ten cents?  A kid comes and stands impatiently waiting for the bus.  The guy asks him for ten cents.  he doesn't have it, but wants to know if the guy has any weed.  The guy says he's on his way to pick some up.  The kid wants to know if he will roll him a joint.  These characters all get on the bus, including a drunk woman who begs the driver to let her bring her dog on.  Sitting in the back of this bus, the kid believes that he has found a soulmate in this drunk woman with a dog on a bus.  He tells her tales of his young life.  I get off and run to catch a connecting bus home.  Some guy at the stop is shining a flashlight at me.  (WTF?)  As we head down the street, we pass stacks of small metal parking barriers, ready to be put out for the Cinco de Mayo cruise down Federal Boulevard on Saturday.  They won't be needed I would discover.  Rain and hail would discourage this year's cruise.  Three barriers next to a school got tagged with spray paint.

     Jack London had forecast something very like a Fascist regime in his trenchant political novel "The Iron Heel" (1908): "...the oligarchs emerged with a new ethics, coherent and definite, sharp and severe as steel, the most absurd and unscientific and at the same time the most potent ever possessed by any tyrant class."  - Carter

     I'm on a bus to work, waiting to leave the train station.  Another driver has come on to ask our driver if she's registered for a raffle.  This other driver is wearing shorts, and I can see a tattoo on her right calf of Michael Jackson.  On the ride home, as I am about to get off where I live, a guy in slacks and a polo shirt approaches the front door.  He opens his mouth to speak to the driver, and what comes out is completely unintelligible.  I've never heard anyone so drunk standing up.  I go to the back door.  Someone mentions that he left a bag on the seat.  It appears to be a plastic grocery bag with a single pair of underwear in it.  He stumbles down the steps, looks at me and hiccups.

     It's Cinco de Mayo.  After work, I am in a gas station, behind a guy who is behind a woman with grey hair. She is purchasing scratch tickets.  "A crossword.  I didn't know you had a crossword.  I also want that one."  After he gets a couple dollars in gas, I see his truck has a bupersticker which reads "Impeach Obama".  What do they call such a residential place, grassroots?  Every pickup has a lawnmower in the bed.  In a new truck with tinted windows, I can make out that the driver is wearing mirrored teardrop shades.  He must be either an albino or a vampire.

     The next day, I would get a ride downtown with my sister and mom, but not have the time to go to lunch with them.  They are headed to the opera.  I am headed to another movie, a documentary I read about earlier this week.  It's titled Hit So Hard, and it's about the drummer in the all girl '90s band Hole.  I have a half hour to spend at the second day of the Cinco de Mayo celebration downtown.  I live on the street where the big Cinco cruise happens every year.  I told a guy in my drug store that, this year, I one lonely car cruising the street, as opposed to bumper to bumper traffic.  He told me that on Saturday, "They tried."  First they got rained on, and then the hail came down.  There in the park the following day, it seemed as though multiple signature gatherers were out with their clipboards.  I don't remember them last election year.  The event was also conspicuously empty.  I would pass one concession booth where I would overhear someone say that they were waiting for everyone to get out of church.  The first signature gatherer I spotted, I wanted to see what her cause was.  Hispanic Republicans.  I told her that I was an Oreo.  She appeared to know what that was...fast.  On the other side of the park was some kid trying to sell me the Dish Network, because it had some kind of NFL package.  I had to cut him off.  The next day at work, I would hear a rock DJ mention "people still celebrating Cinco de Mayo.  White people are celebrating it more."

     "...we're pretty passionate about showing the world that Denver is the New Creative Capital.  We're excited to showcase the local Denver metro people...  We're celebrating a part of Denver's coolness and culture that is central to who we are."  - Denver News

     In "City of the Corporate Mind" by L. N. Schachuer, (ASI: 24, December 1939), one of the heroes describes the city: "This is the ultimate totalitarian state, the goal toward which Earth's evolution was obviously working...  A single corporate existence..."  - Carter

     ...eventually many moms make their way back to work - by choice or necessity.  Before you...gulp, "How can I compete?"...  ...companies that you want to work for.  Take in annual reports, press releases and other industry news daily.  When you have young children, it is easy to network.  ...talk to other parents...ask if they stay home and work.  Ask what they did before they had their baby.  ...Linkedin...  "It is the only tool that I utilize in recruiting.  There are many ways to leverage it..."  What SAHMs do in their limited time outside of the home should be  done with a mindful eye to the future.  As any parent knows, volunteering opportunities at your child's school are endless.  Volunteer for the school leadership committee, or nominate yourself to be the PTO Treasurer.  You can add these jobs to your resume, as well as provide you with rich networking opportunities.  - Colorado Parent, 5/2012

     ...Jesus...and his apostles had a common fund from which they gave to needy Israelites.  (Matthew 26:6-9, John 12:5-9, 13:29)  "Sell all the things you have and distribute to poor people..."-Luke 18:22, 23.  - The Watchtower, 5/1/2006

     ...baby boomers are a third of the population, and they own 70 percent of the nation's net worth.  In the 1920s, age began to be talked about as negative...that's when advertising took off as an industry, and a consumer society began to replace a kind of truth-oriented society that existed before the 20th century.  - Nexus, May/June 2012

     Once in a while, I stop into a deathburger before Sunday grocery shopping.  This morning, this particular franchise has enlarged photos on the walls.  Images of a kitchen table with the sun coming through the window.  Along with a salad in a wooden bowl and a wooden salad tossing fork, on a cutting board are six burgers on rolls, piled high with onion and tomato slices and lettuce.  Wrapped in paper and placed inside some kind of ornamental holders are heaps of fries.  In the top corner is the word 'Gather'.  On another wall are photos of five deathburger patrons, all in their early thirties.  They are enjoying salads and deathburgers, and sandwich wraps.  In the middle are enlarged photos of glasses of iced tea with lemon, glass dishes of ice cream sundaes, glasses of milkshakes topped with whipped cream.  None of which are served here in glass dishware or ornamented wire.

     A marijuana blood standard for drivers appears headed for approval in Colorado...  Sen. Nancy Spence of Centennial said "I'm just sick of the abuse that the state of Colorado has taken from the medical marijuana industry"...  The bill's sponsor is Sen. Steve King of Grand Junction.  "We are well on our way to a doped-driving epidemic that will match the DUI epidemic that we had 15 and 20 years ago," King argued.  Unlike alcohol, THC is fat-soluble, so blood limits can remain above the legal limit even when a user is not stoned.  

     Whether it is a custodian keeping our buildings clean; a motor vehicle employee helping to process your car registration; or a caseworker providing assistance to those in need...  ...committed to open accessible government and accountability back to the people...a strong fiscal conservative and believes that the role of a commissioner is to create a...business-friendly county...  - Aurora Sentinel, 5/3-5/9/2012

     So the righteous "new earth" that is promised to come is a society of people who have God's approval.(Mark 10:30)  - The Watchtower, 5/1/2006

     ...a questionable or nonexistent political worldview.  This "All-American guy" has some bland fucking name like Tyler Chadwick Josherson...looks exactly like Ryan reynolds.  Tyler Josherson was a business major, and has a high-paying job right out of college.  His favorite TV show is Tosh.0.  ...looks exactly like Chris Evans.  ...spends his weekend mornings lounging aimlessly in gym shorts, afternoons on the treadmill, and evenings with his buddies in the bars...looks exactly like Jay Hernandez.  - Out Front Colorado, 5/2/12 

     I am in another deathburger the following day.  It has three flat screen TVs tuned to news channels, and is in a white neighborhood.  What is it, I wonder, that white people are supposed to be monitoring.  One middle-aged women gets her order.  She's in a brown leather coat with a matching leather purse.  I hear her say, "This isn't what I ordered.  Fuck.  Shit.  This isn't what I ordered.  I've waited long enough."

     Do you believe that humans, who long for peace and happiness, are capable, in themselves, of such gross wickedness against others?  What forces drive men...?  Have you ever wondered whether some wicked, invisible power is influencing people...?  ...an intelligent, unseen person has been controlling both men and nations.  It says, "The whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one."  These unseen, wicked world rulers are determined to mislead all mankind...by promoting the idea of survival after death, even though...the dead are not conscious.  ...crystal-ball gazing, use of Ouija boards, ESP, examining the lines of one's hand (palmistry), and astrology.  ..promoting literature, movies, and television programs that feature immoral and unnatural sexual behavior.  - Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Britain

     There was an establishment up the street from my place, a 'hookah lounge".  It opened some time during the past five years.  Last year, it moved out of its old location.  It's become a used car lot.  It has the usual car lot flags, along with its old sign with the hookah pipe photo on it. 

     It's another predawn Saturday at my usual bus stop.  A kid with an almost empty fifth of whisky sits down on the bench.  He's chasing it with a tall purple can, possibly beer.  He begins to tell me about his landscaping job.  He tells me that his boss only wants hardworking people, "He says he doesn't want any women" is how his boss puts it.  "So I showed him I could do some hard fuckin' work."  His cousin showed him how to push a wheelbarrow full of cement.  He gets up and demonstrates for me.  He tells me that he deserves to "get fucked up.  I work from Monday to Saturday.  I'm supposed to go to work now, but I can't.  I'm fucked up.  I'll call in sick.  I deserve that to."  He said he had a fight with his girlfriend.  But he's the breadwinner.  His girlfriend "gets to do whatever she wants."  He gets on my bus and gets off at the train station.  I get on a train and leave him stewing in his boiler maker.  I would see him again, a few days later, around noon across the street from where he sat down this morning.  He will he hanging out with a group of what look like teenaged guys and older drunks.  I'm reminded of another predawn morning twenty years ago, when I met another guy next door to where I lived then who told me that his girlfriend threw him out of the house.

     He wanted to be alone with his mind and his fate.   We were living on the canyon's terms, with its flood rushing river.  ...he refused to leave.  The remainder of the week found me wondering at the interior life of an inscrutable man.  I once witnessed his standing alone, empty-handed, swaying, staring at the ground.  There is no sight lonelier than that of a man again witnessing his own departure - and bearing its hollow emptiness.  Though the mind can be our worst enemy, it is at times our only companion.  Oblivion with a heartbeat seems a cruel existence.  ...cabins crumble and carvings fade, as do our bodies and minds.  Succession...makes room for the next surge of songs and stories.  Whether writ on a canyon wall, heralded by an empty water bottle, or carried silently in the depths of one's soul.  - "Forgetting in a Landscape of Memory", by Jen Jackson, Mountain Gazette 188, May 2012

     On Mothers' Day, one of my brothers told me that he has "been doing some research" concerning panhandling.  He says not why.  What he had to say is that, one may hold a sign on the sidewalk under the law, but not first approach traffic for money.  One may ask a pedestrian or bystander for change once, but not repeat the request.  It's three days later.  There's a middle-aged guy at the train station before sun up.  He has sunglasses on.  A guy at my usual bus stop a couple of mornings ago was in his rimless shades in the first light before dawn.  What don't I know about a workin' man?  That the Lord loves one in sunglasses under the moonlight?

     Yesterday at a downtown bus stop, the driver recognized someone who he knew had no fare.  He asked her where she was headed, and when she answered he told her to get on.  She looks to be in her thirties, inebriated, and with a wry smile.  She sounds as though she is a character from some TV police drama from 4 decades past.  She's talking like some early '70s street character.  I don't understand why she sounds as if she is on a TV show which went off the air before she was even born. 

     This morning, I hop on a bus for a quick ride up the street to another connecting bus.  I sit in front of a woman with bright golden blonde hair.  She too is wearing shades, long before the first sunbeam will come over the hill.  I can hear her smacking her lips as she snacks on something behind me.  At my usual bus stop, a couple of middle-aged white guys come from across the street.  One is in overalls, and speaks to the other in a whisp of a voice.  They both get on, and then get off at a stop within walking distance of where they got on.  

     Mid-rapid the only time in my life I'm effortlessly in full conscious attendance.  On the floor, I see the great Green Room as it is.  A life-sized snow globe a zillion feet deep, antique-glass green water falls 360 degrees around.  ...waves that are Granite-of-the-Snake. 

     The southwestern cities that depend on the river , and that most of us depend on directly or indirectly for jobs, complex networks of finance and transportation and communication, a vast menu of entertainment...  The work today, a task finally being taken semi-seriously by the cities east of the Divide that have dewatered the streams, is to rebuild the rivers from which they have taken two-thirds of the water... ...from the engineers' sense in the 1950s and before that a river was just a sort of sewer system for excess water on the land, and straightening channels made it function more efficiently.  - Mountain Gazette 188, May 2012

     On this dark morning, I hop on a bus for the short trip up the street.  I sit in front of a girl with bright blonde hair...and sunglasses.  I get off at my usual stop, where I watch two middle aged guys come across the street.  One wearing overalls and a bandanna on his head talks to the other with a voice which is but a whisper.  They both get on the bus, and they get off after a distance which they could have easily walked.  My task at work today is to make a delivery to a women's shelter of clothes donated by our customers.  The woman who runs the clothing part of the shelter had her photo in a local neighborhood newspaper, at a charity event for the shelter.  In the shot, she is with our new mayor.  She used to be homeless.  He has stated support for a proposed bill banning the use of tents and other camp gear for overnight camping in the downtown area.  I ask not what strange bedfellows politics makes.  Yet, as I head down the street after making my delivery, I turn a corner and pass in front of the state capitol.  Seated in a row, on the front lawn, are Occupy protesters.  They have a long placard, upon which is printed a quote from the council person who proposed the bill, Albus Brooks.  Tis a bill which a spokesperson for the shelter has spoken against, that the council person of my own neighborhood has criticized for not being sent by the house leader to his committee but to a committee with those who have no experience in matters addressed by it.  Yet the mayor and governor have their own favorite bill, which the latter called a special session for debate of.

     ...the annual County Fair at City Park & the District 8 Old fashioned Ice Cream Social.  District 8's Councilman Albus Brooks has enthusiastically agreed to continue the tradition...  Participants will see the Denver Municipal Band...  Neighbors and guests are encouraged to wear period costumes to take part in the costume contest.  - Denver News

     Friday.  It's been rainy.  I left the house today, for the first time this year without a jacket.  The summer will be here after this wet spring.  It's the last half of May, around 8 PM on an overcast twilight, a cool breeze, and just beautiful at the train station this evening.  Low clouds are dropping rain between the city and the Rockies.  There's leftover snow on the peaks.  If it rains tomorrow, as predicted, there may be more snow in the "high country."  Lights are coming on, all the way up into the foothills.  One white guy, his forearm covered in tattoos, is telling his friend about his "bonus money" from tomorrow's overtime.  A train comes by, with several couples dressed up for some kind of graduation event.  I'm sitting next to a girl who asks a guy, "You're a gang banger, aren't you?"  He replies, "So?"  They and a third guy are teasing each other.  One is jumping over the bench.  Another is doing an imitation, "I'm on steroids."

     The next morning, I'm at my usual bus stop, watching a guy smoking under a street lamp.  He's in some kind of uniform.  Is he waiting for a ride.  When it begins raining, he heads for shelter.  Lightning is streaking across the sky, followed by thunder.  He comes back through the rain.  I suddenly realize, as it approaches 5:30 AM, he has been waiting in front of a deathburger where he works for the place to open.  On a connecting bus, a girl in a supermarket uniform is talking to a regular rider.  They discuss a boyfriend who "at least has a job...at least has a car."  Being aware when "red flags start going up."  They mention living in halfway houses, staying sober, getting married, stressing out.  Having a life; "What life?" 

     Ale - ...a brew made with top-performing yeast.

     Amber Ale, American Pie Ale - ...dry-hopped versions may be slightly

                                                     hazy. 

     Barley wine - ...malt flavors ranging from bready to biscuity...

     Lager - Any beer made by bottom-fermentation.

                                                                 - Special supplement to The Onion 

     ...I instantly decided to take up smoking and grow a beard.  ...it seems like declarative, vacation-y thing to do.  After a few days of this, you loose all sense of what you must look like to other people.  On the street there is no sense of personal space...  ...my hosts offered...endless wine, marijuana...  - Out Front Colorado, 5/16/12

     Four weekends in a row, I have been to brunch with at least the mom and sister.  The sun appears to be up so much earlier.  The birds are out.  Just a month ago, the trees were bare.  The freeze has turned to rain.  It feels as though time is in that sped up mode again.  Or is it simply that, with service cutbacks to the transit system, which appear out of nowhere, are but a mere veil shrouding nature's clock.  It takes an afternoon to go anywhere, do anything with the employ of the transit system.  In the process I collect local neighborhood newspapers, and I assemble a multi-class perspective of my city.  At the supermarket this morning, I'm in the greeting card isle.  A woman approaches me, and in heavily accented English, asks me for help in choosing a card for "a friend who is graduating high school."  I ask her if she wants one from the "humorous" section.  She replies, "I like funny."  I choose one with a pisture of a baby chick on the front.  Inside, it reads, "Happy Birthday from one of your peeps."  I explain to her that 'peeps', along with chicks, also refers to 'people.'

     On the way from brunch, I am downtown, walking past an outdoor patio.  Downtown is the territory of the white urban local.  Four of them are seated at a table.  I hear one on her phone.  "Hey hottie.  Come down and do some shotties.  Are you naughty, hottie?  I want to touch your body."  On the train to the health food store, back on it to the bus, to the supermarket which usually has the tea I like but not this afternoon.  Before brunch, I did my usual weekly grocery shopping, which doesn't include the ancillary excursions.  On the bus home, I heard the driver talking to the guy I've seen before, who uses a big three wheeled scooter to put his knee on and push with his other leg.  The driver was talking about having trouble getting to work.  He must be speaking of another "race."  These footraces, information about which paint them as mysterious, elusive, like the schedule changes.  I waited an extra half hour for the bus home, with some tea which is not the kind I like.  The following day, I saw a notice for the race posted on the train.  It was the Kaiser Permanente Colfax Marathon, and any delays it caused were scheduled to end by 2 PM.  I must live in a delayed neighborhood.

     When this bus appeared, it had a guy in a wheelchair wearing cowboy boots and a bandanna.  Across from him was a guy with a panhandling sign on the seat of his walker.  Behind him was a girl with her own panhandling sign.  All three were quiet, until the girl turns to me to ask when the bus would get to the transfer station.  The walker guy immediately answers her.  She then wants to know how to get north of downtown.  He tells her that the most direct way is by train.  She doesn't want to get on any train.  An argument ensues.  We get to the station, and the wheelchair guy begins complaining that the walker guy is full of shit.  It sounds, in the commotion, as though the walker guy is complaining that the wheelchair guy is drunk, and that he's tired of listening to him talk.  The wheelchair guy uses a bus ramp to disembark.  The girl is off next, and offers the walker guy the ramp.  The walker guy says that he doesn't need it.  An argument ensues.  One of the supervisors at this station, a long-haired blonde lady is slacks and heels, is letting the driver know that, to catch up, she's authorizing him to put the pedal to the metal.  That's what the driver behind him will be doing.  "He's gonna be movin'."  Sitting on the steps outside is the kid who sat down with me a couple mornings ago, and who I saw across the street with some dunks and other kids.

     The following morning, he gets on my bus and sits in back.  I hear another kid telling him what church to go to, and when the services are, so he can go in and have them pay for a birth certificate.  "They will give you a check for $17.85."  I get on a train with a couple of security guards.  It's about 5 AM.  "Slowest part of the day," one says.  A third comes up.  "Did you hear that they're hiring in Littleton?"  I wonder if you need your birth certificate?  It's the same time on a following morning, when I am at the bus stop across the street from where I live.  There's a white kid with an afro, in what looks like a long black leather coat, jeans and sneakers.  He's listening to his I Pod, which could be mistaken for a Walkman.  This guy has been transported straight out of the 1980s, into my neighborhood for reasons known only to the time lords.  He's as out of place here as a Swedish nudist.  Whatever he's listening to, what he's singing sounds like a hymn.  It's too early for such conundrums.  On the bus, for the short ride up the street, is the blinding blonde, complete with her predawn sunglasses.  I get off and cross the street to my usual stop, spying a bike pedal in the gutter.  Bus to train, to train station.  A pair of middle aged guys are waiting on the platform for their friend.  One of the pair sings, "I'm so lonely, nobody loves me."  It sounds as though they are discussing which train car they want to ride in.  "I tell you one thing, I'm going to be on that last car."  "I'm still with yall."  The next morning, I'm scheduled for a shift an hour later than usual.  Realizing that I have time for breakfast from the deathburger, I enter to see a homeless guy talking to someone else.  He says he's from Las Vegas, been here a little over a year, and can't handle these may mornings in the 40s F.  At the train station where I get off is a seated individual waiting for the bus, who begins coughng all of the sudden.  He's blazin' a reefer.  After my workday, I'm waiting for the bus home, watching a guy in a polo shirt and khakis, standing in the sun on the sidewalk.  It appears as though this is how he waits for the bus.  I realize that he has been waiting for a ride when he begins direting a car into a gas station lot with a hand/arm signal.

     There's something different about the little neighborhood street festivals of summer:  There's a communal block-party feel that connects people without overwhelming them.  ...catering directly to everyone - neighbors, sightseers, dogs, kids on scooters with fairy wings...  - Westword, 5/24-30/2012

     I'm working another late shift, and am back at the deathburger for breakfast.  The guy in line behind me, he keeps shifting around, never standing still.  When he orders, it's in a whisper.  When my bus comes, I get on with a couple of women who appear to be friends.  They both get off at the very next stop, each going the opposite direction.  One has a tote bag, on the outside of which is 'reading rocks'.  An hour and a half into my shift, I am on the way to a train to another store.  At the station, there's a young guy dressed in black, hair down his back, standing and staring into the distance.  A young couple is teasing each other, the guy saying, "I'm at peace with it, I'm at peace with it."  The long-haired guy has come up to the train platform.  Behind him comes another guy wearing black.  His neck is green with ink, coming part way up the right side of his face.  When I get on the train, I'm sitting across from a guy with purple shoes reading his bible.  These images in front of me are as though memories from some previous drunken evening.  I will spend the next five hours in front of customers.  The sky is broken clouds.  It's warm in the sun, cold when it disappears, and there is high wind.  It's as some kind of tale from Chaucer.  When I come out of work, it's seven PM on a beautiful cloudless late afternoon.  The sun is coming through newly sprouted foliage.  Couples are on bicycles.  This afternoon, in this neighborhood, reminds me of many an evening of my youth.  

     The bus takes me on a boulevard I lived on for fifteen years.  On the bus comes a white guy in a Raiders jacket with a small pack of beer.  At the train station, I hold the elevator door for a couple, the father waves and smiles.  Waves and smiles?  On the train is a kid with a nude female tattoo on his leg and a fish on his forearm.  When we get to where I catch my bus home, the happiness and innocuous tattoos give way with alacrity.  A kid in jeans and a denim jacket, and hair like some kind of late '60s actor, is unsteadily pacing back and forth along the train station platform.  Up and down, back and forth.  Staring at the ground, expressionless.  A girl asks him for a light.  He ignores her.  He's staring at his phone from a distance of a couple of inches.  The next morning, I see what I think is fog in the streetlight.  From across the street at my usual bus stop, an old guy is pulling the handle of what appears to be a small platform on castors.  He comes across at the light and continues out of sight.  He comes back a few minutes later, and goes back from the direction from which he emerged, making castor noise all the way.  He pauses mid way in the crosswalk to pick something up.  1) Who is pulling 2) what 3) at 5 AM?  On the Saturday before Memorial Day?  I take the bus to a train.  Where I get off, a couple of young guys are seated on a bench.  They appear as though they are headed to work.  One has a small cooler.  He asks me if I believe that the transit system security should be allowed to carry firearms.  I didn't mention to him that they already do. When I get to my bus stop below the train platform, I can see a couple of standing people up top.  Over a third person seated between them, they are arguing, I presume, about the same thing.  The seated person appears still, and quiet.  One of the standing guys points at the other one.  When a train shows up, the arguing guys get on, and the place reverts to the sound of birds hunting for worms and traffic on the other side of the train tracks.  As the sun comes up, I realize that what I thought was fog is smoke from fires from southern New Mexico.

     On a bus home after work, I'm sitting in front of a couple of women who sound as though they have issues in the mental department.  One of them is unintelligibly audible.  The other, in a deathburger uniform, is asking her if she has faith in herself.  She keeps asking the silent one, "who has been talking about me?"  She asks her if she wants some food.  The gabby one then gets up and sits somewhere else.  They both get off the bus together.  When I get on the train, a young couple comes and sits across from me.  It sounds like a blind date.  He's asking her what she does for a living.  She's a bartender.  She's wearing a knit tanktop of the state flag.  They surely are young enough to be my children.

     It's about the light.  ...light does things to glass, defining every fold...  ...experts said Denver couldn't support a glass gallery.  It's another world, one...customers rely on for access and insight.  ...inspired gift items, appointments for the home, and one of the city;s best selections of glass jewelry.  ..."the light and the glass - that inter-mix - it's just breathtaking here, and we have seen a lot of glass galleries.  ...there really isn't anything we can't get right here."  ...people are warm, easy to be around...  "This is one place in Denver on a level with major art centers, bigger cities.  ...they adopt you.  It's a family."  - Cherry Creek Now, Spring 2012

     Memorial Day was beautiful indeed.  I found myself with my sister in a white neighborhood, on the patio of a local ice cream shop where she first bought me a cone in the summer of 1985.  This afternoon, the temperature is 74F with a cloudless sky.  Unbelievable.  We are surrounded by tall, tall homes and green, green foliage.  A guy comes by in a Green Lantern T-shirt, flanked by a fat girl in a baby blue satin dress.  He is taking a photo of a second girl in a shorter dress, smelling a rose bush.  She asks to borrow my sister's cone for a photograph, telling us that they are on a "fairy tale scavenger hunt."  Strange magic; fairy tale aspiration.  Later that afternoon, I took a lady to dinner.  She works and lives in my neighborhood.  I've known her perhaps a year.  I let her talk as we ate.  She told me of the relationship between employee and business franchise.  We spoke of owners who appear not to know anything about their businesses.  She mentioned the dangers of working the overnight, or "third shift", at a gas station.  Guys come in and grab milk out of the case, or jump the counter to grab a carton of cigarettes, before running out.  Is it they who take advantage of a business, or consumer products which dictate their will (and perhaps business which takes advantage of them)?  She tells me of a kid she used to see come in and steal, and yet say hi to her.  She would see him when everyone else was in school.  She hadn't seen him in a while when, one day, he came in with a girl and a one year old.  He was so tall, she didn't recognize him.  She would next see him at Wendy's, surprised that he had a job.  She thought he only ran around the streets.  He told her that the girl was in jail, and social services took the baby.  My date expressed concern for his wife.  He told her, "She's not my wife."  She attempted to point out the significance of his child's mother.  She also told me about her parents who were teachers, her working food service at the high school down the street, where the president came to speak last autumn.  She mentioned the pregnant freshman girls, the kids who appeared as though "their parents have no idea what they do."  She herself talked about her four sisters, married at 15.  About learning English in Mexico, and coming here to discover that she didn't know the language at all.  

 

     It's the middle of the week.  Five AM.  A very slow-moving pair is meandering up the sidewalk.  As they pass in front of the medical marijuana dispensary, one of them heads for the front door.  What's the story here?  The one near the door takes the lid off an outdoor ashtray to look for usable butts.  The other is texting while waiting.  The one rejoins the other as they drift on their way.  At the train station where I get off the train, I see a middle aged couple headed for another bus.  The lady has her coat on against the chill.  The guy has his sunglasses on as the sun just barely has come up.  He's in a tank top and shorts, and he swaggers along with her as he finishes his butt before tossing it.

     I'm on a train home, sitting across from a guy in a cap which reads 'Seal Team'.  He appears to be well beyond 32 years of age, and as if he has never come anywhere near the 100 extra lbs he would have needed on any seal team.  Another guy next to me, a young guy, is nervously flipping page by page, quickly through a small apartment guide.  His eyes are wild and he's smiling.  He's tripping on whatever he sees.  Tiny pictures of homes?  On a connecting bus home, a quiet young woman gets on wearing a beach towel as a skirt.  When she gets off, the guy sitting next to me in a Vietnam veteran cap says to a guy with him, "Did you see that?  She's wearing a damn towel."

     The following day at the train station, the approaching sunrise is casting an orange glow on the Rockies.  A pair of teenagers are at a bench.  They appear alone, like rookies in a society which they somehow have just entered.  They are both staring forlornly in the direction of the mountains, as though they are waiting for someone to show up who will tell them what they are meant to do with their lives.

April 2012

     My power went out around twenty minutes to 2 AM.  My clock radio went out, and my alarm would not have awoken me at 2 AM.  My carbon monoxide detector beeped, and woke me up.  Another shower by flashlight.  The word is that the spring snow has downed power lines for 40% of the city.  I light two candles.  They through shards of shadow across the room.  I'm waiting now under the awning of my ride's home, watching some light, blowing snow under a streetlight.  It's hypnotic to watch as waves blow in, and then hang suspended for a moment before they appear to blow back the other way.  The next morning, I would see a big skunk go trotting down her walkway.  Friday is my day off.  I'm back in a neighborhood with a store where I worked for three months, almost 15 years ago.  Victorian homes, young people running in colorful outfits, walking dogs.  A groovy bohemian strolling with a guitar.  One civilization has passed on, and another has moved in and repainted.  The place where I used to work has closed up shop, less than a year ago.  Walking down a sidewalk, I see a guy in a button down shirt and gold tie, and khaki pants.  It's been five years since I've seen anything like him on a sidewalk.
     The American West is historically religiously unaffiliated.  Whether that's the result of a deep-seated independent spirit...or a holdover from a bygone era when there simply weren't enough clergy west of the Mississippi...  Nadia Bolz-Weber...  In an hour long interview recently, she unloaded at least three F-bombs and explained that "the Jesus business pays for shit."  (...she has Mary Magdalene on her right forearm and the Christian calendar on her left.)  The uncharacteristically late services ("because no one likes to get up at 7 a.m. on Sundays," Bolz-Weber says.)  Her flock is mostly composed of young, overeducated, and, as she puts it, often voluntarily poor parishioners, who might be homeless, gay, married with young kids...
     We don't like the word megachurch - although we understand our numbers put us in that category - because the concept has the connotation that we're here to conquer a city, to swallow everyone in our path...  
     "My services are doled out over wings and pitchers of beer in local bars."  Jerry Harships and his church serve lunch - as well as give communion to - Denver's homeless population in Civic Center Park.  ...people to whom a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich is a godsend. - 5280 Magazine, 4/12
     "If you get married, will you continue to be polyamorous?"  Why wouldn't we?  Honesty also seems more prevalent in the poly world.  Almost every person I know has cheated or deceived a partner  at least once in life, as had everyone asking me about my lifestyle that evening.
     White Allies for Racial Justice Caucus.  "...for white LGBT people...addressing white privilege ..."
     "If you were to hire a really creative pollster, I think they'd be able to show most gay men are Republican," Michael said.  "A lot of gays don't want large, intrusive government.  They don't want to see their wages going to a bureaucracy they don't participate in..."
     The liberation theme is the focus of Queer Seder...  "We go through the traditional liturgy in light of wanting to be free from oppression and homophobia."
     My date was a disaster.  Not the kind of disaster where you spill half a bottle of Zinfandel on your express button-up...  "I spend a lot of time in my church, volunteering and things like that," I said casually...  "Actually, I'm a deacon."  He smiled back at me weakly...  He had no idea what to say.
     "I don't know if I've ever met another gay person in this industry," said Nadia Lopez, who for five years has owned and operated am auto body shop in Aurora.  "I had to dance around my sexuality at work because I work with men." - Out Front Colorado, 4/4/12
     The two dozen pastors gathered in a dreary room adorned with balloons and needlepoint texts from Scripture...  "I wouldn't invite just anybody to my church,"...Santorum's message at private conclaves...has been essential to his success.  Religious leaders, antiabortion activists, homeschooling advocates and Christian businessmen have rallied to his cause...  Guided by the likes of Perkins - who prodded...pastors...to urge their flocks to vote... Tony Perkins said as he introduced Rick Santorum.     The overseer of Santorum's grassroots coalitions...  "We are the campaign," she says.  It helps that Santorum casts his campaign as a divine mission.  The result...  It's also cash.  ...it's increasingly apparent that religious leaders and their parishioners offer Santorum the hope of political salvation.  "It looks like God is just trying to bless this man,"...  ...Santorum has struggled to win over fellow Catholics, who have leaned toward Romney.  Santorum recently suggested...evangelical Protestants "practice their religion more ardently" than Catholics.  ...pastor, Dennis Terry...he thundered.  "If you don't like the way we do things, I've got one thing to say: Get out!  We don't worship Buddha.  We don't worship Muhammad.  We don't worship Allah.  We worship God."  - Time, 4/2/12
     Our clients come to us afraid.  They are afraid to stand up to their abuser.  The National Law Center on Homelessness and poverty reported on their website that domestic violence is the leading cause of homelessness nationally.  "We also file petitions for undocumented residents...  This is literally their ticket out of poverty" and "into work authorization..."  - Denver Voice, 4/12
     The Hackett sisters...know you will enjoy their unique private viewing rooms and old school values.
     ...they proudly affiliate with the Association of Cannabis Trades for Colorado (ACTofCO) and Cannabis Business Alliance (CBA).
     They cater to a diverse clientele ranging from the creative counter-culture to business professionals, veterans, and senior citizens.  
     ...they are a full-service medical marijuana dispensary with the feel of a neighborhood shop.
     ...owned and operated by Colordao natives.  They hold themselves to the highest standards...  - The Hemp Connoisseur, Spring 2012
   
     The new week brings a missing driver at work, and an unexpected shift behind the wheel.  The route takes me to a street corner with an ever changing rotation of panhandlers.  The one I see today has a grey beard, baseball cap, and tie dyed T shirt.  I don't know what it is about the shirt which makes him appear somehow less indigent.  On a bus home, a middle aged guy in back is telling someone about how his kids want nothing to do with him, about his truck...

     What concerns Susan Sontag is how to live in good conscience if one is an artist, a radical, and a highly rewarded citizen of the American empire.  She answers...as an account of her temporary disengagement from the complex society, and of...a brief encounter with a different way of life.  "[I] had been unable to incorporate...my...dilemma at being a citizen of the American empire."  She records her "initial culture shock," her dismay at...a seemingly impassible barrier between herself and the real, living embodiments of the ideal Other.  "...a derisive inner voice" accuses the Other of "posing against overcomplex, hypocritical, devitalized urban society choking on affluence...As eighteenth-century "philosophes" pictured...a pastoral ideal in the Pacific Island or among the American Indians, and German romantic poets supposed it to have existed in ancient Greece, late twentieth century intellectuals in New York or Paris are likely to locate it in the exotic revolutionary societies of the Third World."  - The Pilot and the Passenger, L. Marx, 1988

     On my day off, I am returning from shopping as I find myself at a bus stop with five drunks, three of whom appear to be a man, wife, and teenage daughter.  The daughter appears to have an inch long stitched laceration on her forehead.  The apparent father gets up and tells the other two, "Hey, five-0 is coming around the block, you better get up.  I see the "dad" and girl slowly walk down the sidewalk.  I'm on a train to work on another Saturday at 5:30 AM.  An officer is on the train checking fares.  There are two young guys sitting across from me.  One of them has his fare, the other searches everywhere for his to no avail.  The guy with no fare says that they both "were in the strip club until 4."  He gets a written warning.  he recounts how a friend asked him why he doesn't pay his parking tickets.  She asked him, 'Is he not worried about a warrant for his arrest?'  He replied to her, "They're going to arrest me, in Florida?"  His head is shaved, an earring is in his lip, dimples are in his cheeks, and flames are tattooed onto his left wrist.  "Denver PD can suck my dick," he mentions.
     It's Monday after work.  Baseball season has begun.  On an overcast day at the train station, white guys in caps and sunglasses are everywhere.  Two of these guys are on my bus home.  One has a cap which reads "DEA" on both the front and back.  A homeless senior is standing in the doorway, perplexed as to what the driver wants him to do with his root beer bottle.  The DEA guy says "Go!.  Fuck.  Fuckin' bus."  As he gets off, he says to the homeless guy, "Take a fuckin' bath, bro.  You stink the fuckin' bus up.  Nasty bastard."  After he gets off, a Japanese senior gets on, and he is non-stop coughing.  The homeless man gets up and, in a weak voice, tells the driver he wants to get off.  After he does, the Japanese man continues coughing until he also gets off at the next stop.
     The next morning, around 5 AM, I grab a bus for a short ways up the street.  A woman is reading a hard back romance novel.  Her bookmark is a folded paper placemat from McDonalds.  I get off and approach another bus bench, where a guy with a grey beard, hunting cap, flannel shirt, and backpack is smoking.  When he spots me, he acts as if he has to go.  He walks a few yards before he appears to stop and count his change, before he keeps on truckin'.  Down the same sidewalk as the DEA guy.  The following morning, on the bus is a girl in a hoodie.  On the arm it says "give".  At the top on the front is a heart-shaped peace sign, with tiny rhinestones around it.  On the bus home from work, I'm listening to someone on the phone, "Myra, I just got out of jail.  I ain't seen no one but my home boys.  I want to see a family member.  I'm gonna be very disappointed (if you don't show up).  Dig it.  You're gonna pick me up.  You hung up on me.  What's up with that?"  This went on for several blocks.  Dig it.

     The Colorado Street Medics roster has fluctuated wildly over the years...  The training sessions frequently draw..."crazy wingnuts who want to fight the government in a shack in the woods."  Each class includes at least one extremist who is attracted by the mention of "chemical warfare."  "There's always someone who comes in with camo pants tucked into their knee high boots and is like, 'What do I do with the nerve gas?'  ...if you're part of We Are Change, you're not anti-racist.  We're...anti-supremacy...  Colorado Street Medics also turn down requests here at home, usually because the members of a certain cause are all white or religious...  One of the medics gives the patient permission to use female gender pronouns before asking his or her own preference.  - Westword, April 19-25, 2012

     I went through downtown on 4/20/12, my day off.  I was on my way to see a doc titled ComiCon IV: A Fan's Hope.   Along the way, waiting for a pedestrian mall shuttle, I was next to a street preacher.  He was speaking in generalizations with his voice rising and falling.  "Jesus let himself be killed.  He wants you to live without sin."  In the park downtown was a marijuana celebration complete with booths.  Celebrants were all over the downtown pedestrian mall.  They are just kids, but instead of pop tunes are walking along singing made up songs about marijuana.  Many are wearing green plastic leaf necklaces.  Someone on the shuttle mentions that she hopes the park is not "contaminated by the bums.  Stay off the grass."  Civic Center Park is a gathering place, or a place to drop, for many homeless.  This marijuana movement as it manifests itself strikes me as thoroughly self-indulgent.  A newsletter I picked up off the ground reads as telescopically focused on random information presented as 'evidence' of the importance of their cause.  GMO, or genetically modified organisms, are mentioned as a kind of 'anti-marijuana'.  A speaker on an theatre stage, at one end of the park, a speaker is pontificating upon "this incredible nutrient" which "cures cancer."  I'm struck most of all by the tone of his voice.  It's one of absolute devotion; something missing from the street preacher's script.I didn't realize that this gathering was here today, much less that it would be as organized as any other annual event in this park.  After my movie, I was back in downtown, where the Friday night downtown dining experience-seekers filling the restaurants had shown up, on the mall where the 4/20 soldiers had been all afternoon.  On the way, I was on the bus with a girl in her deathburger uniform.  When she got on her cell, she began talking about her personal life, including coming into downtown before work to "see my son.  They moved him and didn't tell me.  So I came down here and spent the day down here.  Least you can do is tell a motherfucker."  As I am headed to a connecting bus back in downtown, I see on each of two opposite corners a mime, complete with white face paint.
     The next morning, I come out of a supermarket and am waiting for a bus.  The stop is next to a new tiny condo unit.  It stands where an old apartment building was torn down, and where some street characters lived.  Where the same have moved into the new building.  One of them runs across the street to ask me for change, to ask a guy in a wheelchair for a cigarette.  He tells him, "Hey, I want to show you something.  I'm an avid coin collector."  One of his pockets sounds as though it's full of change.  "Here's one, 1777-1776...1776-1976."  He goes into the mini-condo.
     It's an uncharacteristically warm and subsequently beautiful day in Denver's Technology Center.  I am passing couples on the sidewalk, fresh from the Marriott with their 2012 Denver Star Fest merchandise.  "I haven't actually seen anyone dressed as Spock," a woman says as she goes by.  The guy holding her hand replies, "There were Vulcans."  It's 1 PM.  I pass a guy with orange hair, a black robe, and a giant alien ax over his shoulder.  The usual Ghost Busters van is parked in the valet area.  Inside, a girl in zombie makeup appears to have a bite out of her face.  A teenage kid in a trenchcoat has black wings sticking out of his back.  Another guy has a green hat with "YODA" on the front, and a fuzzy ear on each side.  There's a big guy dressed, I believe, as The Rocketeer.  He has a trio of toddlers in tow, all dressed as though they are going out to trick or treat.  Except the guy.  Another guy getting his tickets with his son is telling the woman behind the table that he's considering learning how to use a lathe.  A sign next to the elevators asks guests to limit their number in the elevator to eight, to keep them "running smoothly."
     The Tech Center Marriott has a huge area inside, open from floor to the roof, onto which the balconies open.  Over the railings, the guests have begun a tradition of hanging banners, mostly Klingon.  One is a pirate flag, one is for Gandalf's Order of the Grey.  Another reads "Party like a Klingon."  Here in the big open area, I'm sitting in a leather chair next to a woman in a pointed hat with blinking lights.  The costumed characters abound.  Rebel pilots, ST Next Gen. officers, Jedi lesbians, Aqua...Woman, one of the Droogs from A Clockwork Orange.  I see a young, thin woman in full Klingon makeup, texting on her phone.  Someone has a red uniform shirt from the original Star Trek, with "expendable" on the front.  The inside joke is that, every extra's character on the original series in a red uniform always gets killed.  I pick up a flyer for another con coming in October before I hit the men's room.  I am soon the only one in there when I hear a knock and, "Housekeeping..." with an accent.  I answer in Spanish, "Welcome.  How are you?  Have you seen any crazy (white) people?"  "Only a few," they answer in Spanish.  The art show this year is sparse.  The dealers' room I save for last.  I like to give every vendor an opportunity.  I could have had plenty of DVDs; Space 1999, Far Out Space Nuts, The Fantastic Journey.  I could have had the same AMT kit of the original Enterprise my dad bought me forty years ago.  Only, four decades ago, it wasn't $150.  It's quite a kind of history of future histories, and has great personal entertainment relevance.
     The Star Fest strikes me as, not an exclusively, but a predominantly white experience.  Though those attendees who come in costume consider themselves out of the ordinary,  the social interaction is predicated upon subtle complexities, much like those presumably other "ordinary" social interactions.  The 4/20 rally is a predominantly minority street (or park) party.  The dress is uniform to the point of appearing as a bland, singular statement.  The social interaction among these faithful strikes me as overly sincere and desperately fashionable, not to mention evangelical.

     ...no matter how weird it seems to you that people would pay thousands of dollars to fly to Aurora to pretend to be in the Wild West, it's going to happen.  ...Pueblo wants to build a riverwalk extravaganza on the Arkansas River, when there's water in it, I guess...and some "moderate income residential housing."  ...Estes Park...wants millions of your tax dollars for elk bugling classes.  ...Montrose, a place way out west that thinks it's in the mountains but is as flat and dusty as Goodland, Kansas...  They want millions of state tax dollars for putting up an RV park.   Welcome to the new capital of the Old West.
     In 2008, members of the Colorado Minuteman Civil Defense Corps chapter protested against employers who give jobs to undocumented residents.  - Aurora Sentinel, 4/19 - 4/25/2012
     GI GRILL JIM ODLE...CHAIRMAN OF THE ALL AMERICAN BEEF BATTALON...DEDICATED TO SUPPORTING THE TROOPS FIGHTING THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR...SERVES...A SOLDIER IN THE 349TH PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS COMPANY, A TACTICAL UNIT OUT OF AURORA...  "WE'RE FEEDING (THE SOLDIERS) STEAK AND LETTING THEM KNOW THAT RURAL AMERICA REALLY APPRECIATES THEM," SAID ODLE.
     To this day, I shudder when I recall...former City Manager Ron Miller who said that in the nearly 13 years he was city manager in Aurora, he was never aware that folks had something bad to say about A-Town.It was that kind of of ridiculousness that helped keep the city and its image from gaining ground for more than a decade.  - Aurora Sentinel, 4/25 - 5/2/2012

     Today I was sent to work a manager's shift at his store.  A customer came in; a tall, soft spoken middle aged guy in a black church T-shirt.  On the front, top left, his shirt reads "leader".  He brings in his drycleaning, and asks, "Do you want to see spots?"  He mentions his clothes having stains from a spilled platter.  "This is the tie I remember wearing to dinner.  Do you do ties?"  I wonder who usually deals with the drycleaning in his house...  The afternoon part-time person does not know, after working for us for almost a year, how to bag and put away orders.  As a result, I stay an extra 20 minutes, and miss my bus home.  Having a half hour on my hands, I stop into this month's rotating business next door, a yogurt place.  The patrons reflect the neighborhood's white families.  It's just the kind of place which replaced our downtown store, after the property owners doubled our lease.  The place where I am now has Hebrew letters identifying the many different flavors, and must be named Smiley's, because the cashier tells me, along with everyone else, to have a smiley day.
     When I get off the train on the way home, someone wants to sell me a wallet for a dollar.  "I'm just trying to get home."  He gets on my bus with a transfer he already has with him.  The next morning, I am on a bus to work with a couple of different passengers wearing sunglasses at 5:30 AM.  A guy at the train station is asking me for "anysparechange..."

     In an effort to deal with increasing numbers of the homeless on Denver's streets, the City Council in expected to consider an ordinance that would ban unauthorized camping throughout the city.  - Denver News, 4/10 - 5/10, 2012
     ...the exhibit at the Denver Art Museum of Madeline Albright's exhibit of pins ahe wore while engage [sic] in diplomatic work...   The students prepared questions for Albright...  Albright told the young women..."there is no room for mediocrity at the top for women."  - North Denver Tribune, 4/19 - 5/2, 2012
     The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has scheduled a Nation Prescription Drug Take-Back event...  It is a great opportunity for individuals who have accumulated unwanted, unused prescription drugs, to safely dispose of those medications.  1. Many teens feel that prescription drugs are safer to use than street drugs since they are prescribed by a physician.  ...they are found in medicine cabinets.
     ...The Older Anericans Act provides funding to...programs in nutrition, in-home care, transportation, disease prevention/health promotion, long-term care overnight, senior employment...essential to maintaining independence for older adults.
     A 2008 survey conducted by the Employee Benefit Research Institute* found that...around half (49%) reported that the total amount of their savings (excluding the value of their home and any defined benefit plans) is less than $50,000.  In addition, 22% of workers and 28% of retirees said they have no savings of any kind.  ...every generation...should have a disciplined savings program in place.  - 50 Plus Marketplace News, Denver Metro, April 2012
     Don't give me teachers.  Give me real world gladiators.  I don't deal in theories.  I want instructors who actually have experience...  I crave insights from the front lines, not textbooks.  I want every edge I can get.  Are you in?  I don't take classes.  I experience them.  Don't give me lectures.  Give me dynamic, immersive experiences...like I absorb the world...  I want to collaberate in groups.  I want feedback from practice tests.  ...I'm part of an educational movement.  Are you in?  - Colorado Technical University brochure

     The following day, I am working a closing shift.  I stop into a bagel place in a wealthy neighborhood.  I get a couple bagels and sit next two a couple of guys having a conversation.  "Corinthians 14.  Who are we becoming in Christ?  We don't teach about that.  It's so powerful.  In 30 years, I've never had anybody pray over me.  You know, something's wrong.  You know, it's awsome.  I go to these other churches.  I just learn things.  The grace of God is great, but what does it mean? "
     "It means he accepts you where you are.  ...spiritual formation.  There's not a lot of emphasis on that."
     "No there's not.  How to be focus on that?  A lot of these guys, Global Americans...awakening your spirit...  It's powerful.  I'm knowing guys who changed their mind, broken off from pornography.  Those who are awakened in the spirit are sons of God.  We don't want to stagnate spirituality.  I think most Christians think, "God, just beam me up, get me out of here."  It's changed my thinking."
     "We know God is powerful.  This is not all there is.  I don't want you to feel bad when I go.  It's okay.  I want you to know there's more.  Just havin' a big ass house in Cherry Hills with a gate on it.  You know, that doesn't make you happy either.  I know someone who has this house.  She can't sell it.  They won't let her subdivide it.  That's not life either.  Nothing is what it seems.  Everything is not, you know..."
     "I quit the club.  I left it intact.  I didn't fire this guy.  After I quit, this guy got fired."
     "Well that shouldn't come back on you then."
     "The unemployment he gets, plus cash under the table, plus his student loan..."
     "Selling this last condo, there's so much crap you have to deal with, so much paperwork, I don't even want to deal with the system."
     And just like that. I'm off to work.  Some eight or nine hours later, my coworker has given me a ride to a 7-Eleven.  She has pulled part way into the drive and stopped.  As I open my door, there suddenly is some guy on a chopper right next to me, saying, "Goddamn, goddamn driver.  Goddamn driver..."

     The next morning, I am walking up the street to the bus stop, past a halfway home in the form of apartments.  One of the basement ones has its window open.  The inside lights are out, and I see a big screen TV.  It appears to be on MSNBC.  (Rachel Maddow at this hour?)  Do I hear some guy getting oral sex, or is he laughing?  Only on the Feds.  As I travel through these neighborhoods, the lines of demarcation between class are erased.  The resulting collection of random characters have no immediate context.  About 25 hours later, I am on a bus to work, sitting behind a woman with two black eyes. She is looking at her face in a reflection in the window.  When we get to the train station, she asks me if the trains run this early.
     A couple of evenings ago, when I almost doored a Hell's Angel reject, I immediately got on a bus for a short trip up the street.  I sit next to a father and his two adorable daughters.  He doesn't appear to have the same appreciation for what of what he may consider personally as something of a long ride.  I see them again, the next afternoon on a bus home from work, this time with the mom.  I see original three a third time the following day, at the grocery store.  They may live in a trailer park next door to the supermarket.  In the afternoon, I'm on a downtown pedestrian mall shuttle.  At the stop for the shuttle, a kid asked me if I was interested in purchasing any of the marijuana buds he has in an orange plastic prescirtion medicine bottle, complete with child safety cap.  He asks another kid with tattoos on the shuttle.  One of the shuttle's stops is at a corner with a guy who has a guitar and blue hair.  The kid asks the guitar guy's friend if he's interested in a purchase.  The guitar guy's friend replies, "All I have is a dime!"  The kid says, "Okay, I'll be on my phone."

     Midnight, 16th Street Mall, at Stout  The densest concentration of homeless folk is between California and Champa, where the doorways have been filling up...  A guy hanging around in front of the Walgreens tries to hustle a few bucks when I ask questions, as though he's some kind of informant.  A few doors down, another guy strumming a battered guitar in front of a closed sandwich shop gets pissy when I stop to talk.  "I'm trying to make my living out here," he snaps.  He strums a few more chords for an audience of nobody.  1:45 a.m., 16th Street Mall and California  A pedicab driver mentions, "The most trouble I ever get is when my drunk-ass passengers want me to let them out so they can go fuck with these guys: 'Oh, let me out a minute, I want to go talk shit to this homeless dude.'  Down the mall, two girls stumble past the Sheraton.  Inside the hotel, eighteen TVs are all showing the same channel in the empty bar.  5 a.m., 16th Street Mall and California  As if roused by some kind of internal alarm clock issued only to the homeless, a large chunk of the sleeping population awakens almost exactly at 5 a.m.
     Last week, Westword sat down with Albus Brooks, the...ordinance to ban "urban camping" in Denver...proposal's main propopnent in (city) council, in the conference room of his District 8 office.  Albus Brooks: When I first got onto council, one of the first issues people were talking about was we have an incredible homeless issue.  The homeless providers were saying, "We need to...provide more services."  Businesses and residents were saying, "We've never seen it this bad."  One of the first things I saw were multiple, multiple responses from conventioneers where the first and second thing they'd say was, "Do something, I thought you guys were supposed to be the leaders.  You're nationally renowned in your effectiveness towards homelessness."  Most providers are saying, "We want to help draft the ordinance."  That's not going to happen.  As a city , this is where civil liberties and government start to meet.  I'm elected to protect the public good...  - Westword, 4/20-5/2/2012
     In Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan's first State of the City Address, he pontificates:  "In Aurora, what will happen next is a future so bright  that the rest of Colorado will wonder how we got so lucky.  We are not lucky.  We are good.  We have a focus, we have a vision, we have the citizenry, the elected officials...partners to help make things happen."  And in true Hogan fashion, he also stressed the importance of debunking the common misconceptions of Aurora.  "Now is the time to take the lead on the false images of no trees and rampant crime," he said.  - Aurora Sentinel, 4/26 - 5/2/2012



     Civilians pity us.  They're always talking about the loneliness and the danger.  They talk about the sacrifices we have to make to feed the millions topside.  They ought to take a good look at their world: crowds, noise, shortages, tension, rules, ugliness, hostility, and more rules.  They can have it.  Why do they force us to go topside for R and R every two weeks?  Why won't they turn us loose?  Why keep binding us with their own fears?    - "Lobotomy Shoals", by J. Brantingham