March 2013

     It's 5 am at the bus stop across the street from where I live.  From the alley behind a liquor store comes a thin guy with what appears to be a thick steel camping pot.  A few mornings later is the beginning of a new work week.  This week, I am catching a slightly earlier bus.  It's going on 4:30 am, and I am walking up a dark and quiet boulevard to catch a bus.  As I step on something small and hollow, it sounds as if a gun has gone off as the sound of it popping echoes off every dark building.  When I get up the street and around the corner, the wind begins blowing.  I can hear it wailing through the bus shelter.  Inside is a derelict guy, with a cast on his calf, a cane, a grey moustache and dirt on his skin.  With what is left of his voice, I hear him mumbling before I realize that it's directed toward myself.  He puts two fingers up to his lips.  He wants a cigarette.  The wind comes in gusts, and it blows the giant empty plastic drink cups down the street.  The derelict guy can see that the rest of us there notice the bus coming, and he begins ever so slowly digging into his left pocket for his fare.  In his seat, he hangs onto a bar and rests his head on his arm, closing his eyes to get whatever rest he can, if not sleep.  The driver announces that the train station is almost the end of the line.  The guy does not get off.
     I take the train to the end of its line, where I have a short wait for a connecting bus.  When it comes, the driver gets up from behind the wheel to sit across a row of seats with his legs stretched out.  Both posted signs and a surprising number of people notify passengers not to "place your feet on the seats".  He is taking a cat nap before his short layover.  I wonder if he has an alarm set to wake him, and sure enough his phone goes off in a few minutes.  I wonder if this is the drill for this week?  The next morning, the driver wakes up and acts as if he has awoken late, though I never heard his alarm.  As he is hauling ass down the street, I hear his alarm.  After I get home, I run across the street to grab some Chinese food.  A regular panhandler is standing there, and asks me for fifty cents before I go in.  When I come out, he asks me again.  I remind him that he has already asked me.  He says, "Oh."
     Ride West.  The adventure begins 4.26.13.  Riding the rails.  It's a western tradition as old as the hills.  See the sights and explore the modern West when  RTD's West Rail Line opens on April 26.  - RTD print ad, 3/13
     A couple of days later, I'm on a train home when the line loses power.  I get off the train and hop on a bus.  At the bus gate is a short, thin guy with long hair who is on his phone.  "This is ridiculous," he is yelling.  "You ruined my family bitch."  The driver is telling him about the small chances that something which he lost on the bus will be found.  The bus proceeds without the guy.  The driver tells a passenger that this guy got on the bus in my neighborhood, along the way here.  He passed out drunk, and some high school kids stole his wallet.  I get off at a stop for a connecting bus.  A guy with long blonde hair and a grey beard appears to be asleep.  I snap a picture of him before he awakens to tell me that a "long snow is coming.  And in two weeks, it will be spring."  I hope he does not forget about Daylight Savings Time this weekend.
     The following day is my day off, and I am out and about upon the boulevard of derelicts.  Some are familiar and some are not.  On the ride to the bank is a guy with a long white beard and some kind of small dolly.  It almost looks like a dolly for an oxygen tank, but it has a five gallon plastic bucket, a rolled up piece of cardboard, and I don't know what else wrapped in what appears to be plastic belts and wire from the trash, or I don't know from where.  Sticking up in the middle are a couple of poles, one of which has what appears to be a duster at the end.  Is he a homeless guy masquerading as a window washer?  After he gets up to move for an oncoming wheelchair, and sits back down, he begins spouting nonsense.  He slaps one of the poles and tells the dolly to stay put.  At our stop, he asks the driver if he can use the wheelchair lift to get off, and so that he can "drive.  At then thousand miles an hour."  I see him cross the middle of the street with his dolly, and disappear.  I grab lunch across the street from Catracho's Barber's.  The staff are listening to pop music in Spanish.  Inside is a homeless regular wearing a good pair of jeans inside of a pair which is falling apart.  Some high school kids come in, and are all speaking rapid fire Spanish.
     I like talking to "outsiders" who don't see the human species as needing to urgently correct course, as needing to change to avoid some looming (or distant) disasters.   - Nexus, March/April 2013
     In April 1955 the first Youth Dedications were held.  The vow...stated "Are you ready to devote your strength to...a happy and beautiful life, to progress in economy, science, and the arts?  We, the community of workers, promise to help you and protect you.  Let us go forward with united strength to victory."  ...during the Mardi-Gras of 1956 in...Brandenburg...an actor parodied Christ.  In a long white garment...a red paper rose...and a crown of thorns; in one hand...a bottle of whisky...  He was assisted by girls of the Free German Youth.  - Hutten
     ...cities are back...the news is quite good.  People are coming back, crime has declined, economies are improving, and cities are once again becoming desirable places to live and work.  Immigration is actually one of the factors behind the national decline in crime rates.  - Discover, 4/2013
     Surely, not to have seen the great cities of the world is not to have lived.  For it is in those cities that the life of our times, its actions and passions, are most sharply experienced and exceedingly felt.  - "Getaway", Faye Hammel, 1971
     Another Saturday, headed to work at 5 am.  Snow flakes are coming down again in this snowy month.  I am standing inside the bus shelter at my usual stop.  This morning, it smells like urine.  There is change on the ground, which I never see.  Like the empty cream containers and sugar packages all over the ledge some weeks ago, within throwing distance from a trash can, I believe this is evidence of the presence of derelicts.
     On Monday, I am scheduled to work a closing shift.  I get called in to work, and I take the buses which come next, after my usual ones.  At my usual bus stop is a guy who is telling another guy, "I ain't paid taxes in so long."  He says, "The buses out in LA...goin' every which way.  Two of the same number show up, two of another behind them."  I take the bus to a train, to another bus stop.  A big guy comes up with a small woman.  I hear him quietly telling her to "stay prayed up.  If you're still dirty," he tells her, "you take another shower."  He says that it's the same thing with sin.  When they get on the bus, he continues to speak to her in barely audible tones.  "You have sinned.  You know what I'm saying?"  He mentions discernment.  She is half his size, and she sits demurely listening to him prattle about the behavior of humanity.  When the bus pulls into another train station, they both get off.  During the five minute layover, perhaps he walks her to the gate for a connecting bus before he comes back on alone.  I hear him quietly say, "Thank you Jesus" before he sits down next to someone else, telling them, "Bless you, good morning."
     ..."Higher Powers" in the sense of St. Paul could be recognized only if they agreed with Christian understanding of what is good and what is evil.  But if Higher Powers decided autonomously what is good and what is evil, then...Romans 13 did not apply to them.  ...thoughts advocated by Karl Borth in 1938.  ...Walter Ulbricht, Secretary General of the SED (the German Communist Party) stated: "...socialism, Communism, and the Christian church must work together...  The Christian who takes...humanistic and social obligations seriously...cannot be anything but a socialist."  - Hutten
     They had listened gravely, watching him, but there was no comment when he had finished.  It was not often that they saw him for himself.  ...he sat a moment longer.  "They lay all these improvements to help you, but none is fool proof.  There is only one perfect way of navigation, to know the error of your compass and to take two bearings on shore positions.  Don't any of you ever forget it.  Good night."  - Supership, by Noel Mostert, 1974
     On the bus home, a guy gets on who is talking on his cell phone.  He just got out of work and has to go back to "the block."  As in cell block.  He has to do 20 hours a week in jail.  The next morning at 5 am, sitting in the bus shelter across the street from where I live are a couple of homeless.  They both have baseball caps under big hoods.  And they are sharing chips and dip.  The next morning is another Saturday.  Five am.  I see a few police cars going back and forth.  I wonder if they are after someone again.  I stop into the deathburger, where a couple of young men are whispering to themselves, almost like little kids, before they begin saying "fuck you" as they leave.  They are looking in the direction of both myself and the staff.  As I head back to the bus stop, I hear more "fuck you"s before I see the two slowly walk across the street, as they look back toward the deathburger yelling "fuck you bitch!"  I get on the bus, and a couple of short stops away a kid gets on to ask the driver which direction is the boulevard from which we just came.
     I'm on my way back from the Chinese place across the street from where I live. I see four people come out from behind a building across the street from where I live.  Two appear to be local drunks, and two do not appear neither drunk nor familiar.  They give me the impression that they were briefly hiding.  The two apparent non-drunks go on their way.  The drunk man appears to give the drunk woman something before they each head down opposite directions of the street.  The next evening, I am on the way home from work.  A couple of guys sitting behind me are discussing life after prison, in the halfway house.  One of them was told by his parole officer that he will have to live in a hotel.  He wants to know if the state will pay for it, along with his food.  Sitting up front are a couple of women talking about having started out in the same county jail way back when.  One is talking a mile a minute, suggesting the other get some kind of resume together to take downtown.  The other replies, "I can make money fixing motorcycles.  My dad died and left me a (mechanic) shop."  On a connecting bus home are another couple of women, one a bull dyke in a black leather jacket missing a front tooth.  The latter tells the other that she was a volunteer firefighter.  They are discussing health care.  Sitting behind them is a homeless guy in a knti cap which reads "chaos."
     It's 8 am on a Wednesday.  I am at the local deathburger before heading off to work a late shift.  The big, drunk guy, who required the manager to call the police, resulting in two squad cars and a paramedic unit from the fire station to drop by, is back sitting at the very same table where he and his friend were both making pencil drawings before he took off his shoes and attempted to put them back on again.  Today, he appears sober as he sits next to a grey-haired guy, talking to him about the bible.  In the corner in a homeless guy sleeping in a booth.  Sitting next to him is a guy with grey, shoulder-length hair, reading a book titled Holy War.  An hour and a half later, I am in a snack shop at the train station, standing in a short line.  The train stop is next to a community college.  A grey-haired couple come in.  The guy has a book bag, wire-rimmed glasses and a neatly trimmed goatee.  They both look like continuing education adults.  They sneak through the line and go into a back room, before coming out and asking if there is a rest room.  I instantly realize that they are both homeless.  The following morning, I am back at the same deathburger, this time again at 5 am.  Where the big guy was sitting 21 hours ago is a familiar homeless guy.  He too has a grey goatee, along with a red face and dirty grey hoodie with "U.S. Polo Association" on the front.  He does not appear to be the kind to have put his time in swinging a mallet from a horse.  On the table is what appears to be the entire contents of his pockets: some Zig Zag rolling papers and his change, which he counts with a shaking hand before looking up at the menu.  On the bench are his back pack and a plastic grocery bag.  On the floor is his rolling suitcase.  When he disappears into the men's room, he leaves everything at the table, including his money.  When he comes out, he scoops up his change and gets in line.  Heart of Glass is playing softly over the speakers.
     On Friday, next to a downtown deathburger, a young guy with hair and a beard like Grizzly Adams is sitting with a sleeping bag and other parcels directly underneath a sign.  The sign reads, among other things, "no soliciting, so trespassing."  As I passed him, he asked me for a new pair of shoes.  The hiking boots which he had on, he claimed, were worn out.  All I could do was stare at the sign, and then back again.  He told me, "God bless you."  When I get home, my tax refund is in the mailbox.  I go to my bank's local branch to deposit it before the weekend.  When I get there, the front door is locked.  A notice on the door asks customers to go around to the side door.  When I go inside, I ask if the door is locked because of the homeless.  The answer is yes, partly, and partly because of three robbery attempts.  The homeless come in and take mints, or they stand between sets of doors in the foyer.  The next morning, at 5 am, I am at my usual bus stop.  The day will bring white out conditions, shutting down both interstates.  In front of a Walgreens is something which I have never seen in the eight years I have been living in this neighborhood.  There is a guy shovelling snow on the sidewalk.
     To a generation of gay urban-dwellers...  Millions of job losses and home foreclosures...wasn't our story.  It meant...the freedom to relocate spontaneously, trying on different neighborhoods or towns - slipping into their streets and seeing whether we wore them well.  ..there's an appeal in...life outside home ownership or being tied down by our "stuff."  It meant idle time and energy to put toward independent projects we may not know exactly how to make money from...  Creativity is the dream.  Denver photographer...said his images are...of a particular gay subculture based on a rugged, unkempt look.  (..."a slender, fit, hairy gay man.")  - Out Front Colorado, 3/20/13
     It's 5 am on a Monday.  I get off the bus at the usual stop, up the street on the way to work.  There is a middle-aged guy coming up the street from the east.  When he passes me, he mumbles a "how's it goin'?..."  It's 12 degrees F but feels colder.  This guy is not wearing a winter coat, but an unzipped hoodie and a knit hat.  He doesn't appear cold.  He looks lost.  He crosses one corner and turns north.  He goes a short distance before turning around.  The way he walks, he will stop, turn around, and look down the street as if expecting someone to come along.  He does this over and over.  I watch him come back down the street and cross it against a red light.  I don't think that he is inebriated.  Instead of slouching through oncoming traffic on some kind of autopilot, as the "drinkers" consistently do, he appears genuinely surprised upon arriving at the median to find traffic expecting to go.  He hurries across the street and does his turn arounds, going a short way before again coming back up to the corner and turning west.  Soon after, he in coming back the opposite direction.  He is coming the way he came.  Crossing his third time, he passes me again with another "how's it goin'?"  Looking into this bewildered face, with its mouth hanging open, am I staring directly at mental illness?  I watch as he heads to the deathburger, goes inside, and sits down without ordering.
     The following day, I'm on a bus home from work.  Three women are discussing, in both Spanish and English, the purchase of two cabbages for a dollar; 25% less than the supermarket.  The bus stops at a stop where a wasted derelict is getting up from the bench.  He is talking to another guy.  When they say goodbye, the other guy heads off while the derelict turns to get on the bus, only to find that the door has closed and the bus is leaving.  He makes a futile attempt to alert the driver by raising a finger.  It's a foggy morning at 5 am.  I'm at the deathburger.  I smell urine.  I turn to see Mr. U.S. Polo Association.  On the table are the contents of his pockets again.  Gone are his parcels.  He has two lighters, a hairpin, and some kind of tiny wooden rectangular pipe, into which he is putting something.  I wouldn't know where to find a hairpin in 2013.  Oye Como Va is quietly playing through the speakers, and he is quietly singing along.
     It's my day off, and I am on my way to have the broker of my original mortgage take a look at some refinance paperwork from the company currently holding my mortgage.  In he office, a young woman whips out to grab the papers, she's gone for less than a minute, and she whips back out having copied every page and sent them digitally to my broker.  By the elevator is a big window five stories up.  It overlooks a neighborhood in which I lived for 16 years, and a world away from where I live now, before blogs and derelicts.  I continue to watch this place from time to time, a passing of people and homes and the creation and installation of a self- made global generation.  Somewhere, out there in the view of homes peeking out of bare trees, homes which start at half a million dollars or more, are the lots where I lived in three different homes between 1992 and 2007.  I am back here a few days later.  On a rainy spring day, it still feels like the same place.  The office buildings, the condominiums, the small dogs on short leashes.  In this part of town, age comes not at the expense of unrepaired sidewalks.  Their good order is required by strollers, where residents pursue all things health-related.  And the Mercedes are brand new of course.
     There are memories here, as I attempt to remember how it used to be, and if it's different now.  It's the time, not the place which has changed most.  I worked with a guy a couple of decades ago who lived here when the place was a forest.  A health food place at the time he remembered as a gas station called Shorty's.  And of course he knew Shorty.  He passed the memory on to me.  I pass it on, along with my own, here. My own years here were big, bam, boom years.  The condominiums which replaced the post WW I housing started at half a million.  At the time, that was chicken feed.  In 2007, my landlord got a cool million for the two houses he owned on a lot, along with the land.  I bought my own place at the same time.  My credit was sterling.  I had mortgage schlubs falling over themselves to give me a loan.  I closed on a place a year or so before the party times came to an end.

     ...to provide neighborhood independence - allowing taxpayers...to retain up to 80 percent of their federal income taxes to use for local purposes.  ...politicians...have spoken kindly of increasing a neighborhood's independence from governments and corporations by employing "community technology" to fulfill its own survival needs.  ...populist science...wanted to prove that technology was great - not a killer - if you understood and controlled it. If America becomes a federation of 100,000 or so neighborhoods, the cheap computer...could be much more of a unifying instrument - of the American culture...than anything ever to hit political science.  - Omni Magazine, April 1979

     It was about 25 years ago that a shorter, gray-haired gentleman...appeared at my  desk and chewed up maybe an hour of my time ranting about...developers taking over the east Cherry Creek neighborhood in which he lived.  ...there would be no more bungalows for working class families, just...rows and rows of high-priced townhomes...  I remember thinking..."This sounds a lot like, 'The Russians are coming; the Russians are coming!"  Well, as time went on...it came to pass...  Developers were making offers homeowners couldn't refuse...  - P. Kashmann, ed., Washington Park Profile, 3/13
     Henry visits his mother's house several times a month, though she's been gone now for thirty years.  It's where he was born 75 years ago.  It's where he brought his wife after World War II...  Now he hardly recognizes the place.  Someone buys a modest house in a middle-class neighborhood.    ...the new owner tears it down and builds...in its place.  Perhaps a row of townhouses.  Maybe even a mansion.  ...puts the property on the market and sells it for a huge profit.  Land values soar, property taxes rise...  Walk through the neighborhood today and you'll find a new house, condominium, duplex, or townhome on practically every block.  The original bungalows are toppling like dominoes.  People want to live here.  And they're willing to pay...often $300,000 or more.  ...several blocks from the Cherry Creek Shopping Center and the boutiques...The Denver Country Club...Congress Park.  ...the posh neighborhood of Hilltop.  To city planners, this is good news.  ...to lure people to the city's core, reduce freeway traffic...more tax dollars, more construction jobs and more shoppers...higher property values...  Henry's wife, Vera: "Something you used to see was a lot of children.  You don't see that many anymore.  What you see is people with dogs.  They always say how friendly the dogs are."  Henry: "You don't see that many people period."  Vera: "They go in through the back and you never see them."  Henry: "...it's strange to see one couple living in a huge box where the whole family used to be.  If you don't take your turn at the four-way stop...if you miss your turn...you get honked at..."  Vera: "When you go walking...it's almost like you're invisible.  Some of them would just as soon walk over you as look at you.  We feel like we're new here.  We've lived here fifty years."  - Westword, April 16-22, 1998

Here in mondo condo  Or, 'Where have all the rentals gone?'
     Is there life after barbecue?  Refugees of the 'burbs, those...freaked by matching appliances have come rolling into the inner rim of Denver to set up housekeeping in more tolerant environs.  Out there in the realm beyond urban culture, neighborhoods are characterized by guest lists of weekly cookouts.  Who only eats Boca burgers?  Shifting alliances...  Signs of the times  Huge banners with telephone numbers for reserving a "unit" and tentative prices (anywhere from the $200s to the $800s) have been stretched up along the construction sites.  It's a mystery to many as to exactly who is going to purchase these "units," and where they work.  - Denver Daily News, date unknown

     From the start, we made the cow the symbol of...Denver.  Back in the about-to-bust oil boom of 1984, city boosters were worried that...was holding us back.  From what?  Scraping away more of our past, maybe.  Building high-rises that could be Anywhere, USA.  But the subsequent economic downturn actually helped preserve much of...this city...  ...with suburban sprawl temporarily stymied...  - Westword, 3/28 - 4/3/2013

     'Tis yet another Saturday at 5 am.  I see who I think is a drunk middle aged-woman holding a Coke bottle.  She is talking to a younger guy, who turns towards me to ask, "Hey, do you know what time it is bro?"  I realize that the one who I think s a woman is actually a guy.  The younger guy appears to be dressed as someone who may work in an office somewhere.

February 2013, Year of the Snake

     It's another Saturday morning at 5 AM.  I'm headed for the deathburger next to the usual bus stop.  As I head toward the parking lot, I can hear a voice.  Standing next to a parked SUV are a couple of guys, both in red down parkas.  The one on the phone is bald and looks young, and appears skinny in his big parka.  The way that they were standing next to the car, I thought at first that they guys perhaps were having car trouble.  As I pass through the lot, I hear the one on the phone say, "I opened the bag and they pulled two guns on us."

     "This is more like Compton because of the diversity of gangs here,"...hit hard by the recent recession.  Thousands lost their homes to foreclosures, and the area began changing...  ...80 percent of the children in the area are at risk either because they were born to teen mothers or mothers without a high-school education, or because they live in a family near poverty level.  That's among the highest rates anywhere in the city.  Although he feels supported by his teachers and school administrators, he's not so sure about the faceless education officials who run the show downtown.  ...teachers had to re-apply for their jobs.  Those who were let go were informed via e-mail during the school day...and some of the broke down in the middle of class.  When...a member of the school council, he says, the school board promised...new computers and other resources - but when the assets arrived, they went to the kids in the new programs that opened in 2011.  ...in the four school programs now housed...to the shared campus agreement...to make room for three other lunch periods,...students have to eat lunch first: at 10 a.m.  "That's what happens when there are three other schools in your school.  We got the short end of the stick."  - Westword, 2/7-13/2013

     A church who merely says and does what the state says and does...does not help to preserve peace, but disturbs and confuses the relationship between church and state...a politically colored picture of the church...a pretext for carrying politics into the church...  - Hutten
     ...Christian terminology...vehicles for messages of the defeated, dejected, desperate, and disaffected.  Millennial expectations and radicalism fitted into each others needs.  Riches were a property of the great Beast...  Rank was a cause of woe.  Respectability and a good reputation could be marks or perdition.  - Weber

      It's the Monday after the Superbowl.  I'm on my way to a friend's home to get a ride to work on an early shift.  It's 4:30 am and I'm walking past a gas station across the street from where I live.  In a bus shelter next to the station are three people.  One of them I recognize as a local drunk   I watch as he ambles up to someone filling up at a pump.  It appears as though the guy at the pump gives the local some change.  Touchdown.  On the way home, I change buses at a stop where a guy is on a bench.  he is so tired that he's dozing off and waking up when be begins to fall over.  He says "hey bro" to everyone who passes by him.  He gets up and shuffles over to me, asks me for a cigarette.  I'm sure that he's younger than myself, with a gash over his nose.  When you are constantly having to move along, it must be such that you are never awake and never asleep, never quite.  He isn't dirty nor are his clothes, and he has a tote bag which appears brand new.  If he isn't homeless, I can't figure why he's falling down asleep or greeting everyone who goes by with "bro".  We get on the bus when it comes.  At another stop, another derelict gets on.  They both greet each other as "bro".  Bro one asks bro two in Spanish what his name is, and Bro two answers in English.  Bro one is in his seat, dead dead tired to the world.
     The following morning, a guy in his sixties gets on.  He has on a style of coat popular with guys forty years his junior and has a bag with a huge yellow denim tag which reads "hanzzoff".  He asks the driver how he is, and the driver tells him that he's "tryin' to keep up."  He tells the driver, "When I was younger, I used to talk about treading water.  Now, I'm just tryin' to keep my ass off the bottom."  This statement must be on a bumper sticker, somewhere in a gift shop.

Moral Absolutism
     ...we usually suppose morality to be threatened only when the law is violated.  American morality...follows Cartesian logic...If our premises are unsure, how can we have confidence in our conclusions?  "To the good American," Santayana says..."is...the dogmatic cast to American morality.  ...the frame of mind which regards doubt as foolish and even wicked."  - The American Style, ed. by E. E. Morison, 1958

     Another morning at the old deathurger.  Sitting outside, on the ground, waiting for the door to be unlocked, is local derelict Richard Spotted Bird.  When his prayer is answered, he arises and goes inside to get a cup of coffee.  In the time during which I am inside, I never see him sit down.  I watch him continue to pour sugar and cream into his Joe.  When I am outside, I turn to see if he ever took a seat, only to find that he has vanished.

Morality and Power
     The organic state of English absolute idealism give primacy to the state as more metaphysically "real" then the empirical individuals who compose it.  The locus of morality...in the larger whole, the national community whose ideas produce the movement of history.  - Morison

     Saturday morning.  At ten to five am, I'm out the door.  Parked across the entrance to my little townhome courtyard is an ambulance.  In the street in front of my place are two police cars with lights flashing.  Across the street at the gas station is a dog in the back seat of an SUV, with its head out the open window barking while its owner is inside.  At the bus stop is a short, curvy girl with no bus fare.  At the train station is someone belting out, "Are you reelin' in the years!  Stowin' away the time!"
     Many of us are wildly romantic.  ...half-holding our breath through life to meet (not choose, but find)...swept off our feet, lonely years abruptly lifted like a spring dawn...days yet lingering on an imagined horizon we can almost touch - will be poetry.  - Out Front Colorado 2/6/2013
     ...passion for facilitating the kind of group collaboration needed to get controversial things done...  ...the current regional affairs director for Mayor Michael Hancock...  "I had been working for about 10 years as a communications consultant for human resources consulting firms that handle employee communication strategy...  ...neighborhoods, developers, city staff, and elected officials could figure things out together."  ...public relations/lobbying firm...local communications, government relations, and political consulting issues.  ...land use and property development in multiple jurisdictions,such as the Gates rezoning on S. Broadway...  ...entitlements for architect...development...  "...the Gates redevelopment...have long-term positive effects on our community, granted the length of time it takes for them to realize themselves, legacy kind of stuff.  - Washington Park Profile, 2/2013
     He originally "stumbled" upon the campus...  "Next I know I'm getting concerned about...their exams, their break-ups, their hook-ups."  After a long career involved in "white collar" crime...  He also...lectures at classes on campus.
     On any given weekday, Bill wakes up in his empty apartment no furniture, save a T.V....he battles emphysema, depression and PTS...
     I started to count how many friends had passed away in the four and a half years that I had been homeless.  ...(my number is 44)...  When you're homeless...  The friends you make are for life.  ...more basic...  You aren't always driven by money or social status.  The friends I had before I was homeless disappeared when I couldn't afford to go out...  A couple of them that I've seen act like they don't know me at all.  When I became homeless, I...saw that death was just around the corner.  Living on the streets, he was closer - just two steps behind you, with a slightly longer gait.  There were some cold nights I felt him breathing on the back of my neck.  That is a very cold breath, that not only goes down your spine, but travels up into your brain.  You can only sleep lightly...  I've known...homeless men and women...who ended up in the hospital, only to be released too early.  I have learned that life is not the adrenalin rushes.  The homeless know this and that's why we can live this way...  - Denver Voice, 2/2013

The Year of the Snake
     On Sunday, I'm across the street for lunch at my usual Mexican place.  I suddenly hear what sound like four thousand fireworks going off at once.  On the other side of the street are four dancing Chinese dragons dancing in the parking lot of a small Vietnamese strip mall.  The next morning is a frosty 5 A.M., and the beginning of another work week.  Before leaving the house, I turned on the TV to see the Pope giving a resignation speech.  Now, I get off the bus which takes me the short way to my usual stop for a connecting bus.  I can hear someone coming from way up the street.  He is talking to himself.  When he gets to the intersection, he crosses on the green light.  As he walks inches in front of the traffic, he turns toward the cars and yells, "Fuck your god!  Look at you in your stupid purple car!"  When he gets to the bus shelter, he doesn't find any beer, and he continues on his way talking to himself.  I look to see if he has gone into the deathburger.  I don't see him there, or up any street, or anywhere.  He has vanished into the frost.  The year of the snake has begun.
     The following day, I am working a late shift, and on the way to work on a later bus.  I drop a small packet of sauce from the deathburger on the floor.  As we get off at the train station, I see someone pick it up.  On the way home, the bus passes through a neighborhood built in the 1970s.  One of the passengers is talking to the driver about his upcoming review at work.  He says that he's "down to 16 hours a week now."  You get a review for less than part time?  He mentions using something called "Job Coach", which I know only as a service which assists employees who are disabled 'in the membrane'.  This guy sounds completely lucid.  He then mentions someone he knows.  "All my money goes to her, and she's too much like my parent."

     Substantially all students, American and foreign, agree that American culture...is overwhelmingly a middle-class culture.  The dominant American values are recognized...by virtually all adult Americans.  - Morison

Fried Foods
     According to the package, each square of Hashheath has about 100 milligrams of cannabis extract - which seems about right, given the ganja-heavy flavor...  The list of ingredients indicates that the cannabis extract is in the medicated butter...  ...the muscle-soothing buzz began to vibrate from my head to my toes.  ...if you're the type of patient who only requires about a fifth of the bar to get where you need to be.  ...I was in a stoney haze for a good three hours.  ...billed as Cookies and Cream - looked more like a bar of Irish Spring soap.  ...the thing mostly tasted like dried marijuana stems.  Like a tiny chocolate rocket ship...took effect almost immediately.  ...pronounced "stoned" effect that put me in a zombie-like trance of pain-free bliss.  And the taste of the weak tea wasn't much better; it was like drinking the run-off water from a bubble-hash extraction...  - Westword, The Chronic-le, Your Guide to Medical Marijuana, Enjoy!, February-March/2013

     ...Russian Research Study of Americans...(Roseborough and Phillips, 1953)...  '...Americans admire people who are sociable, sensible, strong, and sincere.  They are critical  of...unsociable people...of indecision.  ...of people with unusual or defective physical appearance.'  ...the Wolfenstein and Leites (1950) content analysis of American A films...  'The hero is typically in a strange town where there are apt to be dangerous men and women of ambiguous character and where the forces of law and order are not to be relied on.  If he sizes up the situation correctly...if he relies on no one but himself...demands sufficient evidence of virtue from the girl, he will emerge triumphant.'  - Morison
     Since 1959 the state has established ...a committee for the Observation of Family and Community Celebrations...charged with the arrangement of national holidays and...family celebrations...  "Today the birth of a little baby [is a] joy [that] only our government can bestow."  - Hutten

     Another Saturday at 5 a.m..  I step out of my door into my parking lot.  A guy on a ten speed bike coasts by on the street.  He has a giant trash bag full of I know not what on his handlebars.  He pulls in to the gas station and stops by the dumpster.  On the way home, I wait for my last bus at a stop with a homeless-looking guy.  He sees me pull out my camera, which I am advancing in order to snap his photo.  He asks me what I take pictures of.  I tell him, "Nothing in particular."  He ass, as I snap his mug, "Whatever looks cool?"  I guess that means that I think he is cool.  Stay cool bro.  The bus arrives and takes me up the street.  I get off and I'm walking in the direction of my front door after a long and productive day at work.  In the vicinity of his usual spot is a regular panhandler, one who lives in a small house just down the street.  Walking up to him from across the boulevard is a teenaged girl in a grey sweat outfit, with a sleeveless leather jacket over it.  I watch her as she walks up to him to hand him something.  She then returns across the boulevard.  I watch her go and stand in a bus shelter, and I see her not get on a bus when it comes.
     The following Monday is a frosty 14 degrees F at 5 a.m..  I step into the gas station across the street from where I live.  Outside is a regular drunk, manning a regular panhandling spot.  He goes inside after I do.  I get a doughnut, and as the guy behind the counter is ringing it up, a second employee is asking the drunk if he can look in his inside coat pocket.  The employee must have seen some merchandise which had yet to be paid for in this guy's pocket, because the employee began telling the drunk that he was going to "call police.  I call police."  The drunk acted surprised to hear this.  He replies, "Seriously?"  On a bus home, a middle-aged guy is telling the driver about a park where someone was "selling bad cocaine.  You turn me loose in that park with five guys, I'll have 'em rounded up."  In his hand, he is holding a rubber spatula wrapped in a plastic bag.

     We have studied and practice many energetic modalities.  We integrate Eastern Wisdom with Western Science in our approaches to skincare...and we foster Mindful Skincare.  Specializing in Sexual issues, Shamanistic Soul Retrieval...   Consider grounding.  Imagine a column of light going down through to the center of the earth.  This helps you release energy you no longer need.  ...a psychic guidance coach...  ...Brain Massage...Master of Change...Free Consultation.  ...a clairaudient, clairvoyant and clairsentient.  ...intuitive astrology consultations from an evolutionary perspective.  ...a professionally trained psychic who works with angels and guides...  She is a spirit medium, animal communicator and past life counselor.  Imara has been described as "The ferrari of psychics..."  She has been featured...the no-nonsense USNews&WorldReport.  ...her blue-chip credentials from top universities and success in major world businesses... Ranked one of the top 65 psychics in America per Simon&Schuster's, 100 Top Psychics in America...  In this uncertain world, you need an edge for decision-making.  Imara is that edge.  ...ion foot detox machines and cold lasers.  ...women should avoid under-wire btas and try to wear no bra for at least 12 hours each day.  - Natural Awakenings 2013 Annual Health and Wellness Guide

     It's been snowing all night, with some six inches on the ground by morning.  It's the biggest snowfall of this winter.  The same drunk guy is back at the same gas station with the same twin employees.  They do not appear to like this guy, who I've seen on this corner lately day after cold day.  He may actually live someplace in the direction from which I have seen him come and go.  The twin employee guys make me wonder what they think of this neighborhood, one with a deathburger which has a clock that has been ten minutes fast since the beginning of the year (to trick themselves into opening on time?)  Everything about this couple of guys suggest that they are not from anywhere near this place.  I am in front of one of them, who is ringing up my doughnut.  "Just one?", he asks.  He should be able to see that it is only one.  When I pay with my card, I like to keep the receipts because they help me keep track of how much I have in my account.  My receipt prints out.  The twin behind the counter takes it in hand, and stares at it...

     ...Roy  conducts heartfelt interviews with members of Denver's homeless community.  ...he's had difficulty getting his interview subjects to open up about their situation...some want to deflect blame...  "...the general public thinks you already view yourself as a victim, and they don't want to hear it," he says.  "...the more real your story is, the more people are going to relate."  - Westword, 2/21-27/2013

     On my day off, I am at a deathburger for breakfast.  I got off the bus with a derelict guy who comes in with me.  I hear him tell someone he recognizes that he slipped on the ice outside.  I saw him go in, I never saw him slip.  For lunch, I am downtown at a place in an office building.  I run into a woman I know on the custodial crew.  We converse briefly in Spanish.  At the lunch place, disco hits are playing over the speakers.  A woman at a table of grey-haired people mentions that, "a rapper was killed.  A rapper."  She then begins talking about the TV show CSI.
     A couple of days later I am at the local deathburger, across the street from where my photos are being processed.  At a table are a pair of men who appear to be in their thirties.  They are both making what appear to be pencil drawings on pieces of typing paper.  The drawings appear to be alike, waves of lines.  One of them is falling asleep drunk.  The other appears to be just fine.  Throughout the drunk guy's antics, the sober one remains oblivious to them, quietly continuing his pencil drawing.  His face is expressionless and his nose is running.  The drunk one has now taken off his shoes.  While adjusting the laces, he is dozing off.  He wakes up and puts his shoes on the seat of a chair at an empty table.  He then moves them to the seat next to it.  He then moves a third chair to look under the table.  He sits down at a booth with someone who appears to recognize him.  An employee walks past, points to his shoes, points to him.  She notifies the head manager, who comes out to quietly tell the guy that he can not stay without shoes on, or he will dial the police.  The drunk guy puts his shoes back on.  A third employee comes by to tell him to exit stage left.  The drunk guy is trying to tie one shoe with the lace around his ankle.  While bending over, he is having trouble steadying himself.  The head manager comes back out to get some kind of conscious response from him.  He's lights out.  The manager is headed for the phone.  A couple of gaggles of teenagers have come in.  The drunk guy wakes up and says, "Oh boy.  Whew!"  I am waiting and wondering if I will see five-0 slowly stepping in through the door.  On my way out, the drunk guy is standing, and trying to steady himself as he stands in line at the counter.  After I come out of the photo place, I watch a couple of police cruisers turn the corner and pull into the deathburger.  From the bus stop, I can see that a fire truck is already there, SOP for the inebriated.
     It's a frosty morning after an all day snow.  At the bus stop, a truck goes by with a couple of big American flags mounted on poles attached to the sides of the bed.  The next day at the same stop, I see a neighborhood regular go by.  He has salt and pepper hair coming down from under his stocking cap.  He's coming back from the gas station, where I have seen him before, and headed toward some drab apartments which are a halfway house or something.  In one hand is a Keystone Ice, and in the other is a phone.  He's telling someone that he will be home soon.  Is 5 am too early for a beer? 

January 2013

     On August 29, 1950, the agreement between church and state was concluded.  ...the result of extortion.  The Bishops' Conference...declared that "it will take action ...with canon law against...religious beliefs...abused for anti-state purposes."  ...on May 15, 1951...a State Office for Educational Affairs...was charged...to work out...the administration of the church...  ...to regulate all questions...of religious life...  ...the church became subject to...the legal power of the state..."  - Hutten
     I was shopping too much, driving everywhere, not getting enough exercise...
     So you don't move places for your work?  And you experienced the freedom of not being constrained by jobs and stuff.  ...that stuff owns you, and it's a kind of imprisonment...  You write that when you're trapped by all your belongings, you may become less involved and engaged with your community.
     ...my friends...they're trying so hard to get out of the work/spend cycle...  Most people are like that.
     Belongings impart status; that is, we measure each other by what we have with us or around our bodies...
     Houses are a great example of status items.  Your house is the one thing that defines your socio-economic level more...  - Nexus, January/February 2013

     A new year.  5 AM.  New transit riders.  At my usual bus stop, a guy I haven't seen before is chatting me up, wondering why the bust stop doesn't have graffiti all over it.  I wonder what neighborhood he is from.  Along comes local panhandler Richard Spotted Bird.  He suddenly turns to someone on a bench, as he does, and asks him for a dollar bill in exchange for a dollar in change.  A connecting bus is full of coughing passengers.  In the past month's frigid temperatures, I've seen no one dressed as warmly as myself.  In the wheelchair space is someone in a chair with an illustration of a dreamcatcher on the back.  Above the illustration, between an arrow on each side, is the word STONE.  Sitting across from her is an employee of a Goodwill who is impaired mentally, and who I haven't seen in months.  For the past couple of days, he's been holding up an empty soda bottle as if he expects soda to come out.  At one stop, the driver brings up the automated wheelchair lift.  Stone stands up from the wheelchair, folds it, and pushes it onto the lift.  Out of the window, I see Stone, with an LCD headlamp on, using it as a walker.  Stone is wearing black sweatpants, the left leg of which has serious sun damage.
     On a train home, I am listening to a couple of young folk trading stories about doing time.  The guy talks about catching "a case."  The girl did a year before starting her own bail bonds company.  On a connecting bus is a guy with bloodshot eyes.  On his head is a scar on top of a huge knot.  The next morning, I am coming out of a deathburger.  Coming in is a curvy young lady followed by someone who strikes me as out of her league.  His response to the way she moves is "Mmm mmm mmm."  He looks at her through the window before following her inside.  Not a bad pair of characters, but definitely the wrong set.
     Another week begins.  I'm on the way to the home of a neighbor, friend co-worker, Roman, and countryman.   It's after 4 AM, and in the dark, I can't see.  But I believe that I hear someone's back yard sprinkler system going in early January.  The day after, I'm on a bus home with a small collection of groovy young white guys in British caps.  One of them is yaking away about spending "five years in the joint."  The next day after work, waiting with me at a stop for a connecting bus is a guy in a red hoodie which he claims his sister gave to him, and that he decorated himself.  On the back is a design which reads, "I love Jesus".  He goes up to another guy on the bench and begins asking him where he is going, what bus he's waiting for.  When the bus comes, the Jesus hoodie guy stands in front of the door as he explains to the other guy that this is his bus.  As he does so, he is blocking the entrance to the bus.  The following morning, around 4:15 AM, I am on my way to catch a ride to work.  I pass a gas station across the street from where I work.  At a popular edge of the building are a middle-aged panhandling pair of significant others.  The guy has his cane and the woman is in a Colorado Avalanche hockey team coat. 

     If another large-scale aggression...were to take place...a substantial majority of United Nations members would support collective action...  The real danger lies in indirect aggression - subversive tactics and guerilla warfare - where the guilty parties cannot be seen...  There are not many signs that the nonaligned nations...will...evolve any genuine spirit of unity...in world affairs.  Loyal support for an effective United Nations is the greatest contribution they can make...  ...a revolutionary ideology and movement that transcends parochial nationalist interests...appeals to all "victims of Western colonialism and imperialism."  The Western world...seeks to arrest the social revolution that is sweeping the underdeveloped world...directed against...the indigenous feudal...relics of medievalism...political or economic...  ...the shop-worn cliches of "freedom" and "free world"...has little resemblance to...a free world to defend...
     Revolutions are not impersonal forces, but movements designed to serve the interests of distinct social groups and classes...  ...revolutions that swept across...the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries...unleashed...forces that fashioned a distinct civilization...where values and aspirations have become those of an entire community of states we call the Western world.  The middle-class social orders of the West are a...fluid, dynamic equilibrium of social, economic, and political power.  The more...social class is transcended the more...that all classes of society become gradually "bourgeofued" as they adopt middle-class values.  In Central America...  There emerged a new type of middle class - a class whose social focus of power was not material wealth or ownership of factories, but possession of special skills...a group that might be called the bureaucratic intelligensia.  The distinguishing characteristic of an ideosocial system...in the equilibrium of power...among the social classes.  ...from the extreme of the Marxist-Lennist image of a "ruling class"...to an informal graduated structure...mobile and dynamic.  ...the social class that constitutes the center of gravity...acts as a bond between the social groups above and below it.  ...in the underdeveloped world, the most immediate and pressing issues...are concerned with the fundamental nature of the social order itself.  ...striking is the almost uniform character of the emergent revolutionary middle class...  The revolutionary elite in underdeveloped countries takes its aspirations and values from the European middle class...  - Martin
     One of the main advantages that set rare colored diamonds apart from all other types of investments is...that wealth is highly portable and very easily concealed.  You can literally carry your entire wealth with you across borders...  ...rare colored diamonds have a record of doubling in value within a four-year term, which is even faster than precious metals.  Rare colored diamonds currently range in price from $15,000 to $65 million each.  Another factor is the trend toward increased demand for them from investor in India and China, two countries with an exploding number of high net worth individuals looking for...the least amount of risk.  ...rare colored diamonds...represent a significant hedge against inflation.  With countless financial land mines out there on the horizon like global political instability...it's important to build a financial firewall around yourself...regardless of what occurs.  - Loxzio, 11/2012

     Downtown at my bank.  A guy on the street corner is selling CDs or DVDs or something.  My bus stop is in front of a deathburger which was a gathering place for homeless.  It's across the street from the Social Security Administration office.  It's been closed since the day after Christmas.  Someone is sitting on a sleeping bag in front of the door.
     Staying in a shelter...the people...might be...shooting, smoking, rubbing.  ...life has beat them down so many times...where you can't get up anymore, at least not onto a path that leads to a future, and you just focus on the immediate.  Where the choices in front of you don't go as deep as "how can I make my life better"...  - Denver Voice, 1/2013

no rhetoric will  no apologies for  no mental illness  no awe  no ignorance will
no middle  class excuse  no self  defense  no amendment  no patriotism
no divorce  no pharmacy  for the  alienation  no day will  no morning will
no vow  I can't move  I can't help  no people  chosen  by G-d  no name  of evil
no information  no book  no famous actor  no lobbyist  no proof will  no armor
no father's father  no mother can  so long as I am alive you say
and see otherwise  no free market  no public park  no boycott  my language
no understanding of history  you say history and mean our  collective humility
of earthen  survival  you say you believe  and in a child  in twenty  no blame
no intercom  and we can't understand  and no ignorance will
and no state or federal law  and the child should know  because the child knows
should not be told what is  and isn't  when you sing in the early  winter
when you sing  through  my  life  whether you think  humans protect
themselves through violence  will not blame  no young man  no morning
will blame heal  there is no medicine when  no avoidance  no rhetoric  this  pain
like a song  you have no choice  but to listen  no protection  not an enemy
no sanitation  no hour  no half hour  no distance  no change
no grandfather's war  when twenty children  when everyone  is  a teacher
and student  no hiding  when a young  man  no credit  no ignorance will
when each day  no market-driven  value  no value  no hunger can
and no song can  and not a protest will  and no father can  when twenty children  when they try  when innocence  is taken  for granted
when the young man was  younger  no blame will  no town's history
in the human wilderness  I couldn't move when I heard  no luck  no providence
no courage would have or  will  no rhetoric  no human nature  no doubt will
no disillusionment will  I couldn't move  I was driving home  no giving
no taking can  when there is no choice  but to see  no game  no understanding
no research no investigation  can  twenty children  when everything living
is a teacher  I felt I had no choice  - Robert Snyderman

     On Sunday I'm headed out in 15 degrees F to see a movie.  It's in a high end, outdoor mall in a neighborhood with roots.  I get off the bus at a corner where I worked almost 15 years ago.  Ironically, I live much closer now than I did then.  The owner at the time was one of those residents with roots.  His shop he took over from his father.  It's directly across the street from where my old boss and his wife went to high school.  I remember her telling me that she was one of the girls who turned over the letters to spell out the school team's name at rallies and games.  He told me that he liked to hunt and fish, was active in local politics to preserve those things.  I remember him telling me that he took his son up to a cabin in the hills, with a boat on a lake "that he can go out on anytime."  As his son was growing up, his son was losing interest in such things quickly.  It appeared as though he was looking to me for some understanding.  On this corner used to be a good Greek short order place, a Taco Bell.  The Greek place is now a tattoo shop and the Taco Bell an authentic Mexican place.  The building appears to be the very same one.  There, set back from the street and hidden away, is the old place I used to work.  On this frigid day, it appears almost as if it has been put on a shelf for storage.  It's now a one hour cleaners.  When I worked there, we had a longer turnaround time.  I've worked at one hour cleaners.  I wouldn't work at another.  It's a ten or fifteen minute walk in Arctic headwind.  Out here may still be seen the frequent older model SUV with elevated suspension for off road driving.  I eventually make it to a health food uber grocery, complete with a huge sign in a window, announcing a book signing.  In an time when malls are either being redesigned or built from the ground up, with the objective of appealing to a particular minority residency, this mall appears to appeal to the Caucasian lifestyle.  Coffee and books on a Sunday afternoon, a leisurely stroll for something sweet.  There's an ice skating rink.  I run into the uber grocery to grab lunch.  I wander among the sweet potato casserole and hot corn meal before I find a sandwich.  After the three hour movie, I'm at a bus stop in freezing cold and in the dark.  Though I didn't bring a schedule along, surely they haven't cut back service to quit running before 5:30 PM, even on a Sunday.  I watch an endless line of headlights as I look for my bus.  Along comes a truck with lights on its cab roof.  Here, at this intersection of two busy boulevards, is an outdoor mall which considers itself contemporary, which holds an annual Italian festival.  Surrounding it is a neighborhood with its own history.
     I don't ski, but I make use of a ski mask.  I'm waiting for the bus to work on another Saturday.  Overnight was 1 degree F.  It's now 5 AM.  I continue to see people out in hoodies and jeans, windbreakers or denim jackets.  I am wearing lined pants along with long underwear, and a winter coat with a hood.  If I move the wrong direction, the wind goes past my cuffs.  I am eating through the hole in my ski mask which I have on.  I don't ski, but I make use of a ski mask. The lightest of snows is falling.  The mood is one of some kind of new age.  I take the bus to the train, down to the next station.  I think I hear a native American chant from someone out in the freezing train station.  Do I see snow falling in the lamp light or freezing fog?  By the afternoon, the clouds in the sky have broken, yet the Rockies remain shrouded in a great white frozen mist.  Jesus it's cold.  I'm sitting in the sun in some seriously lined clothing and I'm still cold.  To write these words, I must exhale on the tip of my pen to get the ink moving.  It feels no warmer than it did this morning.

     Western policy must align itself with the popular aspirations of the middle class nationalist forces in the underdeveloped countries...   Either the western world...not as a hegemonic empire or series of empires - must universalize itself, its values, and its institutions, or it will be inevitably...pass into the ashbins of history as another great civilization unable to accomodate itself to...its aroused, disaffected, and disconcerted populations.  ...international corporations, consortiums, and cartels...sometimes convey the impression that they own Western civilization...  - Martin


     I'm at my usual deathburger for breakfast.  As I head in, I hear a middle aged guy talking to himself.  He comes walking up with a jerking, nervous kind of motion.  It sounds as though he has some kind of Turret's Syndrome.  He's making random statements: he will by a home in five years, just give him five years, $2,000 down, "You mess up - you're done.  That's my grandma used to say."  Then he says, "Nice to meet you."  He's making these statements as if in a hurry.  He sounds like a TV flipping channels.  He's someone else with a mental illness come wandering out of the west.

     ...Khrushchev reveals..."The national bourgeoisie is dual in character.  ...objectively interested in...anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolution.  Its progressive role...therefore not yet spent.  But...shows...compromise..."  - Martin

     I saw my first empty Keystone ICE can hidden inside an empty fast food bag.  It's at my usual bus stop, at the usual time of 5 AM.  A young guy on a bike rolls up .  He's not a regular and he doesn't strike me as 'from around these parts.'  He politely asks each of us at the stop for a dollar before he is on his way.  When I get to the train station, there's a guy wandering up and down the train platform with that straight ahead derelict look in his eyes.  When my train pulls up, a guy with a similar appearance is talking to himself before the door opens for him to exit the train.  As I get on, I think that I hear the first guy yell something.

January 9, 2013

Dear Parents and Guardians,

Today, a student reported that a male in a black van asked to help him find a puppy.  The student reported it immediately...  We also put the school on a modified lockdown for 15 minutes to ensure that all the students were safe.  The officer from DPS security is currently investigating the incident.  - something I found on the sidewalk January 20
   
     The truth is that faith in who we are and who we came into this life to be is the key component to creating the life you desire.  ...to create the highest vision of me that I can present in the world...  ...to enhance...your overall physical vibration.  And faith in me is the activating force that my "human" requires in order to align with that over-arching creative intelligence of the Universe that is my source.
     ...while the faint glow of fireplaces tease passers-by, tempting visitors with hot chocolate to-dos and Champagne fetes.   ...as we would have it - complete with an accented and convivial service staff, many from Europe...  It is what we all fantasize about, isn't it?  - Out Front Colorado, 1/16/12

     On Sunday, I am on my way across the street for lunch.  I am passed by a trio of adult drunks who prowl the broken concrete together.  They are being led by yet another person with tattoos on their face and neck, a kid.  They converse before crossing the street, perhaps for the first time ever through the crosswalk.  The trio strolls on their way.  The kid stops to speak to someone in a small white car before he gets in, and it rolls away.
     It's midweek at 5 AM at my usual bus stop.  There's a guy on the corner with a bike, and a fountain drink in one hand.  He isn't crossing either street.  He wants to know if I have a light, and then if I have a phone.  When I don't, he gets on his bike and discoveres that it has a flat tire.  He trucks on down the sidewalk.  I take the bus to the train, to another bus stop.  A guy in a leather jacket and hoodie asks me if the bus at this stop goes south, and do I have a cigarette.
     ...murky forests lapped close to villages and fields, brimming with...witches, imps, elves, goblins...  ...the violence and apprehension of material reality shaded quite naturally into a supernatural that was just as real.  Apocalypticism, after all, involves divine secrets to a select few...  Clearly, apocalyptic rhetoric used to radical ends destabilized not only church and state but also...establishments...whose interest...did not extend to overturning...social arrangements...  The stars were full of horrors: great winds, strange stars, multiple apparitions of suns or moons, eclipses, warriors battling in the clouds...  - Apocalypse, by E. Weber, 1999
     In a resolution passed in January 1952, the seniors of the Reformed Church [of Hungary] stated: "We recognize the efforts to build up a truly new and great society.  The liquidation...which makes this exploitation of man legally impossible must be dear to a church...God-pleasing and profitable to man."  The basic ideas...of the opposition...declared that Christians must object to the idea that the history of salvation is always clearly apparent in the work of the government.  "History cannot establish the kingdom of God."  - Hutten
     Christanity was a...religion about history that turned on history past events listed...and on history..deduced from prophetic clues...  Communism was hardly new in the Christian tradition; nor were authoritarian ideals.  ...Restoration England  made speculation about the Second Coming a criminal offense.  - Weber
     With the elimination of...missionary activity among...young people, heathen, gypsies, and alcoholics, the church leadership had "supported the planned interference by the government..."  Anyone who dared disagree with the church was branded a sectarian...and an enemy of the state.  Bishop Ravasz called upon the pastors to become the living conscience of the people.  The congressional councils were to be examples of national unity...  ...parish pastors who held religious meetings in their parishes...had to obtain the permission of the police, so that the church meetings could not be abused by...elements...against the existing order of the state and society.  - Hutten

     I on my home after work, sitting on a bus with a short distance to go.  Behind me are a high school kid and a burned out derelict guy.  The derelict doesn't appear half as old as his tired and confused voice makes him sound.   As the last light of the winter sun fights its way through the windows, covered in mud deposited by the last snow shower, the derelict is crawling his way through a story about his mom flushing his marijuana down the toilet Christ knows how many years ago.  When was the last time this guy even spoke to his mom?  The good-natured kid is humoring him, this kid with his whole life ahead of him.  This kid who perhaps is master of many a computer game.  Can this guy even hold a joystick in his hand?  I think that the kid realizes how sad this guy is.  Can the derelict guy even say how he ended up here?

December 2012

     ...I am baking eight kinds of Christmas cookies...hour-long holiday card photo shoot, and creating a flow chart from wish lists to big ideas.  ...while watching the days tick by on our life-sized Santa advent calendar (which, by the way, requires a tiny yet magnificent treat in each of its 25 pockets) and telling my kids, "Please be quiet, Mommy's got a holiday headache."  "That Macy's window of perfection perhaps doesn't fit your moral code," says...a physician specializing in whole-life care and women's health.  "Look at what's going to work for you."  - Colorado Parent, 12/12
     ...we have tried an amazing array of practices, workshops, retreats and teachers, dipped our toes in many philosophies, religions, businesses and roles and have learned that there's a shoe for every foot...  From relationships with others and a Higher Power, to finances, entertainment, food,exercise, environment, family...well, there's no end to the list.  - Natural Awakenings, 11/12
     ...we have come to speak of the poor or underdeveloped countries in general, or the anticolonial or postcolonial states,  and of the colored or Afro-Asian nations.  Just what will be the influence of these states upon the interests of the West...?  ...at a conference of Prime Ministers of India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Burma, and Indonesia...at Bangor Indonesia was considered their part in the creation of world peace.  It included Asian members of SEATO as well as...China and North Vietnam.  Sukarno set the tone..."This is the first intercontinental conference of colored people in the history of mankind..."  Mr. Dulles denounced neutrality as..."a nation can buy safety for itself  by being indifferent to the fate of others."  The policy of bringing new states into alliance met, however, with limited success.  Dean Rusk spoke of the newer states..."But the test is whether they are determined to be independent, whether they are trying to live out their lives in the way in which their own peoples would like to have them shape it."  - Neutralism and Nonalignment, ed. by Lawrence W. Martin, 1962
     ...in 1960, the Ecumenical (Federal) Council of Churches in the Czechoslovak Republic published a declaration...which...stated: "We are more and more convinced that our state is carrying on the work of great social and welfare activities on behalf of our workers and...the struggle for peace and...the interests of the entire society and...for the individual to realize his hopes and aspirations."  ...further...that the socialist classless society "is close to the Christian concept of a healthy society order.  ...Christianity is not bound to any given form of society...  ...Professor Jones Hromadka...as early as 1929, was very critical of the "so called Christian civilization" which he saw represented in American democracy.  It worried him to see that Christianity separated itself from the basis of its faith and was slowly developing into a program for liberal democracy.  "The so-called Christian nations of Europe and America have lost, spiritually speaking, the right to consider themselves the firstborn among the Christian nations.  They have played out their role as political leaders in international affairs.  The era of the hegemony of the Christian civilization is past.  The historical philosophy...based on...the superiority...self-glorification...a claim to be arbiters of all moral, cultural, social and international situations.  ...self-righteous feeling of superiority, from its sterility and from all claims to be the judge of what is right and wrong, just or unjust, and what is freedom and righteousness."  - Hutten
     ...Communists had no adequate doctrine to deal with the success of national movements in colonial areas.  ...the banner of anti-imperialism might be taken over by a force independent of Communism...  The modern state...has several attributes.  These relate to the precision of boundaries.  The completeness of its jurisdiction within these boundaries.  The cohesiveness of its population, and the capacity of its government...to maintain order...to formulate and execute policy for the welfare of the national community.  There may be no such thing as a "logical" boundary to demarcate a modern state in a heterogeneous, traditional society.  Democracy is based upon restraints on the exercise of power.  Democracy demands a sense...of some larger interest than that of class or action.  ...the first requirement of operational independence - the creation of rough equilibrium among foreign influences...  Only a foreign policy dogmatic and totalitarian to the utmost degree conceivable would want to wipe out all diversity...  The policy-maker works at understanding the world from a base consisting of the essences of his own society's character...  - Martin
     The Denver Municipal Code recognizes neighborhood associations as the primary vehicle for communication and dialogue about issues affecting neighborhoods and residents.
     I typically get a bit...nostalgic in...our neighborhood, with its 100 year plus history...  The seeming fury of the pace of change in our society is juxtaposed against our quiet streets and quaint homes...  ...back when Platt Park was a working man's town...a few kids and probably a grandparent or two lived in our bungalows...  How an entire family's clothes fit into two three-by-three foot closets.  I wonder how they'd be amazed by...the light rail...$5 dollar lattes (what's a latte?), modern duplexes, marijuana dispensaries...  Yep, seems the only constant is...more or less in a positive direction.  - Platt Park Post, Dec. 2012/Jan. 2013

     On a Sunday, after purchasing a timer for the Christmas lights, later on I head across the street to a Mexican restaurant.  A slew of 1980s Cadillacs turns the corner.  Outside the front door, a cook recognizes me, so does a waiter inside.  The place is warm and inviting.  As I am reading an article about the Loch Ness Monster from 1979, four men come in to play Mexican music.  A couple of days later, I am on a bus home.  It's a bus which comes a couple of hours later than I usually catch it.  I sit in the back, a couple of seats away from a guy with thinning salt and pepper hair.  His hair and his beard are both perhaps a couple of feet long.  Across from me is a forlorn looking woman with a damaged left nostril.  Next to me is a kid with a paperback copy of Wuthering Heights.  Sitting at the front is a guy tapping his ring finger, with ring, against one of the handholds, tap tap tap.
     Thursday morning.  I'm at the bus stop across the street from my place.  5 AM.  A young woman in Capri pants and pantihose is waiting for the bus.  When I get up the street, I head for the deathburger.  Coming behind me is a wandering homeless zombie.  I go in and order.  He comes in and goes into the men's room, and then leaves.  The following day, I am on a bus in the early afternoon.  A derelict guy is in the seat next to me.  As another passenger gets on, he recognizes her, grabbing her arm instead of saying something.  She recognizes him as well, and tells him that she is sorry about the passing of his sister.  Two other passengers are behind her, and tell him the same thing.
     On the bus home from the train station, a passenger asks the driver how long it will be before we will leave.  The passenger says he has to pee.  He comes back on and sits next to me, asking me to read a phone number somewhere on a jury duty notice which he has.  I ask him where the number is on the form.  He replies, "That's okay, I will read it with my reading glasses."  I expect him to put them on.  Instead, he says, "I have them at home."  He says to me, "You've never been called for jury duty, have you?"  I reply that I have, more than once.  He claims that he was a jury foreman.  A guy sticks his head in the door and asks for a transfer.  He says with a heavy accent that he's from "out of town."  The jury duty guy says to no one in particular, "He's authentic.  You can tell when they're not."
     The next morning I'm up early the next morning for work.  I'm flipping through the channels before I leave.  CSPAN has an interview with someone named conservative black chick, with file footage of her arguing with Al Sharpton.  On the Comedy Channel, Chris Rock was doing a stand-up routine about national pundits "always trying to make us scared.  I'm from Brooklyn; I don't care about Al Qeida.  Motherfuck Al Qeida.  I'm concerned about Al Cracker."  When I get up the street, I step into the deathburger.  There's a customer inside, asking the difference between the old and the new breakfast burritos. On Sunday, I'm picking up a Christmas gift from the drug store.  The drunk who comes in is known by the employees, and treated as a friend.  He's in and out.  One of the employees tells me that, when the store opened some five years ago, he was their "first drunk".  After a year or two, he got a job, and since then he doesn't come by so often.  The next drunk to come in after the first one leaves is one Mr. Richard Spotted Bird.  I believe that he considers himself sociable.  He is in fact obnoxious.  "Hey, brother!..."  He stands in front of the cashier as if he had fallen asleep.  She asks the manager to tell him to go kick rocks.  The manager complies, and Mr. Bird quickly walks out
     It's a little after 7 PM, the middle of the week.  I waiting for a bus home on a suburban stretch of East Denver called Smoky Hill Road.  Sports bars and condominium apartments.  The sun is down.  From behind the bus shelter appear a male in a two piece suit and tie, and a female in a dress.  The male is holding in his hand a copy of The Watchtower magazine, which I have already read.  Nothing unusual so far.  Except this; both of them appear to be in grade school.  An hour later, I am at a train station, waiting for a connecting bus home.   Four young adults in hip hop gear and a grey-haired guy approach the ticket kiosk.  The older guy is staring at the screen as I hear them speaking Spanish.  It's as if the walked off a TV program on Telefutura.  Then, another grade school-aged kid appears in front of me.  Why the hell are these kids not home watching TV?  The kid is holding the biggest bar of chocolate which I have ever seen.  He's selling it for some kind of cause or school group which I can't make out.  When my bus arrives, I get on board with the unwashed.  Right before we depart, a white guy gets on.  He's in a light jacket with goddamned fucking reindeer all over it.  From the Martha Stewart collection perhaps?

     ...Americans have had to think of themselves as a people with a mission, although without a clear formula for performing it.  ...the American image as it appealed to Clay and Watson, for example, seems scarcely adequate to cope with exigencies in the present.  To a people whose independence was based on generalizations as wide as ours and whose founders declared "a new order of the ages," this is disconcerting.  - Martin
     ...from the small and dusty office...of Denver Urban Ministry and o the tables of the catholic Worker Soup Kitchen.  We created a mechanism to work together for...access to places to put our things, public safety for the homeless and a place to rest.  ...the Denver VOICE stood for meaning, an anchor, a place, a sense of the pulse of us as people.  ...from the survival guides we put in the paper...  ...a link between a people who had lost everything.  ...glimpses into the torn, fragile and brutal world of a person...dying in misery and squalor...  We may have been a burden to the establishment.  - Denver VOICE, 12/2012

THE DENVER POST  12/10/2012
     Two University of Colorado at Boulder students are facing multiple felony charges after they allegedly fed marijuana laced brownies to their...class. The professor...was taken to a hospital...  ...a student...was in the hospital after having a panic attack.  The brownies were brought as part of a "bring food to class" day.  Police said the brownies...were the only items brought to class.  The campus will not ban food from classrooms...  Police said they had never experienced a case like this before.
     Macerich Co. ...isn't usually in the business of hosting religious processions in its mall parking lots.  ...hundreds of shoppers turned out from the heavily Hispanic community...  "It's a bunch of guys trying to build for a (white) world that's no longer growing."  ...using bilingual staff, sending out direct mail in both English and Spanish and hosting events like Mexican Independence Day.  Not just dim sum and chimichangas  "We're in the build-it-to-improve-it-because-they're-already-here mentality."  Because Latino families tend to be larger, developers broaden the corridors and make common areas bigger;...such families tend to be younger...  No such thing as a Chinese tie  "...there's really no such thing as a Chinese necktie..."

     Dr. Adulbert Huclak...wrote, "The state is not merely a state in the secular sense of the word.  It's doctrine is not an autonomous doctrine and its secularism is not merely a liberation from, but at the same time a turning toward, the great idols of our century."  - Hutten
     Federal Boulevard is one of the most interesting stretches of pavement in the entire United States.  ..you can drive past looming Victorian mansions, the playground of the Denver broncos, llanteros selling retread tires, Vietnamese seafood markets, strip clubs, and seemingly more medical marijuana outlets than traffic lights without ever hitting your turn signal.  ...a seemingly endless construction zone of shifting lanes, cruising lowriders, school buses and delivery trucks.  Why do so many people on this street - male and female - wear pajama pants in public?  And what's the deal with those Buchanan Scotch whisky Spanish-language billboards, anyway?  - Westword, 12/20-26/2012
     ...the Commonwealth.  As a halfway house between independence and tutelage...it was first a projected federation, then a free association...expected to act together, even going to war as one, the merely a consultative group and, lately, a tenuous link with the "colored races."  - Martin

     The medical marijuana place across the street from where I live is now a shoe store.  On a morning at ten minutes after five, four transient-looking guys show up at the door to the deathburger, ten minutes after they are supposed to be open.  Someone opens the door for them.  Without ordering anything, they go in and sit down.  The door locks behind them.  A day or two later I am downtown after work, to grab next month's bus pass.  On the pedestrian mall shuttle are a couple of guys talking about their prison time.  "I'm 45 years old," one says to the other.  "The last seven years of my life I've spent in and out of prison."
     ...the cardinal was said to have had a secret meeting with the Archduke Otto...  They allegedly agreed that after World War III...a federated kingdom of central Europe...should be set up.  ...the cardinal had been starved in prison for 24 days...with tablets and injections...and was condemned to life imprisonment...and loss of civil rights.  Others...did not agree with the political methods which the Catholic Church was using in her fight against Communism.  ...the church should not consider the battle between East and West as a battle between evil and good men...  - Hutten
     The week before Christmas, I've seen a familiar white van slow to a stop in front of the gas station across the street from where I live.  All week, I've watched it drop a single passenger, who then ambles into the gas station.  On Saturday, he was dropped off by an SUV.  On the bottom corner of one of the front windows of the gas station is a 'no soliciting' sign, a couple of yards from where a handful of panhandlers make their careers.  It's above a sign at least twice as large warning about products in the station which contain artificial sweetner.  I don't remember seeing these signs before during the five years during which I have been passing these windows.
     The train home is full of hollow-eyed people.  They have long, sagging, worn out faces.  A woman with a hacking laugh.  Before the train comes an imbecile on the train platform is wandering in circles.  He picks up a crumpled kleenex and carries it in one hand.  In his other are his keys.  There's a middle-aged guy with an unlit cigarette in his mouth.  He's holding a small dog on a leash.   When the train gets a few stops ahead, I get off with the imbecile.  He walks away, picking up every piece of trash he sees on the ground.
     It's Christmas Eve.  Early.  3:30 AM.  After my ride dropped me off at an intersection, it is as a result a much shorter walk to the train station.  I'm headed down the sidewalk.  Halfway to the next light is a guy standing silently, having a smoke.  He's in plain sight, but I don't see him until I am upon him.  He's in work boots and insulated bib overalls on an early morning of 32 degrees F.  Over his head and upper body is a blanket.  As I pass by him, he's on his way.
     The day after Christmas, I have ten minutes before I head out to work.  It's 2:30 AM.  I turn on the TV.  The channel which is on has what appears to be something like a very old episode of COPS, but somehow it seems to be something else.  The police are called to a barber shop, where a break-in has been reported.  For a full minute, two officers are inside taking cover.  Outside the front door are kids standing around, staring at the camera.  Outside the back door is the shop owner, yelling "Shoot him!" over and over.  Then a completely nude man bursts through the back door, and is tackled.
     The next day, after work, I stop into a deli to grab some potato salad.  I'm sitting next to an investor who purchases houses for cash.  He's looking at a laptop while he is on the phone with someone, asking them if they have spoken "to the real estate agent?  Get them involved.  Then maybe do your little pitch.  Are there any telephone poles?  (for flyers)  Our marketing plan is for 60% direct marketing.  What about Craigslist?  Some towns have "for rent" newspapers.  I'd like to do two or three-line classifieds.  Find out how much they are.  They should be $15 to $20.
     The following day after work, I am downtown at my bank.  I head over to the stop for my bus home.  A sign is posted, letting everyone know that today, this stop is closed and a new one is now open just down the street.  I don't yet know if today is the date on the sign.  I attempt to buttonhole someone.  Only the third person will acknowledge me.  I realize why.  I have on a long winter jacket, hat, hood, have a beard and a large duffel bag, and I am standing next to someone asleep on a bench at a closed bus stop who can be smelled from several feet away.  I also appear homeless.
     It's after work on a Saturday afternoon.  I am waiting for a bus in my neighborhood for the short ride down the street.  On one corner is a woman flying a sign which says something about needing "money for booze."  On an opposite corner is a guy with his own sign, becoming agitated, and gesturing with his cane and pointing at cars.  He sticks his sign up to a passenger window and says, "Come on!  Two dollars!"  The next day, I am at a deatyburger, when a drunk comes running in.  "Can you open the men's room?"  "There's someone in there."  "Can you open the men's room?"  "There's someone in there."  "How about the ladies room?"  "No."  He goes in there anyway.  When he comes out, he wants free coffee.  He may or may not be from a trailer park, next to my supermarket, just down the street.  At the checkout is a woman telling the cashier that her husband wants her to get him all the tabloid newspapers.  She tries to tell him that the stories are all the same in every tabloid.
     Sunday, I have lunch downtown with the mom and sister.  I catch a bus home on a day when the city's football is playing a home game.  On the bus is a big guy on his phone.  He sounds like a burnout.  As we go past the stadium, he starts yelling about an old quarterback who has "four Superbowl rings!"  He's trying to tell a kid sitting across from him about his trivia knowledge.  The kid isn't interested.  The kid's girlfriend is laughing at the guy.  Another guy, who also sounds as though he may be a burnout, mentions the Pittsburgh Steelers during the 1970's.  We pull into a transfer station right next to the stadium.  The station is scheduled to close in April, after the lightrail station opens next door.  I get off and get in line to board a connecting bus.  The second burnout is behind me.  He says out loud that he hopes our team will "kick some asssss."  He gets on for a minute before he gets off again.  We leave as soon as he does.
     It's the end of a week plus one day, of working an earlier than usual shift.  I didn't plan on coming downtown after work.  The train took me there long before I got to a stop for a bus home.  I'm sitting at the front window of a bagel place, on a bleak New Year's Eve afternoon.  The sun is peeking through a veiled sky spitting snow.  A guy shuffles by wrapped in a blanket.  I give my name for my order.  After I am called, I get up to get it, and an employee at a table asks me by name if I want to sit there.  Outside, a guy with a shopping bag is pumping his fist, a derelict has a limp, four guys walking together all have sunglasses on.  They are the only pedestrians I notice with sunglasses.  It's the last afternoon of a year of, yet again, multiple massacres motivated by mental illness capping what one could make a case was a mental illness-induced election contest.
     ...a plan of transforming a once dangerous abandoned trailer park and bar...into the City's newest and first park in 30 years in West Denver.  The theme of the new park will honor the diversity and rich cultures of Westwood/Barnum through the medicine wheel...  iViva District 3!, Winter 2012
     "...we do not exist as separate selves..."  A Mindful Nation, by Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan...  "Mindfulness...can...enhance our emotional intelligence and our ability to act with clarity and wisdom...  A peaceful revolution is being led by ordinary citizens across our nation,"...  ...The Shift Network...empowers a global movement of...creating an evolutionary shift in consciousness...  Thousands of individuals are now working in collective hubs across the United States...for the Planetary Birth Day celebration.  - Natural Awakenings, 12/2012
     Make sure to seek out our cultural experiences while you're here too - whether art, history, music, theater or one of our wacky local traditions...  ...scenic tours as well as "an old-fashioned dinner experience" featuring a homemade meal in addition to the sleigh ride.  The vaulted-ceiling lobby features...a giant stone fireplace, bedecked with an antlered moose head.  Decorations evoke Colorado lifestyle.  ...most opt for a Colorado flair for utilizing old ski photos, Western art and so forth.  ...it's not necessary to leave the resort at all - with its...arcade-style activity center, private heaters, fitness center, private theatres, fitness center, full service salon and even a spa with a cave-like grotto and indoor waterfall.  Very much the fun and fearless counterpart to its straight-laced sibling, Vail...  In a town with a calendar packed...Ullr Fest...has the unique effect of drawing together a town of visitors, second homeowners...  - Explore Summit, Winter 2013