One Saturday in May

     One week in May of 2016, I was doing something I haven't done in more than a year, which is floating to other stores in the company for which I work.  Riding the bike home, I realized that the store I was leaving is just down the street from the infamous Columbine High School.  May you not have the misfortune to live in infamous times.  I had wanted to pay a visit to this memorial at the top of what I understand is Rebel Hill, of the Columbine High Rebels.  I was living here when the name Columbine became more than just the name of a neighborhood.  I remember the "trenchcoat mafia," the new county sheriff who had just begun his dream job, the disputed official timeline of events, the cobbled together SWAT team from neighboring departments who waited hours to enter the school as a faculty member bled to death while holding a sign to a window alerting them to his wounds, a friend of one perpetrator who warned the police, 15 crosses put up and two taken down far more quickly than the others.
     I've recently read a couple of magazine articles and a very good book about events leading up to that day in April of 1999.  And I have seen black and white surveillance footage from security cameras, one frame of which made a Time magazine cover; the footage strikingly disconnected from the bewildering terror which must have been.  I had never been to the school or in the neighborhood, but I had heard it described as a wealthy kind of suburbia, playing into a witches' brew-narrative of aloof residents and a class-repressive high school culture.  I remember it striking a chord with me at the time.  I also remember not being able to imagine doing what these two newly minted cultural anti-figures would end up being known for.  After the shootings, there was much made of the social environment of the shooters, much of it by themselves.  As I rode up the side of one boulevard faced by the school, I didn't see any of what I had read of the killers' description of their own community; some futile and doomed kind of existence.  That kind of moniker has become familiar of those members of the school shooter club.  'Futile and doomed' is a vision through their stale, steely grey eyes.  "The die is cast," wrote in Latin the shooter here at Arapahoe High School.
     The neighborhood through which I cruised is in fact a mixture of walled off mansions and some land zoned for horses, as well as tiny strip malls slated for demolition.  The place is but one piece of a patchwork quilt, which is the greater Denver metro area.  I wheeled up on a spring afternoon with grey skies and a cold wind.  The memorial is located in a park with sports fields, and a baseball game was going on.  I didn't stay more than a few minutes.  The memorial strikes me as hidden away, even though it is right next to the school.  A sign at the entrance asks that no bikes enter the memorial, which consists of a circular outside wall with comments from students at the time, and a circular inside stone monument in the center, with words about each of the 13 killed.  It's something of a populist kind of monument, not to figures with a relationship to national aspiration, but, as a plaque at this entrance suggests, to individuals who we consider "typical of so many across America."  The sanctity of our future citizens is something which was set ablaze on that say, as the concept of the "school shooting" was sliced into being with the loss of these lives.  1970 was the very end of the 1960s, and it ended with the shooting of four students at a public university.  The verdict on the Kent State shootings has, perhaps in the national consciousness, more to do with attempting to understand shooting of young adult students in the terms of conflict between politics and between generations.  If each decade of the nation carries its own unforeseen pain, this one ended the 1990s.

     I can't think of anything
     That's makes me more upset
     People talk of this rhetoric
     "Forgive but not forget"
     I don't rape and I don't pillage
     Other people's lives
     I don't practice what you preach and I don't see through your eyes
          - Bob Mould, 1983 (the year I graduated high school)

         

May 2016

     Sunday afternoon.  The month begins with it's fourth day in a row of wet spring snow.  I am on a train pulling into downtown.  Through the window, I watch a couple of middle-aged homeless guys is long coats lighting up some marijuana.  Another pair come out of the station with lit cigarettes.  They appear to be concentrating only on smoking.  After running inside the station for new bus schedules, I come out and hop on a shuttle for the pedestrian mall, jumping out at the deathburger.  This is a kind of grand central station for homeless.  I watch out of a window as a kid with a long blonde perm sticks a spray can in his mouth.  I walk across the avenue to the bus station at the end of the pedestrian mall opposite my train.  Out of this station come the pair from the other station, with two brand new unlit cigarettes.  After a movie and a three more buses, I am back at a bus stop just outside where I live.  The stop is at the edge of a parking lot popular with both those who can't wait for the light to change, and with street racers who line up their vehicles here on Sundays.  Sundays will never be the saaaame...
     Monday.  4:20 AM.  The snow is gone but it's a little foggy.  I am out at the bus stop across the street from where I live.  My Friday routine has become my Monday routine.  The usual older guy hobbles over from across the street.  This morning he's limping.  As we wait in the cold dark he paces back and forth.  Another guy walks here from the side of the fire station, and a third comes along from the gas station.  The two know each other.  The bus swoops us up and as we head toward the all-important connecting bus on this route, we pick up a passenger for whom the driver waits as he slowly put his coins in the fare box.  The obligatory passenger says, "C'mon, let's go.  We're late already."  Welcome to the Dirty 30.  Not to worry.  We all make the other bus, which takes some of us to the train.  I stand under the light on the side of a building, writing this, as a guy with a leaf blower comes along.  He's sweeping the platform and asks me twice to move.
    Tuesday evening.  It's been a twelve-hour shift at one our busiest stores.  I went in and did the previous day's leftover work, due to a previous employee being let go, as well as most of today's.  The employee was high and frightening the customers.  At 7:15 PM, I am sitting on a sidewalk.  As I wait for a bus, I'm staring into the sun heading into the west.  Some 12 1/2 hours earlier, I was sitting on a sidewalk in front of my home.  As I waited for a ride to work, I was staring into the sun just up over the eastern horizon.  This evening, the bus takes me to a train, which takes me to another bus.  It shows up around 8:20 PM.  The driver of this bus tells us that he is 17 minutes late, due to a detour and traffic, "which is killing me," he admits.  Along the way, we pick up a guy in an orange vest, jeans, clean wok boots, and a hard hat.  It appears as if he is wearing sunglasses.  After sundown.  He's jabbering at the driver as he takes his time putting his fare in the box.  A passenger behind me asks the driver to get going.  This guy falls into a seat and his hard hat falls on the floor.  He begins twenty minutes of non-stop prattling.  He claims that, though he doesn't look like it, he is in fact a boss.  The driver asks him how many employees he has under him.  The guy claims it's 850.  He gets up and down, moving back and forth between three different seats.  Back on his original seat, he appears to be looking for something.  A woman in another seat, who appears to be a lesbian, sees where it is and lets him know.  He thanks her, says he's a "Southern gentleman," and gets up to give her a hug.  He calls the driver "boss man," and begins a non-stop barrage of questions about where we are and where we are going.  His hat falls off a second time.  His inability to keep it on is almost more odd than his monologue.  He gets angry before the driver tells him that he will take him where he wants to go.  The guy goes back and forth between apologetic gratitude and anger before he appears to go to sleep.  If this guy is a nut job, he looks just like anyone else in a hard hat and orange vest.  Is he a tweaker masquerading as a foreman, or a foreman who is tweaking?
     Wednesday.  I'm back at my own store.  The employee who was let go for his drug dance, his check has been left at my store.  Presumably, because this store is closest to where he lives, I'm the lucky one who gets to give him his check.  I get a call from him while he is on the bus.  He wants to know where this store is.  I tell him before I hear him ask the driver if the bus comes here.  When he comes in and mentions his misadventure on the transit system.  He got on the wrong bus which took him to the end of that route's line.  That particular bus is the one I used to take to work, at the first company where I worked in this business, twenty-five years and a couple months ago.

     ...Wolfheals Shamanic Services...intro to Shamanic Journeying...and Walking in Light...  ...the helping, compassionate spiritual realm, including nature and Earth wisdom.  "Walking in Light workshop," says...Body-Centered Psychotherapist..."Is...through your empowered intentions and...spiritual light, enhancing your connection to self, Earth, your spirit helpers and your own essence."
     The workshop...allows you to experience the "Empowered Presence" that functions as your Inner Mediator...
     "Being in Nature can accelerate personal growth..."
     10-12 people...meet twice a month to learn new paradigm for Wellness...  One meeting is a "playshop"...and the other...put into action energizing aspects of community...moving, sensing and playing.  Members...create a sacred circle of accountability...
     Just One Light Gathering...  The extraordinary shift in human consciousness can be stressful and isolating.  ...explore guidance..and...create connection.  Suggested $8.  Light snacks.  Galactic Dance & Mindful Movement...  - natural awakenings, 4/2016

     "We've seen crazy growth here.  There are 1,300 homes going in nearby.  Our dining room has a changing table in it.  We finally surrendered.  We try not to watch too much TV..."  No surprise here: Spending a lot of time cooking in the kitchen isn't an option.  "Nope, we don't cook.  There are not a ton of restaurants around.  ...still catching up on growth."
     ...moms...simply think of things that would never occur to the dads.  Have you ever seen what a dad actually brings to the game?  "Nothing!"  The moms have "all" the stuff.  ...and...all the power.  Mom after mom rolls up to the games with a collapsible cart.  Inside are umbrellas, blankets, chairs, sunscreen, bug spray, coolers, first aid kits, chargers, pens, markers, scorebooks, iPads, snacks, sandwiches, ice packs...  Mile High Sports, 5/2016

     ...behind the rigid, staid smile of the white woman is often...an aggressive, and sexually deprived girl...behind the...air of the white man is frequently power-driven adult with a childlike mentality.  ...threat of violence among the young breed...makes them a highly political group.  ...certain of their actions have far-reaching political consequences.  Their willingness to use force and violence...upsets the traditional socio-economic organization of American cities.
     ...everybody's front is broken and there is nowhere to hide.  The white ruling interest can no longer hide behind their promises and declarations of freedom, democracy, and social equality.  No one believes their declarations anymore.  Now they stood fully exposed, resting on nothing but baked power...  ...the preachers, lawyers, and entertainers...no longer impress people with statements of what they can do...  They can't back up what they say.
     The ceaseless...torture, lawlessness and killing that American white men and women have inflicted...in the country is now producing a species...who are possessed with the psychology of the damned.  Their view of America is the view of those who have been made into monsters.  For it is now obvious that they have been designed as permanent victims of America's madness.  They are beginning to feel that they are the "anointed" ones.  ...they will be more inhuman, more insane...  ...America will be struck dumb, outraged.  ...militia will be dispatched to the scene.  But the scene will be everywhere.
     Standing on top of the rest of humanity, from his upside-down position, the white man sees (W-W) The Wonders of the World.  From the bottom of the heap, looking at things right side up, the downtrodden...in the street sees (M-M) The Madness of Mister Charlie.  ...a lower-class...is never as carefree as you force him to pretend.  - Jones and Neal

...there are issues with homelessness...
     I'm not so much an issues person as I am a systems person.  I was born and raised on the north side of Denver...in the movement of neighborhood activity.  ...any individual issue, those usually come up through the neighborhoods.  But the thing that's missing is what I'm really good at, which is...management.  I have a project management degree...I have a master's in organizing people and being able to see systems...  ..I became...interested in how you combine...systems thinking with business acumen and community mindedness...  Any individual is going to be best solved if we have a system in place.  ...I've been able to makes friends, whether it's through the board of directors or through individual committees...  ...with the Environmental Protection Agency.  ...me as a computer programmer I...generated 3-D models...  It was grassroots; the actual data was driving decision making...  
     "...the 57,800 RTD riders who make less that $30,000 per year are struggling to afford new fares."  ...one day of work just to earn the take-home pay for transportation to and from work.  - the profile, 5/2016

     This annual Festival guide is the lifeblood of what we do here...  ...festival season is more than a time for hippies to argue over their two-square-feet of tarp space and ladies with far-away eyes to whirl in hula hoops.  ...turn their parking lot into one hell of a party.  ...a kid friendly zone, food trucks galore and a couple hundred of your drinking buddies.  Be ready to go home with swag...  ...Oskar Blues Burning Can festival...  ...authentic music and vibe.  Colorado's up-and-coming outdoor epicenter...  ...the biggest outdoor sports and lifestyle happening n the West.  Costumes are welcome!  Join Lance Armstrong...  Music, art and beer in the mountains.  It's everything a Millennial tripster yogi could ever wish for.  Riding a train across Colorado and drinking beer?  The Build Your Own Boat Race...  There will be pre-parties and after-parties...  Yep, bacon.  And music and stuff.  DON'T MISS: Earn a "Bacon Diploma" at the Bacon Education Center.  ...enlightened throwdown...  ...it needs to be weird, or at least alternately expressive.  JAZZ ASPEN SNOWMASS LABOR DAY EXPERIENCE  Yeah, well forget about the jazz, this festival pulls in big-gun talent.  ...Duran Duran...  - Elevation Outdoors, 5/2016

     Thursday.  The trail is full of guys cutting grass and spraying for pine beetles.  For the past couple of days, in a yard of the neighborhood of opulence through which I ride to work, Hispanic roofers lounge in the shade of trees.  On the way home, I go back past a dog park.  Three dogs case me along the length of the park.  Closer to home, a helicopter hovers over my boulevard on Cinco de Mayo.  What the helicopter will contribute to traffic patrol, I'm not sure.  Friday.  My own store's new employee is stuck waiting for his case worker in his own halfway house.  I must go in to work early.  He makes it in for the closing shift, and for the first time in a decade, I ride my bike from one store to another.  I'm headed a short way down trails which, if I've been on these, I don't remember them.  This morning, I dug out my old bike pass for the train.  Years ago, a transit system security officer wanted to see it, only because he had never seen one before.  After work, I'm on a trail which I've never been on, one that shadows the interstate loop around the metro area.  There's a rainstorm between here and the foothills, and a bolt of lightning pierces the setting sun.  I turn off onto an avenue, and I am careening down a bike lane before I realize that I have to turn back off of the street and into the train station.  I hit the brakes and slide.  And I'm on the train with my bike for the first time in ten years.  And just like that, the next morning, I turn around and head back to the very same store for another nine hours.  I go to and from work between rainstorms.  I feel as if I've successfully navigated my day.  On the way to work, I take an old route all the way down a bike lane.  There, sitting in the middle of the lane, is a goose.  On the way back to the train however, after work, I discover a trail which not only is quicker, but goes past a beautiful lake which I never knew existed.
     Sunday.  Mother's Day.  This is the weekend during which Cinco de Mayo celebrations are put on locally.  This afternoon, I am on a bus, headed downtown to partake in the family festivities.   Along the way, a passenger gets on who recognizes someone in the back.  As they shoot the breeze, he mentions that "I have a year or two before I get out."  The other asks, "I wonder if" so-and-so "got out?"  "It's harder to get out than it is to catch more time."  The bus detours with festival traffic and I get out on the pedestrian mall.  I pass a younger guy with a bottle in a brown paper bag.  He stops to ask a question of another guy with a grey beard like a tumbleweed on his face.  Sitting on something in the middle of the mall is another guy, this one in what appear to be hospital scrubs and an emergency rain poncho.  I hop onto a mall shuttle packed with families.  At one corner a homeless kid gets on with a couple of dogs on a leash.  There is a method in painting of mixing both grey and brown, by mixing all colors together.  The skin on the head of this guy is that shade of grey, along with his clothes and backpack.  I get out and head over to Chilis where four young guys are standing outside.  As I pass them I smell marijuana.  When I go inside, they follow and sit at a table where there mom and two aunts are.  I swing by the festival.  Back on a shuttle to the train, a couple of guys get on, each of whom have guitars.  The older one says to the younger one, "Back east, the trains go under the cars, or over them.  Here, the trains stop for them.  They stop for red lights.  I get a kick out of it."  He says that he's working on a strain of marijuana with psychedelic mushrooms.
     Tuesday.  Not much sleep Sunday night.  Not much last night.  I wake up in a hotel room, in bed with a lady who I've been seeing.  She is of to her Digestion class for her LPN degree.  I am alone in the room, trying to organize yesterday's leftovers and today's responsibilities into a bag.  During breakfast next to a doctor on his phone, and on the way downtown for more damned transit system tickets, I have memories of her arms around me, and her firm body next to mine.  I am on a train with a deaf guy who has a collection of bus transfers clipped to the brim of his cap.  I hit the bank before the bus station for the tickets.  I head for the men's room, where I watch a guy with a mountain bike and backpack go inside before coming back out again.  When I come out of a stall, I see him with his bike, peeking inside the room.  From the hotel restaurant, with its air of southern hospitality, to this typical weird bus station scene; I grab another train and land at a station on the campus of a private university, where every single person appears to be either a student or a faculty member.  I sit on the ground, my umbrella between myself and a sky full of broken clouds, dropping a smattering of rain.  Along strolls a guy in a gold corduroy suit, gold tie, and a hat with a brim and feather.  He swings a closed umbrella as he speaks into his phone, saying something about "God's chosen people" and "cutting people's heads off."  Some nine hours later, it's after work and I am on a bus home with a young guy in a shirt and tie.  He also is on his phone, with a loud and excited voice.  He recounts a conversation with his boss, who made him promises.  "'We will tailor a suit for you.  You get 50 people, we will arrange a party so that they know you are a financial advisor.'  They want a go-getter who will do the job."
     Friday.  Sometime around noon.  I am just of the train and on my way down the bike lane of a road on the way to work.  Laying in the bike lane are two wrapped cigars, one right after the other.  Shortly thereafter, I turn off onto a horse trail, where I am immediately hit by an insect which almost appears to sting me in the neck by mistake.  Another bounces off by left bicep without incident.  Eight hours later, I am almost home when I spot two police helicopters turning circles above my neighborhood.  Earlier in the day, I was training someone new at work.  I mentioned where I live, and she thought she had heard a broadcast news report about a street racer there who had crashed into a house.

     ...we had 12 hit and runs on (my street) all on Friday or Saturday nights.  People drive DRUNK from the bars...and hit cars...
     Last time the guy was caught after causing $11,000 worth of damage.  He was a drunk repeat offender with no licence and no insurance.  - Nextdoor Westwood, 5/14/2016
     Yesterday...someone...spray painted in large white letters "I SELL DRUGS" on the window of our car.  - Nextdoor Westwood, 5/15/2016

     Monday.  My bike has a flat tire.  Around 5 AM, I am across the street at the gas station.  I go inside for quarters, for the air pump.  The clerk tells me it's his last day.  That this store is essentially an endless parade of customers out of a madman's visions.  "You could write a novel about this place," he tells me.  My sister tells me that this blog should be a book.  When I get to work, I discover that, with the return of yet another recent former employee (under the new ownership, the company has been collecting its own former employees, not any from the previous ownership), I will be working at a different store from where I've been for more than a year.  Tomorrow I will go and collect some odds and ends which I have at the old store, and say goodbye to a relationship with a strip mall and a neighborhood.
     On Tuesday, I have a long day ahead.  I am toting a dolly with an empty box (with which to collect said odds and ends) as well as a bike wheel which needs a new tube.  And along the way, I hope to grab breakfast and lunch.  All on a Tuesday morning...  Bus to bus to downtown mall shuttle, and on the mall shuttle is a homeless guy replete with Army surplus gear, complete with giant ruck sack on his back.  He has bushy dark brown hair coming out from under a bush hat and a bushy beard.  He overhears someone looking for directions and he offers his wisdom.  He also throws in a story from his youth and his take on the growth of the metro area.  "There's more than 30 (construction) cranes (downtown)," he mentions.  Someone misunderstands him, and asks him, "There's 30 (marijuana) dispensaries?"  He laughs and replies that there's plenty more than 30 dispensaries.  If Easy Rider was about two guys with gigantic backpacks instead of choppers, he would be the late Dennis Hopper's character.  Back where I changed buses was a middle-aged guy in a hoodie with a marijuana leaf on the back.  He announces from under the bus shelter that he has what sound like joints for sale.  "Medical," he adds...
     I'm out on the pedestrian mall at mid-morning, hauling box and wheel.  I watch a guy pass another while he offers him some form of "medical."  After I hit the bank, I grab breakfast at downtown's deathburger/homeless central.  This place just wouldn't be the same if it didn't stink.  Monitors on the wall show a video loop of pastoral mountain scenes while new age Muzak hangs on the odorous air.  Down and out folks huddle at every table, looking at me like puppies.  Guys in suits wait in line with people outfitted from the Goodwill.  A young guy in a long wool coat mentions out loud that all narcotics give you the same high.  A family sits at a booth.  They have a collapsible shopping cart overflowing with clothes, and kids' toys on the bottom.  One of the teenagers need nineteen more cents to place an order.  The mom, a woman who has almost completely disappeared in a big wool coat, reacts with frustration as she must now retrieve change from an inaccessible location.  One of the younger kids tell her that he doesn't like sausage.  The grimy parents appear young, barely into their thirties.  The father belches and chuckles before he asks a third child to stop running around.  As I eat next to them, I read a local newspaper about Mormons at a metro area dinner honoring local high school teachers.  On the way to the bike shop, I pass a young homeless couple on the sidewalk, flying a sign.  They think that I am also homeless, and they ask me what time a nearby church opens for free meals.  While a mechanic changes out my tube, the new community resource officer comes in to introduce herself to the employees.  I listen as she tells a story about entering someone's house to find 50 stolen bicycles and being unable to make an arrest
      With a new tube in the wheel, I make more connections to get down to my old store.  I say goodbye to friends at the Great Harvest Bakery, including a lady I saw in a local musical, and I have one last lunch at the Wooden Table.  So long old-money opulent neighborhood.  Hello food desert neighborhood.  I've worked at all the stores this company has left, as well as this many more which it no longer has.  Every neighborhood where we had and have a store has it's own personality.  Many guises, many names...  After work, I'm on my last bus home around a quarter to 8 PM.  A curly, grey haired guy with a plastic shopping bag, who gets on in front of me, is asking the driver if he makes one particular extra loop around an apartment building, which only the last couple of buses on this route make.  The driver sounds unsure of what he speaks.  As we approach this loop, another passenger tells the driver he went past the turn.  The guy yells, "You passed it!  Fuck!  I'm payin' this bill..."  Wednesday.  7:30 AM.  I'm on my way to the dentist.  I'm at my old bus stop when a bus pulls up.  The door opens, and out comes a grey-haired guy pulling a 55-gallon plastic drum liner full to the top of aluminium cans.   This bus takes me to the train station, where I wait for another.  An autistic guy comes along.  He has a few words with himself before he begins rocking back and forth.  Some four hours later, I am on a bus from the dentist to another train.  In the front seat is a couple from out of town, here on holiday.  They are getting some local info from a woman in a wheelchair.  Underneath their seat, it reeks of urine.

     ...white people are doing these things, yet they claim ignorance of them...even while they are doing them.  This denial...strikes deep into the very psyche of American culture, which...intends to vilify and maim the "ethos" of ...the objects of scorn, ridicule, caricature, and devaluation by the folkways, myths, values and ideologies of the white world.  The junctures at which biography and society encounter each other determine the psychological nature, as well as the human nature...  - Jones and Neal

     Thursday.  Around 8:30 AM, I make it to a store where the "operations manager" of my company was going to take me before she called to let me know that she overslept.  Sheesh, operations managers. I came here flying down the sidewalk of a busy avenue on my bike.  The store is not open, but the back door is unlocked.  I go inside and meet the mechanic the owner hired, as well as his dog.  He wants to know if the dog "attacked me with love."  Friday.  I've agreed to open a store today.  I am up the street at a bus stop with a guy in a full length camouflaged coat.  He lights up a tiny pipe and I smell marijuana.  I've seen announcements about the closure of all train stations north of a main hub this weekend.  I forgot that I am headed to one which is closed.  I'm not there when a transit system employee pulls up to offer myself and another guy a ride to the transit hub.  The other passenger is a middle aged guy in a woven hoodie and camouflaged pants.  We get dropped at the station and I head over to the platform and have a seat.  Shortly thereafter, I watch the camo pants guy quickly walking down the platform with another transit system employee.  The station is full of transit system drivers, security, parked buses and supervisors directing traffic.  Trains must be stopped here and redirected back south.  On schedule of course.  The camo pants guy is saying to the other, "Well, the dude just dropped me off..."

     Saturday.  It's going on 6 AM as I watch the sun rise on a pair of discarded women's boots on a bench in a bus shelter.  I wait here with a younger guy with a bike, scratching off his scratch ticket.  The bus comes as the dawn breaks, it's orange light striking the worn, black heeled boots.  Down the way, the driver says "Hey."  I look up to see that he is trying to get the attention of a female behind me.  She has been directing him along this route.  As we come out of a detour and head toward the chaos of the station, we roll up on a running passenger.  The bus comes to a stop and the driver opens the front door to ask the guy if he wants the bus.  The guy doesn't say anything.  He's not a native English-speaker.  The driver tells him that he can't ride without fare.  "Show me a ticket," he tell the guy.  "Ticket," he replies, "Oh, yeah."  "You got a ticket?  C'mon, these people are waiting," expounds the driver.  A half an hour later, I am on a connecting bus to work, seated in front of a couple of ex-cons.  It sounds as if they both work somewhere, unloading tires from a delivery truck.  They get paid by the tire.  The older guy has a call into halfway houses, looking to hire someone with experience.  Tire experience I guess.  One of the guys he has working under him now must go.  "He does some things that kinda fuckin' make me mad."  He goes on, "They get these tires.  They hang onto them for 20 days, then they send them all back."  I'm learning more than I ever knew about tires from an ex-con.  I guess it's who you know.  I move to a seat closer to them to hear more clearly.  The boss is named Adam.  The younger one says, "I was going to tell Adam, 'Fire Jaylin, split up what you're payin' him between the three of us, we'll take care of it.'  That's $3 each.  Jaylin says, 'Why don't you message me on Facebook?'"  The older one says, "He doesn't answer his fuckin' phone."  The older one mentions that he found his arrest record online.  He also believes that he may have located his sister.  "I called and left a message, 'If you're my sister, blah blah-blah.'"  The younger one says, "The first time I went to jail, it was on 22 counts."  The older one mentions a female at work.  "I'd like to fuck her.  That's how they dress down here."  Welcome to planet Earth.
     Sunday.  I decide to take my bike to the gym.  On the way back, I stop for lunch at a deathburger.  At one table are seated three elderly folks and a young guy who appear to be here from church.  In come a tattooed lesbian couple, followed by a family group with two members wearing blue handkerchiefs on their heads.  Five hours later, I will be in the Vietnamese place behind where I live, for dinner.  At one table are a Mexican family.  The son and father are huge and overweight.  The son is dressed in black and has long black hair with the sides of his head shaved.

     A good deal of stress is put on success...good manners, keeping their hair trim, dressing pleasantly...  ...aspirations of the master class...liberal paternalism...  ...Billy Graham flies all over the world preaching about the...milky-white way.  ...preaching the love of the white mushroom to...frustrated housewives...  But for the unwed mothers, the hustlers, the vice-preyed upon youth, the hoodlums of the street, the unemployed and under-employed with families...Revolution is a mockery.  - Jones and Neal

     "I live right around here and I know going through the Target parking lot, you do see panhandlers because they are pushing them out of Denver.  It's a problem confronting fast-growing cities...as affordable housing becomes scarcer, and developers want the valuable land.  ...Comitis Crisis Center...has seen its Aurora shelter...able to provide more room...because staff removed tables from the dining room to put down mattresses and cots...  Unlike Denver, Aurora is not enforcing a camping ban...  - Aurora Sentinel, 5/19-5/25/2016

     ...attending the 138th annual Colorado Press Association Convention...  Folks from the coal and energy areas of western Colorado have grim reports on jobs and the future of the fossil fuel industry.  Somewhat surprising were reports from Pueblo about lack of jobs, tourism and industry...  Housing is tight everywhere.  Salida...new homes are being built, but not enough to accommodate the number of people fleeing city life for a less expensive home in the country.  A new issue is...summer and winter vacation homes...off the job-oriented marketplace and renting them as seasonal vacation homes.  It has long been an issue in many mountain communities as part-time residents and tourists...create low-paying service jobs with workers who have families...  The Denver-metro homeless population is at record levels of poverty and people on downtown streets.  Shelters have had great difficulty...  - Denver Herald-Dispatch, 5/19/2016

     HUNGRY FOR SUCCESS?  If your answer is YES...then it's time to apply at your neighborhood [deathburger].  ...the first step to a satisfying and successful career.  ...our culture and objective is to delight our employees and our customers.  - flyer from a deathburger on the way to the gym

     Hit and run on the 23nd [sic] at 2:30 a.m. my car is probably totaled [sic].  My neighbors had two cars that were also hit.  The runners car...has got to be close by.  - Nextdoor Westwood, 5/23/2016

     Monday.  8 PM.  I am coming home from work, just off the train with my bike as I am making haste.  I have to open a store tomorrow.  Up with the damned pre-dawn patrol.  I have my choice of ways home.  I decide on the residential streets, which means climbing a hill.  I turn at the base, and I see a paramedic truck from the fire department across the street from where I live, as well as an ambulance.  I watch as a woman is wheeled out of the front door of a small bungalow.  On the other side of the street is a guy blowing cut grass off his driveway with a leaf blower.  Tuesday night.  I get a call from the boss just before bed.  She needs me to open a store tomorrow morning.  It's going to be another night with six hours of sleep.  The following day is already Wednesday.  Working 12-hour days will make a week disappear.  I'm at the train station shortly after 5 PM.  A transit security officer wanders over to ask which train I need.  It turns out that my train isn't running due to an emergency.  I will find out later that it hit and killed someone.  That would be the train which goes down the east side of town.  "Bus bridges" to stations south have yet to be organized.  My only option is to take the train down the west side, get out, and ride my bike east as the crow flies.  With only an hour and a quarter to get there, it's wishful thinking.  It turns out that I will go past my old store.  As long as I will be late, I may as well stop and get breakfast at the bakery next door.  From there, I rediscover a trail upon which I rode once a decade ago.  The next day is another 12-hour grind.  I listen to traffic rumble with diesel engine noise during morning rush hour, and I listen to it again some eight hours later.

     From energy workers weighing in...  ...we are meant to SEEK happiness...  ...opportunities come your way because because you are in alignment with the energy of the Universe or God or Spirit or Source, take your pick.  ...living from love rather than ego.
     ...professional bodyworkers...polarity therapists..."biodynamic style."
     "Healthy living and conscious choices are no longer a 'privilege' but a...goal for betterment...  Our nation's openness and readiness is stronger than ever and our event platform...an open invitation for positive integration."
     If you can adopt the belief system that everything is here to help you.  Happiness wants to unite with you...  ...it's like an energy car wash...  Whether you pray, meditate, or work out, you have the choice to move out energy. ...I work with people...that...worry about the future, which is not even here yet...  ...Eden Energy Medicine...energy psychology...  ...nine different energy systems.  ...spiritual autonomy and spiritual power.  Ceremony is built into ordinary life daily and seasonally.  ...I often create ceremony for my community...  - Natural Awakenings, 6/2016

     Saturday before Memorial Day.  Saturdays are open to close shifts, but they are shorter that all day shifts during the week.  When the store closes at 5 PM, the sun is still up.  I elect to ride all the way home instead of bailing out and taking the train.  My route home is a lovely side street which eventually empties out into one of the city's many wedge-shaped parks.  I am immediately off the street and riding up a path to a playground and picnic area.  Some kind of biker family is having a party.  I pilot around a biker tossing a football to a child, weave through some middle-aged folks next to the picnic tables, and follow a couple of biker women in low gear stepping toward an intersection of paths before I am able to continue down an underpass below the highway.  Sometime during this weekend, I read a post on my neighborhood social network site.  Over on the next major boulevard west, five teenagers, all wearing scarves over their faces piled out of a truck.  This was in front of the home of a next door neighbor, of the social network member who wrote the post.  The teenagers began checking the doors of all the vehicles parked at the home, to see if any doors were open.  The neighbor who wrote the post mentions going out to chase them away.
     

OMNI January 1981

above, Jesus Pantocrater, below, detail of cherub, by Ernst Fuchs

Fusion Odyssey, by M. Edelhart
...the flat expanse of the Interplanetary Tourist Embarkation Base stretches toward toward the city.  The shuttle is being launched at night because the power drain on the fusion plant is minimal.  ...millions of leftover kilowatts pour into...powerful laser cannons...  Searing beams of light shoot forward, converging on...the ship.  Slowly the shuttle begins to lift, pushed...by a thick shaft of fusion-generated laser light.  Fusion power has had a most stunning impact upon life by this year 2035.  By the mid-1980s, the imperfections had finally been squeezed from the fusion system.  By the 1990s...the first full-scale fusion test facility was built near our city.

The Business of Fusion, by R. B. McColm
     "The idea up until now has been to make fusion engineering harder and physics easier, so that we could study the fundamentals of the physics involved.  But now is the time in fusion when we must make the job...easier for the engineer, so that we can create power plants that are simple enough to build commercially.  Over the past ten years private development in fusion has reached $15 million a year...the Department of Energy's $400 million annual fusion budget...  High-tech giants like Grumman Aerospace, McDonnel Douglas, and TRW are operating government fusion labs...  Most fusion experts project that a mature fusion economy will develop by 2050.  ...will be necessary to maintain a stable U.S. economy...  ...fusion will enter the energy mix in about 2020...  Twenty years later...the first true fusion reactors will be on line, generating nearly 15 percent of all the energy society requires.  ...the theory of throwaway Tokamaks and small fusion reactors dominates discussion among private futurists.   ...Dr. Bussard's Riggatron...will be fueled with a gas after initial ignition...  ...of Fusion Energy Corporation, in Princeton...the...idea...of...positive ions...injected by a particle beam into a magnetic field where they mix with electrons and fuse.  ...will be able to use...nonradioactive...lithium and boron.  ...the small reactor would...produce enough ethyl alcohol to run every car in the United States.

Fusion Politics, by Daniel S. Greenberg
     He called for a $1 billion-class experimental fusion power system.  An engineering test facility, he said, should be in operation by 1987, with a demonstration "on line before the year 2000."

Interview, Robert Bussard, by K. C. Cole
Is there really a fusion "establishment...
Everything is funded by the Department of Energy establishment...  Our first commercial plant will be running  in 1987...

Divine Alchemist, by Thomas Weyr
...painter Ernst Fuchs...  ...thinks that some of his own apocalyptic paintings have a quality of the New Age he sees coming.  In Fuchs' view, art should turn to the exploration of supernal events like the "shining cloud" that bore Christ to heaven.

April 2016, Chickens on LSD, Major Mom, and street racers.

     The purpose of writing is to enforce the sense we have of the future.  ...responsibility...of understanding our roles in the shaping of a new world.  ...the plight...to demonstrate...a so-called academic impartiality to the white establishment.
     These are the founding fathers and mothers of our nation.  We rise as we rise (agin).  By the power of our beliefs, by the purity and strength of our actions.
     These are the wizards, the bards, the "babalawo," the "shaikhs," of Weusi Mchoro.  The descriptions will be carried for the next thousand years, of good, and of evil.  These the sources, and the constant conscioustriving ("jihad") of a nation coming back into focus.  Songs, chants, "bad shit goin down" rendered as the light beam of God warms your hearts forever.  - Black Fire, ed. by L. R. Jones and L. Neal, 1968

     Friday.  Sometime after 4 AM.  Bus stop across the street from where I live.  The regular old guy shows up.  A young guy shows up who is different than the one who has been here the past couple of early Friday mornings.  When he pulls his phone out of him pocket a bill of paper money falls swiftly and silently through the dark, to the ground.  I am the only witness to his.  I stand to pick it up and give it back to him.  No sooner am I off the bench when the older guy spots it, and must think that it was there the entire time as he picks it up and pockets it.  April Fools.

     "It's very difficult to be an advocate in this city in this day and age.  The city doesn't like that we've been advocates and they've organized a group to oppose our advocacy, a group that was headed by people who are on boards or commissions of the city.
     "It has always been my fear that business development districts would somehow take control of this organization."
     What started as a silly conversation turned into the name for the coffee shop and neighborhood bar now located at (the train station where its patrons had a perfect view of myself running for the bus as it pulled away.  Twice.)  You may notice that "light rail" rhymes with The White Whale Room.  (I didn't, but then again, I'm not on LSD.)  The owners...attempt at chasing their dream a' la Captain Ahab.  (A coffee shop/bar as an antagonist from classic literature?  Or a bus as the antagonist?  I am...nah.  I'll leave it to the acid heads.)  - the profile, 4/2016

     Worldview on the one hand and people's hopes and fears on the other are the essential ingredients of ideologies.  ...that stable suburban-type communities where people are generally homogeneous are the natural basis of society and anything that threatens that type of society is alien and subversive.  They believe that the good life consists of a decent job, housing, and family; that is what they want for their children.  And they believe that education is the way to get it.  They fear the proximity of poverty as mortally endangering their dreams for their children.  The ideologies propounded to justify the empire did not promise the people booty from foreign exploitation, nor did they suggest foreign aid to Nepal.  Ideological appeals were put entirely in terms  of the dire consequences for America of world chaos...and the chance to implement American ideals...  The American government of the 1930s and 1940s...was dominated by...the higher social classes, who were obsessed by problems of order, security, and justice.  They believed...the people at home and abroad would rise in revolutionary wrath.  Wilson thought...a new world order...against chaos followed by revolution...as did Napoleon, a product of the stability-seeking Thermidorians, who fought for empire as a way out of the troubles with France.  But not Mao Tse-tung of China, who...wanted the revolution to go on and on and on, "within" China and always vetoed any exploit of it.  - Schurmann

     Since the 'fifties the Aramco company town at Dhahran...  ...a generation of employees...had grown up inside the barbed wire...  I felt as if I were inside an idealized America, like an old cover of "The Saturday Evening Post;" an America untouched by the...sixties, by long hair and drugs, with its citizens watching old movies on Aramco TV...  The new (Aramco) president...  His Texan-style house, with romanticised pictures of idealized Arabs on the walls, looked on to a bright green garden, with the desert beyond the wire...  (He) disseminated to the Saudis a quiet confidence in all things American.  - Sampson

     Denver police are investigating...  ...in the the [sic] alley (a handful of streets from where I live) a man in his 40s (who) was riding a motorcycle east through the alley when he was confronted by a man on foot, who fired a shot at him...  The victim was transported to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.  Police are still looking for the suspect.  "For something to happen in our alley is crazy."  - Westwood Residents Association FB page

     We should have known better...  Sunday April 3...a guy in a red pickup truck who was trimming trees at our neighbors [sic] house.  We gave him half payment on advance and after a small amount of work.  he [sic] left and hasn't been back.   He insisted on cash.
     Help us find ways to make (my boulevard) a better place to walk, drive, bike, use public transit, shop, work, live, and recreate.   - Nextdoor Westwood, 4/5/2016

     Monday.  I am coming home on a different trail shortly after 8 PM.  I am back in my own neighborhood.  The trail follows a small creek, through a big open field with homes on one side and an avenue on the other.  I hear a noise which I have never heard before, as from the dark sky drops a drone.  Wednesday.  I have a lot to do in a small window during this morning.  With a box of diet sodas in tow, I first loose my bus transfer in a drug store.  The new transfers easily fall out of my pocket.  A kindly woman watches me search for it as I prepare to board the bus, before she gives me hers.  From the train station, I hike to the copy place to copy a tax document, before I hike several streets up to a branch of my bike I haven't been to in some time.  The closest branch is closed and I must hike a few more streets to another.  I pass a tattoo parlor with a sign which, instead of "sorry, we're closed," reads, "sorry, we're drunk."  This boulevard is something of a crossroads for both bohemians and homeless.  On the way both to and from the bank, I pass a couple of different guys cruising along the sidewalk as each swings his arms back and forth in a remarkably similar way.  I get to my bank where I can't open the door until I place all the metal in my pockets on a tiny shelf.  And I can't leave either until the door is electronically unlocked.

     Steve Hitchcock loves drinking down beer and climbing up mountains...  "We are teaching people that canned beer can be good."
     If your yoga class doesn't end with a free beer or Bloody Mary, you're going to the wrong studio...or brewery.
     ...visitors also bring loftier expectations when it comes to drinking and dining.  "Guests are really diverse and well-travelled.  And they like...none of the pretense."  - Thirst, Winter 2016

     Denver is rapidly becoming a refuse pile of misguided souls who have been conditioned into thinking they are in the right place at the right time.  ...and contaminate the region with there own distorted...many times drug-soaked values...  ...parasites sucking the lifeblood from a once healthy, vibrant area that is now suffocating under their...artificial fantasies.
     Since March 9...police have been showing up...on an almost nightly basis, issuing "move on" orders...  The continued crackdown has scattered the homeless into small and roving groups...  ...Mayor Michael...Hancock...explained that he was not attending the meeting because his presence "may in turn become disruptive and counterproductive.  We will not just sit by and allow encampments to grow all around the city...so with that...as a city we will continue to minimize those camps."  - Westword, 4/7-13/2016

     ..."Westword" made a number of Colorado Open Records Act requests to the Denver Department of Human Services and the Mayor's Office for internal documents...  (Mayor) Hancock's deputy chief of staff, was the point person responsible for planning and carrying out the sweeps.  ...he reminded...communications directors from...DHS, Public Works, the Mayor's Office..."According to DPD and service providers, the main reason people continue to live on the sidewalk is so that they can use drugs."  - Westword, 4/14-20/2016

     Surrounding the baseball stadium is one particular downtown neighborhood of condominiums.  The homeowners' association for this neghborhood has sued to prevent a new homeless shelter from opening there.  Who are the working class people inside this stadium?  "We...activate the field heating system in early February.  We try to get our first mow in by St. Patrick's Day."  ...touching up the infield between innings...  Six...guys drag the infield twice during every nine-inning game...  "I'll send them out and sit in the dugout with a stopwatch.  It's...keeping your arm level so" (the field does not end up) "bouncy and wavy.  I'm looking for that smooth technique.  I can tell from the dugout...  Each guy's got his spot.  Experienced guys are on the ends so they can pick up a pass that's been missed."  The crew pulls..."screens" mostly during the day games, when the dirt is dry, and "mats" when the infield is wetter.  "80 percent of our job is focused on the dirt."  "He...is as good a groundkeeper as there is in the game.  It's a passion for him, not a job"  - Mile High Sports Magazine, 4/2016

     Thursday.  I'm headed across the street from where I live, to the bus stop.  It's around 8:30 AM.  I must go downtown for more damned bus coupons.  I also need a couple of pairs of shorts for work as I have lost weight since last summer.  Doctors orders.  Three doctors ago.  But that's another story.  I cross the street with a trio of adults my age.  One of the two men has pookah shells and a lit cigarette.  The lady is in a T-shirt which mentions something on the front about drinking beer.   I jump on a bus up the street.  Sitting behind me is a passenger who is silent for almost twenty blocks.  When we get to the train, I hear him say out loud, "LSD."  He's in a mesh vest over his shirt.  The vest says something on the back about a chicken farm.  I've heard of feeding chickens hormones, but LSD must be something to distract them.  I imagine trying to catch a chicken on LSD.  I get out and am headed down the train station steps with a woman who appears to be either high or drunk, and a kid listening to Spanish hip hop.  The woman is apprehensive about the steps, and she has both hands balled into fists up to one side of her head.  She begins laughing at the kid's music.  "that's funny," she tells him.  "That's gangsta shit."  He laughs.  Some five hours later, I am sitting at a table at a bakery next to where I work.  It's a lovely spring day.  A woman walks past, on her phone.  "I hear what you're saying and I hear what she's saying.  The reason she's raising a red flag is the effect of the dosage..."
     Thursday.  It's 8:30 again, but now it's PM.  I'm at the stop for the bus to take me back to my neighborhood.  A little guy, my age or older, drops by to ask me if I wait for the bus going west.  I affirm this, and he thanks me.  He appears to process the world in a slower mental gear.  On the bus, he says that he got "turned around" and "made a loop all the way around."  Sounds as if he came back from the end of the line.  We are going to my neighborhood, a place with no patience for lower gears.  I listen to him on his phone, telling someone that he plans to "pick up some shooters" on the way to wherever he's trying to get to.  He tells the person at the other end that he went all the way downtown.  He can't blame that on this bus, because it doesn't go downtown.  It used to, up until some 22 years ago.  But I don't believe that he's been on this bus for that long.  Yes, I used to ride this bus back then.  But that's yet another story.  I hear him ask the person he's talking to, "You got that much booze?  Shhh...  You're a lush."  The bus drops me on my street, and I get to the stop for my last bus where I wait under a police chopper turning circles above me.  I follow the beam from its light just a few yards down the boulevard, where a police car has pulled over another vehicle.  The chopper heads off.  The police don't bother a car turning the corner with its lights off.  This week, I saw one pickup with lights inside each wheel well, but here's one with front headlamps off.  I watch as a second police car follows another car turning the corner, and pulls it over into a parking lot between myself and the first pair.  Down my street, the bus passes a third pair.
     I used to wake up at 3:30 AM for a decade, no problem.  On my current schedule, it's a killer.  And I do it every Friday.  I'm across the street at the bus stop, some time after 4 AM.  Down my boulevard, I see police car number four has pulled over a fourth car.  A fire truck comes out of the station next to the bus stop.  From the gas station on the other side of the stop comes the bottom end of a sound system, echoing off the buildings across the street and into the dark.  For a minute or two, it has a strange reverb.  I stroll over to see who it might be.  It's from a truck, where stands a guy who also has headphones on.  The bus comes and delivers us up the street.  An elderly guy with a tote bag at the stop for a connecting bus begins lifting his legs high as he walks, a little senior exercise.  The connecting bus takes me to a different train station.  It's 5 AM.  A younger guy comes along.  He has a light jacket in both hands, pondering the fact that both arms are inside out.  He asks to fast for me to understand him.  I make out that he wants a light for a cigarette.  I tell him that I don;t smoke, and he rapidly replies that he doesn't believe me.
     Fourteen and a half hours later, on six hours of sleep, maybe, I decide that I need some air and I sit at a table outside the bakery next to work.  There are two young couples and three small children next to me.  The adults are all in skinny jeans, the men in Keds and no socks.  One of the ladies tells the others about her guy's sports activities.  "I don't do anything (play any sports).  I've had five broken bones, he's had none."  One of the guys chases the oldest toddler.  The other two toddlers are each wearing moccasins.  The ladies take them as the two guys are alone.  "How's the bike runnin'," one asks the other.  "I think it needs a new EPU."  "Have you modified it?"  He removed a throttle restriction bolt.  I presume that it's sweet, it's cherryed out.  After they all say their goodbyes, i watch him ride his dirt bike slowly up a boulevard dominated by racing pickups and Jeeps.
     Monday.  It's around noon.  I am headed down the street toward the trailhead.  I cruise past a parked vehicle, a white 1980s sedan.  It's tricked out with big rims and a raised suspension.  It appears as if it has a brand new paint job, and already one front corner has a bite taken out of it from an impact.  I remember reading something on my neighborhood website about keeping an eye out for a damaged car which lost control and ran into one in a neighbor's driveway.  Eight hours later, I am out on the trail toward home.  I'm passing people too old to be dressed as if they are in high school, people walking dogs, a family on bikes.  Some are just walking.  I pass one woman walking who appears forlorn.

     ...existing white paradigms...do not correspond to the realities...  These assumptions...based on white models are even antithetical to...existence.  ...the natural demands of...culture...are supressed in the larger (white) culture, but, nonetheless, we found in...music and...spiritual and moral philosophy.  We are, in essence, the ingredients that will create the future.  For this reason, we are misfits, estranged from the white cultural present.  In our movement toward the future, "ineptitude" and "unfitness" will be an aspect of what we do.  These are the words of the established order - the middle-class value judgements.  We must turn these values in on themselves.  Turn them inside out...  We must even, ultimately, be estranged from the dominant culture.  This estrangement must be nutured.  ...inherent in the Western dialectical approach is the idea...that there are no immutable social systems or eternal principles; and that there is only the inherency in things of contradictions - of opposing tendencies.  ...all good and canonical to a...Europe in the nineteenth century.  A revolutionary art is being expressed today.  Misguided by white cultural references...  ...society...is...mainly the modes of what is material, and how the material is produced.  What it looks like and what it means to those who produce it and those who accept it.  Art can not apologize out of existence the philosophical ethical position of the artist.  ...the white Western aesthetics is predicated on...separating me from the other...art form...  It is this duality that is the most distinguishable feature of Western values.   - Jones and Neal

     Major Mom...is a residential organizing services company...  Having been recently featured on Shark Tank...  ...highly trained organizers...  "Major Mom"...walks her talk...having served in the U.S. Air Force for 18 years.  "The active Village community and focus on quality of life are values that our entire team promotes."
     ...research showed that the liquor industry had good market opportunity for sustainability and growth.   ...liquor products were one of the best options as an entry point into the retail industry.  "...a liquor store is always an option for any community."  ...door-to-door delivery of alcohol...  - Greenwood Village Newsletter, 4/2016

     Many families today are exploring...gardening, home cooking, sustainable practices, and naturopathic medicine...
     ...frenzy being the default mode of many modern families - Work! Soccer! Travel! Ballet!  ...the constant stream of technology and media distractions, and...head-spinning family schedules...
    "...media literacy...encourages...critical thinkers, effective communicators and active digital citizens."  "Media literacy should be...an ongoing conversation around every dinner table."  ...ignoring the basic impact that technology has is to ignore a part of their own story.  Without media literacy, "the ability for children to understand their biases, beliefs, and values - to understand themselves - can cultivate a sense of powerlessness.  ...leaving them to feel like they can't change their circumstances or experiences."  ...that being media literate supports...children to create their own identity.  It can strengthen their...trust in who they are and what they believe in.  "Not being more conscious about media has dangerous implications for individuals and society as a whole."
     (Down the street is a bike shop I've never heard of in the eight years I've lived on this boulevard.  It apparently has) a free 12-week course in...basic bicycle maintenance skills and...kids...can earn a bike of their own...helmet, lock, and tool kit.  (The shop has a) Youth-at-Work program.  The Earn-a Bike, Ride, and Youth-at-Work programs are all community efforts led by the nonprofit organization Trips For Kids Denver Metro (TFKDM).  ...connecting disadvantaged youth to cycling.  "...to teach respect for one another, patience and structure."  ...these...skills are often not being modeled to the students...  - Colorado Parent, 4/2016

     Wednesday.  There are more cyclists on the bike trail this afternoon than I remember seeing since I returned to riding in October.   Many cyclists are in racing gear, complete with numbers.  I pass a couple of seniors standing off the trail.  One, in running shorts, shoes, and no shirt, is so tan he appears brown.  Further down the trail, I come up behind an entire class of walking high school students.  Yeah, this is going to be an interesting trail as the weather turns even nicer.  On the way home, I come up behind a skateboarding guy with a beer in his hand.  I sneak around in front of him as he turns around to face the opposite way, before he even knows I'm there.  Thursday morning at 11 AM,  am at the bike shop to drop off my bike.  A young guy in a Navy tank top comes in and tells a mechanic that he's "cruisin' my chick's bike."  He just wants some air from their hose for the tires.  After work, at 8:15 PM.  I'm at the train station, watching a guy with a black leather motorcycle jacket and long blonde hair, posing with a leg up on a curb right where I was sitting eight hours later.  At 9 PM, I am on my last bus home for a short few minutes to my corner.  In the back are three drunks and up front are a couple of guys who want to fight each other.  Each are oblivious to the other.  The driver stops until the two guys cool off.  I get out with the drunks.  The next morning is another early morning out at the bus stop, across the street from where I live at 4:30 AM.  This could be my second to last early morning out here because my schedule is due to change.  This is one of the first buses of the day, the "dirty 30," bus of the damned.  At a stop along the way to the train, a woman gets on.  She appears to be a couple of decades younger than myself.  Her skin is clean and brunette hair peeks out of the hood of her coat.  She has a blanket over her shoulder, and wears red socks without shoes.  She digs and digs through cloth bags she carries before the guy behind me says, "C'mon driver, you're going to make us late."
     Sunday.  I'm spending my afternoon going downtown for a late lunch before picking up my bike, before the wet snow melts and freezes overnight.  A wet spring snow has been coming down through the night and into today.  I head over to the bus stop across the street from where I live.  A few flakes continue to drift down from a grey sky.  A twentysomething girl is quietly sitting in the shelter.  She asks me if the bus on the way goes downtown.  She's in bedroom slippers, lycra pants, and a nylon fleece top.  Not warm enough for this weather.  She sounds high.  I tell her that she needs to get out at the train, which will take her there.  A drunk comes along and asks me how far the next boulevard east is.  I tell him and he says he's going to walk it.  "I'm not from around here," he mentions, "And I don't know where my friend is.  he's an idiot..."  That's funny.  This guy looks awfully familiar to me.  The girl tells me that this is the first time she has taken the bus.  I ask her if she usually drives, and she answers me by telling me that she just broke up with her boyfriend.  A middle-aged guy in a parka comes by and hands her a scrap of paper before wishing her well.  She has with her a plastic grocery bag with a couple of tiny garments falling out of it.  The bus comes and we get on.  As we approach the train station, I gesture to her that this is where she wants to get out.  I get out and she slowly, slowly get out after me.  I follow her down the steps to the platform.  She drops the scrap of paper given to her by the guy in the parka.  I pick it up and look at it.  It has the name "Morton," followed by the numbers "71882-85-92."  I feel as though I am in a movie titled The Parallax View.  Before I can return it to her, she wanders to one end of the platform as I run for my train which as rolled in.  I get out at the end of the line and jump on a shuttle to the pedestrian mall.  I watch as the girl slowly comes up and on board.  I give her back her scrap of paper, which she politely thanks me for.  I wonder what her story is.  Downtown is dead this Sunday.  I get out and head into a Chilis.  When I order, the skinny kid who is my waiter tells me that his friend, Zac, told him that what I am ordering is good.  After a quick lunch, I head over to a bus stop with a guy who looks as if he should be working on a loading dock.  Under his coat is a T-shirt which mentions something on the breast about a fraternity mixer.  I get out and cross the avenue.  On a corner of the next block is a middle-aged guy yelling at traffic.  "Plant a pot plant for Arbor Day.  It's 4/20.  Save America."

     ...all ideology ultimately springs  from popular social forces...  For Marx, ideology was the belief system rulers used to delude the ruled...  But Marx wrote at a time when religion and science were two great protagonists and science seemed inevitably on the side of revolution.  Since then...revolution...has become...the chief generator of spiritual belief systems.  What had to be restored above all else was the world market system...the Anglo-American business elite would have its power reaffirmed...as the best custodian  of a peaceful world order...  ...conservatives...thought that power was best invested in a class of wealthy, educated, and...taught responsibility in the finest schools.  The more these militantly revolutionary countries were involved in world trade, (the more) they would be civilized under the weight of international responsibility.  Above all...conservatives...saw themselves as Americans, a definite, distinct, and proud nationality with a mission in the world.  American in the understanding of the day, meant white, Protestant, and male.  - Schurmann

     Revolutionary nationalism has not waited for Western Marxist thought to catch up with the realities of the "underdeveloped" world.  From underdevelopment itself have come the indigenous schools of...achieving independence.  The belief of some American Marxists...is based on a superficial assessment...that the Negro is an integral part of the American nation in the same way as is the white working class.  ...of the components which make American society what it is.  The ramifications of the national and colonial question are clear only if the initial bourgeois character of national movements is understood.  ...racial integration...lacks...objectives...to exert political, economic and administrative power in society.  ...the problems...break out in what are considered to be "negative," "anti-social," "anti-white," "anti-democratic" reactions.  ...the Negro bourgeois.  ...trapped and stymied by the entrenched and expanding power of American capitalism.  ...the Negro could not seize the power...or oust "foreigners."  Thriving off the crumbs of integration...bourgeois elements have become de-radicalized and de-cultured, leaving the Negro working class without a voice...while serving the negative role of class buffer between the deprived working class and the white ruling elites.  ...such groups become a millstone around the necks of the Negro working class...  Is it not just as valid for Negro Nationalists to want to separate from American whites as it is for Cuban Nationalists to want to separate economically and politically from the United States?  ...the end result can only be racial wars in the United States.  Can it be said, in all truth, that Nationalist groups...are...unrealistic when they reject white society as a lost cause...?  White society...is sick, immoral, dishonest and filled with hate...  - Jones and Neal

     ...unprecedented density and mass that has taken NW Denver by storm...  Driving down the "canyons" of...17th Avenue, or watching LoHi busting at its boxy seams have some up-in-arms, others elated as they take their "lotto" earnings to their bank in the burbs.  ...historic districs and neighborhoods are bringing people back to cities and strengthening communities.  "old mined-use neighborhoods are more walkable.  Young people love old buildings.  Nightlife is more alive on streets with a diverse range of building ages.  ...and the creative community thrives in older, mixed-use neighborhoods.  - North Denver Tribune, 4/21-5/4/2016

     You can control lights from poolside to bedside...
     Knowing Denver's mid-century modern real estate is my passion.  Whether your dream home is in one of Denver's well-known neighborhoods, or hiding in one of the city's many tiny MCM enclaves...
     Let's do a little dance at the thought of no longer being tied down to conventional living.  Imagine a vibrant city... Now put yourself in a stylish, low-maintenance rowhome in the middle of said community.  ...your intelligently designed home is just as interesting as the streetscape outside.
     ...livability is a fluid state best measured in decades.  In order to remain true to the ideals of functional modern living, even great homes must evolve.  - Modern In Denver, Spring 2016

     Monday.  On the bus to work out, the driver is the same one who looks like a 17-year-old girl.  Five-oh hasn't picked her up yet for jacking this bus. On a connecting bus to the gym, we roll through a sunrise of grey skies.  With the trees still bare, snow on the ground, and chill in the air, it really feels like winter instead of spring.  After my workout, I grab breakfast at a deathburger.  There are two parents and their grown son, sitting and listening to sports radio as they eat.  The mom gets up to go to the ladies room and when she opens the door, complains about it being dark inside.  After she comes out, I hear her ask, "Anyone want a pepper?"  After breakfast, I jump on my bus home.  A couple of guys who look homeless get on.  One begins walking casually to a seat when the driver stops him to let him know that he must pay his fare.  After a minute, this sinks into his brain.  The pair disembark and sit back down.  Both are smiling as one waves to the driver.  An hour and a half later, I am downtown on a mall shuttle to the back and to get more damned bus coupons.  This shuttle is populated with executives.  My dad wore suits his entire professional life.  A couple of execs my age come on.  One in a pinstripe suit tells the other that his daughter used to work for her sorority, now works for the city's hockey team.  Tuesday.  11:45 AM.  The sun has come out after a morning snow shower.  I am headed down the street to grab a bus to work.  As I stroll along a Vietnamese strip mall, I pass a liquor store, in front of which is a stoic-looking and grey haired and bearded homeless guy leaning on his trusty cane.

     Today we find a completely new phenomenon: large, rapidly growing black populations who are indigenous to city life.  Every nation, tribe or natural community is ruled less by external forces than by...beliefs and moralities deeply embedded in the collective experiences which...regulate behavior...without which the group could not survive.  ...enables the development of his personality.  Every man owes his life, his moral and material condition, to his family and nation...through these...he becomes human.  ...through education and sustenance...by his people.  - Jones and Neal

     ...a self-styled militia...protests against the idea that the federal government can own land in the West.  It does not have to be this way.  ...public lands are the backbone of the vast and growing outdoor recreation economy, which not only benefits current residents but also attracts new companies and employees to our states.  ...to work with public lands and agencies in order to build more sustainable communities.
     "Ooh!  Maybe we'll run across shape-shifters out on the trail!"  "Do you think the vortexes will affect electronic shifting?"  ...and I was going to be extremely disappointed if we didn't get plucked off Highway 89 by a UFO, or at the very least get whirled into the spirit world for a few minutes...  We'd be there for the Blood Moon Eclipse after all...  For a place renowned as...a...New Age nebula...   On the north side...waiting for the leathersmith to find another "e" to finish stitching...on the back of your custom, size 42 leather belt.  On the south end, the vibe feels much more retirement community...  ...aimless tourists scouring the trailside in false hopes of finding a monolithic amethyst like the one on the front of their spa's brochure...  - Elevation Outdoors, 4/2016

     Thursday morning.  I hear on the local news that, located at a supermarket somewhere in the metro area, someone threw a fucking pipe bomb in the mailbox, blowing it up.  Friday.  I head out to the bus stop across the street from where I live, hoping that this will be the last time I am here at 4 AM.  Later today, I will come to find out that I will be doing this on Mondays instead of Fridays.  Yesterday, coming home on the trail, the harvest moon is rising to my right.  This morning, it's headed to the west.  The bus picks me up, and along the way, we also pick up a guy with grey hair to takes forever to put his coins in the fare box.  On the back of his hoodie is "DRAG RACING" and an image of the state flag.  He limps to his seat.  Sixteen and a half hours later, I am back at the stop for my last bus home.  It's the year's first day in the 70s.  The boulevard is packed with street racers.  The red light a the corner is backed up almost as far as I can see.  Sound systems are pumping bass and pickups, SUVs and small cars are just waiting to hit the accelerator.  Tonight, something else is here for the first time.  Police cars are patrolling up and down this boulevard.  Tonight, they appear hopelessly outnumbered by the racers.  I've been seeing more vehicles here with front ends smashed, missing headlights.  One car is carrying four spare tires tied to the roof.  When I get out at the stop where I live, one car is pulled over at the gas station across the street.  The police lights flash so bright that they reflect off of the side of my condo complex.
     Saturday.  On a bus to work, we pull into the train station around 6:15 AM.  The driver announces that due to the new train to the airport opening yesterday, all trains today are free from 9 AM to 10 PM.  I will be at work long before 9, and I will not be taking the transit system home.  I get out to the train platform as the sunrise illuminates the Rockies, all the way past the foothills back to the snow-capped peaks.  I sit down before a young derelict guy shuffles up to me.  With an open beer can in his right hand and a panhandling sign made out of the six-pack container in his right, he appears dingy from head to toe.  His hair sticks up in the air as he slowly asks me, "Who...came...up...with...this...whole...train...idea, do you know?"  He gestures with his finger in reference to the lightrail system.  A mild expression of mild satisfaction, almost a smile is on his face.  I reply that it must have been one of the mayors.  He shuffles away, disappears.  Someone who came in with me on the bus is a guy I sometimes see on my corner on Sundays.  He's a senior, dressed from head to toe in this trademark khaki pants, shirt, and hat with a brim, topped off with black suspenders and a black scarf tucked into his open collar.  For the very first time I hear him speak out on the platform.  He says something to himself about "taking responsibility."  We both get on the train and he wanders the aisle coughing.  He takes a seat and says, "Something for nothing?  Is that fair?"  The city builds a train system and makes it free for a day.  That's life in the big city.

     Around 1:30 AM, my phone rang with a recorded message telling me police are in the area and to stay indoors with doors and windows locked.  ...at least one helicopter overhead.
     There are at least eleven police vehicles visible from my windows.  ..appear to be...a yard by yard search now.  I'm not going to give any details about locations...  ...an ambulance and fire truck pulled in and out...(no lights or sirens, no idea what that means.)  - Nextdoor Westwood, 4/23/2016
     ...a.man was shot and killed Saturday.  (Perhaps ten blocks north and another ten west of where I live.  A) 20-year-old...is in custody and faces first-degree murder...as well as second-degree aggravated assault...  (In his mug shot, exactly half of his thin beard is shaved off.)  - Nextdoor Westwood, 4/24/2016

     The man killed Friday (somewhere which sounds as if it's in proximity to where I live, was) shot in the head (by someone who he had) worked with...for one day about two months ago...  Minutes after the shooting and a few blocks away (the shooter) beat another person with a chain that he ripped off garbage cans...  A victim in that incident...putting him in a "sleeper hold"...  (The shooter) woke and fled...to his sister's house...  - The Denver Post, 4/25/2016

     ...conservatives...just wanted to re-establish...a would based on free trade, respect for property, and freedom...which would automatically assure Anglo American dominance.  The internationalists were strongly in favor of demilitarizing...all nations.  ...arms were the source of malevolent nationalism...  And areas like Malaya and the Indies had reverted to a colonial rule with which America could well coexist.  With a combination of British (and French)  military power and American money, the West would be able to maintain control over the emerging countries even while granting them political independence.  ...opportunities for American foreign investment unencumbered by...socialist or...nationalist referendums.  ...the rising working classes...threatened...chaos if...demands...for a redistribution of income...were not granted.  Thus, the welfare state came into being.  The dynamic capitalist creators of wealth always will turn wealth into property, creating gaps of wealth...thereby creating classes.  ...redistribution  can only occur, in...access to state power.  It was Kennedy who tried to transform covert war in east Asia into a global counter insurgency in conjunction with Washington's new policies toward the Third World.  ...expansion..had an evangelical, mercenary, and marital character...  ...in...Hawaii...the missionaries..became great land owning plantation magnates.  Hawaiian statehood was...supported by the Hawaiian Oriental middle classes...a great immigration of  Orientals...who regarded it as a way out from under the crushing domination of their haole overlords.  ...others, Filipinos, Portuguese, and native Hawaiians, constitute the manned labor force.  Hawaiian expansion was...by a small minority of soldiers, entrepreneurs, and missionaries who constituted themselves into the ruling elite over a "native" society. For the expansionists, the prospect opened up that all of the Pacific could be transformed into a kind of Hawaii.  ...the absence of native bourgeoisies  in the East Asian countries...  ...Christianity would be China's next great creed...Marxism...soon to be swept aside by the liberating armies of Christianity.  - Schurmann

     ...new organizational forms will emerge...by...victims of the American brand of social underdevelopment.  Young people today often know more about the world around them than the preachers.  New college-trained sociologist preachers are attempting to fill the vacuum...  In the turbulently lawless cities of America, the rhythum of life is quicker and...more complex for the masses.  ...today there are black nations in Africa and a powerful yellow nation in Asia.  Moreover, militantly charismatic and popular leaders...have revealed to the masses...the white power structure...  ...store-front preachers...pimps and prostitutes, black college crowds, integrated civil-righters and beatniks, the 'fingerpopping' and 'good times' groups, black nationalists.  When one moves between any of these sets he has to 'go through changes.'  From hustle to hustle, from set to set - such is the pace of black life in the cities.  The chaos and disorder...is...why some of the new jazz sounds are becoming 'chaotic.'  ...expressing...the disorder of American living conditions.  The tense, fast-driving demands of the rat race in modern America is pushing Negroes...  On the streets the young 'headshakers' used to just talk aloud, drink wine, and steal from and fight each other.  Today...they are getting loaded on weed...  ...they are stabbing white people on the subways.  Where poets went about singing in the days of the new awakening, angry, frustrated boys now prowled.  Where 'primitive' children danced on the sidewalks, hungry, evil-eyed little criminals lurked in doorways...  Outlandish cults were meeting in some of the homefront churches where the moaning and shouting had formerly been...filled with joy.  ...the cultural folkways and norms,,,do not apply to the social realities of today.  ...the old folkways...must be vomited up.  This means...shock, disruption, and transformation.  It can be violent...creative and constructive.  ...sharing a common cause and common density.  The era of a new breed, then, is one of order in disorder, clarity in confusion, unity in disunity.  - Jones and Neal

     Sunday.  I'm out to get lunch across the street from where I live.  In the parking lot of the restaurant is a street racer's car.  The front end is completely gone.  The radiator is smashed in toward the engine.  The driver is positioning it toward the back end of a tow truck.  I step out later to grab dinner to go on the corner where I live.  Cars with one corner of the front end chewed off.  Glass and aluminium pieces on the street corner.  Bells from the catholic church down the street mixed with the bottom end of someone's sound system.  I step out into my parking lot and see coming along the opposite sidewalk a guy with shoulder-length white hair, slowly hobbling along with a care.  Across the street at the gas station, I watch a guy half his age pay for his groceries.  Monday.  I'm out on the trail by 5 AM.  The full moon lights my way.  Perhaps Jupiter and Mars are next to it.  The first bridge I follow the trail under, from a distance it appeared in the dark as if there was a rippling reflection on the cement.  I suddenly recognized that water covered the trail under the bridge and the light was reflecting off the water, right before I rode through it.  At the top of the incline on the other side, someone placed two orange cones.  Why there are no cones on the other side...?  By 5:30, other riders appear.  As I am rolling through the opulent neighborhood before I get to work, I cruise past one home where a woman in her bathrobe comes out.  To get the newspaper?  As I get on my bike to head home, hail begins.  I travel halfway home through some rain, lightning in the clouds.  Raindrops hitting a metal fence make a ringing noise.  Tuesday.  On the way to work on the trail, I am on a section which I have recently discovered.  It passes through more of an open space than a park.  I watch as someone drives his remote-controlled toy truck across the trail and accelerated out into the field.  Even the toy trucks street race.  At work, I hear on the radio that the guy who put a pipe bomb in a metro area postal box, blowing it apart, was trying to impress his girlfriend.  On my ride home, shortly after entering the trail, I see up ahead a woman with grey hair and a running suit.  She is standing in the middle of the trail looking at her phone.  Further down the trail, I pass a couple of people walking along down the middle of the trail.  This is shortly after a rain shower.  It just appears odd.
     Wednesday morning.  Yesterday, I shared the trail with a remote-controlled toy truck.  Today, it's a remote-controlled toy Piper Cub airplane.  Like the hawks I see, it's cruising the updrafts.  Wednesday evening.  Around 8:30 PM, I am five or six blocks away from home.  From a distance, I can see lights from a police car reflecting off a long white fence and building.  As I cruise through an intersection, I see two police cars which have blocked off the street and have a small car pulled over.  Thursday.  I'm on the platform of a train station up the street from where I live.  I need more damned transit system discounted tickets.  It's going on 10 AM.  Drifting snowflakes hiss when they hit the overhead lines which power the trains.  When enough moisture gets between the line and the connection with a train, at that point it will sometimes flash green.  On the platform is a couple who appear as if they could otherwise be 12 years old.  Except of course that the girl has green hair and the guy has a bushy beard.  So they must at least be seventeen.  I get on a train and sit across from a young guy talking to an older one about his probation and about getting high.  The kid has the sides of his head shaved and long, purple hair.  He;s in shorts and bright green sneakers.  The older one strikes me as homeless.  The kid mentions that he's has "2 clean UAs, two days in a row.  So I cracked open a Rolling Rock and slammed it.  'I don't have to piss test today.'"  The other guy mentions his favorite poison.  The younger one observes, "Everyone in this town drinks the cheap shit."  He claims that he also "slammed" a fifth of Wild Turkey, and that when you're on LSD you don't feel the alcohol.  Perhaps not.  Psychedelic drunk?  It's an interesting approach to a hangover.  He says that he is planning on getting stoned before what I presume is a court-ordered class.  The older one mentions that he is looking for a job.  We pull into the station and I go inside for my tickets.  There is the usual gathering of homeless/off-the-grid/groovy youth.  One guy has his face covered with the obligatory bandanna.  I hop on a shuttle to the downtown pedestrian mall when in comes the older of the pair from the train.
     Nine hours later, I am out at the stop for my bus home after work. Across the street is the stop for the same route in the opposite direction.  A woman who I don't recognize is there yelling something.  As she is looking in my direction, I suspect that she is yelling at me.  Perhaps she was trying to tell me what I would find out in another 45 minutes, that the bus schedules had changed and I had just missed one.  Shortly after 10 PM, I am at my new last bus stop home from work.  A light mist is coming down.  A little guy comes along who speaks nervously.  Then another guy comes along.  He's on his phone as he paces around outside one corner of the shelter.  I listen to him telling someone that they have to start from the bottom and work their way up.  He asks on his phone, "just be a little patient with me."  He says he has both a son and a bacterial infection.  He knows some others with this infection.  "I don't always go through things," he mentions.  The bus pulls up and the nervous guy asks the driver, "Where are you going?"  We get on board and he nervously puts in his fare, dropping a coin, and the other guy slowly looks for his own fare while still on his phone.  He tells someone on the other end, "There was a gas leak."  I'm headed just up the street.  We roll past a fire truck parked in the misty dark on a side street, it's lights slowly turning.  I get out next to the gas station across the street from where I live.  In the parking lot lights is a woman in a hoodie, holding a plastic grocery bag.  She is arguing with someone on her own phone.
Day of the Umbrella
     Friday.  9:30 AM.  Tiny wet snowflakes come down as I wait for a bus at a stop next to where I live.  Along comes a girl who appears as if she is young enough to be in high school.  The kind of woman who you would never expect would have a gas leak, or a bacterial infection, or a son, or have LSD or Wild Turkey or Rolling Rock in her UA.  Her hair is in a pair of braids down the back of her head and her eyes and lashes are made up.  In a temperature of 30 degrees F, she's only in stretch pants and a thin hoodie.  I hold my umbrella over her and she says thanks.  (By August, she'll be mine...)  She asks me how long it will keep snowing.  The forecast is through Monday.  She works the late shift at an Arby's somewhere, till 1 AM, and she tells me that she hopes it won't get any colder by then.  We hop on the bus, and shortly thereafter I am headed into the supermarket down the street.  There;s a guy sitting on a lawn chair for sale.  His groceries are in a bag on the floor, as if he is waiting for a ride.  He notices my umbrella and says, "Is it that wet out there, bro?"  Inside, a guy turns down an isle.  He has on a purple hoodie, on the back of which is "RIP Troublesome," with an image of who I assume was troublesome.  An hour and a half later, I am at a fish place for lunch.  When I walk in, the host compliments my umbrella, and implies that at first glance he thought it was a gun.  On the wall is a swordfish, just like the kind my dad had on the wall in the house.