February 2020, "We're Not Together" and "Ronald Reagan For President."

     The 1st is a Saturday, which is my turn to be off work.  However, the bike I rode home Thursday and back to work and home again Friday is the one with the brake lines refilled.  By the guy I work for.  Which means I had to leave the clunker at work.  I decide to pick it up from there this morning.  I have another motive.  More than twenty-five years ago, I worked for another company, when I was promoted to assistant manager.  It was a six-month gig which I decided to check out of when I found out I was only going to get a raise of twenty cents per hour.  I must have been greedy.  Anyway, the manager (unbeknownst to me) parked right across the street to watch me, examining whether I did or didn't properly close down the place for the evening.  Ten years later, I was working for yet another company, when I received a battlefield promotion to store manager.  Later, I would hire someone to work their first opening shift on a Saturday.  I parked at the end of the lot to see if she arrived.  It's more than fifteen years later now, and I am roaming the block in front of the place where I work now.  In my dirty riding pants, I perhaps appear just as the same homeless who roam these very sidewalks.  Yesterday, the owner came in, and I told him I would pick up my bike today.  It would just happen to be around the time we open on Saturdays.  He laughed.  We both know that the employee I trade every other Saturday with is unreliable when it comes to ever being somewhere on time, God forbid.  Here I am out here, undercover, hoping I do appear homeless so I won't be recognized.
"We're Not Together"
     This morning, my ordeal along the way here included a stop at the downtown deathburger
homeless central, to grab breakfast.  I order a biscuit with egg and sausage.  I am handed a biscuit with egg and bacon and cheese.  The guy ahead of me orders what I do, and also gets what I get.  We both reorder and he asks for cheese on his.  We both get our order with cheese.  I let the employee know that I ordered what I did because it comes without cheese.  She replies, "But I asked you guys if you want cheese."  He reaches around me to grab some jelly and tells her, "We're not together."  I leave the wrapper and take the biscuit with egg, sausage, and no cheese.  It does not feel as though the biscuit has been baked.  Wow, that is fast!   I didn't need the largest size soda "here in the wealthiest nation on earth" and I end up "wasting" half of "it."  I have fifty minutes left and grab a doughnut from across the street.  I get to work fifteen minutes before we open and decide to swing by a coffee shop down the street.  As I approach work, I discover a third employee has arrived.  He has exactly the same concern I do.  In his defense, the guy we're waiting for is only ten or fifteen minutes late.  I call it a Saturday and I'm out the door.

     The commercial topography of Anytown, America, is changing due to [the] buying power of large corporate entities and the low overhead of online retailers...  ...adding millions of square feet of apartment and commercial space while...crushing the streetscape, parking and vibe, of the district.  In addition of lack of planning for and management of projects, construction workers and developers have total control of the streets...  At the "Cherry Creek North Business Improvement District's" December board meeting, BID officials once again contemplated trying to become "Beverly Hills."  It was the third time the board has listened to Emzy Veazy III tell them how to...retake lost marketing chare and become a world class destination.  ...another BID Board Member - has been transforming the district into something much more like New York's "Greenwich Village."  …"several years of heavy construction"...parking shortages and constant lane closures...rent increases.  Even "Wolfgang Puck" couldn't make it in [Cherry Creek.  One] high-end furnishings brand was the only Adler store in the region.  [They] also closed this year.  Many residents and longtime state/regional customers are concerned about...what has long been a neighborhood hangout...  ...the departure of...independent boutiques...  - Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle, 2/2020

     ...moving to a new community after living...nearby...for a number of years.  It's...intimidating...and sure, I'll have to plug every address into my GPS for a while.  But I'll eventually learn the best routes to get around the city and, of course, get to know the neighbors.  That's when the fun starts.  Perhaps it's...the barista at your favorite mom-and-pop coffee shop around the  corner.  Or the neighbor who spends all summer knitting...  - Life On Capitol Hill, 2/2020

     The Dairy Block in LoDo has [been] moving away from the notorious sports bars and burger joints to...a market-style, central hub for independent restaurants...inside the Milk Market.  The luxurious and modern hotel...  ...a staple of customer flow...art deco-style...the now-well-known alley...  A selfie haven...  ...extremely enticing...  ...appeals to every kind of fabulous foodie.  ...flavors that would lift the eyebrow of a skeptic...  - Outfront Magazine, 1/22/2020

     Sunday.  I offer to take the sister to a birthday breakfast, her birthday today.  Not only is she thrilled with the book for her I picked up at last Sunday's library used book sale, but tells me that her friend will be jealous.  I'm glad the effort was worth it.  I'm doing my taxes over the weekend, and discovering issues which make me wonder how long I may have been able to deduct things I never knew I could.  I'm coming back from the pharmacy at the supermarket, with a complete list of all the prescriptions which I purchased in 2019.  I only today discovered that I can deduct all my medical expenses, if they come to more than 7.5% of my AGI.  I don't know if this is new.  Yesterday and today, the high is 67 degrees F.  Tuesday or Wednesday has a forecast of seven inches of snow, an overnight low of -1 F, and a high during the day of only 11 F.  This afternoon I'm riding my bike back home from the pharmacy past the home of the mother of an old coworker.  The employee was laundry manager of the company where I was employed for more than 12 years.  I stop by to see her.  It turns out that her birthday is also today.  She's 46 and a drop dead knockout.  It's really great to see her.  This week, our employee with the son who was murdered has returned to work.  She continues to provide details about the shooting to the guy we work with.  Odd details, crazy details.  She shooter is 14.  You have to imagine a 14-year-old boy with a gun and willing to kill, in a local park on a winter weekday around rush hour.  Her son expected trouble and was wearing a bullet proof vest.  The driver of the getaway car is 16 and took off after the other fired.  For some reason, the shooter attempted to jump out of the vehicle as it began to move, and fell under it and was dragged.  I also learned the purpose of T-shirts I've seen with deceased family members on them.  Our employee had them made, along with candles, to sell at his memorial.

     ...Schuyler County, where all the men drive trucks and have facial hair, tattoos, and hunt deer.  Schuyler County does not have a health food store.  Schuyler County has a Cheese Doodle supply center - Walmart.  Schuyler County is where, if you have an old bathtub...you throw it in the woods.  [This] wasn't any year in Provence with charming quirky local characters eating French cuisine.  It was barfing fat guys and [supermarkets with] insecticide in the beverage aisle.  There were no shaved truffles or hearty cassoulets.  The local diet is...twenty pound bags of sour-cream-and-onion potato chips.  When...my boyfriend...leaves, there always little piles of his bullet casings on the windowsill, or on my underwear on the floor, and his rifles lean against the walls in every corner.  ...if he's not carrying a rifle, it's a chain saw.  He...wears T-shirts that advertise motor oil or say things like DEAD DEER WALKING.  ...he puts on Aerosmith of "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy."  [At Walmart] the men wait in the truck while the wives of girlfriends go in!  He has to chop down trees or grind stumps or he's off to snowplow the shopping plaza parking lots for twenty hours.  Unless its hunting season.  ...I am fifty-seven!  But when he grabs me by the arm and...my pants are down...and he's got me bent over a chair, what am I going to do, complain about it?  - Scream, T. Janowitz, 2016

     Bloomberg - the ninth-richest person in the world, according to Forbes - made his second official campaign stop in Colorado...  ...the crowd at the local event...skewed older, whiter and - if the quality of the Oxford shirts and premium outerwear was any indication - wealthier than the average voter.  They packed into the campaign's new state headquarters, a former Patagonia outlet that occupies some of the most sought-after real estate in downtown Denver, a far cry from the drab, remote digs typically leased by political campaigns.  ...a career coach from Aurora who attended the rally, liked what he heard from Bloomberg and says he's excited to begin reaching out to some of the "over 1,500C-level executives" he's worked with...  Like the candidate himself, [the coach] is not terribly specific about [what] he wants the next president to do, but he has faith that Bloomberg will get them done.  …"New York City," he says.  "That place was a cesspool, and he turned it around.  He's that kind of guy."  ...the Bloomberg campaign...compensation packages...pay even low-level field organizers $6,000 per month, with many senor staffers making $20,000 per month or more.  Staffers receive new iPhone IIs and MacBooks upon joining the campaign and enjoy three catered meals a day...  [Bloomberg's] "Colorado for Mike Advisory Committee," announced February 7, features local heavy hitters like [the] InterTech Plastics founder...and [a] private equity investor...  ...says a campaign staffer, who supports, but isn't employed by, Sander's 2020 campaign, "We see that buying elections works." [A career coach gets the last word.]  "Money is the stuff of life."  - Westword, 2/13-19/2020

"Ronald Reagan for president."
     On Tuesday, during a snowstorm, I get up and proceed with doing my taxes.  I have to call my state health care exchange, the Monday before,  to get the last document I haven't been sent in the mail.  I need the old school hard copies because I need my monitor to display my tax windows.  On Monday, the one at the other end of the phone begins by making it sound as if the state exchange can't mail anything.  First tells me that the document will take up to 21 days to arrive.  Then it will take 30.  Then I may get it in the next two days.  She does successfully walk me into my account with the exchange, which only my health care exchange brokers have previously seen.  I write the figures down but I won't understand them until I get to work the following morning.  Toward the end of my federal taxes I put the numbers in, to find that I owe the IRS almost $1,000.  When I began my taxes this past weekend, I made a call to a tax preparer who gave me some help last year.  I called her because I had a few questions unrelated to reporting my health care premium payments.  She told me to drop by Tuesday or Wednesday.  On Tuesday, I make the trip to her office, in the snow, by bike and train.  Her receptionist gives her a call, and lets me know that she won't make it in until later because of the weather, and to give her a call this afternoon.  It's back through the snow, cold enough for my ski mask, to the train.  I'm off the train downtown, and along the way to work, I pass Mike Bloomberg's local campaign office.  Among huge "Mike Bloomberg 2020" signs are a pair of smaller ones.  One says "Protect transgender rights".  Another reads "Private property, no trespassing".  I make my way across the plaza along  the city's pair of art museums.  I stop at a crosswalk on the street between the two, and I think I see a waiting pedestrian on the other side.  As the sign turns to "walk" I notice that he isn't crossing the other way.  He stands there, waves at me, and asks me if I want to free 'the ocean from plastic?'  It's somewhere below freezing out here and the plaza is empty.  I reply that I would rather go to work.
     Later on this evening, on my ride home in the dark, I will be on a residential street with Caucasian  residents replacing generations of original residents.  One of the transplants is crossing the street to a waiting car as I roll across the snow and ice.  He does not appear to be as old as I am, and he tells me, "Ronald Reagan for president."  This morning, I stop at a gas station and store a block from work.  It's a major hangout for the downtown homeless and assorted street folk.  Inside, the clerk asks me to remove my ski mask.  Outside, a guy in a suit compliments my commute by bike.  I make another call to the exchange, who is clueless about the meaning of these numbers, before I call my exchange broker's office.  This is when I learn that I failed to report changes in my income to the exchange, what they refer to as a "major life event".  My life has been a major event beginning the end of last year.  There is a difference in what it turns out I have been making since I first began using the exchange and my AGI for 2019.  I've been too busy to calculate my AGI or even look at my paychecks to see what I make.  I take the opportunity to update this info while I happen to have someone from my exchange broker's office on the phone.  Along with the fact that I'm no longer head of household with the passing of my mom.  Which increases my monthly health insurance payments by another $53.  Not including the two months I've already paid and may be aske to repay next month or any time until I do my taxes for 2020.
     Wednesday.  My coworker who's son was murdered has a new tattoo of him on her forearm.  He appears younger than his 17 or 18 years.  And on the tattoo, he is holding what appears to be an assault rifle, perhaps an M-16 or a Belgian Assault Rifle.  He produced his own hip hop music, and this may be part of his brand.  The end of the week is a cacophony of more snow.  On Thursday, the flakes begin falling before I leave work.  It begins collecting on the street as I'm headed home.  An hour later, I'm home, and I can see the morning will bring another blanketing.  Friday morning, rather than a citywide ice rink, it's snow rather than ice and something I can ride on.  Saturday, the temps will climb well above freezing, and I am riding to work through melting slush.  Where I cross a busy thoroughfare, it's in proximity to a stretch where homeless like to panhandle.  A young guy approaches from the other side of the intersection.  If I give some some spare change, he tells me, he can use his military ID to board a city bus.  Again, I'm telling someone I have no cash.  Or a lighter.  Or a cigarette, which this week I've heard multiple wanderers of the city ask others for.  Also during this week's end, who comes into work but the new landlord of our previous location.  I'm told on a regular basis that he owns multiple dance clubs and restaurants, which he continues to open here in the city.  One would not necessarily assume from his appearance that he has money.  A second customer comes in who appears to know him.  They embrace and the second inquires how the first is.  He replies that he divides his time between here and California, as he has "sons in acting."  The second asks about his real estate successes, mentioning the block upon which we stand.  "It's changing," he intones on the way out of the door, "and not in a good way."  I will mention to another employee that the guy who purchased our old building, and most of the block, is also a customer.  The employee replies, "The one who looks homeless?"
     Sunday.  I'm back from grocery shopping with just enough time to throw what needs to be in the fridge, before I run out of the door to catch another bus across town.  I'm headed to pick up some photos.  I catch the bus in jig time.  It drops me on the boulevard where I lived 13 years ago.  It's a short hike down the snowy sidewalk to the photo shop.  I'm out here these days on my bike, and it's a bit odd walking along this busy street which I used to drive upon, back when I had a car.  I walk into the shop, and there she is.  My tall photogenic hippie goddess.  She has some kind of psychedelic keffiyeh.  I whip out...a valentine for her.  She says she prefers to open such cards in the presence of the one who delvers it.  She loves it.  I got it at some health food place, so it's artsy.  Right up her statuesque alley.  Who knows, perhaps she's even a vegetarian. The card matches the colors in her scarf.  I compliment it and ask her from where she acquired it.  She says her boyfriend's brother got it for her.  Back when she and he and her boyfriend were living together.  She mentions that the three of them still get together for Christmas.  I'm confused.  She no longer lives with the boyfriend?  Or his brother?  I don't ask.  She fetches my photos and I ask her if I may sit at one of the chairs and tables with monitors, to peruse my prints.  She invites me to hang out as long as I desire.  I have other motives, besides being in her presence.  I grabbed the least expensive lunch possible from the supermarket in this shopping center.  Gone are the days (this past summer) when I was breezing into the Chilis just across the street for a meal while I'm out and about.  I need someplace where I can sit down to eat and drink, albeit on the sly, preferably indoors.  In this I am successful, in fact I am finished eating when my psychedelic Palestinian angel floats over to examine my photos.  She's over my shoulder, which at our respective heights is not difficult for her.  We discuss cameras and film.  She likes my composition.  I fill her in on some of my life, until she must help a customer.  I enjoy listening to her voice.  I pack up and, when she's finished, ask her if anyone will do something nice for her on Valentine's Day?  She replies that she doesn't go in for holiday commercialism.  Indeed, death to the capitalist infidels!  We say our goodbyes.  I step through the veil and she disappears behind it.
     It's a short walk to a Target, which is only one of a few places I've found low fat cheese.  At the corner I have a brief wait for a bus downtown, then a short shuttle ride to a train.  The train whips me to a station where the last connecting bus home will be here in but a few minutes.  On the train is a woman who asks me about a station we stop at.  I mention the name of the station and she is blown away.  She says she doesn't even recognize it.  She hasn't seen it since years past, before the condominiums were built where the big drive and grassy areas used to be.  I'm out at the next stop and standing outside of a bus shelter at the stop for my last bus.  Seated in the shelter is a guy who appears oblivious to the geese waiting for food.  I have my own flock surrounding me.  As I hold court with my waterfowl entourage, I spot a woman approach another bench, which I had my eye on.  I continue watching her.  And watching her.  Slowly, slowly it dawns on me.  I know this woman.  I haven't seen her in fourteen years, since I worked with her shortly after joining the company I stayed with for more than 12 years.  I'm still not sure.  I intend to tell her that she looks like someone I knew.  I approach her, and as soon as I open my mouth, she speaks my name.  We embrace.  She speaks little English and we convers with my own limited Spanish.  The bus soon arrives and we are both headed the same direction.  During a previous decade, those times I worked at the same store with her, I pursued her romantically.  In 2007 I purchased my first home, and I remember suggesting that she and her son move in with me.  I think that I simply enjoyed being able to ask someone this, only because I had a home.  She's married since 2012.  Her son is now six or seven feet tall, like his biological dad.  She's by no means short, but clearly she had sex with one tall guy.  Where he is today, she knows not.  Or she didn't when I asked her about it way back when.  I imagine him travelling this earth, fathering very tall children.  She and her husband live in my extended neighborhood, perhaps as close as my ex-girlfriend.  Though it may sound as an odd coincidence, everyone appears to be moving this direction.  We step off the bus at the same stop.  We say farewell.  She goes across one street at the intersection, and I cross the other.  Amazing.
     Monday.  During my ride to work, I'm on a street to work when my wheels go out from under me.  I land on my left side like a ton of bricks.  I'm back up and riding again, but my lower right back is sore.  It's one of my days at the gym, where I do okay, including the sit ups.  They start out slow, but the pain appears to subside.  After work, another ride home in a snow shower, and another is forecast for Wednesday.  I awake on Tuesday and my back feels as if it's on the mend.  I'm getting a late start to work and, in spite of my desire to conserve my transit system tickets, my only hope of being on time is the bus.  I'm out of the door, at the stop, and on the bus.  In back are a couple of guys discussing county jail and the west side (of town, my side), and discussing McDonalds and bringing $3,000 a week to "the man".  On Thursday, more snow has fallen yesterday afternoon and overnight.  Mercifully, the streets (at least outside my neighborhood) are clear enough to ride.  As soon as I get to work, my coworker tells me she will buy me a cookie from a pizza place across the street, provided I get two for her and a soda.  It's a pizza place with an extensive menu.  I assume the employees are Italian.  I pay for the snacks and sit down to wait for someone to bring me out a soda with ice.  It takes a minute or two until I realize the freezer case.  I won't be receiving any soda with ice.  In the meantime, I'm listening to the head guy.  He just waited on me and is now in the back, speaking to another employee.  "You want to be a good Muslim?" he asks.  "A good citizen?  A good person?  Don't pull the shit you just pulled."  He repeats this a second time.  The employee responds that he didn't do "anything bad."  The employee persists.  Whatever the issue is, is appears to be the way he pulled into the parking lot in back.  "He was waiting to park," the employee says about an unknown driver.  "Well, you could have waited as well," the head guy says.  I take my coworker's soda and exit.  Friday.  I'm coming back to work with a snack from a gas station on the corner.  A homeless guys approaches me and silently hands me a business card.  It's for a "VP of Marketing & Innovator" for a beverage company.  Then, he's on his way.

     ...to...help create more affordable housing opportunities.  The way city law stands...only two unrelated people are allowed to live together in Denver.  "It's the most limited code that we've been able to find in Western cities."  One idea...proposed is to raise the number of people who can live together to eight.  [One] Uptown resident...feels the city has been working behind closed doors...  Eight, he said, is too high.  He worries about...the cost of housing.  - Life On Capitol Hill, 2/2020

     Monday of a new week.  I'm outside of my gym, waiting for the doors to open.  Here also are a couple of regular seniors.  One tells the other that he doesn't have to work out here today.  He did that this morning at the YMCA.  He's here just to "make coffee and water the plants."  Then he will go home, where he says he will have "nothing to do but smoke a joint and go to sleep."  Thursday.  I'm on my way home in the dark after work.  The nuts are out tonight.  I pass a homeless guy o his bike.  No helmet.  He says to me, "Nice helmet."  I acknowledge this.  It's a $100 helmet, which may not sound like much, but it's a splurge for me.  He's on his way with, "God bless."  "If you say so," I reply.  We both turn down the same street.  I pass him and leave him in the dark.  Around a corner, across two busy thoroughfares, and down another street, I approach an intersection where another homeless guy is walking in the road.  I stop at the stop sign.  He stops right next to the stop sign and stares at me in the dark.  Then I am on my way.  The other cyclist should be headed his direction.  I'm sure they have a lot to stare at each other about.

     "The War on Cars is not being waged just by the bicycle crowd," [the] president of the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association, wrote in an op-ed...  …"in central Denver...you've see their strategy...Lanes for parking and driving are being turned over to bicycles and buses."  ...Colorado's newly formed Freedom to Drive Coalition...also includes the Colorado Petroleum Association...  [Critics of transit diversity] mostly want the state to fund widened roads and new bridges, "not extra pogo stick lanes or bike lanes."  ...our fixation on certain narrow, highly individualistic definition of "freedom"...  "I ride over I-25 on the way home on my bike every day, and when I look at that traffic, I think, "that's not freedom, that's imprisonment.  I think a lot of people feel...There's no other charges...  And we're just putting more cars on the road...  "There are people willing to ride a bicycle in any situation, any condition, and I was one of those...  I think...we have so many people honking at each other these days is that we go from our locked homes to our parking garage to our single-occupant vehicle to our parking garage at work to our office...  From the New Urban iconoclasts of the '90s to today's hell-raising youth climate activists, proponents of alternative transportation really do believe...a revolutionized mobility network to break down barriers of geography and race and class...to rebuild a sense of community in a fractured, isolated country.  - Westword, 2/27-3/4/2020

     I also ride over I-25, both on the way to work and home again, four or five or six days a week depending.  I'm one of those willing to ride in almost any situation or condition.  It brings me into contact with the street, with the everyday otherwise sometimes hidden homeless camps, places I would otherwise never run across.  I pass along what appear to be neighborhoods segregated between early 20th century homes or older, all wood and with front porches, and new steel and stone and glass boxes with balconies.  Perhaps a kind of geographic perception is broken down, but the geographic dynamic does not appear to be one of community interaction underway.  As I prepare to cross an off ramp from the interstate, I'm facing oncoming traffic from the sidewalk, and it's rare if the driver glances my way before turning onto the avenue.  I'm the one with the larger perspective, on the outside of traffic looking in.
     Earlier this week, I came home from work.  I always arrive just before eight PM.  If I'm not mistaken, I hear in the dark the voice of my neighbor who claims to hate the woman who lives next door to him.  He's the neighbor who knocked over her recycle can.  Our HOA president tells me he's always drunk and lives in his unit with a child.  I usually see him sitting on a concrete berm in the lot or standing, while he has a smoke.  Year round.  If it's him this evening, he's with two other guys.  They knock on another resident's door.  I hear him say that someone owes him $20.  I don't hear anyone answer the door.  As the dynamic trio depart,  hear him exclaim, "Oh yeah, we're gonna get this done!"  Friday I have off.  Lately my place of employment is cutting back on overtime.  Late in the afternoon I go out to check the mail.  Next to the mailbox is a wooden coffee table which no one appears to want.  It's been there for a couple of days.  Parked across from the mailbox is a Caucasian woman taking a big box out of her back seat.  I ask her if she needs help and she declines.  I introduce myself and ask her which unit she lives in.  It turns out, this is the woman with the recycle bin which was knocked over by our angry drunk resident.  Sitting on the table this afternoon is the angry dunk resident.  he's smoking and on his phone.
   

2019: A Crucible Beyond Meat

     For ten years I worked at a company because my mom got me the job.  She faxed my resume on a whim.  Five months shy of a decade, the company was sold to a new owner.  I continued to work for this new guy, navigating his ejection of almost all the original employees, his bouncing checks, his refusal to pay the leases on some of his stores, his partner sexually assaulting some female employees, and his hiring of a couple of homeless guys, one who lived in one store and another who had a teenaged employee live with him.  You know, the usual stuff.  For three months shy of three years, they ran the company like drug addled lunatics, finally shutting it down.  I began the following week working at another store he had already owned way up in north Denver, and I made the two bus + a bike ride, 1/2 - 2 hour journey each way for another year and three months.  He had also purchased a couple of new businesses, one of which was in Florida.  The owner sent his alleged sexually assaulting partner down there to run it.  That's the last anyone heard of the partner, and the owner had to make an extended trip to Florida, in court.  That didn't bother his wife, who discovered he was on a previous trip to a nude beach with a young woman.  I'm not making this up.  Then he decided to put his store, where I was working, up for sale.  You see, his office manager got it into her head to, on her own, hire a construction company to knock down walls inside another one of his plants.  He, being someone who no one could ever get ahold of, left his management to figure out without his input what he wanted.  As usual, when he found out, he told her he no longer needed her services.  In revenge, she let us know that he had our store on the market.  So, the dominoes began to fall.  I gave notice, began to look for a new job, found one, and ended up with a new commute to downtown which took less than an hour.  And I no longer needed a monthly transit system pass, now more than $100 per month.  I had a new gym at a fraction of the cost of my old one.  I lost my beloved investment advisor, and hooked up with another one across the street from where I was now working.
     The four years which I spent working for the lunatics are now water under the bridge.  Five months into it and four into 2019, my mom went into the hospital before being sent to physical therapy with undetected cancer.  After three days, someone noticed one morning before she awoke that her color was grey.  Unsure whether she would survive by the time she was returned to the hospital, yes eventually to be diagnosed with large tumors around her stomach and elsewhere but carrying with her assurance that her muscles were making improvement.  From her admission into the hospital, to her stay at a physical therapy center and back again, the bizarre journey to her death took a total of six days.  I think she would appreciate my complaining for her.  The nice thing is, I was now working much closer to her hospital and was able to visit with her shortly before she passed.
     This is to say that I no longer have the money she insisted on giving me each month.  It took me the rest of 2019 to attempt to figure out which changes I had to make to live without it.  I knew I had a handful of expenses coming up at the end of the year and into the beginning of the next.  Before this, my initial meeting with my new investment broker inadvertently conclude that she was attempting to hustle me.  It would not be until the middle of January of 2020 that I would realize this was the direct result of a complete misunderstanding beyond the control of either of us.  She was asking me to make a larger monthly contribution to my retirement investment account.  I spent the better part of a year wondering if I should find a different advisor within the same brokerage house, find another investment company, or cash out my investments and put everything under the mattress.  In the autumn, I did contact the next closest advisor for the same house.  I laid down my cards and told her I thought my current advisor was scamming me.  This other advisor told me that she knew my advisor, and coldly related that her opinion of my current advisor was that she "is just fantastic."  What I stumbled onto in a following meeting with my advisor, in 2019,  is that none of my information was transferred from my previous and beloved advisor's office to hers.  Why?  It remains a mystery.  During our next meeting, in the first month of 2020, I again stumbled onto the fact that she thought I had been contributing a monthly amount less than a fifth of what I have actually been contributing to my account.  The figure my advisor had somehow came from before I ever joined her brokerage firm, and from my previous beloved advisor.  It was an amount I had been paying into a single mutual fund before I signed up with my current firm.  I suspect that, with none of my information with this firm transferring to my new advisor's hard drive, the only investing info available was this figure.  Rather than suggesting I increase my monthly payment beyond what I am actually paying, my new advisor was making her recommendation from this obsolete figure.
     The good news is, I did make use of one suggestion from my new advisor, and I actually increased my personal savings, which is how I covered my biggest annual expense; my annual dental insurance premium.  The month during which my mom passed also began a dental ordeal.  I have crowns so old that they are wearing out.  My dentist wanted to replace a back molar which is next to a buried wisdom tooth.  He told me that the wisdoms could possibly degrade the integrity of a new crown, and wanted me to consult with his oral surgeon, all the way across at the opposite end of the greater metro area.  I used to work out that way on occasion.  I found my own oral surgeon, downtown on the way to work.  He did x-rays, and when he came in to discuss them, he took one look at them and it almost appeared as if he was backing away.  He advised me, if they ain't bothering you, leave them where they are.  I debated what to do and how I was going to pay for oral surgery.  I had my first ever consultation with the dentist I have been going to for a couple of decades.  I told him what my oral surgeon said about the issue, and he wanted me to get a second opinion from his oral surgeon.  After that meeting, we had a second consultation, where I told him that my oral surgeon convinced me.  This is the first time I've ever broken with his advice.  After a summer of worrying what his reaction was going to be, he appeared to be just fine with it.
     Over the first full year at my new job, I've consistently had raise after raise.  But I recently updated my income info with the state healthcare exchange, for the first time ever.  As a result, my monthly health care premium almost tripled, in spite of my sister's claim that our new governor told us our monthly premiums would go down by two thirds.  And I had both Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve off, neither of which I was paid for.  This is reflected in my first paycheck for 2020.  Though employees working in Denver County, which includes downtown Denver, will beginning in 2020 have a new raised minimum wage; this will be reflected not until the second paycheck of 2020.  In my ongoing quest to determine how all this shakes out, the first two weeks of 2020 are where I've bottomed out, coming as close to being over budget as I can remember.  My good bike, the one I ride to work, has dirty disc brake pads.  This means a couple of things.  It's the same as having no brakes, and it's $50 or $60 to get them cleaned.  And I never know what else the shop will find wrong with my bike.  With my luck, they will probably have gone out of business, complete with some goof out on the street just waiting to tell me, "I can't believe you didn't know they closed up dude!"  Ironically, my second bike ("from the department store" as techs are so fond of pointing out) has one mechanical disc brake and one with standard brake shoes, instead of discs operated with brake fluid.  I'll never forget, some 15 years ago, when I was coming home from the very part of town where my dentist has his oral surgeon.  One of my brake cables on a "department store quality" bike had snapped along a busy highway.  I made it to a little bike shop run by some 40-year-old guy with frosted hair.  he refused to even work on my bike.  Well, this other bike appears to have suffered no such brake pad maladies, and it's the bike I will be riding to work this week.  As for the rec center where I've been working out for the past year, the lady in charge I have become friends with.  In spite of the ridiculously low amount, I have yet to come up with the money for my new annual membership; perhaps this coming heck will provide the funds.  She has been telling me not to even worry about it.  Hers is one welcome I don't want to wear out.
     This is the confluence of all the disasters which I can recall during the fateful year of 2019.  During my first meeting with my current investment advisor this year, she does what she appears to enjoy doing at every meeting.  She goes over more details than I will ever have the time to think about.  We hung out for an hour and a half, and among my diverse portfolio, she mentioned a group of individual international companies.  I was curious what the typical publicly traded international company looked like.  So she read a short list of company names.  In the middle of the list was something called Beyond Meat.  "What the hell is Beyond Meat?" I inquired.  As I suspected, they produce vegetarian meat products.  I think I will keep this new year's resolution simple: get beyond 2019.

January 2020, 'Two Dollars For You Or Pay My Homeowner's Insurance?' And "Hey, Big Face!"

     ...to transition a baby or toddler space into a bona fide kids bedroom...for school-age kids who have formed (strong!) opinions...  Local interior designers say it is possible to fold in your kids' preferences without going down the theme-room rabbit hole.  ...preselect 10 kids room photos you find online.  "I'm an advocate for finding pieces that can work through teenage years if done right."  ...when picking the...rug.  ...ones with viscose, can't handle kid-caliber action.  - Colorado Parent, 1/2020

     ...an election..."flipped" the Denver school board, giving control to members backed by the teachers union...  ...Denver school board elections are often...with candidates backed by the Denver Classroom Teachers Association on one side and those backed by ["] education reform groups ["] on the other...  "Last night, somebody was like 'Oh, we have a school board member that wears his hat backwards.  He's a thug.'"  He pulled out a black baseball cap and put it on backward.  …"this school board member looks like his district."  All three newly elected board members...pledged not to close struggling schools or open new charter schools...
     ...1) acknowledge the heterogeneity of boys and men and the unique needs of diverse populations; 2) develop culturally appropriate male-focused screening tools...  - Denver Urban Spectrum, 1/2020

     …"so many sex therapists, so many doctors, so many sex workers...started approaching us almost immediately."  ...for women who identified as queer or feminist, or just people who wanted a better experience.  …"no matter what level they were at in their sexual journey or their feminist journey.  We just did the first in a four-part series about sex-positive parenting.  ...we're going to do one on sexuality and media literacy one, and another on porn and social media.  We also always do a ropes class..."  - Out Front Magazine, 12/18/2019

     New Year's Day.  I'm headed downtown to meet the sister.  I take the bus to the train station, where I disembark with a guy who has his bike.  He tells someone when he boards a connecting bus, "Thirteen years in prison cured my criminal mind."  My own connecting bus takes me downtown, where I head over to the downtown deathburger homeless central.  In a booth are a couple of young guys who sound as if they are from Great Britain.  On the other side of the booth is a young guy who appears as if he's homeless.  It sounds as though they are getting a kick out of him.  A woman in line begins reciting a bible verse.  Her friend behind her tells her to shut up.  She replies that she can say, "whatever the fuck I want."  She turns to one of the Brits to say, "I like your sweater, can I have it?"  She says she likes to meet people.
     The following week, Tuesday after work.  I run into one of my nextdoor neighbors, each of us at our respective front doors in the dark.  I mention to him my encounter on New Year's Eve morning, with the townhome resident who made his threat concerning his recycle can.  I elected not to make a police report, but to mention it to this neighbor, who is our HOA president.  He's aware of him, tells he that he always appears to be drunk, and that he lives with both a female and a child.  That this character lives with a child is perhaps the most disturbing news of all.  Our HOA president's advice is to avoid him, along with his entire half of the townhome complex.  Striking advice from someone at the head of an association in charge of the place he lives.  I've heard him mention the other half of this place a few years past.

     ...the type of community that charms its visitors...  "We get to live in the kind of place we'd want to visit."  ...a thriving business scene and vibrant neighborhoods.  ...the Denver Inter-Neighborhood Cooperation..."strives to...unite the neighborhoods."  ...its focus [is] attracting more young and diverse people...  [Denver's mayor] said, "we had to turn our attention to the issues facing highly desirable and successful cities."  - Life On Capitol Hill, 1/2020

     ...the only ADA-compliant emergency shelter for men in Denver is...a warehouse across the street from gleaming RiNo luxury apartments and high-end yoga studios.  If someone with a disability is at all able to get themselves off the floor in the morning, they can expect to find themselves sleeping on it.  "It blows my mind to think that we've been granting dollars to these entities for so long and had never had an interest in whether or not they were accessible"...Councilwoman...CdeBaca adds.  [One particular shelter] designed its building to ease...trauma...with warm lighting...soft color palates...a...kitchen with inspirational sticky notes on the walls...
     Riding to dispensaries and cultivation tours on weed-friendly buses...playing dab-and-disc-golf tournaments...are now receiving official licensing...  ...cannabis painting class...runs...out of the Coffee Joint...  …"my painters...do things...better...artistically the more stoned they are.  If I'm painting samples for a class...I reward myself for finishing a painting with a dab.  Keeps motivation...  ...I'll partake during class, but...keep that to a minimum so I don't forget the next steps!  ...gradient backgrounds...allow people to...get into a vibe with the process of painting...  I had a visitor from out of town over-consume and pass out...  The body high...makes the event a much more spiritual-like experience.  I was...grateful to the staff at the Coffee Joint for their...expertise on over-consumption...  - Westword, 1/16-22/2020

     The very middle of the month falls upon the very middle of the week, during the first month of 2020.  I'm on my way to the gym before work.  I stop at the supermarket downtown first.  I'm in line at the check stand where I hear the cashier conversing with her bagger.  They both go to the junkyard for parts with which to repair their motor vehicles.  "I'm 54 and I've learned a lot in my time."  "I'm also 54," I interject, "and I haven't learned anything."  "That's too bad," she replies, "I sure have."  It's a morning bereft of irony.  Surely ignorance is bliss.  Outside, I am unlocking my bike as a young woman wanders along.  She appears young enough to be a high school student.  She's cheerfully asking passersby for, "two dollars?"  She has no takers.  Her last attempt is from a woman who is speaking Spanish into her phone.  She gets around to asking me.  I reply that I am saving my pennies for my homeowner's insurance.  She reacts by sitting down on the concrete and opening a folder full of documents.  Friday.  On the way to work, my disc brakes are finally so clogged with road grit that I have no brakes.  I will have to wait for my paycheck one week from today to get them serviced.  Until then I will need my other bike.  Sunday, I am across the street at the Mexican place for dinner.  The waitress tells me in Spanish that more Caucasian residents are coming in.  She asks me how to say some sentences in English.  I'm now teaching English to Mexican waitresses.

     Executive assistants...women whose positions vanished are now in their 50s and 60s...the only jobs...some...can get are low-paying and physically demanding...  The workers taking their place...make half as much money...  ...the [new] model...has...remote executive assistants in five low-cost cities...who support executives in places like Manhattan and Los Angeles.   ...partners were increasingly away from the offices...  "If somebody's not in our office, yet we have...their assistant [there], where's the disconnect?"  ...partners and directors...call travel services themselves.  [They] keep their personal lives separate...no one is picking up their dry-cleaning.  "This model offers new benefits and broader opportunities and is...meeting changing business needs."  "We were the glue for everything.  We were so important [once upon a] time."  ...the frenetic pace...and flatter hierarchies.  [These have replaced] separate dining rooms, reserved parking spots, private offices and personal assistants that help run their lives...  [At] retirement parties for the departing assistants [they were handed] $500 gift cards...  ...some...worried about paying their bills sold the gift cards for cash.  Up to 10 million women across six mature economies...will need to switch roles or careers by 2030...  ...women will have more trouble than men...greater responsibilities at home and less freedom to move geographically.  - The Wall Street Journal, 1/18-19/2020

     Who doesn't want to work in yoga pants without a commute?  Until you realize you can't remember the last time you showered or spoke to someone that isn't the baby - or the dog.  ...to build a community of women who work alongside each other.  The space was designed by...female architects and designers.  ...five private offices...a mother's nursing room, a library nook, and a vanity area.  ...in-house salon services, dry-cleaning services, pop-up fitness classes, a refrigerator stocked with healthy food, and a regular speaker series.  Leadership meetings, meditation sessions...and nap rooms.  ...grocery delivery...shoe repair...  - Colorado Parent, 2/2020

     "I was born in 1940 into a...harem...a luxury of the bourgeoise."  ...a place of seclusion for a patriarch [and his extended family to reside all together.]  ...behind the "hudud", or sacred frontier...high walls and...iron gates.  ...the doorkeeper was the enforcer.  ...the females rarely went out...only with permission...vailed and escorted by a male family member.  The one connection to the outside world was a large radio...for men's ears only...  "My mother doesn't know the alphabet..."  [At] a family council of senior male members.  Debate was heated, but...decreed that...female cousins could go to school.  "If I had been born two years earlier I would not have obtained an education.  Historically, only the king and his advisors had information...  In 1991, I got a satellite dish.  It brought CNN...also...the first Arab satellite stations, and suddenly all the boundaries between private and public...palace and street, and all...dichotomies vanished."  - Wright

     …[un]confirmed claims that one man...regularly patrolling...had stolen...possessions...  ...on a Facebook page...residents...argue that taking possessions from the homeless - drug addicts, in particular - would actually help get them off the streets.  "'We were totally gonna clean up this garbage and pack up...but then we got high...and didn't.'  If y'all [sic] tend to imagine homeless folks as a class of angels or saints, grow up.  If one gets involved, one soon learns...poorly made decisions based on sloth and self-involvement.  And we don't help when we pander."  - Sentinel, 1/23/2020

     The propaganda will start by blaming the victims...and don't understand the disparities between the rich and poor, not giving any credit to the socio-economics in our society.  They will make broad generalizations, such as work harder or they are drug addicts, to...discredit...policy changes.  And...continue to be fooled by...propaganda that pits Americans against one another...
     Vote out the activist politicians...allowing people to camp in the streets.  ...this is primarily a drug, substance-abuse and mental-illness problem...  - Westword, 1/30-2/5/2020

     Wednesday.  I'm at the gym where I see my friend behind the desk.  I find out that my gym membership is so low because, when we first met a year ago, she gave me a disabled discounted membership.  One day this week, I don't remember which, three different street guys ask me for a lighter.  One guy asks me for spare change because he's hungry, telling me to fuck off when I don't, on the corner where I work.  Thursday, I walk into work.  An employee is there from another one of our stores.  She tells me a terrible story.  Our usual morning person, who started with us late last year, very quickly became one of our best people.  Reliable, fast, a tireless cleaner of our new location.  A close friend to the other guy here, something I believe he has a hard time finding.  Just yesterday, he and she were discussing one of her sons, part of her extended and raucous brood over which she does her dogged and thankless best to keep in line.  Her youngest son, seventeen, was in a park late yesterday afternoon.  Not a long walk from my home.  He likes to pick fights.  He picked one with someone who had a gun, and put at least one bullet into him.  Someone else drove him to the neighborhood clinic just down the street from me, instead of directly to a hospital.  He was dropped there, and the clinic had to call an ambulance to take him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if his mom has to do all the work, perhaps without any help, to arrange his funeral.  Perhaps as she did during his life.
     Sunday is a busy one.  I head out to grocery shop at sunrise, and as I've ferried some food home from the supermarket downtown after work, today's trip is short.  Then I'm off to drop off and pick up film.  I'm on the bike with no brakes, which I am taking to drop off at work, where I left my other bike.  I discovered my boss used to fix bikes and he's going to take a look at this one.  So yesterday I decided to take the bus home having hatched this plan.  So I ride to work with a sliver of braking capacity.  Along the way I stop and pick up some soda for work.  I arrive and make the switch before I'm off to the camera shop.  I cross a street before it hits me, I can take a bike trail along a thoroughfare which will take me straight there.  I get there early and grab an early lunch at another supermarket next door.  I'm eating chicken wings outside the shop as customers filter in.  One is a family with two tiny daughters there to have photos taken.  A few minutes later the door is unlocked and the two girls are each sitting for photos.  The last is a toddler.  After her photos, she holds up her doll and exclaims, "[Now it's] Baby's turn!"  From the back comes my Tall Photogenic Hippie Goddess.  I apologize that I didn't let he rewind my film.  Then it's off to yet another library used book sale.  This one of course would be all the way across town.  But the high is supposed to be 51 degrees F today, a nice reprieve from this month's frosty mornings.  Outside of the camera shop I grab a bus to the train.  The driver sounds as if he's from Louisiana.  At the train station, I almost leave my bike on the rack in front of the bus.  It's the first time I remember doing this.  Perhaps it's a sign that I'm relaxed after several months of having to scheme how I will pay the expenses of mine which all arrive around the beginning of a new year.  The train whips me across town, where I catch one bus out to the municipality of Aurora.  During the ten years I put in with a previous company, I came out here by train and bus and foot.  These were early morning adventures before sunrise.  Other times were layovers waiting for connecting buses after sundown.  This afternoon I have a short ride from the bus to the library.  Last month I was at another library sale where the pickings were slim and being sniffed over by stragglers.  Today's sale is hopping.  I ask how long I have.  "Until four or until we run out of books," I'm told.  Patrons laugh.  I get a soda which I am allowed to take into the sale.  I make it back to the stop shortly before the bus hauls me back to the train, which drops me at a station where the bus home collects me straight away.
     The following Monday, I'm at work with my coworker who is familiar with socioeconomic institutional mistrust.  He spots an acquaintance making his way through an intersection outside the window.  The middle-aged guy in his worn and dirty hoodie and jeans appears to be s street person.  My coworker steps out and yells, "Hey, Big Face!"  Big Face steps inside for a moment.  I think my coworker introduces him as Terry, I'm not sure.  He asks Big Face if he's not working.  He replies that no, "He's mad at me."  "Your boss?" he asks him.  "The big boss," he replies.  "Because you didn't show up [at work] for a little while?" he asks him.  "Yeah," he replies quietly.  After work, I'm coming up the steepest hill on my ride home in the dark this time of year.  I move over to the left side of the street as an SUV approaches the stop sign, at the intersection at the top of the hill.  The vehicle stays behind the sign without proceeding.  This isn't unusual in my neighborhood.  Most vehicles, with the exception of the city buses, either go too fast or stay put for inordinate periods.  I'm walking the hill as I sometimes do.  I watch as a middle-aged disheveled woman slowly, slowly wanders in front of the vehicle's headlights.  As the vehicle is finally able to continue on its way, she turns as if she wants to address the driver, perhaps ask a question.  I get the feeling that she may want to ask directions, or for some help.  She's dressed in clothes which appear warm enough, but she appears to be wearing a long sweater which is falling off to reveal a bare left shoulder.  I last see her standing by a no parking sign, almost as if she thinks it's a bus stop.

     "I want someone that doesn't...approach this from a crime-ridden...point of view.  Law and order is not what Aurora needs.  We need someone who understands the full diversity of Aurora..."  "...what you've given us and what your systems have given us...since 1978 in Aurora, are basically used car salesmen."  Following months of protest sparked by [an] in-custody death of [a] 23-year-old...in late August.  "I have never seen such a fracture, in my 24 years, with the public."  Much of the recent violence has involved area teens, some of whom have ties to gangs, according to various social media accounts and anti-gang crusaders.  "This is 200, and...organizations are still trying to intervene and prevent gangs in a 1993 way.  They're not necessarily identifying with a park or a school or numbers or anything like that...now, it's six or seven kids who play Fortnite together."  ...he nearly walked out of a recent community forum after attendees failed to discuss youth violence.  "Aurora has no idea what they're doing at all - none whatsoever.  As a kid...I'd think they don't give a f[uck] about us.  ...and if you go to these meetings, they don't."  - Sentinel, 1/23/2020

     Wednesday.  I'm approaching the front door to work.  On the opposite corner is a homeless guy, his chin sticking out of the hood of his coat.  He's yelling, "YOU EXPECT ALL THESE THINGS FROM ME!"  It makes me think of the guy I work for, who is taking time out of his busy day to help me get the brakes on my bike working again.  I mention to my coworker that I am running down to the bike shop.  He has so far brought two different newspapers to work, the last one in the kind of plastic bag used for home delivery.  These are the very first newspapers I've ever seen him with.  I suspect that he's stealing them.  I head over there to pick up some mineral oil, as my owner instructed.  Inside are four employees discussing new bike lanes in the city, mentioning that the city council passed a resolution giving bikes the right of way in bike lanes.  Bike as opposed to...what exactly in bike lanes, you may ask?  Electric scooters.  Back at work, my coworker mentions that our other coworker's son, who was shot and killed last week, was a member of the gang known as the Bloods.  The Westside Bloods.  His killing a drive-by.  She is due back to work on Monday.   On Thursday, the owner comes into work.  He opens the reservoirs on each of my brakes and fills them with the mineral oil I bought.  He works the brakes to remove the air bubbles, replaces one gasket, and replaces the covers.  I have brakes again, thanks to my boss.  I'm ready for the next month.

December 2019: "Mayor Fucknoy", "Get Off That Bike", A Guy With "666" All Over His Pants, "My Neighbor. She's A Piece Of Shit."

     The East Colfax Neighborhood [had a meeting which did not] "target renters' typical issues" [nor] "the level of people...at risk of displacement [being] 70 percent.  ...never...that upwards of 40 percent were listed as living in poverty [south of Colfax].  ...let alone the...Registered Neighborhood Organization...to actually do something about it and to protect these populations.  That was like another universe, somebody else does that stuff."  [Someone new] was elected president of the RNO at the beginning of 2019.  At its October meeting, the organization voted unanimously on a resolution declaring that preventing involuntary displacement was it's number-one priority,  ...RNOs have long been...often viewed...by the city...as the voice of their neighborhoods [but] have a reputation for representing only a certain slice of the city [which] has the time and resources to make it to hours-long evening meetings and write public comments...   A slice that is older, wealthier and whiter than its general population.  "...property owners...run...them..."  [Denver's] Neighborhood Planning Initiative...guides future development according to community desires.  ...there was no requirement that RNOs reach out to non-members.  Some residents...are worried that it doesn't establish enough protections against displacement.  The East Colfax Neighborhood Association has...its own neighborhood plan.  [It] would require RNOs to...ensure that it mirrors socioeconomic diversity of their geographical boundaries.  - Westword, 11/28 - 12/4/2019

     ...the most bustling, population-rich core of the city...  Capitol Hill is the densest neighborhood in the city.  Eight of the 15 D 10 neighborhood tracts surveyed...have a population density that exceeds 15,000 residents per square mile.  ...the number of people on our streets is significantly higher than the 71,000 residents who live here.  We have more arterial commuter through traffic in our neighborhoods than other districts...  - Life on Capitol Hill, 12/2019

     [During] his second to last meeting, before protesters forced councilmembers to move rooms, one activist called [the outgoing mayor of the municipality of Aurora "a fuckboy"] and presented a cake that said "bye mayor [fuckboy]."  [The outgoing mayor responded with,] "Thank you.  I hear from other people...saying, 'What in the hell is happening in this city?'  And, 'Who are these people getting up and speaking...?'  ...with...council members...there's some that I never got through to."
     [The new mayor of the municipality of Aurora was sworn in on December 2, and] said he would lead meetings with a "big gavel"...  [A member of] Abolish ICE...created [a] five-foot long gavel [brought] to city hall [with which the new mayor posed for photos].  During the last meeting [some] city council members wore...t-shirts, often association [sic] with the Blue Lives Matter movement.  In apparent response [a party chair] passed out t-shirts with...silhouettes of...two new [progressive] lawmakers...  - Sentinel, 12/5/2019

    ... peasants flocked to the cities...  But this did not make them "urban."  "The values of a civil society are...created by citizens, and one or two generations...in the cities under a totalitarian regime had no chance of becoming citizens, politically or culturally."
     It was "COWGIRL Night"...in [one] section of Bangkok.  [From children to twentysomething women wore] sheriff's badges, high black-suede boots, and [denim cut-offs revealing their bare] buttocks.  The evening was sponsored by Pepsi Max, whose...logo appeared on the [children's and] girls' cowboy hats.  A voice over the loudspeaker announced that all major credit cards were accepted.  The [children and] girls ran their...hands over...Western oil riggers, stockbrokers, and tourists...  One girl with...overdeveloped breasts...wore a red kerchief...  "I'm Khmer Rouge, darling, Aren't they cool!" referring to...guerillas who murdered over a million [of their fellow countrymen and women and children] in Cambodia...around the time she was born.  Hostesses [were] marveling at each other's sheriff's badges.  ...they were all looking for...foreign businessmen...to set them up in apartments.  They lacked the hard mouths and cash register eyes...among the prostitutes in...Samarkand.  ...the girls put their hands together and bowed in Buddhist supplication before they mounted the bar to gyrate...  ...44.2 percent of Thai prostitutes worked in the agriculture sector before entering the sex industry.   - Kaplan

     ...soldiers who...return to...peacetime, often describe combat as the peak event of their lives.  After an experience like that, "everything is anticlimactic."  …"everything" is all that [most] have ever experienced: work, love, children, family, friends...  ...women have inhabited a world that warriors happily leave behind, or arrive at - only to destroy.  [It's} as if [the] Warrior Caste had a kind of historical inevitability, transcending...everything we know as culture.  - Ehrenreich

     ...loud children, their faces covered in sores; their heads shaved against lice.  The dust of old carpets and the soot of coal fires blended...as though I were seeing a...lithograph or daguerreotype of Kashgar.  Kashgar was populated by Turks...whose culture had been ground down by Mao's awful threshing machine.  ...hippie back packers and similar Western travelers.  Kashgar was...a nexus...of this 1990s hippie route.  There were...packs of young men and boys...with hardened...faces...robbed...of their childhood innocence.  The China one-child policy...had already collapsed in the minority areas.  Overcrowding, unemployment...  ...a Moslem resurgence...  ...the lack of a burgeoning middle class...  - Kaplan

     A week or two ago, I was out at the corner where I live.  I noticed a bicycle chained up to a pole, a bike I hadn't seen there before.  It was spray-painted white -  a "ghost" bike - placed somewhere in the metro area where a cyclist was killed in a traffic accident.  Yesterday, I noticed that it had been moved to another pole some yards down my street.  I can't think of any reason it should have been moved...unless it's stolen.  The homeless are nothing if not resourceful.  But if this is the case, it's nothing short of insidiously brilliant.  Or perhaps simply the mother of invention.  I don't know that someone homeless wouldn't realize that a ghost bike is supposed to remain in the same location, never mind that to be seen riding one couldn't make a bike more obvious that it's stolen.  Or perhaps it would suggest that the rider must also be a ghost.  The mother of invention - there's little room in the dynamics of survival for social opinion.  Nothing surprises me in this neighborhood anymore.  Today is Sunday, the 1st, and I am across the street at the Chinese place for lunch.  From inside, through the window, once again I see my neighbor's grown son at the trash can.  At first, he's simply having a smoke.  When I turn around again, he isn't merely poking around the top of the can.  He has his entire arm inside.

     On Tuesday, November 26, the full fury of a [snow] storm struck Denver...exceeding two feet in height.  ...plenty of Denver residents are angry about the snow-removal efforts...  [The storm lasted from] "the wee hours of Tuesday...until early afternoon - about an inch an hour.  [After plowed cleared a full circuit,] there were several more inches...and traffic packed it down - and the temperatures were quite cold."  Once a layer of ice has formed...the options are...limited...  "If you're looking at melting, [salt] would be so expensive that any benefit...would be minimal."  - Westword, 12/5-11/2019

     ...downtown is family-friendly, right?  Are we going down there to view the homeless of get stuck or fall on the ice and snow?  There was snow everywhere.  In the streets, in the open parking spots, all along the pedestrian mall...even where the Xmas market was being held.  Why did my street get plowed over and over and downtown did not?  - Westword, 12/5-11/2019

     December 7th, a date with will live in infamy.  This year, infamy falls upon a Saturday.  I would have had this one off, but was offered the chance to work today.  The snow and ice have mercifully been in retreat during a week of temperatures well above freezing.  I'm pedaling up the sidewalk of a busy thoroughfare of industrial shops.  Beyond the opposite side of this roadway is the interstate highway.  I happen upon a point where the rest of the sidewalk, beginning across one side street, is occupied by a long line of who appear to be homeless.  They are standing in between metal gates set up on the sidewalk, monitored by someone in an orange vest.  The line leads to a large parking lot of a large brewery, where food trucks fill the lot.  Rather than make the suicidal attempt to ride in the street...the wrong way up a one-way 45 mph zone...to pass a line which is so long I can't see the end around a corner, I choose the only alternative.  I take the sidewalk of the side street, because the street itself is blocked off with a barrier and a police cruiser.  The street is full of metal gates, along which the belongings of the homeless are lined up on the ground.  I get to work on the first weekend of a Christmas sale around the corner.  Past my work, all day long, stroll endless groups of apparent family and friends, some carrying various purchases.

     ...in...Cherry Creek State Park...a local political party activist stole a homeless man's tent and possessions before a recent snowstorm.  On any given day, there's usually about three tents set up illegally in the state park...more than in recent memory.  In a Facebook post last week, members of the Arapahoe Tea Party group argued they had an ethical obligation to remove drug addicts...because these people cannot get themselves the help they need.  ...the man would be charged with theft if he did take certain items under the guise of park cleanup.  [The perpetrator] did not respond to a request for comment.  It's unclear whether the local Tea Party affiliate aims to...rid the state park - or area - of homeless people.  - Sentinel, 12/5/2019

     Our culture in general is experiencing a major disconnect from our environment...  Shoes inhibit the ability to use our feet like a ground wire - passing negative energy to the ground and receiving positive energy from the earth.  - natural awakenings, 12/2019

     A massive statue of Mao loomed...  Rather than the father of Asian communism, here he symbolized the conqueror from a...technologically advanced civilization.  ...hippie backpackers...went in droves to places...moving too quickly from a medieval culture to a modern one...suddenly exposed to outside influences.  ...two backpacker demands: that a place be "wholly exotic" accessible to Westerners.  [Such places] were likely candidates for upheaval.  In [Pakistan], it is a sign of manliness to pass other vehicles o blind curves...  …"this is why...Pakistan is going places.  Because we are ambitious and dynamic..."...as if...fatalities were a reasonable price for...social and economic dynamism.
     Malthus...in 1748...propounded...that population, when unchecked, increases [faster] than food supply…  Malthus...worked among the poor...and was in constant conflict with utopian[s] who believed social ills were exclusively the fault of a coercive state.  He failed to see the [future abundance of Western resources.]   - Kaplan

     "Sobriety is awkward.  There's ten minutes of awkwardness that you need to push through...  That's what we've learned.  We need to have cornhole or whiffle ball...or we need to have a TV that's got the sports games on.  How to get through to the other side of that is definitely talking about it, figuring out a plan...  ...to support anyone who's afraid they're going to feel like the only ones there not on drugs or alcohol.  ...'find a sober wingman and charge up your battery.'"  - Westword, 12/5-11/2019

     ...spoke English.  My DJ was on acid and I think the rest of my crew was on shrooms - I think I was sober at the time, and I don't do psychedelics that much anyway.  My DJ met us outside looking bizarre - he has this marine knife, bigger than a Bowie knife that he carries with him.  I don't know how he gets it through security.  Maybe because...he looks like he's white.  He got that into Universal Studios.  He had pills, a fucking knife, and some weed on him and all they said to him...was, "you have to leave that here."  - (Salt) Magazine, Issue 13

Two different men's hats
     Monday.  I'm on the way back at the doughnut shop on the way to my gym before work.  Along the way, I cross a busy thoroughfare.  On the opposite corner in a shadow are a couple of homeless guys.  One of them is a guy who could be in his twenties.  He's a dead ringer for someone in a photo I remember seeing, taken during the Great Depression.  Even his winter cap strikes me as the same  one in the photo.  I get to the shop at 9 AM.  A succession of local Caucasian neighborhood residents come along.  The guy behind the counter converses with them, and everyone is speaking at a rapid pace.  I feel as though either they are on speed or I am on downers.  The sound system is playing its usual droll contemporary pseudo-indie rock music.  One couple in their thirties comes inside, with their son who appears not quite old enough to be in kindergarten.  The dad is in a tan, felt, short-brimmed hat. The mom is responding to each sales pitch from the clerk with a perky, "Sure!"

     We live in crazy times...art & culture can be curated by the masses...  Localization is a reality...  The old way of thinking is a world of hurdles and barriers, ones that breed discrimination and segregation of talent, aesthetics and personality.  We will make this market competitive and shirk the old hurdles and barriers [and] build our own regional school of art.  - (Salt) Magazine, Issue 13

     It's the Friday before Christmas.  I arrive at work and spend a few minutes before clocking in with a coworker on break.  We get to talking about her bizarre family troubles with two seventeen-year-olds and a twenty-five-year-old stranger beating up her cousin, who is a child.  Because the cousin has a sibling who is a popular hip hop artists on the internet.  I believe that she lives in a neighborhood where this is an old story.  She relates an attempt to rape her by a twenty-year-old when she was eleven.  She mentions where it took place 30 years ago, an alley on a street corner.  It's in the neighborhood I pass through every day on the way to and from work.  Speaking of work, on any given day, individual groups of different downtown residents will saunter past the windows.  A group of executives, followed by a group of homeless, followed by a group of hipsters.  This afternoon, someone who I think is a man in his thirties comes stumbling along.  I suddenly realize that he's not wearing any pants or underwear.  I expect to be confronted by a penis when my brain tells me that something is missing.  This may be someone who appears to be male above the neck, but it's indeed a woman.  She stumbles along, leaning out of the way of our driver before lumbering past him and down the sidewalk.  I wonder if she has been sexually assaulted.  My coworker wonders if she has been given meth by some homeless and possibly raped.  Our driver watches as the building's concierge gets on the phone to the police.  After work, I'm on the way home in the dark.  In the neighborhood between the bike trail and my boulevard, in a school parking lot, a street racer is doing doughnuts.  A "woo-girl" goes "Woo!"  Saturday.  The stop for the bus to the supermarket.  On the bench is an open bag of cookies.  A familiar middle-aged guy comes shuffling along.  He spots the bag and takes a couple of cookies before he is on his way.

     ...Sukarno...his acquiescence to the Communists' demand...that he introduce...political commissars in the armed forces.  ...the Indonesian Women's Movement.  [They] would not be difficult to train...for participation in the coup...  ...a Revolutionary Council...would take over from the progressive Army elements...then dismiss the Cabinet and rule the country...  - Time out of Hand, by R. Shaplen, 1969

     The following week, I work Monday, Thursday and Friday at our newly acquired plant.  It's a special and a transitional week for our company.  I meet the manager of this plant who I immediately come to recognize as one of my professional contemporaries.  On Friday, one of our drivers bring in the remnants of the supplies from our old plant.  It's a signal of the end of that plant.  Last week brought me good news.  I got my first energy bill during a full billing period when my furnace hasn't stopped running during cold days and nights.  It's not as large as I feared.  Today, more good news.  It's payday, and my check s large enough for me to pay the rest of my root canal, to pay for next years annual gym membership, and even to get a calendar for 2020.  Those are bills I am happy to put behind me.  Saturday is my turn to work.  Small snowflakes are blowing in and have already accumulated more, I think, than the three inches predicted.  It's enough to cause me to take caution, but it isn't as bad as the previous Hell On Ice!  I make it across my boulevard and I'm making my way past the bus stop where I used to catch the first bus in the morning, now five years past.  I still roll past the occasional character in the shelter.  This morning, around 8 AM, there is a small, out of place group here.  Three elderly Caucasian guys in what appear to be the same navy down coat.  One cranes his neck to peer outside the perforated wall, to spy the bus.  My back rim slips slightly on the sidewalk, and the one closest to me speaks up.  "Get of that bike.  You'll break your neck.  Lord have mercy."
     Sunday.  I decide to purchase a wall calendar from this paycheck.  The bookstore is steps from the downtown train stop.  I wouldn't be doing much bike riding.  I may as well take the transit system.  My transfer from this morning's grocery shopping is good for another hour.  I head out to the bus stop where, yesterday morning, I was told by who I assume was a waiting passenger to dismount my bike.  Instead of a trio of elderly white guys, the shelter's occupants include a couple of guys in jerseys of the city football team.  There must be a home game today.  Two express buses roll past through the melting snow, exclusive for those residents of my boulevard headed straight to the stadium up the street.  Eventually, a bus with an actual route then collects us there, and onboard is a drunk in a wheelchair.  He's conversing with a couple of middle-aged guys in a seat across from him, who appear to know him.  His brakes are not locked, and he slides back and forth according to the acceleration and braking of the bus.  At one point he slides backwards into another passenger in a wheelchair.  One of the drunk's two friends asks him if he has seen his sister.  He hasn't.  "You know James West died?" the drunk asks him.  "He was killed," he responds.  He tells him that the drunk's sister came into town to "investigate it."  From the bus to the train, to the downtown transit hub.  On the platform, next to the free pedestrian mall shuttles, is a crazy who is attempting to sing.  His voice sounds as if a metal rake is being pulled over asphalt, and it resounds throughout the station.  His style is one of someone in physical internal pain.  The only intelligible words coming out of his mouth are "puppy love".  A couple of transit security officers show up to ask him how he is getting along in life.  They also ask him if he is going to board a shuttle.  He acts as if he suddenly remembers to do so.  Before long, he's in a seat on my shuttle.  He returns to his painful singing/scraping, at a relatively lower volume.  I'm out of the shuttle, inside the bookstore, and have tracked down an interesting wall calendar.  I order another and purchase this one before I'm out the door and back on another shuttle.  This one takes me to the old deathburger homeless central.  I'm at the front of the line.  Directly behind me is a homeless guy who is watching the security guard handling food packaging behind the counter.  "He shouldn't even be doin' that," I hear him say.  "He don't even have no gloves on."  A friend of the guy behind me suggests that they make their exit.  The guy goes ahead of me to ask for some ice water.  I order food, head out, and grab a shuttle back to the train.  Onboard this one is a silent guy in a seat.  His face below his eyes are covered on this winter day.  He's in khaki pants with faded magic marker uniformly down the front of both legs, forming rows of "666"s.
     The following day, I'm back at our newly acquired plant.  In the morning, I'm on my way to my own store.  I stop first at a 7-Eleven down the street from work.  I'm inside and back outside when a guy hanging out asks me if I know anyone with bicycles for sale. Then I'm off, stopping for the light across a busy downtown thoroughfare.  A guy in a hard hat, orange vest, earphones, and a plastic grocery bag crosses on the red.  He tells me to be careful.  "I busted my ass a couple of times (on my own bike.)" he reveals.  I arrive at work and head down the street, for a beverage from the restaurant next to our old plant.  Parked outside of this plant are two flatbed tractor trailers.  Buckled onto one is all of the remaining machinery from inside which we no longer need, including our drycleaning machine.  I remember the first modern drycleaning machine I ever saw, that one newly minted and coming into the place where I was working at the time.  It was the only previous time I saw a drycleaning machine on a flatbed, some 28 years ago.  Here at the end of this year, we're finished inhabiting this old building.  The new property owner has also purchased the restaurant next door.  He bought the business as well as the property.  He wants to expand it.  The owner of the restaurant jokes that he now needs a job.  At our current plant, after the day's work is done, I have a discussion with the longtime manager there.  She's an old school drycleaner and spotter like myself, and we discuss spotting chemicals.  She has one which I used to work with way back when, and haven't seen for a while.  These are reminders of how long I've been in the business, and how many people I've seen pass through it.  And then there is this.  I've been living where I do, coming up on 13 years now, as long as the previous home I rented.  During which one of my neighbors has a family, including grown children.  One is the guy I've mentioned, who strolls the neighborhood extra slowly.  And I wouldn't call this place, with it's discarded tires and carbon monoxide, exactly a strolling kind of neighborhood.  But I digress.  This month, I saw him panhandling for the first time.  He was outside the Chinese restaurant, manning a usual panhandling spot for various rotating characters.  I mention to one of the staff that he's my neighbor.  They reveal to me for the first time during these years that he's been doing this since before I got here.  One time, he came in a bought food with a $100 bill.  He took the change and handed it out to random passersby.  They say that no one knows their neighbors anymore.  I guess they don't...
     Speaking of which, New Year's Eve, I'm out collecting my neighbor's recycle cans.  My big neighbor comes out of his back gate.  I believe he's the guy I saw being frisked by the police some weeks ago, a few feet from where he now stands.   He tosses or kicks an empty shooter bottle across the snow and ice.  It comes to rest next to another empty.  He pulls out his phone and looks at it.  The last can I take out of the way of the parking lot entrance turns out to be his neighbor's.  He tells me, "You shouldn't have done that for her.  She's a piece of shit.  You shouldn't have done that for her."  If he recognizes me from the first time we met just a few short years past, he doesn't mention.  I ask him if the can belongs to a "her."  "Yeah.  She's my neighbor."  Later on, I realize that I've seen her for the first time just this year.  "And you definitely better not touch mine," he adds.  I don't see the recycle can for the condo I've seen him come out of.  Neither does he mention the last time we spoke.  Again, I was bringing in residents recycle cans.  That time, he was questioning whether I was putting the cans next to the correct condo units.  I'm not sure he holds me in much regard.  You see, I'm his neighbor also.  Walking back to my unit, I hear the sound of a tumbling can.  A few minutes later, I'm out at my own gate taking down my Christmas lights.  I see that he knocked over her can.  It's sideways there in the snow.  After sundown, I head across the street to grab a bite to eat.  On my way back, I see his gate open.  He's crouching down over at the corner of the townhome complex.  The end of his cigarette glows orange in the dark.

      ...a judge ruled...the city's urban camping ban...ordinance unconstitutional last week...  Denver County Judge Johnny C. Barajas...said the ban amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.  Earlier Friday, Denver police...officers stopped doing...street checks for unauthorized camping...after learning of the ruling, "pending further guidance" from the city attorney's office.  The city appealed the case Monday morning...  - The Denver Post, 12/31/2019