As you may have heard because I’m
pretty vocal about it, I hate summer. Hate the heat. Even when I am
inside in the air conditioning, just knowing that it is 90+ outside
seems to pickle my brain. I feel lethargic, can’t get anything done,
and can’t seem to think straight.
I have many friends and family members
who live in Phoenix, don’t ask me why, and when I inevitably tell
them, “I don’t know how you stand it,” they always say, “We
stay inside for six months, just like you do in the winter.” Since
they all seem to parrot the same words, I have concluded that this is
part of an Arizona brainwashing campaign. I think they have to
believe that to justify living there.
It certainly isn’t true.
It would be true if a typical winter
day here was 20º
and snowing. That does happen maybe 10-12 days a year. But, as anyone
who has spent a full year here could tell you, a winter day is more
likely 50º
and sunny. That hardly requires hunkering down inside under a
blanket. Instead, you will find people here walking, running (in
shorts!), having lunch on the patio, riding bikes, and playing golf
all year round.
So imagine my surprise at hearing my
brother, who has always been highly intelligent if not exactly a free
thinker, echo those words to me. He’s moving to Tucson this fall, and
I can only conclude that the Arizona Thought Police got to him early.
Over the
years, I have simplified my Christmas about as much as I can without
eliminating it entirely. I’ve taken a couple of classes and read a
book or two about turning away from the over-commercialized, frenzied
holiday that seems like an American tradition and focusing on the
true meaning of Christmas.
I don’t go
to parties, give/receive gifts (which also means no shopping or
wrapping), bake cookies, have a big family dinner, or any of the
other things most people seem to find necessary. For decorations, I
have two small trees filled with beloved ornaments, a few teddy bears
culled from a larger collection, and a glass urn of colorful balls
that don’t fit on the trees. I make chili for Christmas eve before
going to our beautiful candlelight service at church and ham and
scalloped potatoes for Christmas dinner. Calm and peaceful.
Yet this
year I’m feeling overwhelmed and it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet. This
Saturday I’m going to a concert of a friend’s women’s chorus, and
Sunday is our Thanksgiving potluck at church. After that, everything
seems like a mad scramble until the end of the year.
For church
alone, I have the tree lighting, a soup and carol sing, a Christmas
concert, blue Christmas service. I’m opting out of the hanging of the
greens and cookie baking and I’m thankful that this year the
children’s pageant (always a hoot) will be during our regular service
on December 23.
I plan to
attend the tree lighting in the Olde Town Arvada square to hear the
Arvada Chorale, and I’ll send a few Christmas cards although probably
not my usual letter this year.
Finally, I
will write my third annual literary advent posts in the days leading
to the big event. That’s more than enough for me.
I stand in
awe of my friends with both kids and jobs who manage to make it
through the season with grace and joy and a semblance of sanity.
As
election day approaches, I find myself feeling anxious–both
definitions. I’m eager for the day to arrive so we can see an end to
the awful and constant political ads, and also looking forward to the
predicted blue wave which should help to return the country to a
semblance of sanity.
And
yet, I also feel dread knowing that the outcome could surprise the
pundits and pollsters who tell us this time will be different than
the last time. Last time, they were wrong.
Two
years ago, I was happy and confident and hopeful.
I
know that because Facebook keeps showing me those optimistic posts I
made two years ago that now make me want to cry and scream. They also
make me, well, cautiously optimistic, as they say, about tomorrow.
We’ve
been on a roller coaster since the Kavenaugh “hearings.” Those
seemed to energize the right.
Then
more than a dozen prominent Democrats plus a few others from Trump’s
enemies list received mail bombs. A Trump-loving creep sent them
while the right accused the left of sending them knowing the right
would be held responsible.
The
next day a crazed white nationalist took his AR-15 into a synagogue
and killed eleven people and momentum again favored progressives. The
liar-in-chief pouted because these inconvenient terrorist attacks
took attention away from his constant emphasizing the “hordes” of
Central Americans coming to invade the US. To rev up the base, he
decided to send thousands of military troops to the border to defend
from the starving families still 900 miles away and on foot. Finally
(well, so far) he announced that he would end birthright citizenship
with an executive order.
In
Florida, Georgia, Kansas and North Dakota and elsewhere, voter
suppression was the right’s strategy for winning toss-up races.
Still,
the polls look good for Democrats to take over the House of
Represesntatives, as well as many governorships. The long awaited
Blue Wave seems real.
The
more people around me are almost giddy with their expectations, I
grow more wary and a little afraid, panicked even. I remember the
last time. I can’t take it again. More important, I don’t think our
country can take another two years of this unchecked evil. Vote blue.
A week or so ago, I took my lunch to the park
in Olde Town and discovered that the picnic tables were gone. Only
empty concrete pads remained. I thought I knew why, but I posed the
question to my neighbors on the Next Door website, and they confirmed
it.
Homeless people had congregated there, so the
city solved that “problem” by removing the picnic tables.
Brilliant, right? Homeless people had to find
someplace else to relax and it cost the city very little. Except for
this: Why can’t people who live on the street or in their cars use a
picnic table in a public park? Yes, one table was right next to the
playground, and I’m sure the moms and dads who take their kids there
to play are happy it’s gone even though homeless people are much less
likely to commit crimes than to be the victims of crime.
Of course, the poor people didn’t disappear;
they simply moved on. One Next Door neighbor said, “now
they are all in the square, so it just moved them from one location
in Olde Town to another.” Another commented, “Yes the homeless
have changed old town.”
It’s
kind of funny if you think about it. The city moved the people out of
a park tucked in out-of-the-way on the edge of town and into the much
more central and visible location of the town square. Unintended
consequences.
Apparently,
people around here think the homeless problem isn’t that our society
pushes people to the margins and beyond, but that we have to look at
the results. They put dividers on public benches so people can’t
sleep on them and pass laws prohibiting sleeping in parks and
panhandling. Some smaller cities in the area have addressed this
visibility problem by giving people bus tickets to Denver.
Look,
they make me as uncomfortable as anybody, yet it seems obvious to me
that taking away their rights only exacerbates the problem. Hiring
them for jobs, as Denver has started to do, following the lead of
Albuquerque, can help. Arranging for housing and social services can
turn things around.
We’d
rather just get them out of Olde Town and off our minds.
Coming home from the grocery store the other day, I made the mistake of turning down Olde Wadsworth. Since testing of the G Line commuter trains started in earnest a month ago, the railroad crossings just south of Grandview have caused frequent backups throughout Olde Town.
In my defense, the street looked pretty open, and it was until I approached Grandview. There I stopped at the red light and waited for the crossing gates to open and the guards to lower their stop signs and return to their posts. Yes, we still have guards at every crossing 24 hours a day. Now with trains running every fifteen minutes or less, they finally have something to do.
So, I sat at the red light and waited. And waited. And waited. No train came but the gates stayed down. I looked at the clock and realized I’d been there six minutes. Then suddenly a train came by. Okay, I thought, now we can get going. The light turned green for approximately two seconds, long enough for two cars to squeak through.
The gates came down again and I was stuck for a total of 14 minutes.
When I finally made it home, some workmen had blocked the entrance to our parking garage. I had to park on the street and schlep my groceries in from there.
The day went downhill from there. I will spare you the details.
You may recognize the title of this piece from the poem Casey at the Bat by Ernest Thayer. If so, you also know the next line, “Mighty Casey has struck out.” That’s the way I felt.
Everything I tried to cheer myself up failed.
I played my “Happy and Calm” playlist. I read a book I liked. I watched an episode of my favorite show, “Grace and Frankie.” I ate some dark chocolate. Still, I struck out.
Sometimes you just have to cut your losses and count on things looking better in the morning. Psalm 30 tells us, “Weeping may spend the night, but there is joy in the morning.”
It worked.
If you’re looking for a neighborhood with a high cool factor, forget the suburbs and stay close to the inner city. Not for hipsters the homogeneity and manicured sameness of far-flung developments. A recent Forbes article listed the twelve coolest neighborhoods around the world, and only two in the US pop up—The Yards in Washington DC and Chicago’s Pilsen.
The main feature tying all these neighborhoods together in coolness (coolitude?) is a mix of old and new buildings, cultural attractions, restored multifunctional spaces, tradition and forward-looking creativity. Most of all, at least in this non-scientific article, are good bars and restaurants. I’d like to add walkability, population diversity, and park or open spaces to the list.
How does your neighborhood stack up?
My old neighborhood, Highland, placed high on all the features, and even with out-of-control gentrification still ranks as one of Denver’s coolest areas. Olde Town Arvada, while not in the inner city, scores well. In fact, when I tell people where I live, they almost always say some version of “I love that area.”
We enjoy a mix of new and old buildings housing business, retail, and residences. A farmer’s market and frequent festivals add to the charm and walkability. I once counted 58 restaurants within a 6-block radius of my condo. That’s changed over the years, with the number probably higher now. Although most of the eateries are charmless chains, in Olde Town proper, the restaurants and drinking establishments are one-of-a-kind and many offer live music on Friday and Saturday nights.
The biggest thing we lack is cultural diversity.
I still haven’t found a place that can make a decent turkey sandwich. We may never be known as “a buzzy hive for all things creative” like the Keramikos district in Athens, but I’d like to think we’re moving in that direction.
First comes the train horn blowing two long, LOUD blasts, then one short and one extra long. It starts at 3:40 in the morning and continues every fifteen minutes (frequently more often) or so all day long until it quits at 1 the next morning.
It’s pretty much all people in Olde Town Arvada talk about these days. This has been going on for more than two weeks and no one can say when it will stop.
RTD is testing the G Line commuter train. You remember the G (formerly Gold) line. It was supposed to open two years ago, but they ran into problems with the A line, which is the same technology and shut down the Gold line until they fixed the A line. They promised that once the train is up and running we could become a quiet zone, but no one seems to know when that will happen.
This woman says she likes hearing the trains. Another uses an inside fan as white noise to drown out the sound. One man complains about the frequency and decibel level and wants to know how long this will go on. The other says, “if you don’t like trains, don’t move next to one.”
To the man who asked rather snottily if the train track was there when you moved here, no, it was not. Well, the tracks for the freight trains to Golden were here, but those trains run a maximum of four times a day and rarely at night, so no comparison.
We had to endure many months of construction noise while they built the commuter tracks, listening to the incessant beep beep beep of the construction trucks. Compared to this, that was, to quote Jaime Escalante, “a piece of pie, easy as cake.”
To the Pollyanna who suggested that those of us getting blasted out of bed and having conversations disrupted 21 ½ hours every day should realize that this is for the greater good and quit complaining: bite me.
Meanwhile comes the unwelcome news that tomorrow we get to test the fire alarm system here in the condos. That requires an even louder blast that will continue for a good twenty minutes until they make sure it’s deafening every person in the building.
At least that will drown out the train horns.
I didn’t sleep well last night, thanks to my *&^%$#@! cat. I went to bed about 10 and had to get up around midnight because that’s what old people do. After that, it was all over, according to Radley. He jumped on the bed and proceeded to mess with my hair because that’s what he does.
I threw him gently off the bed.
He jumped back up, lay on the pillow and reached for my hair.
I threw him off the bed.
This continued roughly 700 times until 4:20 this morning. I don’t know why.
I may have dozed off for 10-15 minutes a few times.
He had food and water. He has a perfectly fine bed of his own, for crying out loud, not that he ever uses it at night.
At 4:20 he finally let me sleep for about an hour.
At 5:23 he stuck his claws in my hair again and I gave up.
I got up, accompanied by his usual morning bawling. I yelled at him, not that it ever works. “What part of Shut Up don’t you understand?”
When I sat down to write this, he finally settled down. I don’t know why.
I’ll go back to bed shortly and he will probably let me sleep. I don’t know why.
While I’m grateful that I no longer work and can spend the morning in bed if I need to, it isn’t what I had planned for today.
Our sermon on Sunday was about the importance of getting enough rest. We are a busy people and most of us don’t get our needed eight hours of sleep, but Pastor Ashley reminded us that even God rested and built that into the Ten Commandments.
I’m thinking God didn’t have a cat.
I have a low tolerance for authority and bureaucracy. That’s why it took me three colleges, six majors and twelve years to complete my bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Colorado at Denver. I returned to school, earning a master’s in adult learning from Colorado State University. A ... Continue reading →
The Constant Learner 