Bewildered

As an introvert, I’ve been practicing social distance all my life, so you’d think this forced isolation would be a piece of cake for me. It’s that other part of my personality—the part that doesn’t like being told what to do—that wants to rebel.

You don’t need me to tell you that last week was crazy. As people hoarded toilet paper, schools closed, sports, entertainment, and other events were cancelled, and the world went mad, I tried to lead my normal life with increased hand washing.

I went out to breakfast three times and lunch once plus to a drive thru and takeout once. I went to the gym at my regular times, and when people said, “See you next week,” I said I wouldn’t bet on it. I felt pretty sure the recreation centers would be closed next week. I was right.

On Saturday, I ran a few errands—picked up an online order at Michael’s, bought a few things at the Dollar Tree, and filled my tank with gas because, well, you never know.

And that was that. I came home to hunker down.

Sunday morning, I attended my first virtual church service. Our staff did a terrific job of making it as inspiring as possible. When the first hymn started, I burst into tears thinking of all my friends sitting at their computers all over town singing Come Thou Font of Every Blessing, making a joyful noise alone.

That was the first time I cried for our lost way of life, but it won’t be the last.

The truth is that I am just bewildered. I have no idea what to do in this unprecedented global disaster. In my 72 years, I have never experienced anything even a little bit like this.

Maybe in a week or so, when this becomes our new normal, we will all adjust. Meanwhile, I’m sad and scared and wondering which friends and family I may lose. Or maybe I’m the one who’ll be gone. I’m dazed and confused, but soldiering on.

Hot Enough to Fry Brains

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.

Election Anxiety

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.

Endurance Test

Many years ago, before I gave up traveling, I took a trip to Ouray, on the western slope of Colorado in one of the most beautiful settings in the country. I had reservations at a spa and was looking forward to a massage and the hot springs.

By the time I arrived, however, I was hot and tired, feeling sick and cranky. I wanted nothing more than to collapse on my bed and sleep. Unfortunately, it was two hours before I could check into my hotel, so I parked on the main street to explore some shops.

I hate shopping and normally would have tried my best to avoid it, but what else could I do to kill a couple of hours?

As I opened the door to a tourist shop, flute music filled my ears and I felt my stress level decrease. I took a deep breath and turned to the shopkeeper to ask, “What’s that music?” That’s when I learned about R. Carlos Nakai, a Native American flutist of Navajo and Ute heritage. The town is named after Chief Ouray of the Utes who inhabited this area before getting hustled off to a reservation in less desirable surroundings.

Of course I bought the CD, Earth Spirit, and it remains one of my go-to selections when feeling anxious, agitated, angry. Those emotions descend over me frequently as I wait to see if the fast-approaching November elections will offer us some relief from the dystopia of the past two years.

Playwright William Congreve wrote, “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.” I took that to heart earlier this year when I put together a “Happy and Calm” playlist to get me through difficult times. In addition to Nakai’s flute, it includes Neil Young’s Harvest Moon, Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon, and Maria Muldaur’s Midnight at the Oasis (because that song always makes me smile).

I’ll be playing it frequently over the next few weeks. With any luck, after November 6, I’ll be able to make a celebration playlist. Please God.

Losing Touch

On the Auntie continuum, I fall somewhere between Aunt Bee and Auntie Mame, less matronly than one and less flamboyant than the other.
When my nieces were little and spent time with me, I told them “just don’t act like children.”
I’m sure this makes me a bad person, but children are not my favorite people. I think they’re cute and I like watching them, but interacting with them baffles me.
Now I’m a great aunt (well, I was always a great aunt) to Griffin, 10, and Harper, 7. They live in Phoenix and I see them once a year when they come here to visit their grandparents. This year they flew alone for the first time, and in that and many other ways they are growing up way too fast. They were more subdued than in previous years. Harper has lost her first tooth, showed us her new gymnastics moves and then settled in an armchair to watch So You Think You Can Dance. Griff was a little cold from our uncommon rainstorm, so he came home and changed into his pajamas before cuddling under a blanket to watch TV.
I was thinking that next year, he’ll be taller than I am, and then I realized that this may be the last time I see them. Next spring their grandparents will retire and move to Tucson, so that’s where they will visit from now on. I’ll have to go to Arizona to see them, and that would require me to reconsider my no traveling policy, which could happen, but I’m not making any promises.
Thank goodness for Facebook. The ability to check in regularly with distant friends and family has always been the best thing about it.
I will watch from a distance to see how they navigate their perilous teens. How will their interests grow and change? What will they study in college? I’m feeling a little premature melancholy about all this. Maybe my own version of empty nest syndrome.

Art Attack

Colfax Avenue, once considered “the longest, wickedest street in America” and despite recent redevelopment efforts attempting to obscure its infamous past, it retains some dicey areas tucked among the restaurants, car dealers, and storefronts that line the street from Aurora to Golden. Starting at Sheridan and heading west, you will see signs for the 40 West Arts District, one of Colorado’s newest of 22 certified creative districts. That was my destination last Friday night.
The state’s Creative District Certification process aims to “attract artists and creative entrepreneurs to a community, infuse new energy and innovation and enhance economic and civic capital.” The Denver metro area has five and the rest are spread throughout the state from Trinidad to Steamboat Springs. Creative Districts are hubs of economic activity, enhancing the area as an appealing place to live, visit and conduct business, as well as generate new economic activity.”
I was meeting a friend at 1528 Teller Street to check out the new digs of her painting teacher, Tabetha Landt, for July’s First Friday Art Walk. Tabetha had just moved her studio after nine years in the more established arts district on Santa Fe Drive. “We have parking!” she says, “and no stairs.” The address turned out to be in a small industrial park behind a strip mall, just the kind of low-rent flexible space artists like.
This location features three of the district’s more than 120 creative industries, Tabetha’s studio, the Edge Theater (a longtime resident of North Denver’s Highland neighborhood) and the 40 West Gallery, featuring an exhibit of glass artists that night.
The district also includes an architect, fine artists, graphic designers, photographers, sculptors, jewelry makers, typographers, illustrators, multimedia artists, musicians, carpenters, ceramicists, and more to come.
When you think “art” Colfax probably isn’t the first place that springs to mind. Maybe it should be.

Holing Up

There’s only one thing to do when the forecast calls for a high of 97°–hole up in my air-conditioned apartment. That works for me because my home has always been my happy place. It’s kind of a giant toybox, and always offers plenty to do.
Reading is my go-to activity. Right now I have 48 library books checked out, not counting downloaded ebooks and audiobooks. Of course, that doesn’t include the 600+ books on my Kindle (no, sorry, that isn’t a typo), and the dozens of “real” books on my bookshelves and stacked on every horizontal surface in my house.
Writing comes in second only to reading as a favorite thing to do. That’s why you see these posts so often, plus I keep thinking about getting back to that book I started writing about three years ago. It could happen.
Watching the late night comedy shows on YouTube because I can’t stay up late enough to watch them.
Exercise, specifically a 15-minute stretching/yoga routine I’ve been trying to add to my daily schedule. Failing that, I could always go to our gym here at the condo, but that is probably not happening if only because I’d have to venture outside for 40-50 steps to get there.
Meditating only takes me about 20 minutes. If I try for longer, I fall asleep.
Cooking is probably not an option because of the heat, but I can always make a salad or zap leftovers in the microwave.
If all else fails, I can clean my bathroom and mop the tile floors.
Lastly, I could get busy with my decluttering project. So far, that’s been on my to-do list for about four years. Someday I really will start it, and someday could be today. Call me optimistic.
Hope you find some good ways to stay cool and entertained.

Leaving Colorado

Destiny, a waitress at my favorite restaurant, was telling me about her housing woes. The wildly inflated real estate and housing prices dominate our conversation here in Denver and no one seems to know what to do about it. Destiny and her husband, who works in security downtown, live with their one-year-old in a one-bedroom apartment not far from me in Arvada, where they pay $675 a month. “The only reason it doesn’t cost more is because the owner doesn’t take care of the building,” she said.
They’d like a bigger place, but can’t find anything in their price range. A two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the metro area would cost them about twice what they pay now. A house is completely out of the question, now averaging more than $500,000.
We’ve watched the older, smaller houses, which once could have served as starter homes for young families, get torn down and replaced with monstrous and monstrously expensive townhouses all over town, and we ask one another, “Who can afford to buy them?” And yet, people do buy them as fast as they come on the market.
Local governments are racing to find fixes from requiring builders to include affordable units in new construction to allowing tiny houses and micro-apartments, but these efforts are minimal at best. More and more people are now talking about moving out of Colorado. Gulp.
I’m lucky. I managed to buy a house in what was then a ghetto thirty years ago, long before housing prices took off. Selling it six years ago allowed me to buy a nice one-bedroom condo for cash. It’s now worth more than double what I paid for it with property taxes continuing to rise.
Would I consider moving out of Colorado? My family moved here on my third birthday, and I always considered it to be my birthday present. I never seriously thought about moving out of state because I think it’s the perfect place to live. How could I leave the mountains or our almost perfect weather?
Unlike Destiny, I’m not being forced into that decision. Yet. I am, however, starting to think about it.
It makes me very sad.

Read Trip

This may be crazy.
It’s late and I’m tired—my cat kept me awake half the night and I had a meeting tonight. Maybe I’m not thinking straight. Also, it started on Facebook, and that’s never a good sign.
The subject, however, was libraries, and that’s always a good thing. A friend mentioned how much he likes the library in a little town in the Colorado Rockies. “The Georgetown Library is way cool,” he said. “Reeks of age and years, and years of use. Serene & friendly. Once I go in I feel like time doesn’t matter anymore.”
And I thought, “I’ll have to go visit it next time I go to the mountains.” Then I thought of the library in Idaho Springs (on the way to Georgetown.) And then it occurred to me that there are cool little libraries in lots of Colorado towns and I’d like to visit them all.
Several years ago when the Woodbury branch of DPL was being remodeled, I used that as an excuse to visit the other libraries in town. Every time I ordered a book, I chose a different location to pick it up.
This, of course, would be a much bigger project. I’d want to write a short piece about each one and that would require research and scheduling interviews with librarians and actually visiting each location. I need some input from my library-geek friends (Pat Wagner and Kathleen Cain, this means YOU.) The website I found listed 275, which is probably pretty accurate. I’m thinking only of public libraries right now, but since I only had this possibly stupid idea about twenty minutes ago, it’s still in flux.
I don’t have any timeline or deadline. It could take the rest of my life, which according to actuarial tables is another 16 years or so. (I don’t really know. I made that up.)
What do you all think? Really, I want to know.

Paradise is a Kind of Library

I’ve written many times about how much I love libraries and the constant supply of books, ebooks, and audiobooks they supply for me. However, these days, libraries are much more than repositories for books in all their formats. You already know they have computers, wifi, printing, meeting and study rooms. Maybe you’ve attended a class or concert or movie or lecture at your local library as I have.
Have you used a Culture Pass yet? It gives free admission to many museums in the area. Both Denver and Jeffco libraries (and probably others in the metro area) offer passes to the Museum of Nature and Science, History Colorado, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Molly Brown House and Jeffco includes several more sites including Dinosaur Ridge and the Butterfly Pavilion. This does not include admission to special exhibits. By the way, you don’t have to be a resident of these counties to qualify for a library card. If you’re new to the area or have out of town visitors, these passes are an excellent way to get to know the area.
Since Denver is essentially a city of neighborhoods, you can also get acquainted with them through DPL’s Neighborhood Guides. Read about the history and development of 17 Denver neighborhoods from Barnum to LoDo on the library website, complete with pictures, or check out a recommended book and plan your own walking tour.
With libraries around the country threatened with local budget cuts and closings plus the administration trying to eliminate all federal funds for libraries, making use of library services is one good way to demonstrate that these are dynamic and essential resources for all Americans.
One of my rules for living is to always find and frequent your local library. It’s probably open and waiting for you now.