Late Summer At The Zoo...

I went to the Denver Zoo yesterday afternoon to take a few photographs, but didn't have much hope for any good shots, since it was sunny and 97 degrees, and in those conditions, most of the animals either hide in the shade, stay inside, or just sleep the day away. One exception was the rhino in the photograph on the left, who was sitting underneath a shelter in the middle of its compound. And as you can see, he or she was more than happy to pose for a portrait.

The large male orangutan in the photograph on the right decided to stay indoors with the rest of its clan, and lay down against the door to the cage, no doubt daydreaming about dinnertime. There is a lot of hay and other such matter on the floor, and much of it seems to attach itself to the animals. Perhaps they should have an intern go into the compound, soap them up, and hose them all off. Considering the heat, I am sure they would all appreciate it.

The hippo in the photograph on the left spent most of the time I was there underwater, only occasionally coming to the surface to take a breath. In previous visits, I have photographed it playing with what looks like a giant beach ball, but this time, staying cool took priority. The water looked pretty dirty, by the way. Perhaps when the intern gets done hosing down the orangutans, he or she can take care of that pool, too.

On the other hand, it looks like the gorilla in the photograph on the right has just plain given up. Which is pretty strange, since gorillas are native to the tropical rain forests of Africa, where it is not only hot, but unlike here in Denver, very humid, too. I think the Denver Zoo really spoils these animals, what with air conditioning, cable television, and occasional massages, also administered by interns. In any case, if readers out there are interested, the Denver Zoo is always looking for new interns. For some reason, turnover is very high.

Continental Divide

One of the great things about living in Denver is that you are only a 29 minute drive from the mountains. All you have to do is head west on Interstate 70, past the ugliness that is Lakewood, drive around the outskirts of Golden ("Where the West Lives"), and you are heading up the foothills. As soon as you pass Lookout Mountain, site of Buffalo Bill's grave, you are in Genesee, at an atitude of 7,600 feet. As you drive under the overpass leading to that community, you can see the entire Continental Divide before you, as seen in the photograph above. Of course, if you go a little further, you will run into a traffic jam when the lanes merge from 3 lanes into 2, especially on weekends, and past that, you will encounter road work at Floyd Hill, which is expected to continue for at least the next 20 years. And so even though you are enjoying that mountain atmosphere while sitting in you car, it probably will take you a while to cross that Continental Divide and get to Breckenridge (Breck to us hipsters) on the other side. And don't even think about making the return trip to Denver on a Sunday afternoon. It could take days. After all, every silver lining has a cloud.

A Pleasant Wednesday Afternoon In Boulder

My sister Susan I and visited Boulder this past Wednesday afternoon, and it reinforced my belief that Boulder is a truly great place to live (or just hang out, if you can't afford the 7th most expensive real estate market in the country). It was "Move-In Week" for University of Colorado students, and so there was a lot of energy around town, especially on the Pearl Street Mall, where I took the photograph above as we were leaving the Boulder Bookstore. The Boulder Bookstore, by the way, was doing a brisk business, and in my opinion is the best bookstore in the state. It is packed with interesting titles, including a LOT of bargain books, and is just a fun place to spend time. All in all, a very pleasant afternoon.

Visiting With Joe At The 2023 Summer Art Market

I visited with my friend Joe Higgins, seen in the photograph on the left, yesterday afternoon in front of his artwork at the Art Student League of Denver's Summer Art Market. Joe specializes in monotype printmaking, and after being inspired by a recent exhibition of Fillmore Concert Posters held at the Denver Art Museum, has produced a large number of very impressive and very colorful prints. Joe has recently retired from several of his jobs (including at the University of Denver Bookstore), giving him a lot more time to spend on his art, although he still teaches classes two days a week at the Art Student League. Be sure to check out his work at  https://www.joehigginsmonotypes.com/.

The Summer Art Market takes place each year in front the ASLD's building at 2nd and Grant Streets. It features over 150 artists working in a variety of mediums. I especially like this show because it takes place in an historic Victorian era neighborhood, and to me the houses and streets where the event takes place add to the wonderful ambiance. And many of the people who attend this festival come every year, and greet the artists as old friends. I strongly suggest you put it on your calendar for next year.

One Hot Summer For Florida

It has been a very hot and very wet summer in Florida this year, including in Stuart, where my sister Susan and I own a condo we inherited from our parents, Nelson and Mary, who moved there from Chicago back in 1976. After renting the place out for the past 14 years to help pay expenses, we have decided to take it back next August, and spend half the year there and half in Denver. August has always been one of my favorite months in Stuart - there is much less traffic, always a breeze off the ocean at the beach, and a 9 hole golf course at our condo complex all to myself. You can also walk down to the pier each evening to watch the sunset over the St. Lucie River, and have that all to yourself, too. Best of all, you can dine by the water without having to wait for a table, and have time to walk around after dinner and enjoy the ambiance while it is still light outside, which is when I took the above photo years ago of my mother and Susan at the Pirate's Loft Restaurant. I just hope next August will be back to normal when we finally take the place back. And is that realistic? Probably not, but we can always dream, can't we?

The Norman

I drive past The Norman, a 6-story condo building on South Downing Street, located directly across from the Denver Country Club, several times a week. Each time I go by, I always think it looks kind of creepy, especially in the winter, when all the leaves are off the trees and everything looks so stark. I strongly believe that if they decided to do a remake of Rosemary's Baby and set it here in Denver (and why not - the Perry Mason Movie of the Week starring Raymond Burr was filmed here in the 1990s), it should definitely be set at The Norman. I recently stopped to take a few photos of it when I went biking this past week.

One of the photos I took of The Norman can be seen on the right. When you get right down to it, it doesn't appear to be all that creepy. I guess it is just a feeling I get when I look at it. Hearing the chants of a Satanic coven coming from an open window probably adds to that feeling (just kidding). The place was built by prominent Denver architect William Norman Bowman (hence the name) in 1924, and is said to be one of Denver's best preserved luxury apartment buildings from the 1920s and 30s. Bowman designed more than 30 buildings in Denver, including quite a few now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and died in his home at The Norman in 1944. This is not a cheap place to live - 2 bedroom apartments start at $3,100 when they are available. Not in the same league as The Dakota, across from Central Park in New York City, where Rosemary's Baby was rumored to be set, but pretty pricey for Denver. And is the place haunted? I could not find a single mention of any ghosts on the internet. Probably scared away by all the Satanists.

Commons Park

The City of Denver really scored a hit when they developed Commons Park, which is also known as Riverfront Park after the neighborhood it borders. This development was built from what used to be rail yards. One side of the park is fronted by expensive condo and apartment buildings, and on the other side is the Platte River. The photograph above shows the tree-lined walkway across the street from those pricey residences. It is an extremely desirable neighborhood to live in, and it makes me wonder why the same thing wasn't done with the River North (RINO) neighborhood, another trendy Denver locale. RINO was originally an area of warehouses and industrial buildings, many of them still standing among the high rise apartments and brew pubs in the area. But except for a small spot along the Platte River, there are no parks or open spaces there. And the place still looks like an industrial area, with amenities. But ugly is still ugly. Damn! I should have been a city planner. But it's still not too late. After all, I am only 70. Which these days is the new 40. And thank God for that.

Got Buffalo?

My sister Susan and I visited the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge this past Saturday. This refuge was once a chemical weapons manufacturing center just to the east of Denver, and after being shut down and undergoing a major cleanup, was considered a prime location for the expansion of Stapleton Airport, which, I might add, was a mere 20 minutes from downtown Denver. Instead, it was decided to build an entirely new airport close to the Kansas State Line, to the joy of the city's cab drivers, and instead this area was turned into a wildlife refuge. To be honest, the few times I have driven through it I have been hard pressed to find any wildlife other than the occasional deer. However, this time we drove past an entire herd of buffalo, as seen in the photograph on the left.

This is one of two buffalo herds near Denver. The other is up in Genesee, in the mountains just west of the city, although I have only actually seen that herd once in all the time I have lived here. The herd at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, however, is much more outgoing, and even poses for photographs, like the buffalo and calf in the photograph on the right. I got out of the car to take this photo, and when I saw the sign on the fence warning visitors to not get out of your car under any circumstances, quickly took that pair's portrait and hurried back to the car, happily avoiding arrest. To be honest, this very large tract of land is pretty damn ugly. If you are a fan of the Great Plains, you will love it here. As for me, a drive through this wildlife refuge every couple of years, or for that matter, every couple of decades, works just fine.

Say It Ain't So, Joe...

I was shocked to see on the WGN Television News that my South Side heroes, the Chicago White Sox, are contemplating a move to either a new location in Chicago or the suburbs, or even to a different city, possibly Nashville. Their stadium lease is up in 6 years, and so this is probably not a surprise. Especially since back in the late 1980s, Jerry Reinsdorf (Swinesdorf to some) threatened to move the team to Tampa if he did not get a new stadium. He got one, built right across the street from Comiskey Park, which was torn down after the new park opened in 1991. Sadly, it was built just before Camden Yards opened in the early 1990s, starting the whole retro ballpark movement, and "New Comiskey Park" was ugly, fan unfriendly, and a white elephant almost right after it opened. The first row of seats in the upper deck at what is now called Guaranteed Rate Field are farther away from the field than the last row at Old Comiskey, seen in the photograph on the left around the time it opened in 1910. And no, I DID NOT take that photo. It was printed in the Chicago Tribune yesterday morning in an article about the possible move.

I did, however, take the photograph on the right. Kind of. Back in 1980, the year before I moved from Chicago to Denver, I attended a lot of games at the original Comiskey Park. One Sunday afternoon I was walking down the concourse and looked up to see I was about to run into Harry Caray, the White Sox baseball announcer (along with sidekick Jimmy Piersall). I was able to get a great photo of him, and through the magic of Photoshop later combined it with a photo I took of the old Comiskey Park scoreboard. It was a great place to watch a ballgame, and a very fun summer, but at the end of the year, Bill Veeck, the baseball legend and team owner, was forced to sell the team, for financial reasons, to Jerry Reinsdorf, who immediately declared that "from now on we are going to run a class operation." Veeck, offended by this remark, became a Cubs fan and starting hanging out at Wrigley Field, where he worked on the grounds crew for his father, who was the Cubs team president at the time, when he was young. 

Veeck was originally going to sell the team to Eddie DeBartolo, who was going to have Bill run the team, but the other owners, who hated Veeck and his many wacky promotions to get fans in the stands, voted against selling the team to DeBartolo, on the grounds of him being Italian or some such thing. And thus the team went to Reinsdorf, who has owned it to this day, although he also mentioned he might sell the team (we can always hope). It was Bill Veeck who talked Harry Caray into singing "Take me out to the Ballgame" during the 7th inning stretch, a tradition he continued when he became the announcer for the Chicago Cubs and became a national celebrity thanks to the advent of cable and WGN Chicago becoming a "Superstation." I also took the photo on the left of him performing that song sometime during that summer of 1980. Caray sometimes would do "The Twist" (remember that?)  to the music being played on the ballpark speakers. I especially remember him twisting to "Run Around Sue," a truly different era from today. I do hope that Reinsdorf sells the team, and the new owner builds a new, fan friendly retro ballpark right across the street from Guaranteed Rate Field, on the spot where Old Comiskey Park used to stand, bless its memory. But in this day and age, I am not going to hold my breath.

The Golden Fine Arts Festival

This past weekend I attended the 33rd Annual Golden Fine Arts Festival, held each year on Golden's 11th Street, which runs along Clear Creek and the Clear Creek Historic Park near downtown Golden, Colorado. This is one of my favorite events of the summer, but I almost missed it due to a lack of parking. Unlike in previous years, the streets around the festival now require a special permit to park, and every single damn city parking lot was full. I made a last ditch swing through one of those lots, and happily, someone was just pulling out and I grabbed their space. The web site for the festival says that 30,000 people usually attend this event every year, and now I believe them, even if it didn't look like 30,000 people were there when I finally started browsing the art.

Golden was founded in 1859, and the area where the festival is held is part of an historic district which features many homes and commercial buildings, most from the 1870s. The Astor House Hotel, which until recently was a museum and now has been taken over by the Foothills Art Center, dates from 1867. It started out as a rooming house, and is known as the first place in town that had a bathtub. The owner rented out the bathtub to the public, and made more money from that than renting rooms. I wonder if the Motel 6 does that too? Just down the street is the Old Capitol Grill. Golden became the territorial capital of Colorado back in 1862, and the territorial legislators met in the upstairs of this building, and then headed down to the saloon on the first floor after their work was done. There was and still is a glassed-in area in the bar for the ladies, so they would not be corrupted by sitting in the bar area itself. I think they stopped this practice several years ago.

As for the art, there were 100 booths with over half the artists coming from out of state. There were a number of photographers displaying their work, mostly Colorado and western landscapes, although Scanlan Windows to the World Photography did have really nice photographs from around the globe. They are out of Glenwood, Iowa, by the way, which is just outside Omaha, Nebraska, which I have noted is featuring television ads trying to attract tourists there for a fun weekend. Seriously! But I digress. As I mentioned before, the festival was adjacent to the Clear Creek Historic Park, which has a number of buildings from pioneer days on display, such as the old schoolhouse in the background of the photograph on the left.  If they wanted, art goers could enter the park and tour the buildings right after they purchased one of those owl sculptures, or whatever the hell they are, as seen in the foreground. No doubt perfect for your balcony! All in all, a very pleasant afternoon. Although they had better fix their parking problems by next year, or if not, I will demand to know the reason why.

Watching The White Sox Beat The Rockies At Coors Field

I went to see the Colorado Rockies play my South Side heroes, the Chicago White Sox, yesterday afternoon with my friend Mark, seen in the photograph on the left. The Rockies scored 25 runs against the Sox on their way to winning the first two games in the series, and so I did not have much hope for a Chicago victory. All the television sports reporters were wishing the Rockies could play the Sox every day, which is pretty humiliating for a team that was expected to win their division before the start of the season. And therefore I was pleased to see the Sox score 7 runs in the 8th inning and beat the Rockies 10-5.

The White Sox have lost 18 of their last 26 games, resulting in a 49-75 record, one better than the Rockies, the worst team in the National League, which does not speak well for the White Sox. On the bright side, the Sox are in a weak division and while the Rockies are currently 28.5 games out of first, the Sox are a mere 15.5 games back. Which means if they could win their next 16 games in a row, and the other teams in the division go on a losing streak, they could still win it all. Mark feels this is pretty unlikely, and I am afraid he is right. As humorist and White Sox fan Jean Shepherd once said, if he were leading troops during a war and needed to find volunteers for a suicide mission, he would ask if any of those soldiers were White Sox fans, since they are used to hopeless situations. And yes, it is indeed a hopeless situation for both teams, at least for the next several years, if not more.  

Disney World Drama

Disney World has been in the headlines a lot lately due its very public feud with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Disney criticized DeSantis' "Don't say gay law," and the governor responded by trying to end all the special privileges Disney has been granted over the years. Attendance has been down this summer at Disney World and its other theme parks, but the general consensus is that high heat and lots of rain are to blame. And I am here to tell you that Central Florida, where the parks are located, is indeed hot as hell. No ocean breezes to cool you off there. I have visited Disney World three times, first back in the late 1970s, where the picture on the left of my sister Susan and I was taken. It is hard to believe that it is even me in that photograph. Perhaps I really have aged a bit since my 20s.

As I recall, that was a happy day at Disney World, proof of which is the photograph of Susan and my mother Mary on the right. The cost of a ticket was not unreasonable back then, and so there was money left over for ice cream cones. These days, the cheapest ticket is $109 during the months of August and September, and other times of year can go as high as $189. This is for everyone over the age of 10, no less. Could this also be another reason for the decline in attendance? Standing in line for the rides in extreme heat and sudden downpours, after taking out a loan to pay for your family of four's admission to the park, must be a major bummer. Especially when it is cooler and free at the beaches along the ocean. Plus, as an added bonus, no giant rodents in sight, either.

The 9th Man

I just finished reading The 9th Man, "a Luke Daniels Thriller," by Steve Berry and co-author Grant Blackwood. Berry has written 17 Cotton Malone thrillers, featuring a retired government agent living in Copenhagen, who owns an antiquarian bookstore, but is frequently called back to his former agency, the Magellan Billet, for special assignments. This time, however, the story features one of his Magellan Billet sidekicks, Luke Daniels, who gets a call from an old friend, Jillian Stein, who has unwittingly drawn the attention of a sinister group that wants to keep a secret about the Kennedy assassination buried at all costs. The action moves from Belgium to Luxembourg to Louisiana to Wyoming, with a grand finale in the Bahamas. The story was fast paced, with a surprise ending, and I enjoyed it, but in my opinion, Daniels just does not have the charisma of Cotton Malone. It is definitely worth reading, but I still have to ask when the next Cotton Malone will be coming out? Soon, I hope.

One Sooper Senior And His Sedan

I took the above photograph yesterday afternoon of a Colorado senior driving home in his vehicle after picking up a few items at the University Hills King Soopers Grocery Store here in Denver. This location, by the way, is where the U-Hills Mall used to stand, and which once held the Hatch's Bookstore I used to manage in the early 1980s. But, of course, I digress. What I really want to know is whether this guy is a time traveler heading back to 1925, or a mountain man returning home to his cabin deep in the wilds of the Rockies? Could he be Santa Claus on his summer break? Or perhaps just another eccentric California transplant doing his thing. California was once known as "the land of fruits and nuts." Whether that is still politically correct or not I do not know, but I suspect Colorado has probably taken over the title. I'm just sayin'.

A Peggy Fleming Sculpture In Evergreen

I went for a short walk on the trail around Evergreen Lake in - get ready for it - Evergreen, Colorado the other day, and on the way back saw the statue in the photograph on the left in front of the Evergreen Nature Center. Just for fun, I decided to have a closer look. It turned out to be a sculpture of Peggy Fleming, the former figure skater and gold medal winner at the 1968 Olympics in Grenoble. The sculpture is very contemporary in design and appropriately gold in color. But why was it here? I did some research on the internet, and found that Fleming, although born and raised in Northern California, now lives in the Denver area. It is the same old story - still another Californian moving to Colorado.

Another Olympic figure skater who has spent time in Colorado is Michelle Kwan. After she retired from skating, she attended the University of Denver, and graduated with a bachelors degree in international studies from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies. I remember seeing her once or twice at the DU Bookstore, where I was the store's Finance Manager. As I recall, the staff was all atwitter about it. And where is Kwan originally from? You guessed it - California! Do you see a pattern here? In any case, after getting a graduate degree from Tufts, she became active in politics and is now the U.S. Ambassador to Belize. Just think. If I had been smart, I could have used my tuition waiver to get a graduate degree in international studies, delved into politics, and today might be the U.S. Ambassador to who knows where? Perhaps Outer Mongolia. I hear spring is really nice there. And are they into ice skating?

Speaking Of Rome...

I see on the news that the City of Rome has opened up Largo Argentina, a square with the remains of four Roman Republican temples and Pompey's Theatre, to tourists, for the first time in something like 2,000 years. It was on the steps of that theater that Julius Caesar was assassinated back on the Ides of March in 44 BC. I personally know Largo Argentina as the place where you get off the bus to get to Hotel Smeraldo, where my sister Susan and I stayed when we visited Rome back in May of 2019. This hotel is just down the street from Campo de' Fiori, my favorite square in Rome. I had always thought Julius Caesar was killed there, but evidently not, although this square and Largo Argentina were all part of the same complex, as can be seen on a map of Ancient Rome at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largo_di_Torre_Argentina#/media/File:Roma_Plan.jpg, no doubt given away for free at ancient Shell chariot stations. I took the photograph above, by the way, of the monument to Giordano Bruno during our visit to Rome. He was an Italian philosopher, burned at the stake for heresy, at that exact location in Campo de' Fiori back in 1600. And they say the U.S. is violent.

Some Like It Hot - Rome Is Sizzling

The City of Rome is very hot these days, both as a tourist destination and for its extremely high temperatures. This past June downtown Rome reached 105 degrees Fahrenheit, its warmest temperature on record. Of course, that is only 40.8 Celsius, which, like dry heat, probably makes it seem much cooler. It is still pretty hot there, with temperatures this week in the upper 90s. On the bright side, Rome is at its best in the evenings, when the temperature drops, and the natives, many of whom work in air conditioned offices and shops during the day, take their nightly passeggiatas (evening strolls) and then dine around 9:00, a most civilized routine. I wish I could be there now and join them, the temperature be damned. And by the way, I took the photograph above back in May of 2019 at the foot of Rome's Spanish Steps, when temperatures were a bit cooler.

The Farmer's Market At Union Station

I was kind of amazed to find out that there is a farmer's market at Denver's Union Station every Saturday during the summer. Union Station was remodeled back in 2014 to make it into an upscale shopping and dining complex. Although Amtrak trains still stop there, the waiting area has been moved to a small space in the back, and the Grand Hall is now a giant living room, with sofas, desks, chairs, and tables. What used to be the ticket window has become part of the Terminal Bar (named for a former bar down the street frequented by Jack Kerouac), where you can order a drink and take it to the seating area of your choice. The farmer's market is located in front of the building, as seen in the photograph on the left.

I guess I really shouldn't have been surprised. Lower Downtown Denver (LoDo) and nearby Riverfront Park are filled with upscale apartment buildings, and even hipsters have to shop for groceries. although most of the booths feature expensive and unique food items, which is no surprise at all. And speaking of Amtrak, as I passed the status board on my way to the light rail train and home, I noticed that the 7:10 P.M. train to Chicago was now expected to leave just after midnight. Comforting to know that some things never change.

Hanging With Hick In The Hood

The last year I worked at the University of Denver Bookstore, after it was outsourced to Follett Higher Education Group (contractually obligated to keep all employees for at least a year), DU hosted the first presidential debate of 2012, and the bookstore had a booth outside, close to a free event related to the debate. As I recall, a cold front came in while we were out there, and University of Denver sweatshirts were selling like crazy. I was at the cash register ringing up sales, and none other than then governor and current U.S. Senator from Colorado John Hickenlooper stopped by to peruse our stock. He graciously consented to let me take the above photograph for my blog, which at that time was almost exclusively about DU and the DU Bookstore, to the great chagrin of the Follett people. Those swine! But I digress. The University of Denver spent a fortune hosting the event, allegedly to boost its prestige across the nation. And it worked, for a few days, anyway. This was the debate where Barrack Obama was kind of lethargic in debating Mitt Romney, which Saturday Night Live mocked in a skit the following Saturday that had Obama preoccupied with having forgotten to get his wife Michelle a birthday gift, thinking about what he could quickly pick up to hide that fact. One of his ideas, as Romney went on and on saying outrageous things without any response from Obama, was a University of Colorado sweatshirt. So much for the publicity for DU. No problem. You can always raise tuition to pay for it all.

Speaking Of DU...

I had lunch with my friend Stuart yesterday at Spanky's Urban Roadhouse, located just to the west of the University of Denver campus, which I waxed nostalgic about in yesterday's blog post. Stuart is doing well, and seems strangely unenthusiastic about his team, the Chicago Cubs, being only 2.5 games out of first place. Stuart grew up on the North Side of Chicago, and I suspect feels that being only 3 games over .500 in a weak divison does not bode well for a possible Chicago Cubs playoff run. I myself grew up in the South Side Brainerd neighborhood of Chicago, and have finally lost all hope for my South Side heroes, the Chicago White Sox - curently 23 games under .500 - to make a comeback this year. After lunch, we walked around the DU neighborhood, past the building Stuart lived in years ago, and then through the park across the street, where I took the photo of Stuart on the left.

Eventually we walked across the DU Campus, stopping in at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, where Stuart earned a graduate degree, and from there toured the (relatively) new DU Commons, which boasts a rooftop deck and "The Fourth Story at the Community Commons," as seen in the photograph on the right, where they serve beer, cocktails, and free (Yes! Free!) hors d'oeurves, but only between 4:00 and 8:00 P.M. Since we were about 3 hours too early, we decided to head back the way we came. Plus, since it is still 4 weeks before regular classes begin, and not a soul in sight anywhere in the building, will they really open up at 4:00, with free hors d'oeurves, no less? If you believe that, I have a bridge I want to sell you. A really nice one, too! It's in Brooklyn!

Crunch Time For DU

I took a walk across the University of Denver campus the other day, and everything was quiet and serene, as seen in the photograph on the left. However, all that will change very soon. Tomorrow the law school starts classes, which when I worked at the DU Bookstore marked the first wave of students coming to the store to purchase their required textbooks. However, I have heard that the now Follett Higher Education Group run DU Bookstore angered the law school so much that they now buy the books and sell them to the students themselves. That, of course, must make things much calmer on the sales floor these days.

Of course, the start of law school classes only resulted in 2 or 3 busy days on the sales floor. All the action was back in the stockroom, where boxes of books were stacked to the rafters, filling every nook and cranny, the staff desperately trying to get them unpacked and on the shelves before the first day of regular classes at the beginning of September. The campus itself still seemed outwardly calm, including University Hall, the oldest building on campus, dating from 1892 and seen in the photo on the right.

I worked at the DU Bookstore for 28 years, most of them as the store's Finance Manager, and my focus was preparing the sales floor for the peak periods, which started Labor Day weekend with the arrival of the freshman class, and their parents, for orientation week. By Friday, the sales floor was packed with students, preparing for the first day of classes on Monday. It was hellishly busy, and the summer lull was just a pleasant memory. The photograph on the left shows the new student center, on the right, replacing Driscoll North, constructed in 1984, the year I started working at the bookstore. Hard to believe a building only 35 years old would become obsolete, especially since University Hall has been around for 130 years, but amazingly enough, I was never consulted on the matter. The bridge in the center, over Evans Avenue, leads to Driscoll South, where the bookstore was relocated to from the Carnegie Library Building. Carnegie, by the way, truly was obsolete (a stockroom and offices in the basement that flooded after every rainstorm, and a sales floor above it with only a dumbwaiter for books connecting it with the basement). It deserved it's fate, and Carnegie Garden now stands in its place. A truly great improvement.

A Baseball Update

With a mere 7 weeks left in the major league baseball season, it is time to take a look at where things stand. My South Side heroes, the Chicago White Sox, have been a big disappointment this year, and are currently 22 games under .500, but to be fair, only 13 games out of 1st place (it is a very weak division). Their North Side rivals, the Chicago Cubs, are actually having a good season, after making a lot of positive moves during the off-season. Although they are only 3 games over .500 (a true sign of a mediocre, as opposed to really awful, team), they are only 2.5 games out of 1st place, thanks to also playing in a weak division. As for the Colorado Rockies, whose victory celebration over the Oakland A's I recently captured from the upper deck at Coors Field, as seen in the photograph above, they are indeed the worst team in the National League, but they are NOT the worst team in baseball. That honor belongs to those A's, who I might add beat the Rockies 2 games out of 3 during their recent series at Coors Field. And what conclusions can be made from all of this? For White Sox fans, they have seen all of this before, and are resigned to the inevitable. Cubs fans are, of course, hopeful about getting to the playoffs, but know in their hearts that the team would soon get eliminated. As for Rockies fans, they could care less. Coors Field is a great place to spend an afternoon or evening, most fans root for the opposing team anyway, and according to a national survey that came out before the season, their ballpark has the cheapest beer (at $3, believe it or not) of all the major league stadiums. Of course, we who live here in Colorado are still trying to figure out where the hell they are selling it. Even this late into the season, the search goes on.

The August Issue Of Chicago Magazine

The August issue of Chicago Magazine arrived a week or so ago, the first copy of that publication I have received since April. Unlike other magazines, which want you to renew your subscription 6 months in advance, the only way I ever find out that my subscription to Chicago Magazine has lapsed is when the issues stop coming. And then it takes almost 4 months to start receiving it again. Very strange indeed. In any case, this month was the "Best of Chicago" issue. While there were a few restaurants and stores mentioned that I would like to patronize when I come back home to Chicago for a visit, many of the "bests" I would avoid like the plague. And I would need to google a lot of the featured restaurant's offerings to learn what the hell they are before ordering. On the plus side, there were a number of interesting articles in the August issue, including one titled "A Short History of Chicago's Wildlife Celebrities," featuring a coyote in a Loop Quiznos, a cougar on the North Side, an alligator in the Humboldt Park lagoon, not to mention a giant snapping turtle on the North Branch of the Chicago River. Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, I personally never encountered such beasts - it is definitely a different world north of the Chicago River. And speaking of the South Side, there was an interview with White Sox legend Ozzie Guillen, too. All in all, this month's issue is definitely worth checking out.

Biking Past The Dancers. Sadly, They Are Still Dancing

I went for a bike ride this past weekend, and on the way home, went past The Dancers, a sculpture located in front of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts (The DCPA), and seen in the photograph above. There was a lot of controversy when this pair was unveiled, with most people wondering why it was decided to install a pair of very large dancing space aliens along Speer Boulevard. It didn't help that this work of art cost a cool 1.58 million dollars. A few years later, The Blue Bear was installed at a cost of $424,400 in front of the Denver Convention Center, but everyone likes that one, and thought it well worth the investment. Most people here even like The Blue Mustang, located at the entrance to Denver International Airport. It is nicknamed Blucifer, due to the fact that it has glowing red eyes and actually killed its creator when it fell on him. Blucifer was also quite a bargain, at a cost of $300,000. But can you really put a price on art? Definitely, if it features dancing space aliens costing well over a million dollars. Perhaps we could sell it to New York City - they would just love it there, I'm sure.

Mark Visits The UK And Chester

I got a text from my friend Mark, who is on vacation in the UK, mentioning that he visited Chester, which is a town that was first established as a Roman fort back in 79 A.D and located very close to Wales. Mark also sent along a photograph he took while there, which I took the liberty of combining with a photo I took of him a while back via the magic of Photoshop, as seen on the left. Chester is famous for its Victorian era black and white buildings, as well as St. John's, which was built in the 11th Century and was once the cathedral church. Chester, by the way, is located on the River Dee, which is no doubt named after Sandra Dee, who starred on the big screen as Gidget. It is a well-known fact that the British just love their teenage beach party movies. I'll have to ask Mark the reason for this when he returns to Denver.

Hatch's Bookstore 1984 / Hatch's Bookstore 1996

I started managing the Hatch's Bookstore at the University Hills Mall in South Denver back in 1981, and after getting married and finding that working 6 days a week (7 days a week during the Christmas season) was not helping the relationship, I applied for and was hired as the book buyer for the University of Denver Bookstore (and afterwards found I would be the Assistant Manager, too). The very day I started at DU, in July of 1984, I realized college bookstores were a very different animal, and I really missed my old job at Hatch's - stocking all the new titles, helping customers find books, and just the camaraderie with the staff. But there was no going back. The photograph on the left was taken of me at the upstairs cashier counter just before I left for DU.  

At the time, the U-Hills store and the Hatch's Bookstore chain were still doing well. Hatch's was owned by Bob Hatch, and consisted of bookstores in 5 Denver area malls, as well as stores in Craig, Colorado and Lawrence, Kansas. Hatch also owned a chain of card and gift shops. There were two additional bookstores owned by Hatch's sister. As I recall, Amazon was not a factor back then, but most of the Hatch's bookstores were located in malls with only one department store anchor, and when the department stores began consolidating, those smaller malls often lost those anchors and their traffic flow as well. The growth of the Tattered Cover Bookstore, with their giant stores in Cherry Creek and Lower Downtown (LoDo) didn't help either, and the chain started to go downhill. The photograph on the right, by the way, shows me entering the U-Hills Bookstore in my usual grandiose style.

I took the photograph on the left of what was left of Hatch's Bookstore at the U-Hills Mall back in 1996. If I didn't realize it when I first started at DU, the sight of the mall being torn down made me realize that even though it wasn't as much fun, working at the DU Bookstore, with the benefits the university offered, was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I was able to retire comfortably at age 66, which I would almost never have been able to do if I stayed on at Hatch's. A while back, a popular saying was "do what you love, and the money will follow." No doubt that is true for the lucky few, but not for most of us, I'm afraid. Reality sucks.

Six Years - Discovering Harlan Coben

None of the books I have on order from the Denver Public Library have come in yet (the waiting list for new books is very long here), and so I scanned my bookcases and chose to read Six Years, by Harlan Coben, which I picked up years ago at the Action Center of Lakewood's Beautiful Junk Sale, where you could buy an entire shopping bag full of books for $10 during the last hours of the event. I started the book, and was immediately hooked. It is the story of a college professor who had a love affair with a woman at a creative artists workshop six years earlier. At the end of that workshop, she told him she was marrying someone else. After attending her wedding, she made him promise never to contact her again. When he reads the obituary six years later of the man she married, he travels to South Carolina to attend the funeral, and is shocked to find that the widow, with two teenage boys, is not his ex-girlfriend. And so starts a dangerous search for the truth. This is the first book I have read by this author, and I definitely intend to read more. You should too.

The August Mutts of The Month

This month's Mutts of the Month were relaxing on the patio of the New Terrain Brewery in Golden, Colorado, which, as regular blog readers know, is my go-to place for dog portraits. The dog on the right in the above photograph was kind enough to look right at the camera and give me a big smile, while the one on the left couldn't care less if I was photographing it or not. Of course, it was a pretty hot day, and that particular dog does seem to have a lot of fur. I suppose it had other things on its mind, like what was keeping its owners from giving it a nice, cold bowl of beer. And, of course, I understand completely.

Even The Geese Are Suffering From The Heat

It has been extremely hot over much of the country this year, and even Denver has not been spared, although here it has been nothing like what is happening in Phoenix. Nevertheless, it has been hot enough for even the geese in Washington Park to find a nice spot in the shade and sit on the grass, with their tongues hanging out, like the one in the above photograph. Unlike people, these geese have the option of flying north to find cooler temperatures. However, they all seem to have decided they like it here, and are hellbent on staying no matter what, just like, as I have frequently pointed out on this blog, all those damn Californians now living here. Of course, if their numbers grow too large (the geese, not the Californians), the city will start its culling program once again. So watch out, guys!

The Stanley Hotel

My sister Susan and I drove up to Estes Park, Colorado from Denver yesterday afternoon, and while there went past the Stanley Hotel, as seen in the photograph above. The last time I visited the Stanley, I was able to drive right into the parking lot, go inside, and walk around a bit. I even went into the bar that was featured in the film adaption of The Shining, and had a beer. Stephen King used the Stanley as the inspiration for that horror story. However, the beer was pricey, the atmosphere was kind of blah, and there wasn't a ghost in sight, which was, of course, very disappointing. And so I left, unimpressed. This time around, they wanted $10 to park there if you weren't a guest of the hotel, and so we skipped going inside. After all, the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver is older than the Stanley (built in 1892 versus 1909), does not require you to pay for parking, and is rumored to have as many, if not more ghosts than the Stanley. Plus, it is just 20 minutes away from my condo. So there.

Exactly One Year Until The Good Life - Maybe

My sister Susan and I have decided to stop renting out (at least on a yearly basis) the Stuart, Florida condo we inherited from our mother Mary, and take it back exactly one year from today. This is a major step for us, since we have been renting the place out since 2009, when our mother passed away, to cover expenses. We are hoping that between the two of us, we will be able to avoid the living hell that is renting it out for the season (January thru March). Rentals go for a premium during those three months, but people expect everything to be perfect, which it never will be with a condo that still sports a classic, 1970s era vibe. I still wake up screaming from nightmares about our last seasonal rental years ago. But you do what you have to do. The community features 49 buildings around a 9 hole golf course, and 2 units across the street, a short walk from the St. Lucie River, for the anti-social types, where our condo is located. The photograph on the left is of my mother posing at the entrance to the river side of the complex, with our unit's building in the background.

My parents and I drove to Stuart back in April of 1975 to visit my Uncle Bill and Aunt Elsie (my mother's brother and sister-in-law), who had moved to the Monterey Yacht and Country Club (no yachts, just a yacht club due to dredging issues) a few years earlier. They wanted to see if they might also want to retire there, which they did the following year from Chicago. When visiting my aunt and uncle at their unit on the golf course, people would come up to the screened-in porch every few minutes to say hello and see what everyone was up to, as they played the second hole of the golf course. I think that is what inspired my father to buy on the river side. I just loved to stroll down to the river when I visited and take a few sunset photographs each evening, such as the one on the right that I took back in March of 1991. I really enjoyed the peace and solitude of the setting. Of course, our current tenants tell us that there are now groups that go down there together to watch the sunset, which is bad news for us anti-social types. Perhaps those sunset gawkers are just snowbirds - the swine - who come down January thru March. One can always hope.