Yesterday I posted this video on the buckfifty.org website – to my mind it’s a document of a time in Denver, the early 1990s, when the downtown area was still pretty deserted. My buddy Ray and I used to do performance art around town under the moniker of Two Significant Guys; our general mantra was that “you are only as successful as you pretend to be.” This was the era of Bush the first, so it seemed appropriate. It’s interesting that we spoke so much about change – I guess we were before our time.

So, in this video the Two Significant Guys encourage the feeding of kids while speaking of the importance of family values. We also eat mexican food and report on the implosion of buildings, including the Truckers Terminal and Montgomery Wards. Recorded in Denver in 1991 and 1992 with Hugh Graham and Ray Schelgunov under the direction and camera of Mike Reddick.

I added a new post to buckfifty.org today that’s pretty fascinating. It includes a slideshow of rejection letters from a scrapbook that jhh and I found in our basement back when we lived at 29th and Wyandot here in Highland.

The author of the scrapbook was Mary E. Horlbeck, a writer who lived in Edgewater during the 1930s. Between 1933 and 1937 she created this book of 138 rejection letters she received from magazines and newspapers for short stories she had written. She did eventually publish some stories, but not until after this scrapbook was full. It’s a remarkable expression of the dedication of a writer to getting published during the great depression.

Scrapbooks provide a fascinating glimpse into the past; in fact, Jessica Helfand has published a book on the topic (Scrapbooks, published by Yale University Press). Although this scrapbook doesn’t have the design sensibility of some of those that Helfand includes in her book (Anne Sexton’s scrapbook, for instance) Mary Horlbeck’s scrapbook is still charming and insightful.

1.

Denver is a square, proud, prompt little place, surrounded by immensity.
–Demas Barnes (Denver visitor, 1865)

Denver is the unlikeliest of cities; there’s no port, no access to an ocean or a major river, nowhere to get to (easily) between here and there. Compared to other urban centers, it came late to the party, and unnaturally, forced on an unwilling landscape. Started by claimjumpers and promoted with false claims of easy money, there was never any gold at the confluence, but there was an opportunity to set up a transportation hub in one of the less explored and exploited regions of the country.

In the first two years, 100,000 people came through looking to find a fortune; by 1864, the city had less than 5,000 residents and was practically destroyed by flood and fire. For those still here, isolated in “this god-forsaken place,” it may as well have been the end of the world. It was touch and go until the railroad came in in 1870, setting off one of the first of Denver’s booms.

Maybe it was the boom and bust cycles, or the latecomer status, or the distance from centers of culture, but for much of the city’s history it’s been better known as a place to go through, rather than a place to stay.

2.

You may thank your stars that you left this country when you did, for it is deader than it ever was. The fact is I am getting damn sick of this God-forsaken place.
–Silas Soule (1861)

One hundred twenty years later, in the late 1980s, the oil bust wreaked havoc on the Denver’s economy; people were jumping ship for wherever they could make a living, and mostly anywhere was better than here. Downtown was sleepy and lonely (especially after hours), and the skyscrapers that had been built in the 70s emptied out as fast as they went up. The good news? Parking was plentiful and free.

One of the many odd jobs I had at that time involved emptying the offices (cubicles and desks mostly) from the Arco Tower on 17th Street in Downtown. For weeks, we loaded the furniture on carts and rolled them onto semi-trailers destined for warehouses in Texas. The wealth (and jobs) that had been imported left town when times turned tough.

Looking at the empty storefronts in the Arco Tower, my buddy Ray and I proposed to the property manager that we install a series of temporary artworks that would show the space off while also having a sense of humor. Our proposal? Cows. Denver, we thought, should embrace its traditions, and engage in a fun dialogue to encourage people to come back downtown.

It sounded good to us. But not to the property manager. Anything but cows, he said.

3.

…the rare beauty of the accidental location, the grandeur of the region, the charms of the climate, and the enormous permanent resources of the country became fixed in the minds of the people…
–Jerome Smiley, History of Denver (1900)

From its founding 150 years ago, Denver’s residents have described the city with a combination of self-deprecation and boisterous civic boosterism, sometimes with more than a touch of defensiveness. But along the way, something has changed, and there is a bit of self-confidence that doesn’t seem so out of place; there’s a willingness to embrace both the city’s frontier roots and its urban existence.

Denver is no longer so oddly placed in the middle of the frontier. The world has changed. Denver was an accidental city, but now it has grown to become a metropolitan center. Maybe now we can look back with some pride and just a little bit of nostalgia for our cowtown past.

–
Note: This post is co-published with a new project we kicked off this week in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the city of Denver. Called buckfifty.org, we intend to publish 150 expressions of the history, culture, and community of Denver over the course of the next six months (or so). And potentially drink some whisky along the way too. We are looking for submissions, please visit buckfifty.org if you are interested in participating.

The house is a mess, a rental property and not well-maintained, but it was all she could afford. Since she hurt herself the owner has been trying to get her to move out, but she doesn’t have the money to go anywhere else. So, they are involved in some litigation, or threats of litigation. I imagine that the owner wants to sell the house now, as I’m pretty sure she’s lost her homeowner’s insurance. But she can’t really kick Jane out, given that her slumlord ways were the reason that Jane got hurt in the first place. 

When Jane first moved in, she was excited to have a place of her own. She’d come back to Denver after getting out of an abusive relationship, and was looking to make a new start. But then one of her three sons moved in with his wife and kids. He had moved back to Colorado from North Carolina, where he’d been in the military, and needed a place to stay. His family stayed next door for several months while he looked for work. Eventually, he moved to the suburbs. As he said to me, he didn’t want his kids to go to school with a bunch of mexicans. Of course, he said he wasn’t racist. Just wants his kids to be with their own kind. 

Once his family moved out, Jane’s high school age son (her youngest), moved in. Just the two of them. At first. But then Jane told me one day that her son’s girlfriend was pregnant. His high school girlfriend. Soon enough, the girlfriend moves in, and now there are three generations there once again, now that the grandkid has been born. And more. Jane’s middle son moved back from Wyoming, where he’d apparently lost his job working on an oil rig. And her brother, he’s staying there too, just for a while. 

It’s a little unclear what anyone does over there, at least most of the time. There’s a lot of time spent smoking on the front porch, and the cigarette butts tend to pile up on the sidewalk, and then work their way down the hill into our yard. Occasionally, there’s a forty ounce beer bottle on display. But there’s almost never any sign of industrious activity. 

Last weekend we put up an Obama Biden sign in our yard. Not a big deal around here – this is a pretty urban neighborhood in Denver and, as you would expect, it votes pretty significantly to the progressive side of the spectrum. Of course, I realize that yard signs are not a particularly useful way to promote a candidate (fivethirtyeight.com had a pretty funny post on the topic last month), but what the heck. Show your flair. And, I thought maybe it might get our neighbors to consider becoming involved in politics, and maybe vote for their own self-interest.

So, imagine my surprise earlier this week when I look out and saw that our neighbors had put up some yard signs in front of their house. Three, actually. Two for John McCain, and one for Bob Schaffer. Apparently, they are three times as excited about their candidate as we are about ours. 

At first, I was shocked. Republicans? In my neighborhood? And right next door? And it’s the unemployed family with the unwed teenage mother who are on the verge of getting evicted, and have no where to go, and they are supporting McCain Palin and Big Oil Bob? Unbelievable. 

When I thought about it a bit more though, it does take a bit a cojones to politic for the republicans in this neighborhood. As Kenny Be said when we told him about it a couple nights ago, “hey, it’s easier to come out as gay in this neighborhood than republican.” 

I haven’t had the chance to ask why they support who they do, but I suppose I can imagine. There’s a teenage mom. Some military. Some fear of immigrants taking their jobs. Fear, really, has to be the driving force in their decisions. 

I’d love to see that fear replaced with hope – through education, job training, sustainable growth. I feel for Jane, and know that she’s got a lot on her plate, unemployed, hurt, with a teenage kid and his girlfriend and their son and her brother and her other son all living together and threatened with losing their home. It’s tough, and I hope for the best. 

Here’s hoping the election doesn’t turn out the way they want it to.

Vote 2008

I ran into Patty Calhoun at the primary this summer, and talked about how we’re going to miss going down to the polling place and visiting with the residents at the Ivy Manor (now called the Spearly Center) where voting day was the one of the most exciting events of the year. Somehow, that “I Voted” sticker just isn’t the same when it comes from your mail-in ballot, and not from the community-spirit infused volunteer.

The following is my attempt to make sense of an unnaturally long and tedious Colorado ballot. To create this version, I used a Ballot Guide tool provided by Politics West, which works pretty well. I did actually read the ballot amendments that are proposed, and I considered a variety of points of view, including progress now, the denver dailies, bell policy center, squarestate.net, and others.

Most of all, my decisions are based on an underlying belief that progressive politicians better represent a future of opportunity. I also believe that “citizen-sponsored’ amendments to the constitution are usually a bad idea, though that belief is occasionally tempered by the reality that some of the bad amendments we’ve passed in the past (aka, TABOR) require an occasional run around.

So here it is, for what it’s worth:

1. President

   1. John McCain
   2. → Barack Obama
   3. Charles Baldwin
   4. Bob Barr
   5. Cynthia McKinney
   6. Ralph Nader

2. U.S. Senate

   1. Bob Kinsey
   2. Bob Schaffer
   3. → Mark Udall

3. 1st Congressional District

   1. Martin Buchanan
   2. → Diana DeGette
   3. George Lilly

4. House District 5

   1. → Joel Judd
   2. J J Swiontek

5. Amendment 46 – Discrimination and Preferential Treatment by Governments

   Amendment 46 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: – prohibit Colorado governments from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, or public contracting; – make exceptions for federal programs, existing court orders or other legally binding agreements, and bona fide qualifications based on sex; and – provide the same remedies that are available for violations of existing Colorado anti-discrimination law.
   1. Yes
   2. → No
   Comment: 46 is stupid and unnecessary. Perfect example of a bad use of the amendment process.

6. Amendment 47 – Prohibition on Mandatory Labor Union Membership and Dues

   Amendment 47 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: ‚ prohibit requiring an employee to join and pay any dues or fees to a labor union as a condition of employment; and ‚ create a misdemeanor penalty for violation of this law.
   1. → No
   2. Yes
   Comment: Anything Jake Jabs is for, I’m against.

7. Amendment 48 – Definition of Person

   Amendment 48 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: define the term “person” to “include any human being from the moment of fertilization”; and apply this definition of person to the sections of the Colorado Constitution that protect the natural and essential rights of persons, allow open access to courts for every person, and ensure that no person has his or her life, liberty, or property taken away without due process of law.
   1. Yes
   2. → No
   Comment: Inane. Dangerous. Even our pro-life governor is against this.

8. Amendment 49 – Limitation on Public Payroll Deductions

   Amendment 49 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: -prohibit any public employee paycheck deduction, except for: deductions required by federal law; tax withholdings; court-ordered liens and garnishments; health benefit and other insurance deductions; deductions for savings, investment, and retirement plans; and deductions for charitable, religious, educational, and other tax-exempt organizations.
   1. Yes
   2. → No
   Comment: Interferes with individual choice and local control. Basically, an attempt to limit free speech.

9. Amendment 50 – Limited Gaming

   Amendment 50 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: – allow residents of Central City, Black Hawk, and Cripple Creek to vote to extend casino hours, approve additional games, and increase the maximum single bet limit; – give most of the gaming tax revenue that results from new gaming limits to Colorado community colleges and to the gaming cities and counties; – require statewide voter approval for any gaming tax increase if new gaming limits are adopted by any gaming town; and – exempt the revenue raised from new gaming limits from state and local revenue and spending limits.
   1. Yes
   2. → No
   Comment: This is one of the more interesting choices on the ballot. Apparently, I’m a puritan. Perhaps you are a libertarian, and believe that if someone is stupid enough to gamble, they deserve to lose their money. I, on the other hand, am afraid that someone, somewhere, is having more fun than I am. And, I’m voting against this because I don’t want to see that happen.

10. Amendment 51 – State Sales Tax Increase for Services for People With Developmental Disabilities

    Amendment 51 proposes amending the Colorado statutes to: – increase the state sales and use tax from 2.9 percent to 3.0 percent on July 1, 2009, and from 3.0 percent to 3.1 percent on July 1, 2010; – direct that the new money be used to pay for services for people with developmental disabilities and to help eliminate the waiting lists for services; – prohibit the legislature from reducing the current level of state funding for services for people with developmental disabilities; and – exempt the new money from state spending limits.
    1. → Yes
    2. No
    Comment: It seems that I’m a socialist. This is one of those times when I vote against my fundamental beliefs to get around TABOR (taxpayer bill of rights, for the acronym challenged). As a society, we have to treat people with disabilities with more respect.

11. Amendment 52 – Use of Severance Tax for Highways

    Amendment 52 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: require the state legislature to spend a portion of state severance tax collections on highway projects.
    1. Yes
    2. → No
    Comment: It’s a stupid idea to change the distribution of funds through the constitution.

12. Amendment 53 – Criminal Accountability of Business Executives

    BACKERS OF THIS MEASURE PULLED IT FROM THE BALLOT ON OCT. 2. WHILE THE QUESTION MAY STILL APPEAR ON YOUR BALLOT, RESULTS WILL NOT BE TALLIED.
    1. Yes
    2. No

13. Amendment 54 – Campaign Contribution Restrictions for Certain Govt. Contractors

    Amendment 54 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: – prohibit certain government contractors from contributing to a political party or candidate for the contract’s duration and two years thereafter; – prohibit contributors to ballot issue campaigns from entering into certain government contracts relating to the ballot issue; – apply the prohibitions on campaign contributions and ballot issue contracts to any contractor with a government contract or contracts that does not use a public and competitive bidding process soliciting at least three bids and with a total value greater than $100,000 in a single year; and – apply the prohibitions on campaign contributions and ballot issue contracts to a labor organization holding a collective bargaining agreement with a state or local government.
    1. Yes
    2. → No
    Comment: this is an attempt to reign in free speech, and it also places very tough contracting requirements on rural areas of the state.

14. Amendment 55 – Allowable Reasons for Employee Discharge or Suspension

    BACKERS OF THIS MEASURE PULLED IT FROM THE BALLOT ON OCT. 2. WHILE THE QUESTION MAY STILL APPEAR ON YOUR BALLOT, RESULTS WILL NOT BE TALLIED.
    1. Yes
    2. No

15. Amendment 56 – Employer Responsibility for Health Insurance

    BACKERS OF THIS MEASURE PULLED IT FROM THE BALLOT ON OCT. 2. WHILE THE QUESTION MAY STILL APPEAR ON YOUR BALLOT, RESULTS WILL NOT BE TALLIED.
    1. Yes
    2. No

16. Amendment 57 – Additional Remedies for Injured Employees

    BACKERS OF THIS MEASURE PULLED IT FROM THE BALLOT ON OCT. 2. WHILE THE QUESTION MAY STILL APPEAR ON YOUR BALLOT, RESULTS WILL NOT BE TALLIED.
    1. Yes
    2. No

17. Amendment 58 – Severance Taxes on the Oil and Gas Industry

    Amendment 58 proposes amending the Colorado statutes to: – increase the amount of state severance taxes paid by oil and natural gas companies, primarily by eliminating an existing state tax credit; – allocate the increased severance tax revenue to college scholarships for state residents, wildlife habitat, renewable energy projects, transportation projects in energy-impacted areas, and water treatment grants; and – exempt all oil and gas severance tax revenue from state and local spending limits.
    1. → Yes
    2. No
    Comment: Okay, here’s another example of going against my fundamental bias against constitutional amendment. But hey, why should Colorado be cheaper than Wyoming when it comes to the cost of oil drilling?

18. Amendment 59 – Education Funding and TABOR rebates

    Amendment 59 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: – eliminate rebates that taxpayers receive when the state collects more money than it is allowed, and spend the money on preschool through 12th grade (P-12) public education; – eliminate the required inflationary increase for P-12 education spending; and – set aside money in a new savings account for P-12 education.
    1. → Yes
    2. No
    Comment: Once again, an initiative to address the difficulties that TABOR has placed on funding – in this case for education.

19. Ref. L – Age Qualification for Serving in the General Assembly

    Referendum L proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: – lower the age requirement for serving in the state legislature from 25 to 21.
    1. → Yes
    2. No
    Comment: Okay, Referenda are different, they are offered up by the legislature. In this case, I’m not too concerned by having a 21 year old in the legislature. In exchange, I’d like to see the legal driving age raised to 25.

20. Ref. M – Eliminate Obsolete Constitutional Provisions – Land Value

    Referendum M proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: – remove a provision that allows the state legislature to delay taxing land value increases from planting hedges, orchards, and forests on private lands.
    1. → Yes
    2. No
    Comment: I would like to have a private forest, and I want it tax free. But I’ll vote for this anyhow.

21. Ref. N – Eliminate Obsolete Constitutional Provisions – Intoxicating Liquors

    Referendum N proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: – remove provisions related to the regulation of alcohol beverages from two sections of the constitution.
    1. → Yes
    2. No
    Comment: Because I want to be able to go into a saloon in Colorado.

22. Ref. O – Initiative Petition Requirements

    Referendum O proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: – decrease the number of signatures required to place a statutory initiative on the ballot, and increase the number of signatures required to place a constitutional initiative on the ballot; – require that eight percent of signatures for constitutional initiatives be gathered from each congressional district; – require that drafts of proposed constitutional initiatives be submitted for review earlier in the year; – extend the time period for collecting signatures for statutory initiatives; – increase the number of votes required for the legislature to change a statutory initiative for five years after the statute takes effect; and – allow the public and state legislators to comment on proposed initiatives at a public meeting.
    1. → Yes
    2. No
    Comment: YES, oh yes, for the love of all things holy. Look at this insane ballot! Dearest neighbors, please vote for this.

23. DPS Referred Issue 3A

    SHALL DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS (SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1) DEBT BE INCREASED $454 MILLION, WITH A MAXIMUM REPAYMENT COST OF $990 MILLION, AND SHALL DISTRICT TAXES BE INCREASED $59 MILLION ANNUALLY (ESTIMATED TO RESULT IN A TAX INCREASE OF APPROXIMATELY $5 DOLLARS PER YEAR FOR EVERY $100,000 OF RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY VALUE) TO COMPLETE NECESSARY RENOVATIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS DISTRICTWIDE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE FOLLOWING: • MAKING CRITICAL REPAIRS AND RENOVATIONS, THAT TOUCH ALMOST EVERY SCHOOL BUILDING OR GROUNDS IN THE DISTRICT • IMPROVING COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY ACROSS THE DISTRICT • REPLACING DETERIORATING SCHOOL PLAYGROUNDS WITH NEW ONES THAT ARE SAFER 14 • CONSTRUCTING A NEW KINDERGARTEN-THROUGH-EIGHTH GRADE AND NEW HIGH SCHOOL TO ACCOMMODATE THE RAPID STUDENT GROWTH IN FAR NORTHEAST DENVER • EXPANDING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CLASSROOM CAPACITY TO ACCOMMODATE THE INCREASING DEMAND OF PRESCHOOL AND KINDERGARTEN PROGRAMS
    1. → Yes
    2. No
    Comment: Children are the future. And I am, apparently, a socialist.

24. State Board of Education (1st CD)

    1. → Elaine Gantz Berman

25. District Attorney 2nd District

    1. → Mitch Morissey

26. RTD District A

    Includes Denver, Glendale and parts of Arapahoe County      

    View a map of districts: DISTRICT MAP

    To look up your district by address: RTD LOOKUP

    1. Bill James
    2. Peter Lorenzen
    3. → John Maslanik
    4. Laura Yribia
    Comment: John seems like a good bet. Bill James would probably be fine too. Toss a coin?

27. RTD District D

    Includes Bow Mar, parts of Denver, Englewood, Lakewood, Littleton, and Sheridan      

    View a map of districts: DISTRICT MAP

    To look up your district by address: RTD LOOKUP

    1. → Barbara Brohl

28. RTD District E

    Includes Aurora, Centennial, Denver, and Greenwood Village      

    View a map of districts: DISTRICT MAP

    To look up your district by address: RTD LOOKUP

    1. → William McMullen

29. Supreme Court

    BALLOTS WILL ASK: “Shall (Name and Court) be retained in office?” Select the box next to each person’s name if you want to vote “YES”
    1. → Honorable Allison H. Eid
    2. → Honorable Gergory J. Hobbs Jr.
    Comment: Okay, where the judges are concerned I’m going off the recommendations of my friend Matt in the State Attorney’s office. He says that usually it’s fine to vote to retain everyone, except for Judge Nottingham, who resigned anyhow.

30. Court of Appeals

    BALLOTS WILL ASK: “Shall (Name and Court) be retained in office?” Select the box next to each person’s name if you want to vote “YES”
    1. → Honorable Steven L. Bernard
    2. → Honorable David M. Furman
    3. → Honorable Robert D. Hawthorne
    4. → Honorable Jerry N. Jones
    5. → Honorable Gilbert M. Román
    6. → Honorable Diana L. Terry

31. District Judge 2

    BALLOTS WILL ASK: “Shall (Name and Court) be retained in office?” Select the box next to each person’s name if you want to vote “YES”
    1. → Honorable Martin F. Egelhoff
    2. → Honorable Robert S. Hyatt
    3. → Honorable John W. Madden IV
    4. → Honorable Anne M. Mansfield
    5. → Honorable Robert L. McGahey Jr.
    6. → Honorable Larry J. Naves
    7. → Honorable Sheila A. Rappaport

I had a conversation with Rudi Cerri of DOCA, and he pointed out that Dialog:City was intended primarily as a program for the residents of Denver, and not for the attendees at the Convention. It’s unfortunate (though understandable) that it took place during the DNC – many denverites were staying away from downtown and all the traffic hassles, so the events weren’t as well-attended as they might have been otherwise. Nonetheless, it was great fun for those of us who were able to make it.

I didn’t make it to everything, but the following are some thoughts and photos from where we did make it to.

Terra Nova: Antarctic Suite

On Sunday night in the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, DJ Spooky (Paul Miller, formerly known as the ‘subliminal kid’) offered an hour or so of electronic soundscapes with imagery overhead addressing the issue of the antarctic ice shelf and global warming.

Although the political component of the imagery was a bit obvious and risked preaching to the choir (e.g., US residents create more greenhouse gasses than anyone else in the world), overall the combination of music and images had a hypnotic feeling that was reminiscent of old school performance art.

I snapped a couple of photos before I was told it wasn’t allowed due to potential copyright violations (which I found pretty amusing given Paul Miller’s writings on remix culture and the art of the mashup.

A Spiritual Singalong

On Monday, Jill and I headed down to the DCPA, where we caught part of Ann Hamilton’s performance piece entitle “O”. It involved a combination of adult and child choirs, including members of The Spirituals Project (started by the remarkable Dr. Art Jones of the University of Denver).

The work was essentially a choral singalong in a unique urban setting – the choirs were on the stairs in the stairs of the DCPA Galleria, while the audience were on the ground. The roundness of the long O sound that was used to anchor the singing, combined with the acoustics of the galleria, gave the event a fullness and richness that worked to complement the simplicity of the staging.

At the end of the performance, the chorus and audience joined in singing America The Beautiful. It was pretty emotional, and I although I’m not usually overly patriotic, I found myself choking up (twice in one night, actually – the second time was during Michelle Obama’s speech).

Jill and I had the chance to meet Ann on Tuesday; she was extremely gracious and easy to talk to. She said that music has been increasingly important for her work in recent years, including at her Acoustic Tower in California, where she has worked with Meredith Monk, among others. This photo doesn’t really do justice to the experience, but it gives some sense of what went on there.

Images from Iran

Over in Civic Center Park, just across from where the police and anarchists were having a bit of an altercation, there was an independently produced installation called “Pictures of You: Images From Iran.” The artist, Thomas Loughlin, wanted to show the connections between people from around the world; the portraits of iranians are printed on translucent fabric and hung on the walls and across the ‘halls’ of a mosque-like structure. All in all, quite a beautiful effect.

Luke Dubois: From Gentleman to Terror

Luke Dubois’ installation, called “Hindsight”, uses the familiar eye chart as the starting place to analyze the contents of State of the Union Addresses from Washington to Bush. He included a separate panel for each address. The results offers some fun and startling insights into the concerns of the country at different times in our history.

It turns out that “Gentleman” was the most common word in Washington’s speeches, while “Terror” was the most common in the shrub’s addresses. No big surprise there, I suppose.

During the course of the convention, there were docents available to explain the various works, and one of them (the best one, from my perspective) was my mom, who did her part to help explain the details of American history as explored by Luke Dubois. Here’s a photo of her in front of Bill Clinton’s State of the Union roundup. Oddly, she didn’t want her picture taken in front of George W Bush’s tablet.

We didn’t make it everything – I was sorry to miss Krzysztof Wodiczko’s ‘Veteran Vehicle Project’ (I just saw the humvee during the day, not while it was projecting at night, and only saw Minsuk Cho’s Air Forest in City Park from a distance. But still, it was great to see that culture can be explored in conjunction with the american political process.

The welcome address was in the Elitches theater, where we were kept at a very safe distance from those making their presentations. Like, several hundred feet away. Apparently, the event was designed to cater to the 20 or 30 photographers with press passes.

Okay, you can’t see much in that panorama, so here’s as good a close up as I could come by from the cheap seats. If you squint you can see our governor Bill Ritter, mayor John Hickenlooper, Senator Ken Salazar, and attorney Steve Farber, who is apparently responsibly for raising a lot of the 50 million bucks it took to bring this party to town.

At least the speeches were mercifully short, and there was one of the best national anthems I’ve heard (sung by the performers at PhaMaLy), and some great dancing in full regalia by representatives of the Southern Ute, Ute Mountain, and Northern Ute tribes. Unfortunately, we were too far away to get a decent photo.

Once the official presentation was over we were treated to a performance by the Flobots. The Flobots offer a high energy combination of rap and rock with a classical flair (really!), and their politics are terrific. Fortunately, the crowd was allowed to get down to the stage during their performance.

Regarding their intentions for the convention, they put out this statement on their website:

During the DNC we will seek to embody the change we wish to see in the world by behaving as citizens of an America that does not yet exist. We invite you to join us.

You have to love a band that quotes Langston Hughes:

“America never was America to me, and yet I swear this oath – America will be!”

The evening ended up with enough fireworks to scare the dog, who was cooped up in the house a half mile away.

Then we went on to the kickoff of the Karaoke Convention at the Supreme Court bar. Karaoke Convention is a pretty clever idea, here’s an image of a participant doing his karaoke to the dulcet tones of Hillary Clinton’s concession speech. You get the idea.

It actually wasn’t overly crowded downtown, which is a bit surprising, though I’m thinking that people are staying away from the city because they’re afraid of too much traffic. Of course, it’s going to get crowded soon – we’re lucky to be able to walk down to where the parties are. Assuming we find out where the parties are.

I posted some of the photos from the evening on Flickr, and plan to post some other updates this week.

The gist of the article is that this city is willing to be less serious and more playful in the approach to public spaces. It’s always tough to pigeonhole a community into a single perspective, but it is certainly true that, as Jim Green points out in the article, Denver, at it’s best, combines “sophistication and informality.”

The most ambitious initiative in the whole DNC mix is Dialog:City, which involves nine internationally known artists – it’s been criticized (probably with some merit) for not including enough local talent, but it will be exciting to see how it all comes out. JHH and I are planning to attend the premiere of Terra Nova, DJ Spooky’s mashup/multimedia performance at the Ellie Caulkin’s Opera House on Sunday. Other than that, we’re mostly planning to keep our options open all week. Lots of walking around, a tourist in our own town.

The kickoff for the Dialog:City events is at Robischon Gallery tonight (Thursday, the 21st). Jim has done his part to include local artists, including Jill Hadley Hooper and 15 others, for a related show called My Yard Our Message in conjunction with the Walker Art Center’s Unconvention program. The works will be moving to Minneapolis for the Republican’s upcoming Dog and Pony show. Here’s Jill’s addition to the mix – it’s a consideration of the topic of Animal Rights called “Free Range?”.

Of course, not all work in Denver these days has to be either political or overtly humorous. We’re opening a show this friday at Ironton Studios (called Internal Combustion) featuring large scale drawing by Bill Stockman. These drawings (some are 10 feet tall) are all about gesture. Though they also have a certain amount of informal sophistication too.

One of the first cemeteries in the american west designed as a park, with paths for carriages, and trees for shade, and roses, for a generation or so Riverside served as the resting place of the pillars of society, territorial governors and mayors and pioneers and publishers. It was filled with statuary and civil war heroes and abolitionists and shady characters and mothers who died in childbirth, and lots of children who died too young.

But it was downstream from the city, in an industrial area near the city of commerce, and it ended up on the wrong side of the tracks. Even before the Railway line came through, the wealthy had moved on to another part of town. Riverside was left to the working men and the working women, to immigrants and laborers and indigents.

And so there began a long, slow decline, the slow death of a place honoring the dead, exacerbated by the western thirst for water. It’s too far gone now, in many ways. Trees have died, and roses, and there will never again be kentucky blue grass between the graves. In the end, the old resting place will settle back into the dusty plains, as we’ll all settle into oblivion.

There is something profoundly human about the desire to immortalize ourselves with a mark in time. Perhaps it explains the creative impulse, the desire to say “I was here, now.” Or to commemorate a loved one with as generous a statement as you can afford.

In the early days of the american frontier, the cemetery was a primary form of expression, perhaps the only way for most people to say, I was here. I loved. I made my mark. And there is sadness in the realization that of all the monuments, each one for someone who lived and loved an died, so few stories survive.

There is an austere beauty to the prairie, and at Riverside it’s poignant given the location between the smelter and the refineries. It’s not a traditional beauty, not fecund and rich and fertile, but more elusive and fleeting and dry. Like the west, the prairie scene doesn’t give away it’s secrets. They are too valuable to waste on the unobservant.

Times change; the cemetery is no longer the tradition it once was. Burial is now the exception rather than the rule. Still, there’s something to looking to the past, something to gain from saving what’s left of this history.

For a while at least. Until oblivion.