Tag: colorado

Categories
politics

Open Letter to Governor Hickenlooper

I sent this to the governor of Colorado, John Hickenlooper today, after seeing the AP story about a Trump administration draft memo regarding mobilization of the National Guard to be used to round up undocumented immigrants. Yes, I am aware that we’re talking a draft, but I find it seriously horrifying that this is even being talked about as an option, however off-handedly or unseriously. This is not a thing you fucking joke about.

Anyway, that prompted me to write and send the following message today. I’m sharing it in the hope that others will feel encouraged to send similar messages.

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Dear Governor Hickenlooper:

Per the Associated Press today, a draft memo from the Trump Administration showed they’re thinking about using the National Guard to round up undocumented immigrants. Considering the absolutely tragic and shameful history of our own state when it comes to the National Guard being mobilized against our citizens and residents (i.e.: the Ludlow Massacre), this calls on us all to speak firmly against this notion before it can gather steam.

Beyond that, undocumented immigrants are a vital part of Colorado society. It would be far better if they could have a path to legal citizenship or permanent residency, but lack of national will does not change the enormous contributions they make to Colorado daily. We should be respecting and protecting all of our residents, whether they have papers or not.

I urge you to speak out in strong support of undocumented Coloradans, and do everything in your power to keep their families from being torn apart by these unfair and racist policies we keep seeing from Washington DC. Make us a sanctuary state; while I know we can’t stop ICE, we can refuse to aide and abet the destruction of families and the victimization of innocent people who are integral to the fabric of Colorado.

With a lack of national will, it falls to us to step up and show our strength of spirit and compassion. I know Colorado is better than what our national government is currently trying to become.

Thank you.

Categories
personal

Been Busy Not Living in Texas

I can’t believe it’s been ten days since I finished my move. Where the fuck has the time gone? I feel like I just got here, and yet…

I won’t say that I regret the time I spent in Houston. That would be grossly unfair to the wonderful coworkers and the stimulating and fun work that I got to do until I experienced my “change of employment.” (Apparently that’s the term all the cool kids are using on their job applications these days.) But I never made a secret of how awful everything that wasn’t work ended up feeling to me.

I think when you grow up in Colorado, there are certain things you take for granted, including just being able to throw on your hiking books, step out your back door, and walk for miles. Houston is an endless city, far larger than Denver ever prepared me for. And even when you’re downtown in Denver, you can look west, see the mountains, and know that you can be there in an hour, climbing the Flatirons.

I’ve missed this place so much, in ways I don’t even know how to describe. Ways I didn’t know until I was driving a rented minivan (containing my bicycle, computer, and plants aka Delta and the Spice Girls) and with every mile I just felt lighter and lighter. Every other drive to or from Houston, I’ve always taken three days and felt absolutely exhausted at the end of it. This one I did in two, and it exhilarating in a way that hours on end in a minivan have no right to be. When we (my friend Corina kept me company so I didn’t have to do the drive alone) crossed the border into Colorado, I stopped at the first gas station so I could get out and hug the eight mile marker on highway 287. I wandered around with a ridiculous grin on my face, answering anyone who asked me how I was doing, “I don’t have to live in Houston ever again!”

I expected it to take a week for me to get acclimatized to the altitude again. Instead, the day after I arrived, I took out my bike, checked my tire pressure, and went for a 13 mile ride, just because I could. Like I never left, except I wasn’t this good at hill climbing four years ago.
IMG_1265There are still a hundred scary challenges waiting for me. I’m unemployed and trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with myself. Geology job pickings right now are so slim, they might as well be nonexistent. I still have pile of student debt gnawing at my heels that I’m scared to look at straight on. I miss my best friend Mike, and I miss my cats.

Yet I feel so much more alive. I don’t know if I was unhappy in Houston precisely, but I feel as if layers of lead and grime have peeled off of me and fallen in my wake. I can ride forever, the mountains are in the west where they belong, and the sky is so blue.

I’m home.

Categories
colorado shooting

A fast verdict

Verdict returned on Aurora gunman, guilty on all 165 counts. I don’t really have any commentary on the case itself, other than profound sadness at the senselessness of it all, anger about gun control issues; the standard feeling I have about mass shootings.

What I did want to comment on is the “speed” of the verdict. 165 counts decided in about 12-13 hours, depending on the article you read. I’ve seen multiple people mention that this is fast or speedy in a sort of wondering way. With that kind of time, it averages out to about 4-5 minutes spent per count.

I actually don’t think it’s that fast, all told. I’m not the world’s greatest expert on juries, but I’ve now actually gotten to serve on one, which is an experience I know isn’t universal, so I thought I’d share a little. It is so not like TV.

The case I served on was civil rather than criminal, but I get the impression the process is fairly similar. (I just haven’t blogged about it before now because, while I’m allowed to talk about it if I want, I’m uncomfortable with the notion of getting in to details.) Anyway, the trial I served on lasted about three and a half days. We had seven questions to consider at the end; I was foreman for the jury. And it basically went like this: I’d read the question out loud, poll the other jurors, and if the answer was unanimous, move on. It took us about 25 minutes to cover 7 questions (averaging <4 minutes per question). And the only reason it actually took that long was because there was one question where we disagreed about a monetary amount and decided to discuss in order to regain our unanimity (which was unnecessary, technically, since I was the hold out, but we wanted to be unanimous if we could), and then a pause when we wrote a question to the judge for clarification just to be sure about something. Had neither of those things happened, we would have finished all seven questions in well under 10 minutes.

So I’m not claiming to know what exactly went on in deliberations, but I’m not necessarily surprised. You don’t really discuss if everyone agrees already. So to me, it doesn’t sound like they rushed, it sounded like the jurors probably agreed on nearly everything and maybe just had a issues they had to talk about. I just wanted to point this out in case there’s an impression that maybe things weren’t given enough gravity just due to speed; if everyone has been attentive and serious about the issues, they probably already know how they will vote on the various charges as they sit down. And if everyone agrees? It’s going to be quick.

I’m guessing the prosecution did a really good job, though obviously I don’t know one way or another. But that’s immediately what it sounded like to me.

Categories
colorado politics texas

Reason number five million why I miss Colorado (special voting edition)

In Colorado I was on the permanent mail-in ballot list. Several weeks before election day, I would receive my ballot in the mail without having to do anything special for it, then peruse it at my leisure and mail it back, no muss, no fuss.

Technically, they have mail-in ballots in Texas. But only if you are disabled or elderly, basically. I am thankful to not currently be either of those.

In Colorado, the other annual pre-voting day ritual I enjoyed was receiving the state blue book. This lovely pamphlet translates all the proposed amendments into plain English, provides a dry for and against argument for each, and also estimates fiscal impacts. It also told you if judges were recommended for retention. I loved that little blue book and its cheap newsprint paper.

As far as I can tell, Texas doesn’t have those either. I had no idea how spoiled I was, growing up in Colorado.

Of course, I’m still lucky and spoiled here in Texas, to the extent that (supposedly) I’m not going to have any problems with the new voter ID law. I have multiple forms of approved IDs and I didn’t change my name when I got married (not that I did that in Texas anyway). But a lot of people aren’t nearly so lucky as me. It just makes me furious whenever anyone makes it harder to vote.

Anyway, I’ll attempt to find the actual physical voting place either during lunch or after work. I hope it’s right, since I looked it up in the Harris county website. You’re supposed to get the info from http://votetexas.gov but that site has been timing out all morning so…yay?

Enjoy your little blue books and your mail-in ballots, Colorado. Throw the pages of non-partisan explanations of legalese up in the air and laugh mockingly as they flutter down around you. You have no idea how good you’ve got it.

(I am well aware there are many places in the rest of the world where people are literally dying to only be as inconvenienced as I will be today. I wish they had our problems in place of their own, I truly do.)

Categories
Uncategorized

And now my house looks like this.

[pe2-image src=”http://lh4.ggpht.com/–Y3JmfNhSa8/UR7EMmHr5SI/AAAAAAAAKwk/998WMwLxqEA/s144-c/2013-02-15%25252011.24.38.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/104914909709893493346/DropBox?authkey=Gv1sRgCLryga_w-LbXeg#5845325087043740962″ caption=”2013-02-15 11.24.38.jpg” type=”image” alt=”2013-02-15 11.24.38.jpg” ]

 Which is close to the same view as this:

[pe2-image src=”http://lh4.ggpht.com/-5snIc_WEP9c/URXql05HloI/AAAAAAAAKu8/mQEi1HQsKaE/s144-c/2013-02-08%25252023.18.56.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/104914909709893493346/DropBox?authkey=Gv1sRgCLryga_w-LbXeg#5842834027157362306″ caption=”2013-02-08 23.18.56.jpg” type=”image” alt=”2013-02-08 23.18.56.jpg” ]

 So yes. On Thursday a trio of nice men (Marco, Francisco, and Greg) came to my house and took everything away. It’ll be delivered down in Houston on the 24th or 25th. And it only took them about two and a half hours to load, since everything was packed already.

It’s really weird to only be going back to my house to clean things. I’m finally starting to really have the point driven home… we’re moving. We’re leaving Colorado. I’m still trying not to think about it too much, to be honest, since I still have my thesis defense waiting ahead. But we’re living with my parents for now (it only took two days for the cats to stop freaking out about being in a new house so that’s good) and we’ll be driving down to Houston next week to get Mike set up there before I fly back to Denver.

And then I’m just here for a few more weeks before I stuff the cats into another car and do the drive again. (Yeah, wish me luck with that. Hoo boy.)

This is weird. I’ve lived in Colorado basically all my life, or at least all my life that I can remember. It’s weird to be leaving.

Categories
colorado

I Snoopy danced through the election in Colorado

Two days late, whatever. So yeah, this happened. 

As you can imagine, I’m pretty pumped about that, because the president of the United States hasn’t switched over to being an plastic manbot with a faulty truth chip. I’m pumped there are going to be record number of women in the senate. I’m pumped we have our first openly lesbian Senator in the US.  I’m pumped Elizabeth Warren took down Scott Brown. I’m thrilled beyond words that every single one of the crazy Republican rape guys lost.
But that’s not the point of this post. It was an awesome election in Colorado!
First off, in slightly less awesome news, we sent 4 Republicans and 3 Democrats to the federal House. I’m incredibly happy Jared Polis (who once entered The Internet is For Porn into the congressional record) is returning to Washington, even if I’m sad he’s no longer my rep due to redistricting. I have Ed Perlmutter instead, who is less mind-blowingly awesome, but is also not Joe Coors thank goodness. Mostly I’m sad that Brandon Shaffer and Joe Miklosi lost (ugh to Mike Coffman) but there’s not anything I could have done in those races but crossed my fingers extra hard.
So yeah, you might have heard we legalized recreational pot. Thought I’d put that out there first because apparently everyone I have ever met is planning on couch surfing at my house sometime before I move to Houston. And we legalized it by a 10 point margin, which is not too shabby. What does it actually mean? No idea, since pot is still illegal federally. I’m looking forward to seeing the conservatives that like to talk about states rights when it comes to screwing over women and LGBT people potentially tie themselves in knots over this one. 
But I’m excited about the idea that between Colorado and Washington, maybe we’re sending a message to the feds that we’ve had just about enough of the bullshit “drug war.” Here’s hoping. I think we have a much better chance of a positive outcome with Obama as president than Romney.
Ah, and for the record? I voted to legalize pot. Duh. I’ve also never touched the stuff in my life. My vices have been limited to alcohol, and damn little of that. And I have no interest in ever trying pot, either. But I think responsible adults should be able to do it legally if they want, and that our police and courts and prisons have better things to spend their time and money on than a bunch of potheads whose worst crime is bogarting the Fritos.
We also signed off on a collective ‘screw you’ to Citizens United. Well, this one is a bit weirder. By 48% we amended the Colorado Constitution to direct our federal office holders to push for a Constitutional amendment to get rid of that shit-ass campaign finance decision. Which I have mixed feelings about… because I don’t like just amending the Colorado state constitution willy-nilly, but man do I hate Citizens United like a champ. Plus this is actually non-binding… but I think it’s something the representatives and senators from Colorado would have to think twice about before ignoring, since… 48% margin. 
We’ll see if it actually does anything. I’m not convinced. But I hope Colorado has made its point about how we feel.
Jefferson County, where I lived, approved both of its school budget issues. I’m happy about that. The schools need more money, and it’ll help the kids out. And even if I dont have kids of my own, these guys will be in charge of the country when I start thinking about retiring, so I would really prefer they’re functional human beings with a reasonable eduction. 
The Democrats have retaken the Colorado state house and kept the senate. I’m excited about this personally because I no longer have Robert Ramirez (whom I have never liked) as my state rep – I have Tracy Kraft-Tharp, and by a comfortable margin. And I got to keep Evie Hudak as my state senator, and I just adore her to bits. But the really exciting thing about this? We almost had civil unions in Colorado this year, and representative McNulty, with the complicity of the Republican majority, kept the bill from going to vote. Well, McNulty is still around, but he no longer has a majority. So he can sit down, shut up, and get out of the way of progress.
Let’s do it, Colorado. Civil unions, then let’s fix our state constitution, and let’s get back to leading.
Categories
colorado shooting

Senseless

I got hit with the news about the shooting in Colorado about five minutes after I woke up this morning.

This has hit a lot of people hard, as it should. And a lot of nerds, because it was at the premiere for The Dark Knight Rises. If you’re at the midnight showing for a movie like that, you’re part of the nerd legion.

But I think it’s different even when it’s something that happens in your home. I’ve been to that theater before. Not often, because it’s pretty far from my house, but I’ve seen a movie there, meeting up with friends. I know people that live near that part of Denver. It’s my backyard.

A little over thirteen years ago, I sat in my best friend’s living room and we held on to each other like we were going to drown as the news from the Columbine massacre came rolling in. We’d both graduated from high school a little less than a year before it. I’d been to Columbine before for school stuff. I’d casually met some of the students at marching band events.

This feels the same. You feel helpless, because people are hurting and there is absolutely nothing you can do. You wonder how anyone could have so much hatred and despair in their heart that they could even conceive of doing something like this, let alone actually set out to make it happen.

It’s senseless. It’s a thing that literally makes no sense, a thing you can’t understand because you aren’t someone who could ever descend to that level. You watch a screen and cry for strangers and feel relieved and just a little guilty that it was no one you personally know and like. Because you also know of course that everyone there was someone to a lot of people, and they are crying for real instead of in the throes of empathetic pain.

And you’re reminded that this could have been you, or your friends, or your parents. It still could be, at any time, because these things happen and far more often than they ever should. There is a sickness that crops up with terrifying and depressing regularity, bursting out and claiming a group of victims in an instant and then disappearing while it incubates again. This needs to stop, be cured, but the how is a question that never seems to get answered, lost in a tide of political posturing.

I hope the injured recover. I hope the families who lost people today will find solace for their pain. And I hope that this won’t act as some sort of sick signal for others to go out and try to hurt and kill people, as happens sometimes. There’s already too much of this in the world, every day.

Stay safe, everyone. All my love to you.

Categories
climate change colorado

Burning

There’s a new fire near Boulder. It’s only 300 acres, but it’s burning the flatirons, it’s heading toward NCAR, and there are evacuation notices dropping.

The High Park Fire is still burning at over 87,000 acres.

My friends Susan and Galen have been evacuated from Colorado Springs. My best friend (their daughter) just told me that the fire has burned the home of one of her former students, that it’s down the street from the school she taught at until this summer. People from my writing group have been evacuated, or we haven’t heard from them at all.

@PatrickSandusky: This is colorado springs right now. Look at this photo and be shocked. Its f’ing armageddon here

Even away from the fires the air smells like barbecue. It’s hazy. The horizon closes in, unnaturally for Colorado. Ash falls from the sky in some areas, like it did during the Hayman fire years ago. It’s the most disturbing snow imaginable, gray fluff when it’s hot and dry and you can look the sun in the eye because it’s a angry orange ball cloaked in smoke.

9 active fires are burning right now: High Park, Chimney Rock, Flagstaff, Last Chance, Little Sand, Waldo Canyon, Stateline, Treasure, Weber. These are all places I have been, mountainsides that are old friends, trails I’ve hiked.

This is all I have, a dry recounting of names and facts. I know I would feel this helpless if I was home. I will feel this helpless when I’m home over the weekend. Because what can you do against fire? It’s a force of nature. It’s unseasonably hot days, no rain, and an uncountable number of dead pine trees, killed by beetles breeding over too many mild winters. There is nothing a single human being can do about that.

Is this climate change? People arguing over that are missing the point. Climate change is not one single event. It’s the culmination of years and decades of gathering warmth and more easily attained extremes. So is this a warning? Perhaps. Years of warm winters and hot summers? Perhaps. There isn’t anything a single solitary human can do about that either.

There’s some hope that good could come from this, in the sense that this will consume the beetle-killed trees, and maybe it’ll cut down on the number of pests. What we really need are our desperately cold winters back, two in a row. But so far that hasn’t happened, and I don’t find a lot of hope that it will soon.

But now I just feel helpless, sitting 1100 miles away and clicking reload on news feeds over and over while Colorado burns.

From the Denver Post: How to help.

Categories
colorado lgbt

Shame on you, Rep. McNulty

Well, I got absolutely nothing done after trivia tonight. Rather, I spent the last 100 minutes watching the #coleg tag on Twitter with a growing sense of horror.

It was already a shit night, thanks to voters in North Carolina.

But somehow, the disaster in the Colorado legislature is even worse than that. We had a civil unions bill. There were enough votes for it to pass, because a few Republicans were willing to cross the aisle. But in a move of supreme, mean-spirited cowardice the rest of the Republicans stopped the bill from even going to vote. Representative McNulty deserves extra shame. As Speaker of the House, this anti-democratic move hangs squarely on him.

Apparently when the announcement was made that the civil unions bill was dead – as well as more than thirty pieces of legislation waiting in line behind it – the gallery in the House erupted with chants of “Shame on you!”

Shame indeed. The civil unions bill should have passed. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a step in the right direction. And there were a lot of other things that needed a vote, which are dead now as well. All because the group of Republicans in the state house in Colorado couldn’t face losing fair and square on a vote.

I’m beyond angry and frustrated. I’m tired. I’m tired of the selfish, judgmental bullshit that rules the petty fearmongers who continually attack my lgbt brothers and sisters. I’m tired of assholes claiming that they’re protecting my marriage because by dumb luck I met a man I loved enough to marry before I met a woman I loved enough to marry. I’m tired of people being so blinded by their own smug self-righteousness that they can’t seem to understand that life is damn short, and damn lonely, and if you love someone good for you and it’s no one else’s goddamn business.

I do my best to have faith in humanity. I have faith that fear and hatred will not always rule us. No matter how tired I feel, I will never be so tired I’ll stop fighting. Next year and the year after, no matter how long it takes, I know we’ll all keep fighting. This isn’t over.

Categories
colorado

You know you’re from Colorado if…

My mother forwarded this e-mail to me, and I’ve kept all of the ones that I think are true.

  • You eat ice cream in the winter. (Who doesn’t?)
  • It snows 5 inches and you don’t expect school to be cancelled.
  • You’ll wear flip flops every day of the year, regardless of temperature.
  • You have no accent at all, but can hear other people’s. And then you make fun of them.
  • “Humid” is over 25%. (And the horrible things it does to my hair…)
  • Your sense of direction is: Toward the mountains and away from the mountains. (My husband still doesn’t get this, even after living here for seven years.)
  • You say “the valley highway” and everybody knows which interstate you’re talking about,
  • You think that May is a totally normal month for a blizzard. (Any month is a normal month for a blizzard.)
  • You buy your flowers to set out on Mother’s day, but try and hold off planting them until just before Father’s day.
  • You grew up planning your Halloween costumes around your coat. (Puffiest unicorn EVER.)
  • You know what the Continental Divide is. (Both a location and an excellent beer.)
  • You don’t think Coors beer is that big a deal. (…does anyone?)
  • You went to Casa Bonita as a kid, AND as an adult.
  • You’ve gone off-roading in a vehicle that was never intended for such activities.
  • You always know the elevation of where you are.
  • You wake up to a beautiful, 80 degree day and you wonder if it’s going to snow later.
  • You don’t care that some company renamed it, the Broncos still play at Mile High Stadium.
  • You actually know that South Park is a real place, not just a hilarious show on TV.
  • You know what a ‘trust fund hippy’ is, and you know its natural habitat is Boulder.
  • It’s still “Elitches,” not “Six Flags.”
  • A bear on your front porch doesn’t bother you.
  • When people back East tell you they have mountains in their state too, you just laugh.
  • You go anywhere else on the planet and the air feels “sticky” and you notice the sky is no longer blue.

And here’s a few of my own:

  • You know the Colorado Creep as a driving maneuver, not just what your underwear does when you’ve been hiking too long.
  • You instinctively know how to dress in layers for every occasion.
  • You’ve ever considered wearing your hiking boots to a job interview, because they’re the nicest shoes you own.
  • You know that all the bad drivers come from California and Texas. Yeah. That’s the problem.
  • Your bicycle is probably worth more than your car.
  • You go to other states and are shocked by how few marijuana dispensaries there are.
  • You think the Platte is a big river.
  • You’ve seen the world from 14,000 feet but you’ve never seen the ocean. (True for me well into my twenties.)
  • You’ve made it to the top of the Flatirons, and I don’t mean the mall.
  • You have to keep a checklist of which breweries you still need to try out.

Anything to add, my Colorado friends?