This gallery contains 13 photos.
Eco-Cycle and I go back a long way. I volunteered for them in Broomfield for several years, and I visit the Center for Hard-to-Recycle Materials a couple of times a month, mainly because my apartment building doesn’t offer composting. But … Continue reading
I was excited about setting up a booth and displaying my photos at the Colorado Cup. Fantasies of selling enough prints to pay for the booth fee and the supplies filled my head. How hard could it be? I asked myself. After all, my prints were reasonably priced—only $20 for an 8 by 10. Even the most expensive ones, the matted 8 by 12s, were only $40. Surely I’d get a few takers.
Photo by Todd Bradley.
Unfortunately, the Colorado Cup didn’t draw more than a few hundred people this beautiful weekend. I think everyone else was out enjoying the weather after our snowy April.
It was too bad for the vendors and the skaters, some of whom came from as far away as Las Cruces, New Mexico. The roller derby was fun, especially the bouts between Grand Junction and Ark Valley (Salida) and between Crossroads City Derby and Fort Collins. But the rest of the time, I saw at a table and talked to perhaps 15 people about derby or photographs. I got a lot of compliments, and some people took my cards. But I made no sales.
I’ll chalk it up to marketing and hope the people who took my cards will find Beth Partin Photos.
Next up is finding a coffeehouse to display my photos. That means more expense for framing. Soon, I hope, I’ll be making some money to pay for all these supplies.
I just heard about a new treatment device for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer) and wanted to share the news with my readers. This bioelectromagnetic device is called TheraBionic, and according to some friends whose child has liver cancer, it
has successfully completed Phase I & II trials, and will soon undergo Phase III. The device itself is very non-invasive—a small box about the size of a pencil case with a spoon-like attachment. Patients turn it on, put the spoon into their mouths, and sit for an hour while it sends low-level electromagnetic waves through the body. Patients do this three times a day and experience virtually no side effects.
It’s not so easy for people living in the United States to join the trials for TheraBionic, however, as they have been conducted in Brazil. So my friends, with help from doctors at MD Anderson in Houston and Northwestern in Chicago and a patient advocate at the University of California at San Diego, applied to the Food and Drug Administration to use the device on a compassionate basis.
They started this process in December and just received approval. They gave me permission to publicize the device on this website.
I was not aware that individuals could set up their own trial with approval from the FDA. That’s good to know.
Here is some information from the website:
TheraBionic has solved a central problem in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma. Because most drugs are metabolized by the liver, many patients do not tolerate therapy for this disease as they have severely impaired liver function. With current treatments on the market, patients with hepatocellular carcinoma have a very limited life expectancy, ranging from 6-12 months.
In contrast to current treatments, no significant side effects have been observed with the use of the TheraBionic device in the treatment of 41 study patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma and severely impaired liver function. TheraBionic treatment showed clear benefit in 20 of the 41 (49.8%) patients who experienced either significant tumor shrinkage (4) or stable disease for more than three months (16). Seven of the 11 (63.6%) patients who experienced pain prior to TheraBionic treatment initiation reported either complete or partial disappearance of pain. There were several very long-term responders to TheraBionic treatment, which suggests that TheraBionic treatment may offer control of advanced cancer for several years.
So, TheraBionic shrank the tumor in 4 out of 41 patients, and 16 others lived three months longer than they would have otherwise.
The overview page on the website also mentioned a 2012 Phase II trial for advanced breast cancer.
Ah, Claremont. We stayed in New Hampshire for three nights with a friend who despised the place and has since left it for the other coast. 
Our friend lived on the top floor of a bright yellow house, which I didn’t photograph, near the cemetery where I took some of these pictures. It was fun to see her after years—reconnecting with friends was one theme of this trip—and we found we didn’t mind Claremont. Not for three days, anyway.
Claremont is a former industrial town that looks down on its luck. Perhaps the rainy weather that accompanied us from Burlington had something to do with it. Todd and I spent two days exploring the downtown and the cemetery.
We discovered a down-home restaurant and a diner, a nice little library, and trees that made us forget the gray skies, even though they had not yet matched the brilliance of forests in the Adirondacks.
The thing about a town with a long history? It offers a lot to photographers. All those industrial buildings practically begged to have their pictures taken.
I squeezed in as much photography as I could in three days, wishing the entire time for a wider-angle lens.
I’ve been working on my photography site for a while, and I’ve decided it’s ready for public viewing. So head on over to Beth Partin Photos, which is a SmugMug site, check out my photos, and sign the Guestbook. Feel free to share the photos online or even buy one!
I have about 50 photos up there now, and I will be adding more as time goes on.
I’m sitting in the game chair I bought for $10 from Goodwill, on the top floor of the town home Todd and I are renting until the end of January. We are near 28th and Jasmine in Park Hill. It was designed to be a quiet residential neighborhood, so the only things we can walk to are the Hiawatha Davis rec center (very nice!), about 10 minutes away; a small shopping district the same distance in the opposite direction; and Stapleton, about 20 minutes east of us. This area has an interesting mix of ethnicities and houses: many of the houses are small and rather boxlike, or perhaps Foursquare, but others, especially along Monaco and Montview and 23rd Avenue, are much grander affairs. This pair of houses epitomizes the neighborhood: gentrifying, but luckily not as ostentatiously on most blocks as the stucco house might lead you to believe.
Park Hill is not a walkable neighborhood like Baker. I have seen people walking their dogs and people walking to and from the rec center, but most people drive. Two blocks on Kearney south of 23rd feature a liquor store; a bakery and café called Cake Crumbs; a cheese and small plates joint called Neighbors, where we had an intriguing concoction with eggplant crisps, tomato, and goat cheese; and gymnastics and martial arts studios. Farther west on 23rd is Spinelli’s, a famous Denver market that I recommend visiting; a bookstore; and the Cherry Tomato, which I have yet to try.
South of Martin Luther King Boulevard, where we are staying, is probably one-third white and two-thirds black and Latino, but north of MLK is less white. Since I moved away from Washington, DC, I’ve lived in mostly white neighborhoods. I’m enjoying this one, especially since we’ll be living in Boulder from now on, which pretty much rules out the possibility of an ethnically diverse living situation.
I’ve lived in so many different places since June 2011 that I like the idea of settling down, but all the same I can’t help feel a pang for Seattle or New York, which I just visited for the first time in decades, or Denver. Boulder has Todd’s employer and Pearl Street and the mountains, but it’s grown so rich and, well, pretty. I like a little more grit.
That’s why I’ve chosen to live across from the Table Mesa park and ride. That area can’t be accused of grit, and it’s not really walkable either, but at least I’ll have easy access to Boulder, Lafayette, and Denver by bus when Todd has the car. I can walk to Vic’s Espresso or take the bus to Cafe Solé or the library. And it was the cheapest option. We decided to stop traveling in order to replenish our savings; choosing this apartment was the responsible thing to do.
On our next-to-last day in Burlington, Vermont, I was hanging out in our tiny hotel room at the Bel-Aire, and Todd was shooting roller derby. It was raining, and I wanted lunch but didn’t want to get soaked. So I walked down Shelburne Road to The Spot, which is diner-ish, but also very, very modern.
The Spot bills itself as a surf-style restaurant, and there is a bit of a Wahoo’s vibe going on, but I didn’t see any spam on the menu. I did admire the exterior and the bank of Macs on the inside, at the counter, where I waited a few minutes for a table.
The service was accommodating. All I wanted for lunch was soup and bread, but then the pesto on the “Build-Your-Own-Sandwich” list caught my eye. So I asked the waitress if she could bring me toast and pesto and call it a sandwich.
That and the clam chowder (tasty, and easy on the cream) 
and a chocolate chip cookie completed my lunch. I think all of it cost about $7.
Burlington was not my favorite place. I don’t know why—maybe it was the cold gray weather—but I just couldn’t get into it. I liked our motel, the Bel-Aire, the kind of lodging Todd is very good at finding—small, older, not-chain. 
Even though it was twice as expensive as most of these kinds of motels—Burlington is a college town—and even though it didn’t serve breakfast, it did offer coffee all day long, the proprietor was willing to chat whenever I came by, and it was within walking distance of downtown (about a mile). It was also within walking distance of a Lake Champlain Chocolates store, but I didn’t discover that until the last day.
Perhaps my funk had something to do with the need to finish an editing job that had taken twice as long as I told the author it would take. I was stuck in the tiny hotel room a lot, while Todd was off shooting a roller derby regional tournament. I was able to bird Delta Park on Lake Champlain (an adventure in itself because of the confusing layout of that neighborhood and the Vermont habit of providing streets signs only for the roads you’re approaching) and Green Mountain Audubon Center, which was moderately birdy and very beautiful. 
The woods were mysterious, even if the fall colors were much less showy than what we’d seen in the Adirondacks. 
That Saturday in late September, I walked downtown to have dinner and use up the rest of my Macy’s gift certificate. As I strolled down the pedestrian mall, I noticed several bears that had been painted by local artists. 
It must be a trend: Denver has its painted cows, and Burlington has it bears.
At first I had difficulty choosing a restaurant. I didn’t want to be the middle-aged woman eating by herself in a restaurant full of undergraduates. I rejected two or three because they didn’t look single-friendly and instead settled on Mr. Crêpe, a fast-casual joint. 
It wasn’t very crowded, and I felt comfortable there.
I ordered the Super Spinach, a larger crêpe filled with spinach, a little cheese, diced tomatoes, olives, and cilantro, along with two fried eggs. 
Although the filling wasn’t traditional, the vegetables tasted fresh, and I was happy that they were willing to fry the eggs (which are usually scrambled).
After dinner and shopping, I stopped by the Lake Champlain store for another round of chocolate indulgence (the day before, I had their peppermint hot chocolate). That and the Audubon Center were my favorites during my short visit to Vermont.
The day we visited Niagara Falls was not our best. I started a fight about parking, and we walked to the falls separately. Once I arrived—well after Todd, which is unusual because I walk much faster than he does—I found the cloudy weather frustrating. I don’t have the technical knowledge to get a great shot under these conditions.
The first picture shows development on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Everyone said it was prettier, and I think they were right, but we didn’t want to go through customs. Considering the way the American customs agents behaved when we came back from Vancouver, I’m sure our compatriots would have pulled everything out of our clown-car Prius and poured out all our liquor. That would have made us cry.
Double-decker boats venture close to the bottom of Horseshoe Falls. Everyone on board is draped in cheap blue plastic to avoid getting soaked, but I think they do anyway. We didn’t want to pay for it, though it might be fun to do that someday, just to experience all the noise and vibration of the relentless water.
I tried to capture some bokeh and was moderately successful. In one or two shots the water looked nice, but the rocks and plants were never quite sharp enough. All my photos looked grainy, although none was taken at an ISO of greater than 400. Perhaps it was the mist in the air.
Todd and I made up pretty quickly, and here he is checking Facebook while I take pictures.
Right before we left, a rainbow appeared in front of American and Bridal Veil Falls. And yes, I did enhance it. It was nowhere near that bright.
Our trip to leaf-peeping took us briefly through Ohio, and in one sense it was not our best experience. Todd wanted to get Ohio chili, but I was disgusted by the prospect of eating spaghetti topped with chili topped with several inches of cheese and oyster crackers, so we ended up eating Greek food, which was marginally more healthful. Todd didn’t get his Ohio regional delicacy, but we did find a coffee shop 
in Mansfield, Ohio, of all places, that was devoted to serving high-quality espresso and other drinks. So devoted, in fact, that they make their own syrup.
No GMO corn syrup here! And this is the first place I’ve ever seen boxed water. 
The idea is to avoid the plastic bottle and especially the lid, which, if it gets tossed into a river or the ocean, can be eaten by birds or turtles or fish and block their stomachs, causing them to starve to death. If you’re in the area, I recommend stopping at Relax.
On our way from one roller derby tournament in Dubuque to another in Burlington, Vermont, we stopped to visit friends in Winona Lake, Indiana. Not quite 100 miles southeast of Gary, Indiana, Winona Lake reminded me of Lake Tapawingo near Kansas City, where my family used to spend holiday weekends in the summer. It was a pretty lakefront community with lots of outdoorsy stuff to do, and I spent one morning there birding in the woods near town. Between the woods and the lake is a little strip of shops, and there we had lunch at Cerulean.
Though dinner has a more extensive New American menu featuring dishes from arctic char to rabbit terrine to rib-eye, lunch consists of bento boxes comprising a main dish and three sides.
I chose the sunfish flown in from Hawaii, and it was seared to perfection, the crisp edges setting off the tender interior. The sweet chili glaze (next to the spinach salad) was the only truly spicy thing in the entire lunch, which leaned pretty far toward sweet.
After the fish, the spinach greens with cardamon-spiced nuts and red miso vinaigrette was the next most intriguing dish.
I could taste the cardamon, and this salad, unlike the two others, maintained a balance of flavors. The papaya salad had a nice mix of crunch and softer ingredients. It was supposed to have a spicy coconut dressing, but I never tasted any coconut; it seemed more like thousand island dressing to me, and it had no heat whatsoever. 
The sweet orange and almond salad was refreshing. The three salads I chose all had nuts, so they began to seem too similar. 
There are plenty of other sides, including sticky rice, edamame, and udon noodles, as well as a cream-of-asparagus soup that my friends loved.
Texture was definitely the strong point in my lunch. If you go to Cerulean, try to avoid overtly sweet dishes, and enjoy some of the fish that’s flown in every day.
Despite growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, I’ve never spent much time in Iowa.
So it was a treat to discover that Dubuque, on the left bank of the Mississippi River, across from Indiana, had a classy downtown. Even its alleys are colorful.
We couchsurfed with a couple and their daughter who live on the hill above downtown. I walked down the steps instead of taking the famous elevator, and then Todd drove me back, so I never did experience that tourist attraction. But I did walk down to the Mississippi and feel peaceful looking out over its vast expanse.
I lived in Colorado for almost thirty years, and I know the Colorado carved the Grand Canyon. But whenever I see eastern rivers, I can’t help but think, “Now THAT’S a river.”
As I walked back downtown to watch the end of the roller derby tournament Todd was filming, the night was deepening. I’m not sure if the people who developed Dubuque over the decades really had views in mind, but I found great ones. I turned back toward the Mississippi to get this corn elevator. 
Below right is the highway I walked toward; the industry on the other side peeks over to the top. 
(I had fun lightening the color of the industrial buildings. If you enlarge the photo, you can see my boo-boos.) I went over the highway to get to the river (below left), but on the way back I went under it.
When I cruised downtown again, I found this gold-domed building 
that looks like a state capitol but isn’t because that’s in Des Moines. I didn’t think to ask our hosts what went on in that building. 
And finally, here’s the clock tower, showing 7:15. Soon the dark will be descending on us by 6 or even 5 in the afternoon. It’s autumn, and the nights are eating into the days.
I’m sitting here in Monk’s Kaffee Pub in Dubuque, Iowa, just a few blocks from the Mississippi River, and I just wanted to let you know, Baker, that I miss you. I was thinking about the corner of Broadway and Ellsworth in Denver just yesterday. All your little shops and restaurants and bars and houses seemed so far away.
I couldn’t bop down to Bardo for some ice cream if Sweet Action had closed. I couldn’t walk to Dailey Park. I even miss my landlady’s little candleholder surrounded by four stolid figures.
I liked living in Denver. Although I’d lived in the metro area for nearly three decades, I’d never lived in the city proper. For the first time since I lived in Washington, DC, I could walk just about everywhere I wanted to go.
I got settled there, and now I’m traveling again, and it’s unsettling me. I was feeling really stressed out last night as we couchsurfed (in a very nice bedroom). It wasn’t just the cute dog jumping on me in the middle of the night. It was all the change happening so fast.
The next week will be brutal in terms of driving. We have to get from Dubuque to Vermont by Thursday. After that, we’ll be spending several nights at a time in hotels or with friends. By then, I think the excitement of seeing the East Coast will have overcome my anxiety about finances and health.
I spent one afternoon in Kansas City driving across the middle of the city, near the house at 70th and Holmes where I lived from birth until age 11. Among other things, I wanted to visit my mother’s grave, which I hadn’t seen since 1993, the year after she died.
It was rainy the day of her funeral, so they conducted the service inside, and we didn’t see the coffin lowered into the ground. For that reason, her death didn’t seem completely real to me until I went to Mount Moriah cemetery a year later. I was shocked and ashamed to discover that her gravestone was the most terrible thing I’d ever seen.
Shocked because I’d spent the past year in emotional upheaval, contending with the most intense anger I’d ever felt and waking up many mornings thinking, “My life is completely worthless.” I’d hoped I was done with the most difficult part of grieving. Ashamed because I asked myself, “How can I be so upset over my mother’s death—untimely though it was—when so many other people in the world lose children to starvation or most of their family in war?” I guess I expected myself to have a longer perspective, but I had none. I looked at her grave, went back to the car and howled.
After twenty years, I still miss my mother all the time, but my longing for her doesn’t take up so much space in my life. I sat on her grave and talked to her for a while. I pulled up some grass and dandelions so her gravestone was more visible. I didn’t realize that I could have pulled the vase up out of the ground and instead put the flowers on top of it. And I wondered why the grass over her coffin had died. 
Surely she wasn’t outgassing anymore, after twenty years? And that reminded me of how the priest at her funeral had called her “Shirley,” and none of us had corrected him.
Now my father is the one who’s heading out to sea. We’re about to close down the law firm he established when I was a teenager. We may even get the car sold this year. We hope he’ll consent before he gets another wild hair and takes a cab from assisted living to his old house to trying driving once again. The one time he did that, luckily, he decided it wasn’t such a good idea before he got in the car.
The day before Todd and I left Kansas City for Iowa, we took Dad to the Overland Park Arboretum to get him out in nature. It’s a beautiful place, and a little closer and more manageable than Powell Gardens. Several times he exclaimed about the beauty of the landscaping. Todd had to do most of the ambulating—Dad’s not strong enough to do the full tour with his walker or push himself up the inclines in his wheelchair. 
(I had been taking pictures on my BlackBerry in close-up mode, and I forgot to change it to another setting; that’s why this picture is so blurry.)
Here’s a view of one of the ecosystems at Overland Park Arboretum. 
When we got him back home, he was ready for dinner, and, most of all, he was ready to get himself there instead of having us do it. I watched through the window in the security door as he rolled away, and I thought, What if this is the last time I see him alive?
But it probably won’t be.
This gallery contains 22 photos.
How Beth got to her radiation treatments at the University of Colorado Hospital from the 15L bus stop at Aurora Court and Colfax. (Unfortunately, she forgot to photograph the sign outside the radiation oncology department.) Continue reading
Our landlady clued us in that a yoga studio would be coming to our neighborhood. Construction began about a month ago. I’m glad. Although it was interesting to wake up each morning to find a new tag in a new color on the building, the graffiti began to get excessive.
The equipment used in this reconstruction fascinates me. I wish I knew how to operate machines like the ones in pictures 3 and 4 below.
I’ve been taking pictures surreptitiously as the project has progressed. I’m half-afraid someone will see me taking pictures and get upset about it, even though I’m taking photos of what occurs on the street—which should be public.
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Took this picture a while ago at the Denver Botanic Gardens and loved the color. I think this is hen and chicks, though it was a lot bigger than the ground cover I had in my garden.
When we ate at Black Pearl Sunday night in Denver’s South Pearl/Platt Park neighborhood, we sat by the garage-style window, right by the sidewalk. Had anyone been sitting at the tables below us, we could have eavesdropped. Or leapt onto the sidewalk without much effort. The rain probably discouraged anyone from sitting there, but it didn’t come in the window.
Black Pearl is an elegant space, and all the staff were attentive, though I wish our waiter had been a little less formal. 
We could have made a meal of our appetizers. The 6 Eagle Rock oysters from Washington State were silky and dressed in a tarragon mignonette, though I tasted more paprika than tarragon. 
They were delightfully tart and a little spicy. Todd ordered the grilled romaine salad, which was peppery and smoky and grilled just the right amount, which is to say that the greens still had some texture. The dressing was rich, perhaps even gooey, but it seemed appropriate. 
We couldn’t stop eating the truffle fries, which were encrusted with parmesan and were good even when cool, although the herb aioli was bland.
Todd loves scallops, so he couldn’t pass up that entree, which came with a sweet corn crème fraîche sauce, shaved snap peas, and black truffles. I tasted only the scallops, which were perfectly sautéed. 
My entree, the piquillo peppers stuffed with wild mushrooms and Gruyere, was more substantial, less pretty than Todd’s but more interesting. 
Overall it was smoky because of the poblano chili oil, and the stuffing was moist rather than cheesy, but the jalapeño added bite and both it and the cauliflower contributed some crispness—though not quite enough.
If I hadn’t been so full from all the rich, smoky food, I would have ordered the drunken pear and chocolate mousse. Or the lemon meringue tartlet with thyme chocolate ganache. Next time.
Today Todd and I visited the radiation oncology department at the University of Colorado Hospital. We met the radiation oncologist, her resident (cute!), and a med student who mostly stood in the background. The two doctors got to take my history and examine me, but the med student only got to watch. Maybe students never get to do an exam? Or maybe there wasn’t enough time? At this point, I don’t care—so many doctors have examined me in front of my husband that it seems normal.
After that, I had a CT and four tiny black tattoos so the radiation technicians could decide exactly where the radiation beams should go. The doctor came in and pasted metal strips around my right breast; the laser can get through fabric but not metal. One of the techs showed me the picture, and I said, “Amazon!” It was impressive.
I will be having 6 weeks of radiation to the right breast around the incision, to part of the area where lymph nodes were removed under my right arm, and to my chest below the collarbone. Radiation is “local” therapy designed to destroy any remaining cancer cells, as opposed to the “systemic” therapy (chemo).
Next time I won’t be wearing a skirt and sandals. It was cold in that room.
Now I have 4 tattoos, 4 incisions of varying lengths, and one thick bruise the size of an egg in my right breast (no drain for lumpectomies, I guess, though I had a drain for the lymphectomy). My right arm is still pretty tight, but I’ve started physical therapy, and the exercises seem to help.
I wanted to show you the ON-Q Painbuster that was installed during surgery. I wore it for 6 days. See the length of tubing by the measuring tape? About 8–10 inches of that was inside my body. It functions like a drip line; the black areas dripped anesthetic into my right side. 
Todd had to pull it out. That was probably one of the more disgusting experiences of his life. It didn’t hurt me, but I bet it made him a little queasy.
“I’ve grown to love your bald head,” Todd told me in passing today. 
I replied that he had become used to it after seeing it so often for five months. When I’m at home, I don’t put on a wig or hat unless I’m cold. I go commando a lot at home, and if the weather stays this hot, I may start going commando on the street.
So far, I’ve felt comfortable baring my head only when nobody is looking. I’m no Xeni Jardin.
I told Todd I worried that my hair might never grow back. It was thinning before my diagnosis; maybe the chemo just finished off those valiant but malnourished hair follicles.
“You’d be edgy,” he suggested.
“But I wouldn’t be Beth with beautiful hair,” I said, getting teary-eyed. (We’re talking Beth circa 1992 here.) 
I was surprised when he told me he wished he had beautiful hair. When I met Todd, his hair, although thick and curly, was already receding, and he had always told me he was used to it. But perhaps not completely.
We arrived at 10 am, and our first orders of business were to buy fish tacos and listen to a local band. Dozens of bands played at the People’s Fair, including one of our favorites, Brethren Fast. 
The turkey legs looked good against the City and County Building, but we skipped them. We had red velvet cake and ice cream on a stick instead, and a huge cherry limeade. 
We skipped the vodka as well. Somewhere in Civic Center Park there was a wine tasting, which sounded tempting even at 10 in the morning. 
All in all, we spent about $30 on food at the People’s Fair, not to mention my new hat.
On our way to the 0 bus back to the Baker neighborhood, we saw this lovely fellow.
Two photos to illustrate why I always want to pick up plastic trash when I’m walking anywhere, the first taken at a church a couple of blocks from my house.
Yes, the trash bag blowing in the wind in American Beauty is a wonderful thing, but most of them cling to trees or barbed-wire fences, marring our landscape.
The second comes from Occupy Denver’s May Day event in Civic Center Park. Clearly, they need someone to set up zero waste events for them.
At least half the items on top could be recycled.
Read about Trash Walk 1 here.
On Tuesday night I photographed volunteers planting vegetable gardens at the Governor’s Mansion on Capitol Hill in Denver. 
Grow Local Colorado (GLC) arranged for the food from the gardens to go to Metro CareRing, and Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado helped with the planting.
I heard of the event from Dana Miller, GLC’s director (on the right), and also met Barbara Masoner (in the pink shirt) that night. 
There were several photographers and at least two videographers there. 
GLC has 14 garden plots in Denver that grow food for the hungry. If you already have a garden, you can Plant a Row for the Hungry at home.
More pictures from the planting at the Governor’s Mansion have been posted on Flickr.
On May Day I wanted to participate in Occupy Denver’s first General Strike, which began at noon and continued until the sleep-in on the 16th Street Mall later that night. I missed all of the march through downtown Denver except the tail end, when they returned to Civic Center Park, but I stayed for a couple of hours after that. From across Broadway, I judged the marchers to number several hundred at least.
I had been sitting in the park fronting the state Capitol building, on the low wall along Broadway. There were at least 50 people and their sleeping gear strung along Broadway and around the corner up 14th. Across 14th Street stands the new Ralph Carr Justice Center, proclaiming “Liberty and Justice for All.” State troopers patrolled, since this side is state property; Civic Center Park is city property. I chatted for a while with a friendly young man who said he spent a lot of time there. I didn’t know if he was an Occupier or not.
When I saw the march return, I crossed Broadway and made my way to the auditorium. A small group stood behind the mic where the emcee introduced the first speaker. 
I sat and listened for a while, but I was more interested in the signs. I’m always a sucker for spectacle.
The “99%” sign made its appearance and meandered over to the Statue of Liberty. 
Here is my favorite shot. I love the statue’s bug-eyed expression.
Eventually, the emcee brought up the teach-ins, the reason I was there in the first place. I was hoping to attend one in each of the two sessions. I headed toward the pink flag, passing the free food stand (where I got an orange) and getting a flyer from the Foreclosure Resistance Coalition.
University of Colorado philosophy professor Chad Kautzer spoke on the topic “Neoliberalism and Labor: The Struggle Today.” He contrasted neoliberalism, a politico-economic system in which the state supports but does not regulate capitalism, with the system in place after World War II, which he called “embedded capitalism.” 
Neoliberalism is a much less regulated form of capitalism, and since the 1970s, has become the dominant form of capitalism in the world, bringing us outsourcing and the resulting loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States, a weakened labor movement, and the financial crisis we experienced since 2008.
My favorite point? His assertion that debt is a tool used by the neoliberal state to keep citizens in line. People who have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt are reluctant to fight too hard for their rights. If they lose their jobs, who will pay the bills? Kautzer’s suggestion: eliminate your debt. Then you have more freedom of political movement.
After the first teach-in, I returned to the auditorium, where I listened to Live Animal play folk songs for a small crowd. I was feeling tired and hot. Only two hours, and I was fading. As I left, I heard the speaker saying:
We’ll be back next year, and the year after that . . .
Occupy movements may be small outside New York and Oakland, but they are tough and persistent. In addition to the people who sleep on the sidewalks and in the parks, they have committees organizing events and educators teaching people. They are engaging with politicians. They are learning and growing. Occupy Denver is here to stay.
I’m almost done. This Friday, May 4, 2012, is my last chemo.
I don’t want to go, but I’m doing it anyway—because I don’t want to be a quitter. Because I don’t want to reproach myself later if the cancer comes back. Because I don’t have the courage right now to say, “Chemotherapy is a very messed-up way to deal with an illness. I choose a different approach.”
Sometimes I think half the things I do in life, I do to avoid reproaching myself later. And I don’t really trust my own intuition.
But, as I’m telling myself this week, I can trust myself after this last treatment.
And then we will PARTAAAY! Well, maybe in about three weeks to a month … before the surgery and radiation … or maybe afterward …
Throughout my life, I’ve been blessed with good health and strength. I never needed a doctor other than my gynecologist until I was in my thirties and developed a repetitive motion injury. Now I’m pushing fifty and will be going to see doctors about triple-negative breast cancer for many years, if not the rest of my life, and yet I still don’t really believe I have it. All the disease ever did to me was enlarge my right armpit. The “cure” has afflicted me much worse than the disease.
I grew up with a mother who had rheumatoid arthritis that later destroyed her aorta and carotid arteries (in my opinion) and a father who was raised Christian Scientist and then converted to Catholicism. He had nothing against doctors; in fact, he convinced his mother to see one, I think about the congestive heart failure that killed her. He had polio when he was nine months old and always walked with a limp. He couldn’t jog, but he did learn to water-ski, and he rode his bike around our neighborhood. Once he even did a hundred, riding into the wind on the way out on some south Kansas City highway.
My mother didn’t talk much about her auto-immune illness, and I didn’t ask her about the effects I couldn’t see. 
Each of us wanted to be strong in our own ways, though I would ask her now, if I could. December 21 is the twentieth anniversary of her death. You learn, after the death of someone you love deeply, that grief doesn’t fade so much as shrink. In time, your life grows up around it but never completely obscures it.
Last night I thought of calling my father to tell him I have almost finished chemotherapy. But I told my siblings I wouldn’t talk to him about it anymore because it upsets him. He has Alzheimer’s and can’t remember certain things. The last time I mentioned it, he said he had forgotten, and I knew he felt bad about it.
Perhaps the next time I visit him, I will tell him about all the strange places I went because of cancer last winter and this spring and summer. I could say that the knowledge of it rose like a cold current in my body but very seldom spilled over. I could describe my rages and crying jags and the long drives to the infusion room.
But what was most unusual and wonderful, this year, was my acceptance of all the help I received. I remember a man long ago saying to me, after I paid him the exact amount he had lent me, “You don’t want to be obligated to anyone, do you?”
Well, no. When I was sixteen, I told my parents I was “completely independent.” Somehow they managed to restrain themselves from pointing out the food they provided and their car that I drove (and wrecked) and their house where I lived.
I have never felt so cared for in my life as I do now. Thank you.
But it’s weird to feel so much gratitude and so much cognitive dissonance at the same time.
Since November, I have been wondering about the messages we’re given after our diagnosis:
Why is cancer so personal? Why is cancer all about what I do? What if I’m not a positive person? What if I’m a pessimist? All of us know pessimists. Clearly, not all of them have died.
The only solution, for me, is to be grateful for the health I’ve had and the help I received and to assist others by researching the politics of cancer treatment. There’s something creepy about Amgen paying for almost all the cost of my pricey Neulasta shot. There is also something creepy about pharmaceutical companies funding National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Why is so little attention paid to the causes of cancer, such as the toxins we absorb from conception on? Why work so hard to defeat something when it could be prevented?
Note: This post was inspired, in part, by Andi O’Conor’s tales of rebuilding her house, which burned down in the Four Mile Canyon Fire in 2010, especially “Life on the Edge.”