Living the Mile-High Life

After the highways raised above the swamp, after the ragged trees, after Lake Pontchartrain pulled away to our right, we’ve reached hotel strip land.

The rooms face an interior courtyard, partly occupied by a CPR class. Each student, ensconced on the floor, has a device to keep her as far away from Annie’s mouth germs as possible. Annie is inanimate, but who knows what she picked up along the way?

Tomorrow Todd will become an Annie of sorts, the Annie of balance tests.

January 5th, 2009 | Category: MonHaibun | Comments (1)

To be honest, I’m not looking forward to 2009 at the moment. It begins with my husband’s surgery in Louisiana, which will be good for him in the long run but scares me in the short run, and I can’t really see beyond that.

I love writing about Denver, but so far I’ve made $5 off it. I want to keep doing it, but I have to find a way to earn money while exploring Denver. So far this blog has been a money sink instead of a cash cow.

I was talking to my husband about it last week, and he pointed out that bloggers are not my natural audience. He said I should be trying to reach people on TripAdvisor and other such sites, the places where people go for information when they want to visit Denver or move there.

I think his point was insightful; it’s just that I haven’t heard anyone talking about how to build backlinks from sites such as TripAdvisor.

Plus, I like talking to other bloggers. I’ve enjoyed the conversations taking place on this blog that lead me into other people’s lives.

So here’s my plan for 2009:

1. In January, I’ll be writing about my husband’s surgery in Baton Rouge for superior canal dehiscence syndrome and his recovery.

2. Starting in February, I’ll resume writing about Denver, focusing on Denver neighborhoods. I like taking on one chunk of the city at a time, and visits to my blog went up the last time I did that.

3. I’ll follow Caroline Middlebrook’s strategy for building backlinks. (So far, though, I haven’t noticed a link from my first Squidoo lens showing up in my Wordpress stats.)

4. I’ll give myself until August to increase traffic and develop more of a presence.

5. I won’t assume, as I have in the past, that lack of immediate success means I’ve failed. I’ll keep adjusting my strategy depending on what I’ve learned.

6. I’ll develop travel articles based on research for my blog, and I’ll market those to magazines and websites. I would try to sell them to newspapers, but they’re hosed right now. When things settle down in newspaperland, I’ll try them again.

7. My biggest goal for this year is to make enough money from the blog to spend a month in another city and write about that. In other words, I see “Living the Mile-High Life” as a brand that could morph into “Living the Kansas City Life” or even “Living the Mumbai Life.”

8. My ultimate goal is to write travelogues that convey what it’s like to walk around Denver or San Diego or Paris for the first time, that tell the traveler what immersion will feel like. Not so much a travel guide as a Feel Guide.

If you’ve got any advice for me, I would very much appreciate it. I’m not all that new to blogging, but I’ve never tried to turn a blog into an income. Here are some possible questions to answer:

How can I make my site appeal to a wider audience?

How do I get more readers for a travel blog?

Are other bloggers my audience, or people who want to learn more about Denver? How much do those audiences overlap?

January 2nd, 2009 | Category: Free for All | Comments (10)

Today we’re hosting a party. I’ll be posting about my plans for the New Year tomorrow.

January 1st, 2009 | Category: Free for All | Comments (2)

In between looking for the pieces of my gutter that blew off in the 82-mile-per-hour wind last night, I’ve put together this list of what I learned this fall while exploring Denver.

I love to explore, more than almost anything else. I like to wade into something new, find out what I can, and report back to the rest of the world.

There is so much more to Denver than downtown. In fact, I think several other parts of Denver are more pleasant to walk: I like Uptown (east of downtown Denver) for a LOT of walking, and Highlands (west of downtown). I like looking at downtown Denver from the Auraria campus, when I’m walking to the bus station after watching a movie at Starz. Another local blog, Denver Infill, often comments on the walkability of Denver.

It’s a privilege to be told other people’s stories: how they came to start this shop or this restaurant, or why they love this neighborhood.

In seeming contrast, some days I prefer to be a fly on the wall. I can walk into a shop or restaurant one day and announce I’m reviewing it for my website, but other days I feel shy. I just want to sit and observe who goes by, listen to people chatting, and get a sense of the place.

I always feel a little nervous after emailing notice of my reviews. What if they don’t like it? But nobody ever complains—they are just glad to be noticed.

Speaking of being noticed, I’m happy that so many people visited my site and commented. I’ve blogged elsewhere in the past, mostly for family, and never reached out to other readers. My site has a small readership, but they keep coming back, and I’m grateful for that.

My point-and-shoot Olympus camera is not very good at capturing high-contrast settings. Luckily, I’m now the owner of a Canon Kiss Digital Rebel 300D (courtesy of my friend Margaret). It’s a bit outdated but still a step up for me.

This blog will never earn money from Adsense. In the four months I’ve been writing it, I’ve earned about $5. I’m not sure what I will try next.

I’m slowly developing a list of my favorite places in Denver: Ahimsa Footwear, D Bar Desserts, equipement de vin, Urban Pantry, Wen Chocolates. I’m looking forward to adding to it in 2009 and writing more about Denver for all of you.

December 30th, 2008 | Category: Denver Shops, Denver chocolate, Denver dining, Denver markets and grocers | Comments (6)

I think, sometimes, of how you used to rage,
remember words you hurled at me like sticks
and stones—or like grenades. An explosion like sex,
at first, and later on, a cold dark rampage
that laid waste to the quiet country of my heart.
For days on end, I might as well have been
missing in action in a small Southeast Asian
territory. And you the lover of art,
of rationality! The pacifist!
Oh, you the one who never was missing or lost!
I held my hand in front of my then-young face
to keep away those words—that acid, that mace—
and still you seized my wrists and pulled me to you
to kiss or kill me. Which, I never knew.

I returned today from spending Christmas in Redstone and could not think of a subject for a haibun. So I’m giving you this poem, one of my favorites. I love it because I have known people like the [man] the narrator is addressing, but I also admire the fact that it’s a sonnet but doesn’t advertise that fact, nor does it dwell much on rhyme. In fact, it take 10 lines instead of 8 to describe the problem the poet hopes to solve, and 4 lines instead of 6 to resolve it. I hope you like it.

December 29th, 2008 | Category: Poem by Another | Comments (2)

How do we get to “an economy that restores”?

Go over to the Woohoo Report and read this post about Kiva.

I think this kind of collaboration may be the future of restoration. Why? Because it restores human capital—or creates some where there was none—and it’s done by ordinary people lending and borrowing. It doesn’t require too much government intervention.

I give a little bit of money to charity. But this way I could give and give again. I could interact with different people, maybe even go meet them someday.

And while you’re there, give some money to those Central American butchers.

***

I also like the idea behind InvestBX, a local stock exchange in England. Or, I guess I should say, a “local-virtual stock exchange.”

Local-virtual is a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?

I can’t remember where I read about InvestBX, but the article said there used to be lots of local stock exchanges. According to the article, the purpose of InvestBX “is to help small to medium businesses raise capital for growth, in exchange for shares.”

(Is there a difference between a stock market and a stock exchange? If so, would someone please explain it to me?)

December 26th, 2008 | Tags: InvestBX, kiva.org | Category: Restoration Nation | Comments (2)

For many years now, I’ve had mixed feelings about Christmas, and I’m asking for your patience with my honesty about them.

Until my mid-teens, I was a devout Catholic, and then Christmas was a bona fide religious holiday for me. Since I’ve lapsed, about thirty years ago, it can no longer be that way. The memory of devotion is still there, but I can’t recapture it. So my relationship to Christmas has changed.

For one thing, I no longer worship Jesus Christ. I do wish that I were better at following his teachings, though I reserve the right to reject some. But because I no longer believe in sin (good and evil are enough to cover the vagaries of the world, I think), I no longer feel a need to be saved.

People I know may have a different opinion, of course.  And they may be right.

And, of course, there’s the Jesuit saying that if they’ve got you until age seven, they’ve got you for life.

If I were to pick from among Christ’s teachings to implement in my life, I would choose “Judge not, that ye not be judged,” and the one about the speck in thy brother’s eye.

I frequently have a bad case of “speck in the other’s eye” and need to be gently reminded about the boards in my own eyes. And my husband, who is an atheist, is the best person I know at not judging others, at simply letting them be.

So for today I am simply letting Christmas be the variety of things it has been in my life—religious holiday, source of wonder, source of presents, occasion to spend time with family, the season of light (which it shares with the winter solstice), retail fantasyland and horror story, and occasion for measuring what I’ve done in my life.

If I could let it all go, I think I would simply appreciate how the earth is turning toward light and longer days and fruitfulness. I would use the solstice to go inward and evaluate how I’d done in the past year.

Someday I would like to spend the holidays at a contemplative religious retreat. That is, if they’d take me after what I’ve just said. Somewhere I could be still, and listen to my heart.

That sounds like the best kind of present to me.

December 25th, 2008 | Tags: Christmas | Category: Free for All | Comments (9)

Bixa

Friday was serendipitous: the week before Christmas had been cold, snowy; I was stir-crazy. But Friday was warm enough to walk around without a coat in the early afternoon.

I started out at Bixa, a small shop at Colfax and Vine in what used to be the red-light district of Denver. Colfax still has its gritty parts but has cleaned itself up enormously since I moved here in the late 1980s.

The first item that caught my eye in Bixa was a clock made from recycled computer parts, and I asked Charles, who owns the store with his partner Darrel, “Did Carol Baum make that clock?”

I met Carol when we were planning Artful ReCreations for Eco-Cycle; she was one of the featured artists. So I felt right at home in Bixa, with its rugs braided from grocery store bags and its colorful purses fashioned from candy wrappers into all shapes and sizes. Charles said the staff generally don’t recognize the candy wrappers the purses are made from; he thinks they come from other countries.

Bixa is Artful ReCreations 24/7 and then some.

My favorite items in the stores were those made by a Denver artist using acupuncture needles: necklaces, earrings, little storage boxes. I almost bought the creation below, whose silver patterns resemble embroidery but are actually needles coaxed into various shapes.

I bought some organic, fair trade Assam tea there, and had a long discussion with Charles about green teas with that toasted flavor—you know what I mean? I love that flavor. And about Intelligent Nutrients, Horst Rechelbacher’s new company. He founded Aveda back in the day and decided to start up a new cosmetics company after he saw what Estee Lauder did to his baby. Motto: “Everything we put in and on our bodies must be nutritious and safe.” So Intelligent Nutrients products use “organic food ingredients.”

You bought some “organic” lotion? Sorry, there is no organic standard for cosmetics in the United States. “Organic” means something only when you’re talking about food—which makes Rechelbacher’s solution ingenious, I guess.

If I had wanted, I could have stayed until closing talking to Charles. He knows a lot more than I do about recycled and organic products.

But I had to get a move on. I said good-bye to Valentina, the shop mascot; snapped a picture of SAME Café (So All May Eat), which closes at 2 pm most days (open all day Saturday); and headed to the African and American Trading Company, just a block west of City Park.

African and American Trading Company

I walked in, and a voice greeted me from among the shelves of baskets and dolls. John Henderson was sitting in the back corner of the small shop, talking with his friend Harold Brewer. I introduced myself, and the second wonderful conversation of my Friday began.

Mr. Henderson is an importer of goods from Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Iceland, and England. For thirty years he’s been indulging his “hobby” because he likes to meet interesting people. He told me all about his trip to South Africa, the gold miners (both men and women) who descend 11,000 feet into the earth to do their job, the times he was mistaken for a Zulu, and the South Africans who were so excited to meet American blacks because they’d only seen them in the movies.

When he found out I was from Kansas City (he’s from Wichita), he told me about the restaurant on the Country Club Plaza he visited in 1951. They wanted to serve him in their kitchen, but he said he wasn’t that hungry.

What struck me first were the tiny Zulu baskets, some of them called “oops” baskets, for “out of the ordinary production system,” and made by girls who are learning basket weaving so that they can make a living when they’re grown up. The baskets are made by hand from Ilala palm and bark and grasses and natural dyes. Some baskets are woven so tightly they can hold beer. Women do most of the weaving in the Zulu Kingdom, as far as I could tell, but men now weave baskets from telephone wire; the one I saw in the store was bright orange and blue.

I really wanted to take home some of the dolls below (those with woolen capes are initiation dolls for girls), but I settled for 3 baskets.

I told Mr. Henderson my review would appear on December 23rd. If I’ve gotten anything wrong, I hope his friend with the Internet connection will leave a comment here correcting it.

The African and American Trading Company will be open until 6 on the 23rd and from 8 am to noon on Christmas Eve.

December 23rd, 2008 | Tags: African and American Trading Company, Bixa | Category: Denizens of Denver, Denver Shops | Comments (2)

One thing the shopkeeper told me: an outdoor cat survives one to four years in the mountains of Colorado.

I believed him, having lost Rufus last year to the fox trotting through the park, or the pair of coyotes casing my yard early one morning, or a pack of raccoons. My neighbor cleaned up his guts before she knew what they were. My husband and I took the bloody gravel and buried it with the disco green collar Rufus had lost in the yard.

Now I content myself with the neighbor’s cat who spends his days here and his nights elsewhere.

When I see him through my door on these winter evenings, I think of his front claws that Rufus lacked, the fences he could climb. I hope, when I don’t let him in, he returns to his owners and paws at their door.

Drifts so hard, I leave
no prints on the snow beneath
the bird feeders.

December 22nd, 2008 | Category: MonHaibun | Comments (2)