This weekend I’ll be attending some talks at the Green Festival, which is being held in Denver at the Convention Center on 14th between Stout and California.

I’m especially interested in David Wann’s talk at 5 pm on Saturday, “Culture Shift: Creating a Restoration Economy.” I own the domain name restorationnation.org and have been pondering what to do with it for some time. I’d like to create some kind of forum on building “an economy that restores.” I hope he can give me some ideas.

At 1 pm on Sunday, Jim Cassio is discussing “Choosing Work for a Sustainable Future.” That sounds good too.

At 2 pm on Sunday, Hunter Lovins will make “The Business Case for Protecting the Climate.”

It costs only $15 per person for the entire weekend, so check it out. There are bands playing (how could you resist Big Green Rabbit?) and food demonstrations and an exhibit hall.

There is lots of similar stuff going on in Denver (and Boulder) these days. There’s now a Transition Colorado group, focused on “transitioning from oil dependency to local resilience.”

And later this month BALLE comes to Denver (May 21 to May 23). BALLE stands for the “Business Alliance for Local Living Economies.” The website is slow, but I finally managed to get to the registration page. Prices go up to $545 for the entire weekend. If you want to look at prices, go to the pull-down menu for the 2009 conference and click on registration.

Todd and I went up to the Observation Deck on the 17th floor of the Daniels and Fisher Tower in downtown Denver. It’s open only 1 day per year, during Doors Open Denver, which took place April 18 to 19, 2009.

The 17th-floor deck is right underneath the clock face. There’s another deck on the 20th floor, but I was scared to climb up the stairs (they were inside the building, but you could look down through them). In fact, I had trouble staying out on the deck very long. Two people can pass on it if they turn sideways. I kept having to go back inside.

Here’s the original of one picture from the deck, looking southwest toward the Pepsi Center (a.k.a. “The Can” or “The Pod”). Auraria campus is to the left and Elitch Gardens to the right.

Here’s the same picture with saturation reduced to -50 in Zoombrowser.

Here’s another version with saturation at +50 and sharpness turned all the way up.

I’ve been having fun playing around with Zoombrowser’s editing features. Now if I could learn to do more of this while taking the picture… I was disappointed by the haze in the original. The day was clear and bright and hot, but the original doesn’t show that.

I don’t know what it is about this weekend: there must have been 10 things I wanted to do on Saturday alone.

At 11 am I’m doing a Krav Maga women’s self-defense seminar in Boulder that they hold every April in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. I did two years of Krav Maga, but I haven’t trained since fall 2006, so I’m sure I’ll be out of breath, to say the least. I’m looking forward to fighting with guys in bright red padding. Yay!

The real purpose of this post was to publicize Doors Open Denver, which is being held this weekend to celebrate local architects and allow Denverites “to go behind the scenes of the city’s significant architectural gems and lesser-known treasures.”

There are self-guided tours and expert tours, but for the latter, you have to get tickets at Union Station. The event office opens at 8:30 am. On Saturday and Sunday! Not bloody likely.

I don’t think I’ll be making it to any of those, but I am planning to check out some sites on Sunday afternoon.

For the self-guided tours, you can pick up a brochure at Union Station or download it, but it looks pretty big. I don’t know how well it would print out.

I got this email message the other day:

Today the founders of IwantmyRocky.com and other former Rocky Mountain News staffers announced a subscription drive to launch a new online news site, InDenverTimes.com. The site is mix of free and premium content. We need 50,000 pledges subscribers by April 23, the 150th anniversary of the first Rocky Mountain News, to launch the full site on May 4. Former Rocky writers Sam Adams, Mary Chandler, Lisa Bornstein, Mark Brown, David Milstead, Chris Tomasson, Aaron Lopez, Mark Wolf and Gary Massaro have already joined the staff of InDenverTimes.com. Help us prove that good journalism can still be good business. Subscribe here.

I’m thinking of subscribing. How about you?

Do you think this kind of website is the future of journalism?

The signs on the left-hand door say, “No Trespassing,” “No Smoking,” etc.

What is this box along Speer in Sunken Gardens Park? It looks like some kind of alien about to take off. Does it have something to do with traffic?

Today the Rocky Mountain News will publish its last edition. As the website says, the paper was established two years before the Civil War broke out.

I truly hope the staff will put together a website or in some way continue for a while, but I don’t know if that’s possible.

I’ll be in Denver today, and I’m hoping I can get a paper copy.

Well, the hubby and I were investigating why my About page didn’t show up in IE in the old theme, and he suggested that I update the theme. So I did, and something very, very bad happened to the links to the static pages. So I finally changed to this theme because readers can at least find their way to every page.

I guess this is going to speed up that theme change I’ve been thinking about.

David Brooks wrote an article in the New York Times that called Denver one of “the five most popular American metro areas.” Can it be true? Could it be because of our oversized art?

Denverites are embroiled in a war over the blue mustang statue on the way to DIA. If you’re on Facebook, check out the “DIA’s Heinous Blue Mustang Has Got to Go” group, or if you’re cool like me, join the “I Love DIA’s Blue Mustang” group, which, I must admit, I joined just to be contrary.

It’s even made the Wall Street Journal:

A Horse of a Different Color Divides Denver

I’ve decided to turn the weekly Fridays at Restoration Nation posts into a separate website, so that will be coming soon. Instead I’ll be posting my favorite things about Denver, from pictures to other people’s posts to events to actual things that are in my house and thus close enough to Denver to count.

Crazy Blogging Canuck Always and Forever

Go to the next galaxy and play Todd’s game

Beth’s adventures on the 12 bus route

The Faces of Eviction, courtesy of Mile High Gay Guy

Are you creative?

Bag-E Wash

Two photos of the Denver Art Museum on the edge of the Golden Triangle—different angles and times of day.

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?

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

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.

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.

But with a twist: the first week of December is Buy Local Week in Denver, so I’m going to focus on locally owned businesses. I’ll also be looking for locally made goods. It’s pretty easy to find locally made food or wine (if I stretch “local” to include the Western Slope), but locating clothes made in Denver or Boulder is more difficult.

I’ve already discovered a few great local shops, such as Ahimsa Footwear and Talulah Jones, which I reviewed in this post, but there are plenty more.

And after the food fest that was Thanksgiving in Chattanooga, I’ll be staying away from the chocolate stores (Yeah, sure, Beth, we believe that one, you’re thinking, but my goal is to lose 5 pounds by mid-month, so I can actually fit into most of my pants).

***

I want to express my condolences to the family of the Walmart employee who was trampled. That was truly awful.

I hope that next year, American businesses will do away with the practice of opening so early and staying open so late on Black Friday, and will tone down their sales a little. In recent years, it’s gotten completely out of hand, and I’ve always felt sorry for the employees who have to work such long hours the day after Thanksgiving. I don’t see how any of that does much for stores’ bottom line, even if Black Friday is their most important shopping day.

***

A quote from Denver mayor John Hickenlooper (nickname: Hick) at the Mile High Business Alliance Buy Local Week celebration:

“I’m going to speak in a deep, throaty voice…create a mood that makes people want to buy local.”

The celebration was held at the Appaloosa Grill on December 1. According to the employee I talked to, it’s one of the few locally owned restaurants on the 16th Street Mall in Denver. Most of the others are chains or are owned by big restaurant conglomerates.

I voted last Friday, worried enough by the reports of long lines in certain parts of the country that I didn’t want to risk waiting for hours on Tuesday.

But I can’t help feeling a little unsettled.

I’ve never wanted to mail in a ballot, too afraid it would get lost. So I have to go to the polls for that reason, and also because I like the feel of it all: walking into a room full of (generally aged) volunteers, filling out a form, showing my ID, getting the ballot.

I prefer to do my voting on Election Day. It feels like an event, a ceremony, a ritual that way, as it should. Sometimes I even cry tears of joy over the privilege of voting.

This election cycle, though, showing up early provided an unexpected bonus: I ran into the county clerk and recorder, Russ Ragsdale. We recognized each other, even though it’s been several years since I was at a meeting he organized to explain how the Help America Vote Act was going to work in Broomfield. I very much doubt I would have been able to chat with him on Election Day.

The Colorado ballot had a ridiculous number of initiatives, and I voted yes on three that will put more money into the state government: the one to raise taxes to provide funds for the developmentally disabled (people like a couple of my relatives, though they don’t live in Colorado), the one to repeal a tax break for oil and gas companies, and the one to repeal part of TABOR and give more money to education (Colorado is 49th in the nation on education spending).

Then, for good measure, I voted no on almost all the others, including the labor initiatives their proponents had withdrawn. Just to make sure.

And finally, just to be a hypocrite, I voted to make it harder to get initiatives on the ballot to amend the state constitution.

I was telling my husband that people who want to get amendments on the ballot should be required to read the entire Colorado constitution first and pass a pop quiz.

(Of course, I voted for some of the amendments in the constitution now. Amendments my husband probably had the good sense to vote against because he didn’t want to clutter up Colorado’s founding document.)

***

One other weird thing about Colorado politics this year? Mike Coffman, the secretary of state, is running for Congress. So in theory he’s supervising his own election.

I’m not concerned about that because he’s a Republican. I just think it’s disturbing that the chief elections official of a state can run for office and supervise an election at the same time. I wish we could pass a law at the federal level to outlaw it—for a quicker result—but I suppose it’s something that must be done at the state level.

You can probably tell that state’s rights are not high on my list of priorities.

***

I’m not sure this post ever had a point it was driving toward. But Monday morning, I saw something that cheered me a bit: looking out my back door, I saw a vehicle driving down the street on the other side of our park. It had a big American flag on the front of the car and a small one attached to the back, as well as a sign on the side. I couldn’t read the sign, and knew it might be for McCain, but still I was cheered by it.

And then something I heard Monday afternoon saddened me: Barack Obama’s grandmother died, the day before the election.

I really wanted her to make it to Wednesday.

If you liked this post, please share it below on Digg or Delicious. I’d like that.

I’m taking a break from the Uptown theme for today’s and Tuesday’s posts. I’ll return to it after the election for several more days, and then I’ll move on to the Starz Denver Film Festival, which begins on November 13.

***

I thought I’d be spending a good chunk of Wednesday looking for a Halloween costume.

I was going to blow off Halloween for yet another year, tell myself it just wasn’t my type of holiday. I was planning to show up at a Halloween party Saturday night as “Nudist on Strike,” wearing whatever I damn well felt like.

I’m still partial to the idea, actually, as well as wearing a sign that reads “Ce n’est pas un costume.”

But then Steph posted about the real spirit of Halloween, and I felt ashamed of my lack of effort.

So I made up a list of costume stores in Denver, and I headed out to Marcia’s in Arvada. Short story short, I found a 1920s-style dress there. Now, that may be what Steph calls a “lame cliché costume,” but I don’t care. I love 1920s stuff, and I know I’ll want to wear it again and again. So I bought that one.

And then I thought, I could just buy five or six costumes and alternate them, as long as I didn’t wear the same costume to the same party within, say, two years. Then I’d never have to think of a Halloween costume again.

I’m incorrigible.

***

One place I didn’t go, since I got my costume at the first store I visited, was Flossy McGrew’s, a famous Denver costume store run by Grandma Goth. Deborah Hiestand, a local filmmaker, made a documentary on her that was quite touching, and the Broomfield Independent Film Series showed it this month.

***

In honor of Halloween, I’m going to list the movies that have scared me the most:

The Sixth Sense (it was weeks before I could walk into my kitchen and not be afraid the cupboards would be open)

Burnt Offerings (because of Bette Davis’s look at the end of the movie)

The Exorcist (I don’t think I actually crawled under my date’s seat, but it was pretty close. Guess I shouldn’t have smoked that weed beforehand.)

I saw Burnt Offerings with my best friend in high school. She would drag me to horror movies and then laugh at how scared I was. (Yes, we’re still friends.)

I’m much more partial to thrillers, such as Dressed to Kill. That was my favorite for a long time. And I love vampire shows, especially The Hunger and Dark Shadows.

One thing I’ve always wondered about horror movies: why is the horrific creature always so ugly? I think beautiful evil is that much more effective; I suspect I like vampire movies because vampires are usually attractive.

I’m curious about my readers’ opinions. What are your “favorite” scary movies?

Democrats: The Republicans are suppressing minority votes!

Republicans: Mickey Mouse is going to vote for Obama!

Democrats: Palin pals around with secessionists!

Republicans: Obama pals around with terrorists!

Democrats: Palin got $150,000 worth of new clothes!

Republicans: Obama’s flying a government jet to see his sick grandma!

***

Is anybody else about to go crazy over this stuff?

I’ve been reading Talking Points Memo and the National Review like they might disappear tomorrow. Then I still want more.

But what I really want is for this election to be over.

For Americans to

1. be more civil to each other. Stop using “un-American,” “unpatriotic,” and suchlike in our daily discourse.

2. get over our massive sense of individual entitlement. Start thinking about what we want the government to pay for, and figure out how much it’s going to cost. And then pay the damn taxes already.

3. Outlaw robocalls and voter challenges.

4. Outlaw secretaries of state being able to work on campaigns.

***

Who can spot the error in this post?

Our foundations are falling away from our house.

Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it?

It’s not. It happened so slowly we didn’t even notice for years. We’re not sure what caused it—could be the sprinkler box outside the bathroom window, leaking. Could be the drought, working on Colorado’s expansive soils and causing them to shrink.

But it has spread to most of one side of the second level of our house. That’s the level the bedrooms balance on. The place where we rest and dream.

We’ve discussed lowering the baseboards, both to hide the problem and to see more clearly if it continues. But we haven’t done it. I have an amazing capacity to live with things, to the point of laziness.

Our house dates from the 1970s, so I think it’s held together pretty well. Every winter it withstands the winds howling down the valley from Boulder and the Foothills. It has a great view.

But it won’t last forever. And it would be a mistake for us to assume we will always have it, just because we have had it.

Go and read this article by an American man whose family fell into poverty.

And go and read, if you haven’t, Leo’s discussion of the causes of poverty worldwide.

If you liked this post, please share below on Digg or Delicious. I’d like that.

Blog Action Day happens once a year, when bloggers all over the world concentrate on one subject. This year it’s poverty.

Here’s a list of things you can do to combat poverty.

Here are some organizations I like and contribute to:

American Indian College Fund

Heifer Project

Global Response

The first and third may not seem like obvious ways to combat poverty, but lack of education and environmental devastation take their toll. Long-term solutions are just as important as short-term ones.

The quote is from Walt Whitman, according to a card I received from a friend.

Do I follow the admonition in the title?

Not even close.

I’m too afraid. Afraid of opening my wallet, having only a twenty, and not wanting to give it. Afraid of being asked for too much, maybe my house or my favorite piece of jewelry.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll have the courage to live it. After all, tomorrow is another day.