Clifford Styll, fried chicken, Broncos line coach, Blue Mustang – don’t call him ‘blucipher’
Outro by Denver son but world traveler, who I once rode a tour bus with from San Diego to Maine, Corey “Roar He” Harris
edit to add, later that day: this was based on an NYT feature, “36 Hours in Denver”. Another thing, and apropos of my friend Chris Strausser, I added Royce Freeman the former Oregon star, to my fantasy football team; he’s on the mend from an ankle injury.
And regarding Clifford Styll Museum, I noticed an early work, here; he is not nose for representational work or Americana. He is also better nosed as Clyfford Still. Snory. (Not that his work is boring, I am playing on the word ‘nose”).
And if I didn’t already Spain this fifty times: Corey Harris is from Denver before Maine, West Africa, New Orleans and Virginia, or Italy.
(I have a headline, a screen capture and 34 tags so if I don’t get back to this – circulocuting but not overlapping with the popular and large rock band Coldplay, just read my list — “drawn a line” as Chris might say — and write own story)
tk
Movie screening one night only SF Embarcadero at 7 pm or six hours by the clocks, were there world enough and time, lord willing and the creeks don’t rise
Sitting on the dock of the bay, the Maggie actually trying to dude where’s my car
There’s a stain on my notebook where your coffee cup was
Great coffee table book about Joel and Ethan Coen I saw it at Butt Sink Palo Alto and randomly shot a shot I think it’s from burn after readingB/w page 67 of recent Zoe kravitz rolling stone where rich silverstain once gathered no moss:
(
Two hours later, wife he calls to tell me that my capture that was printed in the Cohen brothers coffee table book and is the basic Nightes for this post is obscene it as a dildo so I’ve added that and less it existed some kind a ghost or whatever they call that CACHE
Amy is watching Last of the Mohicans in the other room with the kids. We started it last night after Ulysses’ basketball game. Pizza, carrots, Mohicans and then early to bed.
This morning, before everyone got up, I went on a run with Artemis and then made breakfast. Scones, German pancakes, bacon, eggs, and some bread that Jim and Christine brought by last night with butter and jam on it. Some coffee from beans that a friend in Austin sent to us last week. It’s not Whataburger, but…
After breakfast, we went on a hike in the Franklins with friends and dogs. Glorious morning in El Paso, crisp and clear, you can see for miles at the top of Crazy Cat.
Listening to the war cries and shots firing from the TV speaker in the other room, I’m smiling because we are all together again. Doing something — just hanging out, just being around, just being — that I haven’t done in almost two years.
Been to all the kids’ games over the last few days, made dinners at home, seen some friends and got to be outside, on the mountain and down at the river with Artemis.
I can hear Amy yelling in the other room “Don’t watch this part! Don’t watch it!”
And Henry saying “I’m watching it!” and laughing.
Already miss the road. Miss our team and the volunteers we’d see in every city, every town. Miss the energy and smiles and joy that I found all over Texas. Miss the purpose, the goal. Miss being part of something so much bigger than me or my life. Organized for a common cause and end. We were all together, really together. Never felt anything like that.
While there is loss, I also feel intense gratitude, waves of it every day. How was I so lucky to be part of something so amazing?
I can close my eyes and see so many faces and smiles. Hear the laughing and the cheering. I can see us hopeful and connecting as we shook one another’s hand, looking at each other and nodding, knowing. All the stories that have been shared with me, all part of me. Every gift and kindness, every word of encouragement. Every bit of faith in what we had set ourselves to.
We were doing this for one another, doing this the right way, doing this for our country at what we all know to be a defining moment of truth.
The loss is bitter, and I don’t know that I’ve been able to fully understand it. I try not to ask what I could have done differently because I don’t know that there is an end to those questions or thoughts. There are a million different decisions I could have made, paths I could have taken, things I could have said or not said, said better or differently. I did my best, everyone did. For our democracy to work, for us to be able to continue to work together, it’s important to be at peace with the outcome.
But what remains is this: I’m the luckiest guy in the world to have had the chance to do this with you. To bring power and joy to politics. People instead of PACs. Communities instead of corporations. Polls and consultants left to the wind and hopefully to the past. To have the confidence to move with the courage of our convictions. To open our hearts to one another. To not allow our differences (of party, of geography, of race or anything else) to divide us. To not know how it would end but to know that we had to give it everything.
I don’t know how to fully make sense of what remains or to measure the impact we’ve had.
Certainly, we changed something in Texas and in our politics. At the very least our campaign reflected a change already underway in Texas that hadn’t yet been seen in statewide campaigns.
Future campaigns will be won, influenced by the one we built. Candidates will run who otherwise wouldn’t have. Some will take heart in knowing that you don’t have to accept PAC money, you don’t have to hire a pollster to know how you think or what you want to say. They will have seen in our campaign that there is real joy and power in being with people, all people. Republicans, Democrats, Independents. People who’ve never voted and never will. People who will vote for you, people who won’t. People who live in the forgotten neighborhoods of the biggest cities. People who live in small towns that no Senate candidate has been to in 70 years.
I am grateful that you gave me a chance to be part of this. I feel responsible to you, to our country, to my kids and to my conscience to make sure that we continue to find a way to respond to the urgency that we still feel. It didn’t go away Tuesday night. Our ability to convert hope and inspiration into action and change must not be wasted or kept to a candidate or campaign lest it dissipate and be rendered unusable at the most challenging time in our country’s history.
Just know that I want to be part of the best way forward for this country — whatever way I can help in whatever form that takes. Know that I am honored to have run this campaign with you and that I want to continue to honor and be honest to what was powerful about it.
For the time being, I am going to focus on being a better dad to our kids who have not had much of one for the last 22 months.
Movie is over. Now going to Molly’s basketball game and then we’ll see what’s next.
Grateful to you for being a part of this, for giving me a chance to be a part of this.
See you down the road,
Beto
and1: Hey, Beto: next time hire Kent Lockhart, not as muscle but as art direction:
BLUF: File Zack and Wyatt Vinci former football turn fancies under “right said Fred meets Gordie Lockbaum if Lockbaum’s mother’s maiden name was Licht”
edit to add or prologue, 2020 hind-sigh: I’ve updated this a couple years later, partly because the video link decayed; Vinci is my 3rd favorite Wesleyan football player all time behind (so to speak) Greg Zlotnick the kicker and my high school classmate — from Beth Am, and maybe now that Shedroff N agrees with me that future governor JB Pritzker once sang “If I Were A Rich Man” to wild applause — and Murphy Halliburton’s step son Rocko or Ricky or something, Two Ton Tony Gallento, who came (!) in as a hot shot QB. The Vinci, Night or Day, transferred to the Pac 10 or in his or their case 12 Pac. I met them near Stanford on a game day. Did I almost say “gay dame”? And lastly — although I started this on June 28, 2020 to write about Black Lives Matter and “blacks” versus “Blacks” style-wise and something based on Liverpool and Mo Salah — running down the field vs oh sitting down — and maybe as a leitmotif Robin DG Kelley op ed not on Monk and the COINTELPRO agent who posed as a janitor for a few weeks to count how many times Monk or Scher said “Nairobi” or “disrobe, please” — I would rather, even as a completely straight and rarely homophobic privileged, blessed and circumspect Weiss male, see Wyatt and Zach all greased up and ready to lead — I almost said all leased up and ready to greed — greet — than Tony and JB Pritzker. No “buy” “sell” or “holds” barred.
Capture of a camera shy budding media group: I tried this with Jesse Williams to lesser affect.
I enjoyed rapping with the twin, book-reading budding media gurus from Vancouver via New Jersey and La La. They declined my photo request, but apparently are all over social media.
One played with Robert Woods, one tackled him. The other tackled McCaffrey — Wild Calf — on special teams. One read Shakti Gawain, and took notes, the other Jordan Peterson.
I bought Frederick Douglass bio – Blight, 2018- but D or N claimed I was not an “agitator” to them.
Stay tuned.
Part II: Look, guys: if you’re going to strip down, grease up, and do a combination of yoga and hip-hop moves, you cannot control strangers popping you —is that a word ?—paparazzi style in malls. You are Zach and Wyatt Vinci from Central Jersey and you changed your names to Latin words for “Day” and “Night”.
Best of his generation but sadly never mayor Greg Schmid spoke to 40 who gathered about the events that led to the ribbon cutting for the 7.7 acre parcel potentially known as “Lee Flats” for the family that donated the land 50 years ago
I love that old Mary Chapin Carpenter song (tho written by someone earlier) about sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug. Yesterday, at a beautiful though slightly (appropriately?) smoky late morning early aft at Foothills Park, about 40 of us — local pols, native plant lovers, guys and gals who look good in green — we were the windshield. And we SMASHED the bug or bugs. Bug. His name is Arrillaga. You know, the subject of the Grand Jury Report. Stanford rich guy, who (most) rules do not apply to. This time they did!
In 2012 — tho Karen Holman, former mayor and newly elected to Open Space District, pretended she forget the year — Mr. Rich Guy simultaneously tried to ram down our throats an office tower on a public parks and a war memorial at 27 Uni AND lord knows why offered to buy a 7.7 acre parcel of never-dedicated parkland. Did he low-ball us because we would be so grateful of his offer of a new building, for Stanford? Did he offer to over-pay so we woud look the other day while drillers drilled and hammerers hammerered away for years at a time? Who knows. Did he offer to reimburse us for $500,000 after he coaxed staff to use tax payers money to flesh out his vampire scheme? NO, of course not. (of coarse knot, his brain). I remember that my notes on the weak staff report under obvious duress had 287 faults in it.
I remember damn well it was 2012 because I ran for Council that year (me, Tim Gray, Marc Berman, Liz Kniss and Greg Schmid — Liz and Marc acing out Tim and I for the open seats, Greg carrying as incumbent.) I got 6,000 votes, Tim, 7,000 despite me not spending a dime on campaign — ok, wifey to be and outgoing arts commish and chair Terry Davis did design some buttons without my approval — with help from the great Rob Syrett of monsters fame, thereby establishing myself as the most pop of the pols in recent memory on a cost basis — thru 3 successive tries and less than $2,000 spent or in-kind I got 8,000 votes or paid less than 25 cubits per vote. Jason Green after the candidates forum wrote in the Merc and the Daily News that I “came out swinging” against Arrillaga Towers. (On these pages I called it — hoping to duck his evil Palentir – Allen like Ginsburg Raga like Indian percussion. My review: Moloch. Moloch. Moloch).
more more more
edit to add: I haven’t finished the story but want to add the part about drinking until 3 at Zotts with Rhineharts, Roths and Joe Melena the former para-trooper skydiver on public dole — Army, between Korea and Vietnam but only for practice — and photographer for Chronicle and Times Tribune — and Cory Wolbach outgoing 37-yo pol with a lightbulge above his head about wanting to connect Lee Flats to Los Trancos Road by bike trail and the fact that now that I suss it up –here on a Sunday morn at Old Pro watching MC 2 MU 1 with Sean or Shawn from VZ, that the local angel or angle to “The Bug” is that it was actually written by Mark Knofler of Dire Straits and recorded by he and his brother David Knofler, who for whatever reason toured Europe with local star Megan Slankard of Tracy — disclosure, I offered to manage her, and got a meeting with she, I and Andrea Troolin for manages Andrew Bird if that’s his real name or not — whose parents…wait for it… are Stanford Alums Tom and Amy Slankard. Read my lips, Stanford: more Toms and Amys and progeny Megan (who went to Cal or sis did) and fewer JA.
and1: I first heard of this because Enid Pearson, the former council member, posted on a website about the undedicated land.
Outro by Denver son but world traveler, who I once rode a tour bus with from San Diego to Maine, Corey “Roar He” Harris
This is an inside joke especially following my post about foothillspark in that in 2014 the hollow out the weekly called me the great agitator
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 