2 August 2016

They required all my addresses from the last seven years for the background check. I left off the secret island property off the coast of Oregon because I didn't want anyone to know where I buried the gold. I had to check my Amazon order history starting with 2010 because I didn't remember them all. Found out I've used eleven different addresses since the end of high school. The only place I lived a full year at since 2010 was the Phi Delta Theta house at UTC. The background check took most of July to come back. The other job I was going to do until this one, it didn't last. It was a small canvassing place, and I only worked one day because they ran out of funding and shut down.

For anyone who doesn't know what canvassing is: generally it is the "foot-soldier" division for lobbying. "To canvass" meaning to fully cover large swaths of territory and tell voters about pending legislation. I think it's derived from the word for the fabric, which according to the dictionary can be used as a verb, meaning "to cover with canvas." I have always seen the job spelled with a double s, probably to differentiate it from the fabric. That's what I did at The Fund for The Public Interest in Seattle in 2014. A canvassing agency like The Fund runs a campaign that's usually based on a particular bill working its way through state or federal Congress. In early June '14, it was to increase funding for state parks. Then there was one to regulate the "antibiotics everywhere" approach to meat farming.

Other canvassing agencies offer their services for hire to nonprofits and lobbyists. This place I worked for a day at was doing a campaign to reallocate tax-surplus money in Colorado to public transport and education. Then it was petitions for a minimum wage referendum in November. I don't think it got enough signatures by deadline. Oh, and Black Diamond LLC was doing a pro-fracking campaign. There are strong pro-fracking interests in the state of Colorado. They're pushing really hard against restrictions right now, and doing everything they can to put oil-shale hydraulic fracturing in a wholesome family portrait, like these:

So that's interesting. Overall, Colorado is more of a "red state" than some of my friends and family in the Southeast states might guess. Colorado residents usually vote GOP in presidential elections, except the state went blue for Clinton in '92 and for both Obama terms. Gun laws are lenient here. Don't yet know the state income tax rates. Sales tax is right at 9%, except on groceries which don't have a consumer tax.

My friend Eli made a road trip out here in the middle of the month. Some of y'all know Eli. We had a great time. Hiked a lot. One day he got a bunch of burgers and bratwurst for us to grill at a state park. We drove to Park County on the other side of Cheyenne Mtn., but the ranger at the gate told us there was a burn ban over the whole Pike National Forest. We ended up grilling at the apartment complex, but the scenery was worth the drive.

Besides that, I had the opportunity to visit some old friends in Minnesota. Holly and Gavin had done the National Student Exchange program from their university in Rochester to Chico State when I did in 2012. They had been trying to get me and a few Chico friends to visit Minnesota for years. Minnesotans have a lot of pride in their state, which I like. This year, Victor flew in from L.A. and I flew in from Denver and we joined Holly and Gavin's squad in Minneapolis for Holly's birthday weekend. We went to a bar called the Pourhouse that had secret doors. After that we spent most of the weekend on the water, because Minnesota is the Land of 10,000 lakes. Two things surprised me most about the state: it was 97ºF, and American Spirit cigarettes cost $9.99 per pack. Apparently, the tobacco tax is paying for the new Viking stadium and has signficantly reduced the smoking rate.

One of the best parts was when Holly took me farther north to Lake Itasca, the official headwaters of the Mississippi River. I had only seen the Mississippi in Memphis, St. Louis, and New Orleans. It's huge, fast, and full of sediment by the time it gets that far south. I waded across it here at knee height. And it's so gosh-darn clear. I drank a sip against my better judgment and didn't get a water parasite. I had a blast in Minnesota. I'm looking forward to going back next year for Gavin's wedding.

But there were some things that happened in July that were not so good. 2016 has been an ominous year for the nation. The whole country watched several people die on camera during America's birthday week. Two police officers pinning down Alton Sterling and firing rounds into his chest. His final moments as he's bleeding out. Only a day later, Philando Castile's girlfriend live streams his final moments. He bleeds out and loses consciousness on screen while Officer Jeronimo Yanez panics, shouts, and shakily points his gun at the fresh corpse. In Fresno, Dylan Noble was shot to death after provoking officers by pantomiming a gun during an investigative stop. Then of course the Dallas shooting happened. That was bananas. One former soldier had the whole city on lockdown for six hours. Air traffic was shut down. And the body count kept ticking up by the hour. There was that clip of Micah Johnson in a shootout with an officer and blasting him at close range. There was a lot of real-life violence that week.

Oh! and then the Dallas PD tweeted the picture of Mark Hughes (you may have seen it: a smiling, goateed black man who was open carrying during the protest) with the message, "This is one of our suspects. Please help us find him!" They might as well have tweeted, "Black man with a gun! It's gotta be him!" Almost immediately, Twitter users shared footage of Mark Hughes standing around with other protesters and officers while the shooting was happening. Clearly not shooting at officers. Mark Hughes was arrested as a suspect and interrogated. The Dallas PD told him they had footage of him shooting at officers. Police are legally allowed to lie to you during questioning. That should be disconcerting. It begs the question: Why? And further, why do they feel the need to? I need my white friends and family to understand that there's a problem going on in the United States and how it treats our black siblings. And the Civil Rights Act of 1964 didn't solve disenfranchisement. It also didn't fix attitudes. There are people alive today who remember Jim Crow segregation; there are also those who remember it and wish it were still in place.

On a lighter note, I got Deb started on Pokémon. She's battling through the seventh gym in HeartGold while I'm typing this. It really is a masterpiece of a series. I've spent hundreds of hours on Pokémon games. Every hour was worth it. I still remember when Mew was announced, talking to Gary Holland and Will Burke about it in Miss Kerr's class. Heck, I remember when Ms. Ryan's class got to play Pokémon on their Game Boy Colors at recess but we weren't allowed to play ours. That was one of our early moments of recognition that the universe is intrinsically unfair. (Right, Devin?) Deb just beat the seventh gym leader. Killing it.

Thanks to everybody reading this. It is really important to surround yourself with good people. I've been blessed in the way of friends and community over the years. This blog is pretty much written to friends and family as a way for y'all to easily keep up with me. And it's turned out to be a great creative outlet, too. Writing HTML and CSS is fun. This particular medium strikes that right-left hemisphere pairing: Logical brain and creative brain getting together to do work. I get to use image processors and arrange file trees. So it's a blessing to have people around me who care about what I'm doing enough to click on it. As I said in the opening paragraph, I have moved around a lot in the last several years. But distance is nothing compared to what it used to be. I'm grateful to be able to keep in contact with friends across the country. And to be clear, there is no secret island with buried gold off the coast of Oregon. That was clickbait.

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