Month: April 2013

A Shakespeare Festival

Buses deliver actors to Clock Tower Square
The square fills with people
DPS students overwhelm the DCPA
Melees and monologues become the order of the day

On Friday, April 26 2013, the Denver Center for Performing Arts was overtaken by Denver Public School’s Shakespeare Festival. There was a tremendous amount of student participation and it was great fun for spectators like me.

(and if you’re just starting to wonder, ‘William who?’ click here for a quick and dirty summary from Wikipedia)

Starry, Starry Night

Dee works for FasTracKids, a child enrichment company. One of the centers that operates according to FasTracks principles had their kids paint Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night”. The way they did it was really clever. They broke the whole painting down into 20 rectangles and had different kids paint each of those rectangles. Each rectangle looks really good and the combination of all of them looks great as you can see from the image at the top. Look at a few more photos below.

Snow

Lookin' Out My Front Door
Lookin’ Out My Front Door

‘April showers bring May flowers’

I’ve heard that all my life. But I’ve one modest question, Why, this year, do all the April showers have to be snow showers? I sort of remember this Colorado from when I moved here some forty years ago, but I haven’t seen much snow in April for the last twenty. There are a great many people who think this snow is abnormal. I even know skiers who are whining about the late snow.

As hard as it is on the Lilacs, it makes great pictures. Somehow, I’m always surprised and fascinated by the way the snow soaks up colors.

Baseball and Hockey

Six days before the game, our friend, another Steve, calls and asks if we’d like to go to the hockey game. Our home team, the Colorado Avalanche, were hosting the St. Louis Blues. He explained that he had the responsibility of filling a suite. (Wouldn’t you like that job! I know I would.) We knew it would be a bit of a rush since we had already made plans with family to go to the Rockies game together, but Yes! It sounded like fun. The Avs aren’t going to the playoffs this year and the Blues need just one win to clinch a playoff slot but we were sure it would be a good time.

We’d had plans to go watch the Colorado Rockies get a little revenge on the Arizona Diamond Backs for several weeks. They went something like this:

  1. Meet downtown before the game for a little lunch.
  2. Walk over to Coors Stadium.
  3. Enjoy the beautiful spring weather.
  4. Boo the Ump.
  5. Cheer our guys.
  6. Go home with a winning feeling.

Sure the D-Backs beat us last year (who didn’t?), but the Rockies are hot out of the gate this season. The scenario almost worked.

Its a party
Hapless youth
Play ball!
Cummon Rockies
We’re winning
Lets get to the game
Its slipping through our fingers

We had fun before the game. The weather was perfect. The Rockies got on the board first and stayed ahead into the ninth inning when those sneaky snakes from Arizona took the game away. We told ourselves the day was really about family and friends and headed for the Pepsi Center and the Avs. We met some new friends, reacquainted ourselves with others and watched the Avalanche serve the Blues a pretty convincing defeat. As a bonus, because the Avs had  called the day ‘Military Appreciation Day’, we got to applaud the service of some veterans and some new inductees.

The thing I keep thinking about is that who wins is never a locked down certainty. The Rockies were supposed to win (at least in my mind.) They lost. The Avs weren’t supposed to win, but they did. Its been said before, but I guess that’s why they play the game.

Before the puck drops
New friends
Swearing in the inductees

One final word. More important than being our ticket to the Avs game, our friend Steve is a lawyer who heads up a non-profit organization called the Justice and Mercy Legal Aid Clinic. If you’re intrigued, or even just curious about a lawyer who believes in Grace, click here.

Celebration Community Urban Garden

There’s a new growth area at church. There is a rectangle between the church parking lot and Iowa Avenue that is turning into a large vegetable garden. Until now it has just been dirt with a few weeds for squatters. As a Christian fellowship, the folks at church are quite hopeful about the potential for becoming better friends with residents in the community.

The idea has been around as a seed, but now we can look to a group that knows what they’re doing and wants to work with us. UrbiCulture Community Farms is working with us to make the garden grow. Their people know how to set up the raised beds, run water to ’em and generally stack the deck in favor of fresh vegetable success, Their whole existence is driven by a desire to get good, nutritious food to people who don’t have it – at the price they can afford. At Celebration, that sounds like loving our neighbor as ourselves. The seed of the idea seems to have sprouted and is starting to take root.

There are a few photos below and there are a bunch more here.

Raised Beds
Setting the beds
Clean Dirt
Moving dirt
There’s a lot of dirt moving
Enough for now.