The Dilemma

Hello folks. I have a dilemma. Perhaps you can help me out.

I found this cup at a Royal Farms gas station on Boston Street in Baltimore. I was pumping gas, looked down, and there was this cup one-fourth full of change. I stared at it for a while; looked around to see if anyone was looking at me, looking at the cup. I wondered for a minute or so if I should take it with me. I grabbed the cup, held it, sat down in my truck, door open, sat there with the cup in my hand, wondering if I should leave it, perhaps for someone less fortunate than me, or if I should just take it and toss it in with the rest of my change in the water cooler change deposit bank I have in my closet. Needless to say, I took it (and considering the 'less fortunate' angle, I recalled the countless times I have given those "less fortunate" folks money when they've accosted me on American streets) and I brought it home and counted it:

7 dimes
1 nickel
1 button
87 pennies

The button isn't worth much, but the coins add up to be $1.62, a fine amount if you want to start resurrecting those dreams of world travel and owning your own business, but I digress:

Now what?

I cannot bring myself to pour the change into my water cooler bank, so now the cup just sits on my desk, mocking me, echoing the ghosts of all the homeless persons that could have used the money on these cold and frigid Baltimore winter nights.

So what do I do with the dollar sixty-two?

What ever do I do?

Other Boston Pics

The Prudential Building, Boston, MA

View from Prudential Building, Boston, MA (cont. 2)

View from Prudential Building, Boston, MA (cont.)

View from Prudential Building, Boston, MA

Trinity Church, Boston, MA

Leaving Colorado

View from Lost Gulch Overlook (Boulder, CO)

My Old Apartment, Boulder, CO

My Favorite Used Books Store, Boulder, CO

More Colorado Pics

Long's Peak

Long's Peak stands 14, 255 feet in Rocky Mountain National Park here in Colorado (just outside of Estes Park, where I spent some time today).

I climbed (hiked is the more appropriate term; I bore no equipment for scaling rock faces) this mountain in 1999 with my then-supervisor and friend Silas.

I had lunch with Silas and his three-year-old son today at Mountain Sun on Pearl Street in Boulder. Good to see how well he is doing. He is a bona fide 100 percent milkman; you know, like delivering bottles to your doorstop milkman. NO shit. It's a good living and I wish him and his family all the best.

When I was nearing the end of my Bachelor's degree in Baltimore (2000) at Towson University, I walked into the new Barnes and Nobles and spent some time scanning the titles in the poetry section. One title stood out: Long's Peak by Chester Wickwire. The cover had a picture of Long's Peak. Applying the logic that I once hiked this verysame mountain, I purchased the book. After I fininshed reading, I noticed that it was published by a Baltimore press, BrickHouse Books. The publisher of BHB was listed on the title page: Clarinda Harriss. The name was familiar; I had an inkling she worked at Towson University. So I looked her up in the TU directory, sent her an e-mail inquiring about any internhip possibilities, heard back from her soon thereafter, and thus began my on-again off-again tenure as an Assistant Editor with BrickHouse Books.

This past year, I was reading manuscripts for BHB and came across a unique and lively book of poetry: The General Is Asked His Opinion by Omar Shapli. I wrote up a brief review of the book and told Clarinda that she should publish this title next. Her reply was the she didn't have the funds to do so. My reply: What if I published it? With her blessing, I wrote Omar a letter offering to publish his book, and thus was born twentythreebooks. The General Is Asked His Opinion will be available for online purchase in the next few weeks.

I park, therefore I am....

a fuckhead.

(Baltimore, MD)

Boulder Revisited

This is the bagel shop I worked at for about a year and a half. Up every day at 5 am ('time to make the bagels'), I staggered into this place, by the back door, and ruled like a tyrant over my food prep area.

I am writing this post in a Best Western a few blocks from the bagel shop (or as my friend and former co-worker Eric likes to call it, "The Bagel Hut"). One block up and across 28th Street is a Target.

When my friend Drew and I first moved out here, we had no friends here, no jobs lined up, no place to live, so we slept in our sleeping bags just outside of town at the foot of the Flatirons, fending off cops, foxes, and morning dew. We spent a few days looking at apartments and applying for jobs. City Street Bagels pretty much hired us on the spot and we were to begin working immediately: Drew as counter help, me as the prep guy. I did everything from prepare the dough for the bagels to making a variety of cream cheeses (which I do not eat, and thus I never, ever taste-tested my own whippings) to slicing tomatoes and onions and turkey for the lunch crowd. The night before our first day I went into Target (across the street) and purchased a cheap alarm clock to wake us up at 430 am so we could sneak into a park and use their showers before anyone woke up and was the wiser.

Drew didn't last long at City Street Bagels; I held on until March 1999.

Being back here reminds me of all the reasns why I loved this place; conversely, it reminds me of exactly why I left. I have a lot of great and not-so-great memories tied to this place and I am grateful I had the opportunity to come here in the first place and grateful for the opportunity to revisit.

I haven't eaten a bagel since I left here 7 years ago. Eating 5 to 7 of them a day will do that to you. But I also have not hiked in the mountains since I left, and I miss that tremendously. The Rocky Mountains make this grown man well up a little. Hopefully tomorrow I will get off my lazy sit-in-front-of-the-computer ass and make my way to the trails I once knew.

The gathering flab concurs with this hope.