The All Seeing Eye

We have a lot of great public art in our downtown. We also have an overabundance of bars, which means drunk people who aren't necessarily on their best behavior, and we have our share of transients, some of whom occasionally indulge in petty crime or vandalism. Some of our art has consequently suffered. It's too bad, but now you'll find this caution stenciled to the sidewalk near each piece these days.

Brandon Browne, Never Forgotten

I saw this on the back of a pickup truck recently and felt compelled to take a picture. Maybe someone who reads this blog has a clue to this man's death, and his poor loved ones might get a chance at some closure. It's a terrible what happened. I googled his name and found the cold case write up. I actually remember this crime, which happened in 2004. He was only 23 years old. You can read about the incident HERE. Maybe it will jog your memory.

December 2015 Theme Day: Shop Window

It's the first of the month, Theme Day for City Daily Photo bloggers! The theme for this month is shop window. At first I had thought to make of photo of the most fanciful holiday window I could find, but the events of last Friday have been weighing heavily on my mind, so when I saw this little sign in the window of Terra Verde on Saturday I chose it for the theme.

Wish. What an inspiring, positive word, full of possibilities! Here is my wish for YOU this holiday season: have a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Killer Kwanzaa, Super Solstice, Beautiful Bohdi Day, or Fanciful Festivus. I wish for us peace on earth and goodwill toward all (including animals!). I wish for a few moments when we're not fretting about politics or terrorism or war or scary guys with guns. I wish for you happy times with the people you love. I wish for you prosperity, serenity, wisdom and contentment. This is the season of love and giving. Slow down, be mindful, and make the best of it!

For more shop windows from CDP bloggers all over the world, click HERE. Have a super day!

Another mass shooting in Colorado Springs

The man in this picture is Officer Garrett Swasey, and he was killed yesterday by a gunman who stormed a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, resulting in a hostage situation and a standoff with the police that lasted hours. Officer Swasey was 44 years old and, as you can see, he had a kind face. Two citizens were also killed (as I write this, their names have not yet been released). Nine people were wounded; four police and five civilians.

For my non-U.S. readers, Planned Parenthood is a non-profit organization providing low cost reproductive health services, mainly for women. It is partially funded by the government. It is also an abortion provider, although abortions comprise only 2-3% of Planned Parenthood's services (and are not funded by the government). Abortion is legal in the United States, however there is a segment of our population that believes it should be outlawed, and even some that go so far as believing birth control is a form of abortion. A few of these people feel so strongly about it, they attack Planned Parenthood clinics around the country. Some of these attacks take the form of arson or vandalism or bomb threats. Some of these attacks are deadly. This is the fourth attack on a Planned Parenthood in the last few months. It is still not clear if this shooter's agenda was in line with other Planned Parenthood attackers.

Yesterday was "Black Friday", the day after Thanksgiving when those who can tolerate the crowds and the din make their way to the big box stores and malls, in search of Christmas gifts at deeply discounted prices. Day Two of the four day Thanksgiving weekend. It was cold and snowing, but plenty of people were out and about. The madness started a little before noon. Planned Parenthood sits behind a King Soopers -- the King Soopers where we bought our Thanksgiving turkey just four days ago, actually. There are a number of small businesses in the same strip mall: a Japanese restaurant, a bank, a liquor store. Everyone in all of these businesses, as well as the surrounding homes and office buildings, was put in danger in the blink of an eye. Hundreds of people. Little did they know that they would be trapped in place until well after 7:00pm, hiding from a madman. At first the description was that there was a shooter at large and citizens were on a "shelter in place" notice, then three police officers were shot, then it became clear that the gunman was inside the Planned Parenthood and had taken hostages. My friends frantically posted on Facebook, "Stay away from Centennial and Fillmore!" And we all stayed glued to the TV and internet, feverishly updating Facebook and Twitter with whatever information we could glean. The gun battle wore on sporadically all day, with a fourth police officer wounded sometime during the afternoon. Finally, after six agonizing hours, the gunman was apprehended. My friend Isaiah, shooting for Reuters, got a photo of the arrest. You can see it HERE on the NY Times website. The gunman looks very tall but very average to me. Like any guy you'd see on the street.

It has not yet been disclosed what his motive was. It seems to me that he was a sharpshooter and at least somewhat tactically trained, to be able to shoot all those people and evade the police and SWAT for hours. I have heard that he was using an AK-47. I listened to the police radio live feed all day, eavesdropping on law enforcement as they strategized their way through the situation. It was mesmerizing and terrifying, hearing it from the mouths of the agents who were actually inside the building, hunting a madman. One of the disembodied voices described some duffel bags that the gunman was carrying, speculating about the contents. Could they be bombs? The assumption was made by another disembodied voice that they might be IEDs, homemade bombs. Be careful, the voice said.

This is what I spent yesterday doing. Listening to police chatter, watching KKTV's Don Ward and Dianne Derby repeat the same information for hours on end. It was eerily similar to how I spent September 11, 2001. Sitting on the couch in this same room, watching surreal events unfold on the TV in front of me.

I have a lot of praise for our first responders. There were over a hundred police deployed, as well as the Fire Department, the El Paso County Sheriff's Department, and what looked like a thousand ambulances lined up on the curb. Everyone handled the situation professionally and calmly. They did so well. And they got the bad guy. I'm sure that in the coming days, we'll hear more about what motivated this man, this terrorist, to perform these atrocities. And oh yes, people have already taken sides on social media. They've twisted his agenda to suit their own agenda, shouting their opinions in all caps. As for me, I just want to repost this picture that my friend Bill took last week. You saw it here on the blog on Monday. We appreciate your thoughts as Colorado Springs recovers from yet another mass shooting, exactly 27 days after the last one.

© 2015 William Davis

Nonviolence Works

© 2015 William Davis

My friend Bill took this picture a few days ago and posted it on Facebook. He graciously allowed me to post it on the blog today (which is doubly nice because I'm sick and stuck in bed with no chance to go out and take any pictures). I asked him to give me a little background information. In his words:

"I took the photo with my iPhone on Friday, Nov 20, at 12:25 pm, corner of Tejon and Vermijo. I was just walking up Tejon, saw the non-violence group and stopped to talk with them for a moment. Sadly I don't remember any of their names. Apparently they often hold up banners promoting peace and non-violence at various places around downtown. I asked if I could take their photo. My thought was that I might put it on FB, and maybe Instagram, just as a small message of peace in light of the recent shootings here, as well the horrible violence in Paris, etc. Somehow I was especially thinking of the recent shooting that took place not too far from there, which also involved random people just walking down the street or riding a bike. It almost seems as though the town has already forgotten that ever happened."

I agree with the message, Bill. Thanks for sharing this uplifting image!

Edit: It just occurred to me that the people in this picture are part of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, a worthy organization indeed! You can read about them HERE.

What the heck happened to this house?

I first posted a picture of this house in 2010 (HERE). We have countless beautiful Craftsman homes in the older neighborhoods of our city, but I've always thought that this one was a particularly fine example. I drive past it almost every day on the way to my studio. One day several weeks ago, I noticed that the entire front of the house, the porch, and part of the yard had been, well... destroyed! I couldn't figure out what had happened, but since I was always behind the wheel and rolling past in traffic, there was never any oppportunity to get a truly good look at it until recently, when I got stuck at a red light long enough to really look it over. I noticed that there was a brand new electric pole on the corner, and I realized what must have happened. This house sits on the corner of El Paso, Fontanero and Paseo streets. Normally, drivers only have to deal with two streets coming together at any given intersection, but with three streets converging in this spot, it can be confusing for anyone unfamiliar with it. My theory is that someone was probably driving too fast, failed to navigate the intersection, jumped the curb, and hit the electric pole, causing the pole to topple onto the house. I imagine the accident happened at night, and maybe the driver was drunk, on the phone, or texting. Who knows? Can you imagine being sound asleep, and having an electric pole come crashing through your roof and a car land in your front yard? Holy moly! I hope no one was injured!

The other day I noticed that after many weeks of looking sad and ramshackle, the house is finally getting repaired. You can see a workman on the roof in this picture. The entire front of the building had been smashed from top to bottom, including the foundation on the left side of the porch, so I imagine there was a lot of wrangling with insurance companies, discussions with engineers, and quotes from various contractors before they could commence work (I wish I'd gotten a picture of the carnage for you -- it was bad). I hope that they can bring it back to its former glory!

A sad addendum

Last Sunday, November 1st, was Theme Day for City Daily Photo bloggers. If you're a regular follower of this blog, you know that on the first of each month, all the CDP bloggers post pictures from their city of a common subject. November's theme was ephemeral, and I posted a number of photos of roadside memorials. The text of the post reflected on the ephemeral quality of life. To quote myself, "no matter how long someone lives, it almost always seems not long enough." I had pre-blogged the post days earlier, scheduling it to "go live" early Sunday morning, since I knew in advance that I'd be out of town. Little did I know that my musings would be posted in the aftermath of a mass shooting in my own city.

Saturday the 31st was another beautiful fall day. The gorgeous, unseasonably warm weather had held up for Halloween. For reasons we'll never understand, Noah Harpham got out of bed that fine morning, gathered up his guns, went outside, and killed anyone that he saw. His first victim was a guy who just happened to be cycling past, 35 year old Iraq war veteran Andrew Myers. The neighbors, who had called the police when they noticed Harpham pacing around armed, bore witness to a man begging for his life. He was gunned down on the spot. Then Harpham took off toward Platte Avenue, a block north. For those unfamiliar with the city: Platte Avenue is a major street with heavy traffic at any time of day. Harpham headed west on Platte, soon coming across two women who had the unfortunate luck of being on their front porch at that moment. He immediately murdered Jennifer Vasquez, 42, and Christina Baccus-Galella, 34. Both women were in recovery from drug or alcohol addiction. They were residents of the sober living home upon whose porch they were killed.

Harpham then made his way toward Wahsatch and Platte, a busy intersection with a Wendy's restaurant on the corner. It was there that the police caught up with him. A brief gunfight ensued, and Harpham was killed. (It bears mentioning that the Palmer High School gymnasium is "catty corner" from the Wendy's. If this had happened on a weekday, there would have been dozens of students about.)

None of these people deserved to die the way they did. Mr Myers had survived three tours in Iraq, only to be gunned down as he rode his bike in a quiet neighborhood in Colorado Springs. Ms. Vasquez and Ms. Baccus-Galella had both worked hard to conquer their addictions. They had hope for their respective futures. I'm outraged and I'm sad. This is the kind of incident that you read about in the news -- happening in some other city. Not your own city. I didn't blog about it until now because I was so angry. I had no stomach for making photographs of the crime scene. It took me until Thursday to will myself to do it. As I drove to Harpham's house, I kept an eye on my car's odometer. Exactly 1.8 miles from my front door to his. It was easy to locate, because a memorial to Mr. Myers was sitting right in front of it -- a sad addendum to my Theme Day post. The neighborhood is called Deaf and Blind, because the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind sits in the middle of it. I shudder to think if Harpham had headed east instead of west. It could have been even more horrible. Too horrible to contemplate.

As I snapped pictures, a TV news reporter stood a few yards away, talking dramatically into a camera and gesturing toward the house. Meanwhile, cars drove slowly down this normally quiet street lined with 100 year old bungalows. Each driver paused before 230 North Prospect to stare. To see where the monster had lived, where he had claimed his first victim. One guy in a black Audi drove past, then went around the block and did it again. He stopped his car to ask me, "Is that the house?" I can only describe the expression on his face as sickened, dumbfounded. When I confirmed that he was correct, he said what we've all been thinking: that he had lived here all of his life, and he can't believe that something like this happened in our city. All I could do was nod in agreement.

The warm weather held until yesterday. Then the wind came. It's winter now.

Mr. Harpham lived upstairs in this unassuming old home. It looks like it might have originally been a mercantile of some sort.

A note on the gate addresses the police, giving them a phone number to call for access to Harpham's apartment.

Possible hate crime or act of domestic terrorism in Colorado Springs

On Tuesday afternoon, a homemade bomb was detonated next to the building that houses the local offices of the NAACP. [To my non-US readers:  if you're not familiar with the NAACP, it's a national civil rights organization created to advance and advocate for the rights of African Americans, and it's been around for over a century.] The explosive device was apparently created from a pipe bomb, a flare, and a five-gallon can of gasoline. Thankfully, the explosion failed to ignite the gasoline, so the building and its occupants were spared; there is simply a large scorch mark on an exterior wall. There has been a great deal of speculation that this was a hate crime and an act of domestic terrorism. The FBI is now investigating the incident. To me it clearly appears to be a hate crime, and the thought just makes me sick. This occurred in a neighborhood that is not far from my house, just west of Prospect Lake and Memorial Park. Two blocks east of the NAACP building is an elementary school. In addition, the mother of one of my friends lives on the same block. I went yesterday to take a few pictures of the building, and all was calm. It was like any other day, but our city is very much in shock that something like this can happen here. We want answers. I hope the FBI moves quickly and arrests the criminal.

Just a few hours after the incident in Colorado Springs came the unthinkable attacks in Paris. It has been a terrible couple of days, I think. This kind of hate is unfathomable to me. To our friends in France: our hearts and thoughts are with you. We stand with you.

Looking good!

Chadbourn Community Church is looking well-loved these days! This is great news, since this little church has had some highs and lows over the years, including getting robbed last summer.  Pat and I noticed last weekend how nice it's looking, so we stopped for a quick picture.

Good news and bad for the Pioneers Museum

In the last couple of weeks, scaffolding has crept up the facade of our beloved Pioneers Museum. Yes, it's finally getting some long-needed restoration work! Unfortunately the museum has been in the news lately for a less positive reason: it was broken into and vandalized last week. Some person or persons broke in and destroyed antique furnishings and cabinetry, and worse yet they smashed several historic windows, part of the building's original 1903 architecture. Unfortunately the glass cannot be replaced with any kind of reproduction and the furniture is probably beyond repair, which means we've lost a part of Colorado Springs history with this senseless act. So while the outside of the building is getting a facelift, the inside is a little worse for wear right now.

P.S.  While the sky isn't the subject of this photograph, it does look awfully nice, doesn't it? I guess this means I can call it a Skywatch Friday photo.  To see more Skywatch Friday images from bloggers all over the world, click HERE.

Colorado mourns

I know I already posted a picture for today, but I felt compelled to post again. Earlier this afternoon I was picking up a prescription at my neighborhood Walgreen's, and afterward, as I waited to turn left on Boulder Street, I saw with a pang that all the flags across the street at the Olympic Training Center were flying at half-mast.  It's hard to avoid the news, but if you haven't heard, a crazed gunman opened fire in a crowded movie theater in Aurora early yesterday morning, killing 12 people and injuring 58.  The youngest victim was six years old.  That's right, he killed a six year old.  It's absolutely horrible.  We Coloradoans are in shock and trying to process the enormity of this man's act.  Aurora is part of the Denver metro area, less than an hour north of Colorado Springs.  We are all hard hit by this.

As a human, what can you say?  It's unfathomable that things like this can happen, and yet they do.  We in Colorado deeply appreciate all the heart-felt thoughts and prayers that the world has been sending us during this dark time. Thank you for the comfort.

Truck -vs- building

Here's the damage to Westside Boot and Shoe Repair after being hit by a truck over the July 4th weekend. Holy macaroni! Apparently the driver (who was drunk) was westbound on Colorado and jumped the curb, hitting a bus stop and ricocheting across the street, then skidding across the parking lot and into the building. It must have been pretty spectacular! The truck must surely be totalled, so even if the idiot driver doesn't pay for his crime in a court of law he'll feel it pretty acutely in his pocketbook. I'm just glad he didn't kill anybody with his drunken shenanigans.

Moral of the story: don't drink and drive!

Westside Boot & Shoe Repair

The iconic signage of Westside Boot and Shoe repair, a familiar sight in Colorado Springs for over 30 years. Alas, Westside Boot had a run in with a drunk driver in a big truck over the 4th of July weekend. I'll show you the result of this truck -vs- building throwdown in tomorrow's post.