21 minute read
Astrology: by Rob Brezsny
by Rob Brezsny
MARCH 21-APRIL 19: Aries-born Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was one of the greatest basketball players ever. He excelled at most aspects of the game. Some experts say his rebounding was only average for a player his size—seven feet, two inches. But he is still the third-best rebounder in National Basketball Association history. And he played for 20 years, until age 40. What tips might Abdul-Jabbar have for you now? Here’s a suggestion from him that aligns with your current astrological omens: “Work on those parts of your game that are fundamentally weak.” The implication is that you have a lot of strengths, and now it’s time to raise up the rest of your skill set. TAURUS
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APRIL 20-MAY 20: As a Taurus, you are always wise to be reverent toward your five senses. They are your glorious treasures, your marvelous superpowers, your sublime assets. In the coming weeks, they will serve you even better than usual. As you deploy them with all your amazement and appreciation unfurled, they will boost your intelligence. They will heighten your intuition in ways that guide you to good decisions. You will tune into interesting truths that had previously been hidden from you. I suspect your sensory apparatus will be so sharp and clear that it will work almost as extrasensory powers. GEMINI
MAY 21-JUNE 20: When you Geminis are at your best, you don’t merely tolerate dualities. You enjoy and embrace them. You work with them eagerly. While many non-Geminis regard oppositions and paradoxes as at best inconvenient and at worst obstructive, you often find how the apparent polarities are woven together and complementary. That’s why so many of you are connoisseurs of love that’s both tough and tender. You can be effective in seemingly contradictory situations that confuse and immobilize others. All these skills of yours should come in handy during the coming weeks. Use them to the hilt. CANCER
JUNE 21-JULY 22: Author Jean Frémon says Cancerian naturalist Henry David Thoreau “always had two notebooks—one for facts, and the other for poetry. But Thoreau had a hard time keeping them apart, as he often found facts more poetic than his poems.” Judging from your current astrological omens, Cancerian, I suspect you are entering a time when facts will be even more poetic than usual. If you open yourself to the magic of reality, the mundane details of everyday life will delight you and appeal to your sense of wonder. Routine events will veer toward the marvelous. Can you bear to experience so much lyrical grace? I think so. LEO
JULY 23-AUG. 22: “What good is it if you read Plato but never clean your toilet?” writes author Alice Munro. To which I add, “What good is it if you have brilliant breakthroughs and intriguing insights but never translate them into practical changes in your daily rhythm?” I’m not saying you are guilty of these sins, Leo. But I want to ensure that you won’t be guilty of these sins in the coming weeks. It’s crucial to your long-term future that you devote quality time to being earthy and grounded and pragmatic. Be as effective as you are smart. VIRGO
AUG. 23-SEPT. 22: “To love oneself is hard work,” declares Virgo author Hanif Abdurraqib. He adds, “But I think it becomes harder when you realize that you’re actually required to love multiple versions of yourself that show up without warning throughout a day, throughout a week, throughout a month, throughout a life.” Let’s make that your inspirational strategy, Virgo. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to refine, deepen, and invigorate your love for all your selves. It may be hard work, but I bet it will also be fun and exhilarating. to add its counsel to your head’s observations. Tenderize your objectivity. 2. Always be willing to be puzzled. Always be entertained and educated by your puzzlement. Proceed on the theory that nothing ever changes unless somebody is puzzled. 3. Practice, practice, practice the art of moderation. Do so with the intention of using it as a flexible skill rather than an unthinking habit. 4. Applying the Goldilocks principle will be essential. Everything must be just right: neither too much nor too little; neither overly grand nor overly modest. SCORPIO
OCT. 23-NOV. 21:: There are blessings in every abyss. You, of all the signs in the zodiac, have the greatest capacity to find those blessings and make them yours. Likewise, there is an abyss in each blessing. You, of all the signs, have the most power to make sure your experiences in the abyss don’t detract from but enhance the blessing. In the coming weeks, dear Scorpio, take maximum advantage of these superpowers of yours. Be a master of zeroing in on the opportunities seeded in the dilemmas. Show everyone how to home in on and enjoy the delights in the darkness. Be an inspirational role model as you extract redemption from the messes. SAGITTARIUS
NOV. 22-DEC. 21: One of my favorite Sagittarians is practical mystic Caroline Myss, who was born with sun and Mercury and ascendant in Sagittarius. In accordance with current astrological omens, I’ve gathered six of her quotes to serve your current needs. 1. There isn’t anything in your life that cannot be changed. 2. When you do not seek or need approval, you are at your most powerful. 3. Healing comes from gathering wisdom from past actions and letting go of the pain that the education cost you. 4. The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. 5. What serves your spirit enhances your body. What diminishes your spirit diminishes your body. 6. What is in you is stronger than what is out there to defeat you. CAPRICORN
DEC. 22-JAN. 19: I have always felt you Capricorns are wise to commune with rocks, dirt, mud, sand, and clay. I think you should regularly touch the actual earth with your hands and bare feet. If I’m out hiking with a Capricorn friend, I might urge them to sniff blooming mushrooms and lean down to kiss the exposed roots of trees. Direct encounters with natural wonders are like magic potions and miracle medicine for you. Moreover, you flourish when you nurture close personal relationships with anything that might be described as foundational. This is always true, but will be extra true for you in the coming weeks. Your words of power are kernel, core, gist, marrow, and keystone. AQUARIUS
JAN. 20-FEB. 18: The coming weeks will be a favorable time to dream up creative solutions to problems that haven’t fully materialized yet. Then you can apply your discoveries as you address problems that already exist. In other words, dear Aquarius, I’m telling you that your uncanny facility for glimpsing the future can be useful in enhancing your life in the present. Your almost psychic capacity to foretell the coming trends will be instrumental as you fix glitches in the here and now.
PISCES
FEB. 19-MARCH 20: In the coming weeks, logic may be of only partial use to you. Information acquired through your senses might prove less than fully adequate, as well. On the other hand, your talents for feeling deeply and tapping into your intuition can provide you with highly accurate intelligence. Here’s a further tip to help you maximize your ability to understand reality: Visit a river or creek or lake. Converse with the fish and frogs and turtles and beavers. Study the ways of the crabs and crayfish and eels. Sing songs to the dragonflies and whirligig beetles and lacewings.
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When students don’t show up, attendance detectives are on the case
by Ann Schimke, Chalkbeat Colorado
ANN SCHIMKE
The pandemic compounded many problems contributing to chronic student absence. Some districts have partnered with organizatoins like Zero Dropouts to track them down and bring them back.
is story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters
The front door of the house was ajar when Domanic Castillo and Julia Madera approached. ey were looking for a teenager named Jason who’d missed the rst ve days of school at Northridge High in Greeley. e boy wasn’t there, but his father was—dusty from working on renovations inside.
After Castillo explained that they hadn’t seen Jason at school yet, the man quickly dialed the boy’s mother and handed over his cell phone. Madera took the call and, speaking in Spanish, learned that the family planned to send him to one of the district’s alternative schools.
“She said she meant to call,” Madera said as she and Castillo returned to her
SUV, ready for the next stop on their home visit list. Castillo and Madera are on the front lines of a push to get kids back in school after a pandemic that compounded many of the problems that contribute to chronic absenteeism, including student disengagement, academic struggle, and nancial insecurity. e rationale is simple: Students have to be in class to learn. e Greeley-Evans district in northern Colorado is one of many districts nationwide using federal COVID dollars to fund attendance-boosting e orts. e 22,000-student district is in the second year of a three-year, $644,000 contract with the Denver-based consulting company Zero Dropouts to track down missing high schoolers and help them catch up on coursework or credits. Castillo, the Northridge cheer coach, and Madera, a former secretary at the school, are among 14 Zero Dropouts employees, also known as attendance advocates, embedded in the district’s ve high schools this year. ey have a host of responsibilities, from helping out in classes and monitoring hallways to calling and visiting the homes of absent students. e job is part detective work, part social work and part paperwork.
Before the pandemic, 35% of Greeley-Evans students were chronically absent, meaning they missed 10% or more of school days. at number rose to 40% during 2020-21, well above the state rate of 26%.
Lanny Hass, special projects manager at Zero Dropouts, said advocates help intervene quickly when warning signs pop up: an increase in absences, a grade that’s fallen to a D or F, or problematic behavior. e team works in tandem with counselors, mental health specialists and other school sta .
“Attendance and course recovery are probably your two biggest challenges at a high school,” said Hass, who formerly served as a high school principal in nearby Loveland.
“ e challenges are the same pre- post- and during the pandemic,” he said. “ ey’re just more pronounced now.”
No falling through the cracks
e four attendance advocates at Northridge High use a small room connected to the main o ce as their home base. It’s rimmed with computer workstations that often display color-coded spreadsheets showing period-by-period absences and other metrics that help them ag kids in danger of slipping away.
PHOTO
Along the wall is a cardboard box of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookie packs. Students zip into the room occasionally to grab a snack from the box.
On a recent morning, Erin Eckenrode, an advocate who previously worked as a juvenile probation o cer, made phone calls looking for 54 students on that day’s no-show list. She talked to some parents, left messages for others, and sometimes hit dead ends.
She did solve a few mysteries. She found that two families had moved out of the district—one, refugees from Ukraine, had relocated to California, and another had moved to a nearby district.
Like high schoolers everywhere, Northridge students struggle for many reasons. ey may nd their classes boring, face chaotic home lives, or hold jobs that leave them too exhausted for school. About two-thirds of the school’s 1,200 students are eligible for federally subsidized meals, a measure of poverty.
BS, the world’s largest meat processing company, operates a plant in Greeley.
Attendance advocates say the pandemic has also eroded students’ social and self-advocacy skills. Teens are dialed into the digital world, but can be muted when it comes to real-life interactions.
Castillo, who helps monitor a class where students work online to catch up, said he’s seen students stare at a locked computer screen rather than raising their hands to ask for help.
“I just stopped going.”
Last year, Angel, now a 10th grader at Northridge, missed lots of school—more than 300 class periods last time he checked.
Some of his friends had already dropped out, joining their fathers on construction jobs.
“I started ditching a lot towards the end,” he said. “Sometimes, I just feel school ain’t for me so I just stopped going.”
But Angel eventually came back, and he counts Shena Lopez, one of the school’s attendance advocates, as someone he can relate to at Northridge. Often, he’ll stop by to see her three times a day.
“We’ll just have a good conversation about my day or her day,” he said. “She’s nice to me, so I really like her.”
Connecting with kids in a non-teaching role creates a di erent relationship, said Lopez.
“It’s di erent work. We’re their friends. We’re here for them,” she said. “I always tell them I’m going to do whatever it takes to help you succeed.”
Sometimes, the moments that mean the most aren’t what attendance advocates expect.
When a girl named LaWren, a senior cheerleader, recently stopped by, she mentioned how surprised she was when Eckenrode pronounced her name right on the rst try during an advisory class.
“Wow, you remembered that?” Eckenrode asked.
“ at was like a life-changing moment,” LaWren said. “ at’s the rst time someone’s gotten my name right in my whole life, my whole 17 years.”
When calls and visits fail
Even when attendance advocates track students down, it can be di cult to get them back in class. Madera recalled one student she worked with last year who stopped coming to school completely after a couple months, his absences a long red stripe on his attendance chart. e 10th grader didn’t seem to want to go to Northridge or anywhere else. When she dropped o an application for an online program, he threw the papers on the oor. She ended up calling the family more than 20 times, visiting their home four times and texting the boy’s mother a few times.
Nothing changed until she referred the teen to truancy court.
“I didn’t want it to be like that,” said Madera.
But the move worked, and the teen returned to Northridge last April—at rst shy, with his hood pulled over his head. He attended consistently for the last two months and made up some of his missed work. is year, Madera spotted him on the rst day of school, Aug. 11.
“Oh my God, he’s here,” she thought.
Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat (chalkbeat.org) is a nonpro t news organization Prior to the pandemic, 35% of Greely-Evans school district’s students were chronically absent. Post-pandemic that number rose to 40%—well above the state rate of 26%.
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Changing hearts and minds 3 mph at a time
Through memoir and critique, Denverite Jonathon Stalls examines what it means to be a pedestrian
by Ben Berman
You could say Jonathon Stalls is a full-time pedestrian. You could probably glean that from his toe shoes, wellworn walking stick and routine propensity to trek more than a dozen miles a day. As we circle Ferril Lake in Denver’s City Park, Stalls fddles with a leaf he found, greets a passing jogger and jumps back to conversation about his gripes with Denver’s pedestrian infrastructure. There’s perhaps no greater summation of Stalls’s passion for pedestrianism than his newest publication, WALK: Slow Down, Wake Up, and Connect at 1-3 Miles per Hour, released on Aug. 16 (North Atlantic Books). Through the philosophical collection of short essays, recollections and memoirs, it’s evident that walking is to Stalls what painting was to Bob Ross: a way to engage with the world at a slower pace while learning about yourself. “It’s about being a moving participant the way you’re made to be,” Stalls says.
Much of the book focuses on a cross-country journey
Stalls took in 2010. “It was totally out of the blue. I had never had a multi-day hiking experience before. I wanted an experience that would re-orient and re-calibrate everything in my life,” Stalls admits. He was 26 years old, coming to terms with his queerness, and searching for belonging. “There was a lot of chaos that I suppressed and buried.” “I wanted to learn from the natural landscape, the mountains and desert, small towns and cities. I wanted to be with the things that were hard on the inside. I was transformed by the experience. I learned
see PEDESTRIAN Page 22
COURTESY JONATHON STALLS
PEDESTRIAN from Page 21
from people—from strangers—at an unhurried pace.” Eight months later, Stalls and his blue-heeler husky AUTHOR TALK: breached the Pacifc Coast, and Stalls found his mindset Jonathon Stalls— anew. He came to realize how easily he could focus his ‘WALK.’ 6:30 p.m. thoughts and manage his emotions while he walked. Thursday, Oct. 20, “Our bodies are made—whether you’re on foot or in a Boulder Book Store, wheelchair—to be in movement, to have your body literally 1107 Pearl St., mirroring a moving world,” Stalls says, gesturing to the sway- Boulder. ing trees around us as we continue our second, third lap of Tickets: $5, the lake. If our cells’ natural instinct when faced with stimulus boulderbookstore.net or adversity is to keep moving, Stalls wonders, shouldn’t it be ours as well? His newfound perspective made him uniquely attuned to “the reality of being a pedestrian in everyday places and spaces.”
“I was flled with information related to how unsafe and harmful it was for hundreds of people I would interact with at intersections,” Stalls says. “They were under bridge overpasses, darting and surviving. So much chaos.” Stalls developed a brand new framework he calls “pedestrian dignity.” That framework provided the namesake of Stalls’s TikTok account, a platform for sharing the empathy, healing and activism he discovered on that cross-country walk. Stalls regularly shares point-of-view videos of his treks through Denver, aiming to enlighten people on the lived experience of pedestrians as he expounds on poor infrastructure conditions and anything else that crosses his mind in less than 60 seconds.
“This might actually ft me a lot better than any other social media app, because it's quick. It can be more conscious thoughts and not overly planned,” Stalls muses. “I just started it as an experiment. It took off, and it was so affrming. It's a tool that's more natural for the way I'm wired.” Though it’s likely the widest audience that Stalls currently reaches—his videos regularly get viewed and shared by an audience of more than 100,000 and growing— he has other platforms that predate both TikTok and his writings. Stalls' endeavors mainly revolve around Intrinsic Paths, an organization focused on art, community events and, most importantly, walking. Stalls regularly hosts meet-up walks, inviting people to embark on a multi-pronged ftness-, spiritual- and activism-oriented journey across the trails and sidewalks of Denver. “People join me for a day, or just an hour,” Stalls says. “I see how people get out of their car, experience their neighborhood or community for the frst time on foot. They’re
like, ‘Wow, I had no idea this amazing park was here, or I had no idea how unsafe it is right across from where my mother goes to an assisted living facility.’” Even in an outdoorsy state like Colorado, Stalls is dismayed with the way walking is relegated to recreation.
“It’s a more utilitarian pedestrian framework. Like, this is my home, offce, commute life. And then there’s the escape to the trail,” he says. A major focus of his book seeks to bridge that gap. Stalls hopes that society at large will realize the positive benefts of incorporating walking into everyday life rather than confning it to a recreational exception, novelty or luxury, or worse, ignoring the inequities that arise when cities make walking an uncomfortable experience. For Stalls, there is no walk purely for pleasure, or a walk oriented toward content creation. “(Walking) seems really simple and basic,” Stalls says. “But when we think about complex social, political or relational realities, it’s always between two human bodies. Your experience moves with mine. It’s an actual tool for teams, campaigns, relationships, peers, neighbors, whoever you’re in tension with.” Stalls admits that reframing U.S. cities around pedestrians is a long, arduous and frustrating process often hampered by zoning laws, car-centric culture and thousands of miles lacking sidewalks. (Denver has an estimated 520 miles with no sidewalks.) That’s not even mentioning issues like cracks in the sidewalk hampering those in wheelchairs, or crosswalks changing too fast or not existing at all. Dismantling these barriers through law could take years. “I wish that wasn’t the case. I wish all the lights would just turn on. It can be overwhelming,” Stalls admits. “It’s been helpful to just focus on the specifc container of a human body. That’s kind of been my anchoring ground. My framework is: How are we centering the lived experience of human bodies moving the way they’re meant to?” For Stalls, that means spreading the word through his videos, writings and conversations with everyday residents on his walks, hoping to change hearts and minds at 3 mph. “I want to trust that you, city council members, are working to do some disruption around the defaults within the system. And you can trust that I’m working outside to do some disrupting in the public sphere. Then we’ve got a good thing going.”
At the heart of Stalls' book are practical solutions for pedestrian anxieties, barriers or unfamiliarities.
“Live it,” Stalls advises. “Replace some of your car trips and experience what it’s like to walk to the grocery store. Just be open and available. Connect to why it’s important for us to be doing this more.”
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