Life of Wry

Some disgusting and gut-wrenching stories grabbed this morning. Sure you’ve read them, they appear daily.

There is a lot to despair over, starting with the injustice of random violence, continuing through the stranglehold that greed and power have on our government and the insanity and inequity that brings, and so many other soul crushing and heartbreaking realities of american life (NRA, climate change deniers).

There is just too, too much of it  — the sheer stupid that leads to the condition of our world… it’s numbing.

And yet.. our time here is so limited.  It’s just too sad and too overwhelming to squander our precious lives in that place of despair.  So we do what we can do in our small ways to contribute to something better. In every single moment. Be kind to your kid (so that he learns kindness and returns the same to others), offer what you can to those who don’t have as much (that was sweet last night, Jim, when you offered some food to those two women who have set up residence at the corner of E and 3rd), vote for the right guys and gals (go Robb and Joe), support the causes you think will make things better.

It’s what we can do.

There is a good side to humanity, there’s joy, humor, soul.

I read this poem this morning and it validated another thing we can do: see beauty, live in it, revel in it, love it.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

There is beauty.

So..let’s see…  a picture.. hang on, digging something(s) out of the archives..looking for a couple places where I have lain quietly next to still and beautiful water..brb.

Here are a couple:

I do love those moments and those places, and appreciate them profoundly. These moments of beauty bring me to intense inner peace.

And that’s what we all need.

Scorekeeping has come to this: an iPad, a program called iScore, and extra bliss if you’re seated in the shady, quiet, cool announcer’s booth on a 95 degree day.

I just love this.

We watch a lot of baseball.

We sit in a lot of bleachers.

Some weeks more than others, but, a lot of each.

This week, we’ve been driving over to Sac City College to watch the varsity boys battle it out for the Sac-Joaquin title.  They’ve now clawed their way through the series of games and elimination rounds to become the champs of the northern section. Huge deal. Next week, they’ll vie for overall champ.  They haven’t gotten this far since 2004, so it’s cool.

The pics below are from yesterday’s  championship games.

The JV season ended a couple weeks ago, and the summer American Legion season began today. Today they played a double header in Petaluma. (And won both games.) I didn’t take pictures–busy with scorekeeping as I was.  The boys play another game tomorrow.

Anyway, life in the bleachers:

Ya got your JV players cheering on the varsity:

(Noah, Ray, Peter, Solly)

Ya got your high school principal cheering on the team:

(Way to go Principal Brown.)

Ya got your parents, (who’ve been doing this, and loving every minute of it, since T-Ball).

Totally loving it.

This is one of those things in the category of you don’t really know how much you need to change something until you do and then you realize it’s such an incredible improvement you wonder why you didn’t do it before. 

I knew we were suffering from a heavy case of overgrowth in our front yard.  But we’d worked so hard and steadily on yard maintenance and new plantings that that’s pretty much all I really noticed in the front.

But one day, I was standing across the street and looking at the yard and realized the tangelo tree is just too big. So is the Meyer lemon, the redbud and the sycamore. And the fortnight lily.  And maybe even the matilija poppy. Just way too overgrown.

Right?  Ridiculous.

So we decided to remove the tangelo altogether. Too big, too crowded out, and we don’t really eat the fruit.

Here’s Frances sawing away:

We got most of it out, saving the stump removal for bigger guys who can dig and grind.

We also took the Meyer lemon way down and will relocate it this fall when it’s not so vulnerable to the shock of replanting it.  I think we’ll stick it somewhere in the back.

We clipped a few of the southerly branches of the redbud, as well.  This is where we are at the moment:

Hard to fully appreciate because the three stacks obscure the view.

To finish this job, we’ll 1) fully remove tangelo; 2) replace it with a smaller tree, like a plum or pluot (something with a fantastic spring bloom and a bright fall color); 3) trim the lower branches of the sycamore to open things up and visually create more space; 4) eighty six the fortnight; 5) plant some interesting  plants in the newly created spaces; 6) re-define the rock terrace; 7) remove some of the clutter around the base of the sycamore; and 8) build a short split rail behind the rock path to establish a bit of variation and visual texture.

Turns out, the sycamore really fills up the space, and not in a good way.  I like sycamores a lot, but they’re not really great-shaped trees. And our space is smaller than it once was, what with the twelve feet worth of house addition.

Anyway…  that was a laundry list.  Boring, sorry. But helpful for me as a before/after thing.

Ended up in a cool store in Taos — Starr interiors — that has rugs and pillows and some other nice weavings, most of which are hand-loomed, 100% wool, Zapotec Indian rugs/hangings/pillows from Oaxaca. The store’s been there for 40 years.  I felt like I could afford two pillows.

Now I have to figure out where to put them.. three options.

Option #1: This, I think, looks great, but may be in the line of fire (drool from the teenager who lies on this couch a lot these days):

Option #2: This may be too busy with the stripes and polka dots, not to mention leaves and branches:

Option #3: How can you beat plain leather and colorful, patterned wool? But maybe too much in the way of competing fabric and rug designs even though all same colors?

I actually love them all.

Today is go home day. We straightened up the house a bit, ate what we could of our various foods, packed, then headed out… back to the Turquoise Trail and eventually on to Albuquerque for the flight home. New plans for the return trip, though… First stop was Cerrillos, a mining town with something like twenty one saloons in its heyday (1880s) and once under consideration as New Mexico’s capitol, but now pretty ghosty. Tons of turquoise came out of there (and gold, silver, lead and zinc, too).  Its streets are dirt and its building have seen better days.  Not terribly charming, but old… bunch of movies have been shot there, so there’s that.

Then we went back to Madrid (pronounced MA-drid (MA, like cat) and spent a lot of time exploring the galleries and small shops. Now that the festival was over, you could actually go into some of the stores. It’s not chic (at all) like Santa Fe, or even Taos… but lots of authentic stuff, especially stones and pottery  I bought a turquoise ring (but of course).

Then, highlight of the day: a fourteen-mile, steep climb to the high point of the Sandia Crest:  10,678’… not a trivial elevation!

It was actually cold up there, and there was a little bit of snow still.  I was dying to wander around along the crest, so did.  There were great views!

From the Albuquerque side, a tram takes people to the top.  You can just barely make out the tram station and can see the cables in this picture. They say this is the longest aerial tram in the world (2.7 miles).  I’d been on it long ago, but not today.

From the Crest House, I didn’t go all the way over to the Tram Station (1.5 miles), but got to this..  

and took a more interior route back, which had some good uppity/downity.. and a pretty meadow:

Next time will hike there… seems like there are a lot of great trails. We then hurried down to downtown Albuquerque and met Carol and Bill for a fast and late lunch at the Standard Diner (on Route 66, of course).  Great sandwich (meatloaf, here) and vanilla cream soda (with actual cream poured in.. fantastic). Flight left at 5:30, and had a 3-hour layover in Salt Lake City… lots of time to upload photos!  The SLC airport is in a very spectacular setting:

Marc picked us up at about 11pm, and with that… trip over.  As time allows, I’ll fill in more trip details.  But bottom line: wonderful, full, easy.. good variety: fantastic house to stay in, beautiful weather and views everywhere, several museums, a few churches, many really nice dinners and lunches out, a bit of hiking, some shopping and material acquisition, friend meet ups, amazing natural wonders (gorge, rock formations, mountains, river), countless galleries and art everywhere. Seriously… ALL THAT.  The time with Carrie was easy-going and fun, and it was especially nice to be there as she learned the location of her brother’s ash scattering some forty years ago… Anyway..more details to come.

Leftovers make great breakfasts… a bit of Cafe Pasqual’s enchilada, some fried banana, yesterday’s chips –> chilaquiles with hot red chile from the take out… can’t really do better than that. Plus dark chocolate and coffee while the eggs were cooking.

(Those healthy things in the upper left? Grapes.)

Then we hiked.  Not hiked so much as strolled through the Audubon’s land at the very end of Canyon Road. But wow, it was nice to get out and smell the conifers.

Just a couple miles, were all. But nice.

We drove around some of the neighborhoods up on the hill… some lovely non-Californian fence design, including the ever blooming cottonwoods that are distributing blossoms all over town and causing lots of sneezing hereabouts:

Next were a pair of museums. First, the Georgia O’Keeffe, which, happily, had an exhibit called, “The View from Abiquiu.”  Explained a lot the place I was confused about yesterday.

Some shots:

Here’s G.O’K (really, what’s not to love?):

This is a bit blurry, but explains the exhibit:

Here’s her view from Abiquiu:

And a picture I shot yesterday:

(Cool, huh?)

And another of her paintings.. down the valley:

Her very wonderful kitchen, just because:

Love those built-ins.

We also went to the New Mexico Art Museum which was lovely, small, and worth the visit. Saw a couple really nice G.O’Ks there, too, but couldn’t take pictures of them.  The courtyard was really pretty.. ristras all around.

And a nice exterior shot of a Santa Fe downtown building, mostly because I can’t get enough of the architecture and sky.

Came home and took a snooze on the deck (sorta) and enjoyed more sky:

Dinner at the Shed coming up…

… now back.  On way to the restaurant, enjoyed this sky:

The Shed was fine. I was expecting a more fine-dining experience, but it was, instead, a taco, burrito, enchilada, margarita kind of meal.  All good.

Tomorrow, we leave.

Another day, another bunch of great adventures and sights.  And another evening when my cotton headed brain can’t possibly form the sentences to describe all the photos I want to share…. so…. just uploading and will provide detail later.  Again.

After a lovely morning on the deck with large mugs of coffee, tweeping birds and expansive views, we packed the car with guidebooks and headed north to Taos via the “High Road.”

First stop was “El Santuario de Chimayo,” a town and church that attract thousands upon thousands of people seeking healing. They say up to 30,000 alone participate in the Good Friday pilgrimage each year.  Most dig a small shovel full of red dirt from an anteroom in the church and take it home, or write messages on stones that comprise these giant crosses, or make their own crosses out of twigs and attach them to fences, or post photos of ailing loved ones, or just sit in the circle, or …  it’s quite a place.  I have lots of shots of all this, but for now, here’s one of the famous church:

Then we drove up and up and up, through Truchas and Las Trampas and past Penasco and Picuris Pueblo.. it was all incredibly beautiful. Some shots along the way:

Then, it was Taos.  That included walking around downtown a bit to look at art and architecture:

Then we wandered down Ledoux Street and stopped in at the R.C. Gorman gallery for a very long and enjoyable conversation with a guy who knew a lot about Gorman’s life and his work (here is a bronze statue out front):

And here’s inside:

Then a stop for lunch on the patio at the Taos Inn.. this is green chili and dark beer:

Then a little bit of shopping:

(just a couple of pillows, really..)

Then it was out of town, past the mountains..

And over to a bridge that crosses the Rio Grande Gorge:

The gorge… yikes.

And a view from the bridge… quite unsettling.

And then we were on our way to Abiquiu to see where Georgia O’Keeffe hung out.. but not before we found a road that went right down to the river and we couldn’t resist going down:

(It was a little scary.. very steep, windy, slippery gravel.. but we got to the bottom and it was worth the initial scare.)

THEN on to Abiquiu. Here’s a road shot:

When we finally got to Abiquiu, we were disappointed to find out we couldn’t just visit Georgia O’Keeffe’s home. But I did get a shot of the view from her home… this is what inspired her… the Chama River valley and surrounding mesas and mountains:

On the way back to Santa Fe, we stopped in Espanola to get some food to go.. this place is pretty well known for its great food.. in particular red chili (we tried green earlier). There were a steady stream of people who came to the window and ordered food to go… we felt like locals!

And back. Pooped. Will fill in details later.

Yeah.. I’ll work on that title later.  Again, way too tired to write (and apparently to come up with good blog titles), but a day worthy of many, many photos.  Here are a few that tell today’s story.  And again, I’ll come back and fill in with detail later, but for now:

Started the day on the deck, taking in the daytime view.  Uh… wow.  Nice place we got here..

Then, after breakfast, packed up and headed into town for the day. Parked over by The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. Didn’t go inside today (looked around yesterday), but got a nice perspective on its front facade:

Then wandered through the Palace of the Governors, had lunch at a quick burrito place, then spent a lot of the afternoon at the New Mexico History Museum.

Learned a little about this (sigh)..

and a lot about the many different periods in New Mexico’s incredibly interesting history.

Unrelated to all of that, there was a fascinating exhibit on the top floor on pinhole photography.  Outside that exhibit, was this piece that I just loved (note the shadows cast by these tiles… see the individual faces..):

(It was great in person!)

Then walked over to Canyon Road.  Whoa… in my many trips to Santa Fe, I’d never seen this.  Touristy, ya, but wow… lots and lots of incredible art.  Here are a couple shots:

And, I found the most perfect end tables for our bedroom.  This may take a little convincing, but I fell in love with all this guy’s work. Take my word for it: whimsical, handsome, fun, well-crafted, unique. While the photo doesn’t do it justice, the colors are fantastic (and did I say perfect?):

We ambled off the main drag and into a residential neighborhood.  So lovely. So Southwestern. So many doors, gates, walls and flowers.  A feast:

Ended the day with a long stay at a sidewalk restaurant called El Ferol.  Had just planned to have a drink then go out to dinner back in town, but got the notion to contact Richard Lowenberg to see if 1) he were in town and 2) if he could join us somewhere for dinner. He was and he could, so he did.  We decided to stay there for dinner and had tapas and some nice malbec/syrah wine. Both good.  Seeing rl was a great unexpected pleasure.

Here we all are.  Happy.

I will return with a more detailed story. But for now, some images from today along the Turquoise Trail… a stretch of back road between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

Passed through the tiny village of Cedar Crest..and ate lunch at the Greenside Cafe:

Then drove through Madrid, an old coal mining town, now more or less a revived artist colony (which today was having a jazz festival so there were a lot of people milling around):

Madrid is also the site of the oldest and first lighted baseball field in the entire United States. How’s that for a statistic?  It’s seen far better days, but here it is:

This isn’t the Turquoise Trail, but after traveling since 4:30am on only two hours of sleep, this was such a welcome sight… it’s the view from the driveway of the house we’ll be staying in for the next five days on the outskirts of Santa Fe.  It’s an incredible house. Will post pictures later, as well as Santa Fe shots. But for now, good night: