Teaching old dogs new tricks (not)

Interesting couple of days in the park. Yesterday I did a day-long tour of the park with 25 Elderhostel tour group members. The top pic is of them zigzagging down the trail into Spruce Tree House. The doorway behind the oak brush and scarlet penstemon is at the upstream end of Spruce Tree House.

In the evening, we celebrated our third month anniversary at the Kennebec Café, one of our local favorites. On the way back, sunset was making two young bucks with velvety antlers beside the highway glow in the light. Wasn't quite quick enough for a sharp picture of the one bounding up the slope.

Today, I went to the ARAMARK office across from the entrance to Mesa Verde, there to take required orientation training (even though I may already have worked all that I will for them). Anyway, the majority of the instruction was on visitor service/customer relations ... good topic to focus on. This class for the concessionaire's "new" employees included several Navajos, two young men from Kirghizstan in Central Asia, a young man from the Ukraine, several people from Jamaica and two from South Africa ... wonder what they understood in common after the class. 

The ARAMARK employee giving the class had actually gone to Kiev, in the Ukraine, to recruit employees. Others have made recruiting trips to South America and Asia. They just don't get enough U.S. applicants to fill the roster of summer jobs they have for the amount they pay and the hours folks in the hospitality industry have to work. Of course, one can argue that higher wages would attract more U.S. workers, which would raise the cost of staying in the park and eating in the park and buying souvenirs in the park ... and so it goes!

In the section talking about ARAMARK's "green" program, one person mentioned they use "recycled toilet paper." Perhaps it would communicate better if they said "toilet paper made of recycled fiber content," or some such. Came home really tired! Surgery's only a few short days away, thank goodness!

In the evening, we went to Durango to attend the opening reception at the Open Shutter Gallery's new location on Main Street. Lotsa folks and, as Sandy observed, the average age of the attendees was about 30 years younger than us! Besides Sandy and the owner, Margy Dudley, this old hermit saw exactly three people he knew ... not my crowd, I guess. Great location, beautifully done, with two exhibits of black-and-white prints facing each other across the long gallery that used to be a bank (one of the exhibits was Henri Cartier-Bresson prints). The belly dancers were ... sinuous. tv