Oh, my goodness ... how the time goes by!

Another beautiful, sunny morning in Silver City, New Mexico! We are really appreciating the temperatures here, and lack of snow. Especially considering the 18 inches of snow our old home received in 24 hours recently!

year!

We've had a busy January! Probably the highlight was attending the Bluff Balloon Festival for the fourth straight year. Sandy has described in her blog our fry bread fare and the fun we had (as always) at the school's benefit fry bread dinner and performance.

The first year we went, the Sunday launch was out at Valley of the Gods. The roads were too bad to go out there the next two years, but this year we were able to go again. It was a fabulous, other-worldly experience!

We got out there before the balloonists and before the dawn light really hit. We were treated to about five minutes of out-of-this-world red-gold dawn glow on the sandstone cliffs and spires! We just stood there, with our mouths open and cameras pointing, at the stunning beauty surrounding us. It only lasted about five minutes, but it was five minutes in we shared that awesome beauty the Navajos describe in the Beauty Way:

In beauty may I walk.

All day long may I walk.

Through the returning seasons may I walk.

On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.

With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk.

With dew about my feet may I walk.

With beauty may I walk.

With beauty before me, may I walk.

With beauty behind me, may I walk.

With beauty above me, may I walk.

With beauty below me, may I walk.

With beauty all around me, may I walk.

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.

It is finished in beauty.

It is finished in beauty"

And then we watched the balloons float through this beauty. The light wasn't as fantastic as it was in those first few minutes, but it was beautiful nonetheless.

After spending the morning frolicking in the desert, we didn't want to drive eight hours back to Silver City, so we went to Mancos via Hovenweep National Monument. We'd been there once before, on a very icy day. This was much nicer and we had a good hike around Little Ruin Canyon, including this shot of Square Tower ... a tower built in a canyon bottom. ?

A nice night at the Mesa Verde Motel, Sandy had her favorite BBQ sandwich at the Millwood ... and there was four inches of snow the next morning! On the way back from the MLK breakfast at the community center (lots of friends!), we enjoyed this snow-bedecked tree in the Bauer House yard.

The snow and slush was gone by the time we got to Shiprock, and we were glad to head back to warmer climes.

We've been busy planning ahead since then. Got a hitch put on the Mercury and got the Casita reshod with tires and did some more getting ready to go trailering. Now we need to locate a place that's a few hours away, warmer, with full hookups to give the new car-Casita combination a trial run. This also frees up the Jeep to put the bike rack back on, inflate the bike tires and oil the moving parts and do some biking!

After not being held last year, the Red Paint Powwow was held at WNMU and we attended one of the grand entries. Powerful and colorful! And fry bread! Hope we can take in more next year.

Sandy's Kiwanis Club does a lot for and with kids. Sandy got to do Terrific Kid awards at Hurley Elementary School. Hurley is a little (1,400 pop.) mining town east of here. She's enjoyed the school spirit and last Friday we got to go for the awards and also for the celebration of the school's getting an 'A' rating by the State of New Mexico. What a neat thing ... the town really supports the school and turned out to hold a parade to honor the school's educational achievement! If you don't think Hurley is a small town, note the midday traffic downtown!

And, yes, there's musical fun, too. Saturday night we treated ourselves to supper at the Buckhorn Saloon in Pinos Altos, where friends of ours were playing gypsy jazz! tv

I guess 2012 is here to stay!

We're off tomorrow to Bluff, Utah, for the annual Bluff Balloon Festival. This will be our fourth year there and we're really looking forward to it. Will probably be posting a few pictures from there after we get back ... it promises to be clear, so maybe the Sunday flight will be out at Valley of the Gods!

In the meantime, we spent New Year's afternoon going where we hadn't gone before ... out to the "ghost town" of Mogollon, about 70 miles west of here. It was a good scouting trip ...there's lots to return to see and photograph.

On the way out, we saw a small herd of javelinas beside the highway. This one was grazing right beside the road. It looked up and, between the time I started to press the shutter button and the time the shutter actually clicked, s/he wheeled on its hind feet and started to scram. Dang, they're fast!

Anyway the town of Mogollon, which once numbered more than 1,500 souls, sits down in an east-west canyon, where the sun doesn't shine much in winter. 'Twas as cold as the picture indicates. A few people do live there, some in houses, some in converted vehicles, and there are a few seasonal businesses.

We did get up the winding, muddy road to the cemetery above the town, where the sun was still shining. Like the one above Kingston, it seems to ramble through the trees, without a clearly followed plan of organization. Many stories to wonder about, like this man who died at 20. Or Gordon I. Stahl, who was a little older when he died (24), and was buried with this cryptic, evocative legend:

"GORDON I. STAHL

1940 - HOLY WEEK - 1964

ARTIST - MUSICIAN - MOUNTAIN CLIMBER

BORN OUT OF TIME - DEEPLY RELIGIOUS

HE SOUGHT IN VAIN

TO BRING THE BEAUTY

HE EXPERIENCED TO OTHERS"

We'll definitely be back!

The scenes on the way back to U.S. 180 were equally beautiful in the evening sunset.

We enjoyed hosting our friends Jack and Lydia Munro from Austin, TX, as they returned from their trip to Arches and Monument Valley. Good times with good friends! And, of course, we enjoy the critters in the back yard, like the young buck nipping fruits off the cholla behind the house. Amazing that he could just lean into that prickly jungle to get what he wanted!

While our friends were here, we took them out to see Fort Bayard and also went through the military cemetery. Always something new there to see and wonder about. Sgt. Bowman was awarded the Medal of Honor for leading an attack on mutinous scouts during the Army's battles with the Apaches.

We also enjoyed the one-man show, "Tuck," as Randy Carr played the part of Dan Tucker, deputy sheriff here from 1877 to 1888. It was at the Seedboat Gallery theater, which is likely to be the site of lots more performances as the owners develop it.

We've signed up for our WILL classes for this semester ... the Western Institute of Lifelong Learning at WNMU is a wonderful way to expand our mental horizons! As is the brown-bag lunch series sponsored on second Mondays at the Silver City Museum. In the one shown, Professor Magdaleno Manzanares of WNMU gave an informative talk on how New Mexico, 100 years old this year, is so different from Arizona and Texas in terms of Latino participation in politics.

So, life is good in Silver City! We need moisture ... there perennial mantra of the Southwest ... but it can hold off till we get back from SE Utah! tv

Last post of 2011 (probably)

It's so good to be home! We had a good visit with Sandy's daughter and her family in central Oklahoma, but it's always nice to get back to our own bed, own house, own animals, etc.

Leading up to Christmas, there was quite a lot of activity for Sandy and Tom. In addition to doing our Christmas letter and sending out cards, there was buying, wrapping and shipping presents. Some of the presents included baked goods ... I made a full batch of peppernuts (about five gallons) and eight loaves of stollen to send out or take with us.

Lots of music here a Christmas; we caught three groups at the Silver City Museum ... this is Gleemaiden, a group of young mothers who sing beautifully a cappella, with their kids at their feet.

The Kiwanis have an annual Christmas party, but you gotta wrap presents for patients at Fort Bayard before you get to eat and do the gift exchange. Fair enough; they do good work!

Sandy created quite a Christmasy corner around the tree, which the cats immediately adopted as their parking place, soaking up the warmth from the Christmas lights. Fifi and Sophie's tanning bed!

We took a different route to OK this time, one that we'll probably repeat. The fastest way is I-25 and I-40 ... boring! So, we went up through the Ruidoso area, spending the night in Clovis. We sidetripped to see Cloudcroft, including the Mexican Canyon Trestle and then the boardwalk in front of shops in downtown Cloudcroft. It was overcast up there, but clear most of the rest of Wednesday.

We had an easy day Wednesday, so we poked around Tularosa a bit. Liked this mission, St. Francis de Paula Franciscan Mission, founded in 1865, only 15 years after New Mexico became a territory of the U.S. A couple blocks east, we wandered into what looked like a bar, the Tulie Cantina, and had lunch in a beautiful dining area with a tree growing in an enclosed atrium and a menu that was surprising in its diversity and the imaginative variety of ingredients. Best stacked enchiladas I've ever had!

And, of course, the slaughter of the wrappings! A good family gathering for the opening of the packages, including Sandy, with coffee and Scooby!

While in OK, we went down to Shawnee on Christmas Day and saw "War Horse." Good movie, ended with applause from the audience.

We targeted Amarillo for our overnight on the way back; 'twas snowy and cold but didn't keep us from having a day-delayed 45th-month anniversary dinner at Outback, which was scrumptious. The weather cleared east of Oklahoma City and we really had pretty sunny weather all the way back, though there was a lot of snow around Hereford. Got in in time to pick up our mail and have a pleasant evening at home. tv

it's so dark ...

I'm thinking I will be so glad when the sun begins to return northward in less than 10 days! The days seem so short ... so little time between dawn and sunset. So little time for the dog and cats to follow the sun through south-facing rooms!

On the other hand, it's the time of year to play around with soups and stews, seeing what unrepeatable combinations can be concocted from left-overs. And, of course, it's the annual get-it-together-for-Christmas time.

We've had snow, which has left us with some interesting effects on the street art, like the snowy top-knot on the iron man. We have gotten out for some other reasons, too. I went to the Wreaths Across America ceremony at Fort Bayard National Cemetery (one of two national cemeteries in New Mexico; the other is in Santa Fe). We've also been enjoying holiday concerts, especially the one by the Hi Lo Silvers ... they seem to have the kind of singing fun we enjoyed so much with the Mancos Valley Chorus and Kriss Larson.

On the 10th, we had a booth at the Holiday Arts and Crafts Show in the Silco Theater downtown, cosponsored by two art groups we belong to. We were located near the baked goods booth of the Grant County Art Guild and Sandy helped cover that booth, too. Not great sales, but I realized what a pleasure it is to talk about our pictures with people who come to the booth ... talking about a picture offers a vicarious revisit to the instant the photograph was made ... sharing the joy!

That same day, there was a Tamale Fiesta at the center of town, just a couple of blocks down the street from the art show. LOTS of people lined up at the tamale booths, entertained by these young mariachi musicians and their musical companions.

Packages and cards are beginning to go out, peppernuts are baked, stollen is on the agenda, tree goes up today ... Christmas is coming!!!

We'll leave the house in the care of the cats for Christmas (shudder!!!) and travel to Oklahoma with Scooby Doo, the dachshund. She hasn't traveled with us very much and she'll enjoy this ... she actually travels pretty well.

So, Merry Christmas to all and a safe and happy holiday season! tv

71

Last year was the big year ... 70 is kind of a landmark birthday. Still, each year is a mile-marker and worth taking note of.

Sandy asked me at supper last night (1zer06 - "fusion" restaurant here in SC) what I wanted in the next year. My response was to have my 72nd birthday ... and lots more beyond. We had a dump of snow in the last couple of days, but it's going already; I shoveled 30 feet of sidewalk in less than five minutes ... I can handle that! For my physical condition, the move to Silver City has been good for me. I need to be more active, get more exercise, but this town is good for those opportunities. It's also a great place to enjoy being Sandy's partner in life and I hope we'll be doing things together for decades to come!

We got to enjoy the beautiful a capella finish to the community Christmas concert and then went out and joined the crowds awaiting the town Christmas parade. Sandy has really enjoyed the chance to be active in Kiwanis again and this is a very active, very positive group. A chance encounter in the pool with a neighbor who is part of the MainStreet organization led to Sandy's leading a Kiwanis project to get Christmas lights on the gazebo in Gough Park. Sandy got the cooperation of Town Parks, Ace Hardware and the SC Fire Department ... and it's happened! A wonderful thing to see and to know I share life with the person who made it happen!

So, the seasons come and go, gently in Silver City. The downtown area was slushy yesterday, and a dragonfly mounted on a gallery was snow-covered, but the sun came out in the late afternoon and gave beautiful light to the hillside behind the house.

Life is good! tv

A year in the city

Well, it's actually a "Town," not a City. And we actually live in the County, just north of the Town. But that's close enough!

But it was a year ago yesterday that we moved to Silver City, nine months to the day after we saw the place for the first time on a southward escape from the snows of SW Colorado.

Ah, memories! That COLD morning when we started southward, like a caravan with the rental truck, rental car-hauler (carrying the "Radish") and rental trailer and the Jeep. I guess Mother Nature was blessing our move with a window of bright sunshine after a day of loading in snow and cold, evidence of which is all over the ground and roof in the lower picture.

The most direct route led us under overcast skies through downtown Fence Lake, urban Quemado and then, finally, the sun began to appear again as we got down into the canyons around Reserve.

And it's kept shining ... most of the time. Despite what locals called the worst winter they could remember, we found it to be pretty mild ... one "blizzard" of the magnitude we saw a couple of times a week in Mancos! Summer never got over a hundred degrees at the house; cool breezescome down from the Continental Divide in the evening and cool us off.

We still find the folks in Silver City to be very friendly and courteous. Sandy's gotten involved in Kiwanis and that has been very rewarding, especially their programs with young people. She's heading an effort to put Christmas lights on the gazebo in Gough Park and Town and business people have been VERY supportive and helpful!

There's an interesting choice of eateries and an amazing array of musical talent that's been available here through the year. The major events (Blues Festival and Pickamania!) are FREE and tickets for the other concerts are $10 to $25, less than we were used to paying in SW Colorado. Most of our regular shopping needs are easily met here in Silver City and an occasional trip to Las Cruces or Tucson gives us our "city fix."

A good year and years more of exploring to do! tv

Oh, Lordy ... the time has flown!

I'm shamefully AWOL from this page, exactly like those bloggers I check periodically and wonder why they don't post more often. Shameful!

So, we did go to Shevek's ... very good Mediterranean food, beautifully served ... and pricey. Certainly adds another dimension to the Silver City eateries we've tried.

And a lot of the time since then (for me) has been spent on the road. I left on the 29th on a photo expedition that included a meeting in Washington, D.C., Halloween with grandkids and tracking an ancestor. Got back in time to go to a wedding in Tucson and a baby shower in Scottsdale ... and it's nice to be enjoying home in Silver City with Sandy and the critters!

It was a good time to travel ... sunny days almost all the time, except for a rainy morning east of Dallas on the way back.

It was still just after dawn as I was coming down into Hillsboro on the east side of the Black Range, with golden light highlighting the cottonwoods' fall foliage. Then there were miles and hours on I-25 and I-40. The next day, in Tennessee, I caught an early morning fisherman on a lake near a nuclear power plant and then some eastern woodland color among the roadside oaks.

Halloween was fun with the kids, after watching Lucas get Aiden ready while Noi worked on Nola Jane. The next morning I went with Noi and Aiden to his school, Evergreen Community Charter school and got a tour of the facility. Really impressed!

Back on the road again to SE Virginia, where my great-great-great-grandfather lived in the early 1800s. Among other things, Drayton Mills Curtis was a lock-keeper on the Great Dismal Swamp Canal, which is now part of the Intracoastal Waterway, which many boaters travel up and down the East Coast. 'Twas a beautiful morning to be there!

On Nov. 3, I got to the Lincoln Memorial at dawn, walked the National Mall to Capitol Hill, visited my NM delegation offices and walked back to the Washington Plaza Hotel at Thomas Circle via the new Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial. The next day I could hardly move!

The Reflecting Pool is closed for repairs ... not a pretty sight. There were several groups in town, lobbying Congress not to cut AmeriCorps, etc. These RNs were at the MLK Memorial.

The rest of the time in DC was spent indoors at the annual meeting of the Friends Committee on National Legislation. I'll spare you the pictures of that!

I started back Sunday afternoon and the fall colors were beautiful along the George Washington Memorial Parkway as I headed west. Made it to Kingsport, TN, that night, on to Mount Pleasant, TX, the next and then longing for Sandy and home got me up early and 903 miles later I was home. West Texas sucks! (The river pic is on the Caney Fork River, off an I-40 bridge in Tennessee.)

I looked in on a job fair in Silver City after I got back (not hunting, just curious) and liked this sign in the parking lot.

So, sun's up and I have to open at Meeting today, so I think I'll leave it at that for now. Sandy's still healing, so life is good! tv