Monthly Archives: March 2012

I’m blazing through another crazy chicken week. Short notations will have to do.

The layout jobs went through their various stages: 1. Me to client: “We have a deadline at the end of the week; we should have been done by now; what do you mean you don’t have all the material yet”??? 2. Next day…Client to me: “We have a deadline at the end of the week; is it done yet?” 3. Next day…Me to client: “Here is the first rough draft; still missing pages 3, 8, 11 and the calendar of coming events.” Client back to me: “Sorry, I thought I’d already sent you all of that. Here are 4 pages of corrections and I don’t understand the graphics you chose.” Me to client: Here is round two. All changes have been made and I’m still missing two photos, the President’s Corner, p. 11 and the calendar.” Client to me: Sorry, I’m sure I sent that to you earlier. I’ll see if I can find it. Could you put in an ad for the dry cleaners? I think they had an ad last year or maybe two years ago…? Yada Yada Ya. Time passes, rounds three, four and five get exchanged and it HAS TO be at the printer Monday. Client to me Saturday morning: “Could we switch the article on p. 6 and make it the lead? I know you don’t have any space left, but I forgot two ads that just HAVE to be in this issue…I promised!” Sunday night we are still doing the dance…almost every job every month goes this way. I loved this job even when I was making money at it. I still love it now that it’s pro bono. What’s the matter with me???

We passed on a NODA vigil on Sunday night, and the patient died on Monday. I went to the commo meeting on Monday night and Cath had lunch with her retired divas.

Tuesday, Gene celebrated his REAL birthday, I had coffee with my rowdy bunch at the Dogtooth Cafe right up the street from where our drawing group was to meet at 9:30, but Judy Judy (the hostess) had a meeting in Denver, so we hung it up for another month. Do you think we will all forget how to draw? In the evening we had a wonderful get together over wine with the Agnews, and besides the normal red, we did our best to demolish a bottle of chocolate wine!! I know, it doesn’t sound right, but you should try it. YUM!

In addition to juggling the three jobs and keeping the pressure on all the social engagements, I’ve been data-basing all the tax info for our lovely tax lady. Today was that deadline, and we survived another long session hoping I’d not missed many significant numbers that might come back to bite us in the ass later. She missed one last year and had to file an amended return. It bounced in our direction, so that was jolly. In the afternoon I met with the new sprinkling system dude. I like him, and he has lots of good ideas for how to bring our system up to speed…almost as fast as Cathy and her gardeners come  up with new uses for the water…almost.

Thursday was the hospital gig in the morning, chiropractor in the afternoon (ouch), and a Mac User Group board meeting in the afternoon. Cath busy all day with therapies, et al. This evening we had tickets for Itzhak Perlman. OMG. The guy plays a smokin’ violin!!!

Friday was my haircut, winding down the jobs (by now there is mostly peace in the valley), and in the evening we went to see Gods, Guns and Pancakes at the Millibo Theater. This was an incredible one man show, written, directed and starring Jim Johnson (owner) about his journey from being an engineering student to becoming a clown in the circus. Excellent…sometimes painful, but excellent.

Today, Bill Haffey had a birthday “HB, Bill!” With great trepidation we went to pick up the tax returns, and then with wide smiles decided we could afford to go out to lunch for some tasty Chinese. Life is good. Then we came home and dug up the vegetable garden and made plans for its return to life this summer.

That’s it, folks. Not much room for TV or goofing around. Next week is another adventure.

I don’t want to get into an organ recital, but briefly, I was in a lot of pain during the end of Sedona and all through the Tucson and trip home. I had what felt like a pinched nerve in my neck and left shoulder that got so bad in Tucson that Craig Little put in an emergency call to a masseuse friend who worked me in on a Sunday for a deep tissue massage. Bruised and battered, I limped through the week with little relief except for sleep. The anti-inflammatory drugs we had did nothing, so when we got home, Dr. Huffman worked me in on a Saturday, gave me some Celebrex samples and a muscle relaxant plus a script to see her favorite chiropractor, Dr. Paterson. The Celebrex/MR combo was an instant fix. The chiropractor was OK, but really not necessary.

Free of pain, I felt energized to jump into all the waiting projects and events. On Sunday we went to Tim Rowan’s BD party and reconnected with lots of family. Later in the week we went to a Beatles Show at the Pikes Peak Center and had wonderful seats to see Rain, the Beatles revival cover band. They were excellent and so were the seats.

I finished up a piece that was hanging for Karen Rowan, started the ONEN Newsletter with Kady Hommel and jumped on the ABE Program with Malcolm McCollum. LOTS of time spent with Adobe’s InDesign and the computer.

On Monday before my bone-crusher appointment, we went to visit Barbara Swaby who has taken up photography. Barbara (above) never dabbles. She immerses. She is one of the most intense humans I know. She has pretty much single-handedly distributed 300,000 books to needy children in Colorado. She has a fully decorated Christmas tree in EVERY ROOM of her very large house (over 25 trees) during the season. She still had a dozen or so when we visited today. Her collections spill from every corner, but clutter is not apparent.

Barbara is a master teacher of teachers at UCCS. Teaching reading is her passion, and if you even get near her, you can feel it. O.K., we love Barbara.

Meredith has sent her MANY boxes of books from Sterling Publishers, and so the photo above shows the photo we chose from the hundreds she showed us to take to Meredith on our New York trip as a thank-you.

Tuesday afternoon we drove to Denver for an appointment with TIAA-CREF, Cathy’s retirement people. We got conflicting directions and ended us at the downtown office instead of the Anshutz campus. Somehow, we still got the business handled and worked in a short visit with the Gilmours.

Thursday night we went to a great performance at the FAC – Of Mice and Men. Tough, but beautifully constructed story. Thanks, John.

Friday, Christine and Doug Massey arrived to start looking for a house. She will be stationed at Ft. Carson starting this summer. We’re delighted to be close to them.

We had a session with Buzz, out financial planner, and I helped Keith Roberts with a series of computer problems.

Fast week FULL of fun events!

Home and running like crazy chickens, our heads are still partially back in Arizona/New Mexico.

These two images were taken at the Yavapai College in Sedona (http://www.yc.edu/v4content/campuses-and-sites/sedona/) which was closed before it ever really got going. It’s now the Zaki Gordon Institute for Independent Filmmaking. I don’t remember when we visited it, but Gene, Mary, Cathy and I walked all over the ghost campus entertaining our cameras. It was a little spooky and I’d sure like to know the whole story underneath it.

It’s now St. Patrick’s Day and the MG Club did not get invited to be in the parade this year. Several of the folks went to Denver to be in their parade, but Cath and I were just too busy.

Tonight we went to the Oscar Wilde play Salomé. Weird as a crooked stick, but extremely well done student production at UCCS. All students, original dance, original music and they really pulled it off.

Sad to head homeward, but aware there were piles of things for us to accomplish before leaving for New York, we motored  the circuitous route to Santa Fe. Only those with a GPS can appreciate how many times I-25 turns due south when trying to drive north to Colorado – it’s insane! Priceline found us a real nice Residence Inn (Santa Fe prices a bit higher than Albuquerque).

Maria’s came HIGHLY recommended and we were not disappointed even though we had to wait a spell for the table. A couple of enormous house Margaritas, a bowl of posole and another of green chili stew and we were set for the night.

Hoping to get a possible invitation to visit at some point in the future, we decided to leave this morning and let the Little’s return to a semblance of their normal lives.

I forgot to mention our buying trips to Cat Mountain Emporium and Savers. We did not spend lavishly, but did partake of several bargains, and I stocked up on mostly summer shirts – 8 or 9 of them for under $60.

Gene and Mary await us, and we are anxious to share some of the Book Festival stories with them and hear what they have been up to. It was a very pleasant trip east with a few stops for photos and a stop in Silver City to stock up on some more red and green chili wine. I know, it sounds awful. Don’t judge until we have poured you a glass. It’s delicious.

We arrived somewhat later than we had planned (Marsha let us down and we overshot their street), but visited as if we hadn’t seen each other for years instead of just a few days. Gene and I put in the requisite time on the computer, had a Face Time chat on our iPads and in general behaved like a couple of teenagers. Cathy and Mary solved all the problems for the Catholic Church, swapped recipes, tastefully laughed at our antics and generally had a good visit. We sure love these folks.

The Logan’s packed up and headed back home, and the Mundy’s did their best to live out the adage that ‘company and fish start to smell after three days’!

The Little’s have a red chair in their backyard (yeah, the Sonora Desert Museum IS their backyard!), and I couldn’t resist this shot in honor of Bill Holstein’s wonderful ongoing series of the ‘red rocker’.

The window shot is next door to a glass gallery Craig and Kathy took us to. It was the studio/gallery of the fabulous contemporary Tucson glass artist, Tom Philabaum, (http://www.philabaumglass.com/). Needless to mention, it was not approp0riate to take photos in the gallery, so you will have to visit the web site and look at his photos. Wow!

We did Beyond Bread (maybe a local chain) for the MOST incredible sandwiches, coffee and DESSERTS! I’m coming back for this!

Then it was time for the Etherton Gallery (http://www.ethertongallery.com/html/gallery.html). Huge Yum. Gene, check out the photographer portfolios they show! While three of us were drooling over the art, Cathy was negotiating for a small pot for her collection…the clever girl!

We were back in time for the so boring Arizona sunsets…we could hardly bear it another day. Oh, and then there was the wine flag on the patio with the animals at dusk and another fabulous Craig meal.

We are terribly tempted to become even smellier fish.

Repeat the ‘up early’, the even longer lines, the even greater distances traveled, but oh, what a payback!

The first photo is of Larry McMurtry and his writing partner, Diana Ossana. We were among the last allowed into a huge auditorium seating 700. Susie had waited in line over an hour to save a spot for Ronnie and also made special arrangements for hearing accommodations for him. She then had to leave because there were no seats left. The ultimate bummer was that McMurtry mumbled for the entire hour and Ronnie’s equipment malfunctioned. He heard virtually nothing.

We lucked out and were able to see Lisa See. She doesn’t look 1/2 Chinese, but really is. Her sessions were so popular that people lined up hours before and threaded out of the building and around the block. No chance for the vast majority of those folks to get in, but they waited ‘just in case’. She told us in reading a book, she always reads the last chapter, then the first, then the next-to-the-last, second, etc. She eventually gets the narrative, but her overwhelming interest is how the book is structured and WHEN events are introduced. Fascinating.

Gregory McNamee, the guy with the old lady hairdo, was one of the lesser-known authors who presented with Jeff Biggers (who got so passionate about his subject that he jumped up on a lab table in the amphitheater and screamed part of his delivery!). The third author in this session was Margot Mifflin. Their common theme was: Forgotten Lives: Uncovering Hidden Histories. It was a knock-out…much better than McMurtry.

Up early and off to the Tucson Festival of Books, but not before using the technology to get ready. Months ago I downloaded the Daily Star App (Tucson’s daily newspaper). The previous Sunday had contained a supplement outlining all the authors and vendors and where they would be on the University of Arizona Campus. In addition, both my phone and the iPad contained the App built by the Festival committee. This little gem had links to all bios of the authors, who they would be teaming with, which classroom or auditorium they use, multiple times during the weekend they would speak and where they would be for book signings, etc., etc. Fantastic resource.

Still, we were not prepared for the size of the crowds or the popularity of some of these authors (rock stars might make an apt comparison). The lines were huge, and had we not known exactly where and when to go, we would have missed a great many chances to hear these gifted people with a message.

Our first author was Luis Urrea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu%C3%ADs_Alberto_Urrea) an author I’d never heard of, but one of the favorites of the Little/Logan clan and one whom Cathy had read before (shown above). It was chilly and the venue was a small white tent out on the lawn of the campus, but he made all of that irrelevant. He was a spell-binder. His message was particularly poignant do to the fact that all of his books had just this month been removed from the shelves of the public schools in Arizona as their government suspended all Hispanic Studies courses as a cost-cutting measure. This, is a state with one of the highest Hispanic populations and a rating next to the last in literacy among young students.

Next was J. A. Jance of mystery fame (shown above with Margaret Coel). The rest of the day rolled on with Cath getting to see Richard Russo (I was thrown out along with a hundred or so others due to overcrowding in the auditorium). We did get to hear/see Elmore Leonard today. Wow! Doesn’t he look like Malcolm McCollum???

We checked out by 11 a.m. (barely). We headed south in order to hit Tucson by the time wine flag was hoisted and the Daniels headed east to home maybe via a new route.

We had a devil of a time finding it along the southern route, but we finally arrived at Arcosanti for a late lunch. The youngsters who read this will have to get some background on Paulo Soleri and Arcosanti, but some of us dreamed the same dream as these early hippies – a place of perfect balance and brotherhood. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcosanti).

It was blowing terrible dust, but we persevered and wandered in having just missed a tour. We were invited to stay for lunch which was very good, prepared and served by the grandchildren of the original volunteers who worked with Paulo to build this utopian city.

The photo with the orange cylinder above is a cloth sock containing a low speed fan within. When it’s cold, the fan delivers the hot air from the circular skylight down to the lower levels. When it’s hot, the fan sucks up the hot air an pushed it out the skylight louvers.

We saw a neat art show, bought some cards designed by Paulo’s wife and left ready to get out of the wind, but sorry not to have seen the whole complex. We were even sorrier that the lofty plans of this optimistic society have been only achieved to such a minimal degree. Alas….

We motored south and arrived into the welcoming arms of the Littles and the Logans. It was like baseball’s sliding into HOME….SAFE and just in time for the incredible Arizona sunset and the wine flag!!

We are so glad our train trip got postponed one day. Yesterday’s weather was VERY marginal, and today it is beautiful. The cameras thanked us all day. This is a very scenic canyon and reminiscent of the train ride through the Royal Gorge. We had lunch in Cottonwood before boarding the train. It was comfortable with easy access to the open cars for photography, and there was plenty to eat and drink. We could hear the rolling narrative of history and culture and all was good.