Sidetracked Charley

While my classmates in school were out picking out their prom dresses I was generally on the floor of the gym creating signs and decorations for the event. I could sit like these Navajo sand painters for hours painting free style letters and designs. Only I used tempera paint and a brush. And they lasted until the cleanup committee removed them. I noticed on my budget for the studio I had included a fee for a sign painter. I know a great one. But in these pressing economic times I just did not feel I could afford him by this May. So I set out to do my own on plywood I had left over from some project and with paint from doing the interior of the studio. At that point I had not remembered all those hand painted signs so I was going to use butcher paper and a ruler and laboriously sketch out the words "Art Studio." I have been trying to wrap myself around that for two weeks now. But today when I had the paint brush in hand putting on the base color all those hours with poster b...

I had this horrid nightmare just before waking that my roof was leaking and the icy water was ruining everything in my house. I hate those sort of dreams. They seem so very real at the same time you know they are totally impossible. When that is the case for me I generally look for something happening in the world that my subconscious is tied into. I did not have to look far: Fargo, North Dakota. The people along the banks of the Red River and the Missouri have been working day and night to fill sandbags to raise the dikes as both rivers reached 115 year record highs. To put this is perspective when the residents of New Orleans were treading the flood waters after Katrina it was warm. The above picture is of a barely thawed Missouri River dammed up with broken ice floes. I am sitting here looking out at the six inches of spring snow and 6 F temperature and knowing that would be warm in relation to what they are experiencing in North Dakota. I went to Minot, ND one spring and saw the M...

A funny thing happened this morning. I opened Twitter first. And then Travels with Charley that has my most extensive blog list. I have been reading Shouting at Street Lights by my 360 friend Michael (Muttley de Arf Arf) and Treesparrow's Twitterings by Treesparrow who I met there too. And then a great poem by my old friend Catfishred at Catfish Tales . And another by Aimless Joys . Then I was off to the pages of the people I have met on Blogger like bekkieann of Red State Blues . And then, of course, Margaret and Helen at wordpress. I finally swung back to Y!360 my old home blog. It has been rather quiet there of late and no doubt the problems with posting comments and blogs has been an issue for some. In fact it has been easier to send messages or post on profile on Yahoo or Twitter. I have tried Facebook and cannot see its draw quite frankly. I am using the 5 second rule to avoid malware is my excuse but basically I just find it boring. All the blogs I have listed above hav...

The above picture was taken at New Buffalo Commune during the "Hippie Days" in New Mexico. It was an interesting experiment for which many of the participants were ill prepared. It wasn't just the horse that had to be taught to pull a plow. Living and gardening and cooking in the high mountain west is not an easy feat especially when done in a minimal way. But some succeeded. I rather admire those times. We sought ways to cooperate and barter and live a simple life. Very different than corporate jets, and huge bonuses, and off-shore accounts, and a new Hummer every year when the ash trays get dirty. We called that conspicuous consumption. and definitely put it down. I have been watching the anger at AIG and other greedy banks like Citibank and wonder if these seeds of outrage are not leading us back to a more simple lifestyle. The pendulum swings wide the first arcs from one extreme to another so I doubt we will go totally back to the commune days but what about cooperati...

The Three Fates Today is Word Thursday on Y!360 and my word is Predestination. Predestination is the Divine foreordaining or foreknowledge of all that will happen; with regard to the salvation of some and not others. And predestination was a particular favorite of John Calvin. And my mother when bad things happened to good people. But when good things happened to bad people it was just luck. I always felt it was a rather grim belief. It seemed to have no escape route. I like escape routes. Never burn a bridge if I can help it. But perhaps after all those years in close contact with Mother I have become a bit of a fatalist in my own way, and some events really bring that home. Yesterday it was the death of Natasha Richardson due to a funny little beginners fall in a ski lesson. On Christmas Eve 2001 I had a much more serious fall. I was hit by another skier and thrown into the air and landed on my head I am told. Both Natasha and I suffered a closed brain trauma or CBT landing on soft s...

Ever feel you were getting absolutely nowhere? I have been attempting to get in touch with my legal aid attorney now for more than a week. First it seemed it was just the FAX lines that hand been disabled at the office. Then all the phones. I called the Santa Fe office of Legal Aid and waited two days to get a return call to be told this was effecting phones state wide. There is a setting on this coming Tuesday which is a phone conference. My attorney has filed an appearance and the cover letter lists her cellphone number while acknowledging communication issues at the office. Called the cell number and left a message there yesterday! No joy. Well, there is always the physical address. So I am on my way over the mountain to hand deliver papers to her. I certainly hope there is someone there. In this day of e-mail, FAX, telephones, and cellphones we take communication for granted. And haven't a clue what to do when they fail us. A few years back some hungry prairie dogs south of he...

I'm Irish. I just don't believe in St. Patrick. Now in my drinking days this was a great excuse to get roaring drunk with a bunch of people who were not Irish. And in later years I used it as an occasion to fix up corned beef and cabbage. Yeah, I really like it. But St. Patrick's Day is about celebrating the fifth century conversion of the Irish to Christianity. And there began all the problems. Ireland was a peaceful country when they were all pagans. Well, except for a marauding Scot or two. I am not exactly sure St. Patrick's "conversion" was all that peaceful. Then Henry the VIII came along and wanted the Catholics to be Church of England. And Ireland splits between the Orange or Protestants and the Green or Catholics while the pagans in the countryside continued to make Maypoles and Jack-O-Lanterns. My Dad's Mother was a Irish Catholic with roots back to the Kennedy's and my Dad's Father was Protestant Irish with some English and Scottish thro...

Where from came Charley? From John Steinbeck and his non-fiction book Travels with Charley. Charley is the black standard poodle in the above illustration from the book jacket in one of its many publication runs. I chanced upon Charley and Steinbeck in the train station in Los Angeles on my first ill fated trip to the west coast. It was semester break of my sophomore year and five of us coeds had piled in Penny's Buick convertible and set off on the 17 hour drive to the coast. Well, it should be about 22 hours but this was before radar and at night. But the poor stressed Buick blew a con-rod and cracked the block in Kingman, Arizona. Heart of Goldwater country during the presidential campaign. We all accessed our available funds. We were college kids! And decided to hitch hike from there. It was the middle of a General Motors strike so months before the Buick, towed to the dealership there, would be fixed. And it is probably why, Charley, my particular Charley was out driving west ...

Those that know me are probably totally mystified with another new blog. I already have, just here on Blogger, two others. Creative Journey is about my art and the creative process. Travels with Charley is now devoted almost entirely to political issues here in the United States and more specifically in the Mountain West. It did not start out as that, but was sidetracked. Ergo the name of this new blog. I am very easily sidetracked. Maybe that is the creative mind or the fact that I ran with scissors as a child. Today we call that Hyper Active Attention Deficit Disorder (HAADD). And I was happy that research has shown we don't outgrow it. Means I am not crazy. As we did not medicate scissor running kids when I was a child I did learn some discipline. I can focus but sometimes for just limited periods of times. But it is best for me to always have a wide variety of tasks or interests about so I can shift from one to the other. When painting I frequently work on as many as four at...