Sidetracked Charley

For those of you that follow my other blog(s) you know I got the flu. Probably, my nurse sister thinks, not the Swine flu but there is another flu virus out there making the rounds that is not covered by the flu vaccine manufactured for this flu season which came late. And if remarks on Twitter are any indication it reached epidemic proportions before Swine flu did. As I blogged and commented in various platforms that I had the flu I was constantly told I should have gotten the flu shots. I had a flu shot once and it almost killed me as it is cultured in eggs and intensifies the sulfur of the egg yokes. I am allergic to that. I have always had doubts about the vaccine process. Probably because in my life it is not just the flu vaccines I have reactions to but the oral polio vaccine, the smallpox vaccine, the original shots for polio, and a couple others. To take me for vaccinations as a child was to figure out what days of school I could most miss - like up to a week. But I also think ...

I was reading up on the growing threat of Swine Flu this morning. I do not live in a major city and with my lifestyle (artist in own studio) I can avoid a lot of the risk centers. But I do live in a border state with Mexico and between the drug traffic and illegals crossing (not to mention tourist traffic) I cannot be totally sure of safety from the feared pandemic. This morning's news was, however, particularly interesting in that I evidently survived a previous pandemic in 1968. From Yahoo News : While all the deaths so far have been in Mexico, the flu is spreading in the United States. Eleven cases were confirmed in California, Kansas and Texas, and eight schoolchildren in New York City caught a type A influenza virus that health officials say is likely to be the swine flu. The new flu strain, a mixture of various swine, bird and human viruses, poses the biggest risk of a large-scale pandemic since avian flu surfaced in 1997, killing several hundred people. A...

Thomas Edward "Black Jack" Ketchum and his gang were only a few of the "outlaws" that hung around Moreno Valley, Elisabethtown, Cimarron, and the Black Lake area. They were supposedly "laying low" after doing train robberies in Texas and other parts of New Mexico. Black Jack was one of the only train robbers hung for that crime and not murder. He was hung in Clayton, New Mexico in such a bumbling way that he was decapitated. And it was later determined that it was unconstitutional to hang someone for robbing trains. Horses, maybe, but trains no, regardless of what the real robber barons (train builders and owners) wanted. But if local stories are to be believed Black Jack was by no means innocent of murder. The charges were just never brought against him. And he participated in more than one lynching where he was not the guest of honor. One of these lynchings in Elizabethtown produced a head which Black Jack took in a sack to Cimarron and placed on the pic...

Spring at Last I had lunch On my studio porch today I put on a sleeveless shirt And took off my shoes and socks And dined on chocolate ice cream. I sat on a step Last week covered with snow And watched two ravens Repledge their union In a flawless blue sky. I walked barefoot In the greening grass Drenching the tree With the newly thawed hose And celebrated the arbor survival. I hauled out the potted plants Washed their dusty leaves In a spring time shower My toes wiggling In the mud forming beneath them. I had lunch outside today And reveled in the sun basking in the warmth Spring has arrived At Last. (c) J. Binford-Bell

The history of my area is a lot of things that might have happened. There was a lot of mining here but never the mother lode. Lots of ranching here but no easy way to get the cattle to market. Lots of outlaws here like Black Jack Ketchum and Bat Masterson but none of them died here. Just killed others here. And for years when the mining and the ranching was going at full tilt there were talks of railroads to get ore to grinding mills and cattle to slaughter. The closest trains got were Ute Park to the East and the Denver and Rio Grande to the east. The spur connecting the two never materialized though there was a huge double wide tunnel built just 20 miles from here so the trains could make it through the Cimarron canyon. The Texas cattlemen were heavily behind this train because it would allow them to ship their cattle up to greener summer pastures and back to winter feed lots with greater efficiency. That now happens with cattle trailers and semi-tractor rigs. In may we will see the...

The hardest part of going green with my new clothesline was the clothespin. Seems there is not a single product, even the lowly clothespin, that China cannot make worse. So what I thought was going to be a simple local store purchase because an extensive hunt. I want clothespins like Momma used to have. You know the ones that your little fingers could barely squeeze open and when applied to the skin of your sibling caused pain. I wanted them to hold the clothes on the line in valley winds. Seemed simple but NOT. Finally found some largish plastic ones at Wal-Mart that are labeled heavy duty. They will do for the moment, but I am still in search of the ultimate clothespin. So yesterday with the expected snow storm delayed and the new clothespins in hand I emptied my travel bag and did my laundry. My sister and I had been "mudding" in her Jeep and I had all those clothes to wash. So what might have been a three dryer load day wasn't. My clothesline and the clothespins held ...

I have this photograph Capturing another Time A moment forever frozen Upon my refrigerator Recalls to memory a happier time. I have her picture among others A moment when she smiled Always Smiling back at me In my kitchen. We had been on a hike together With friends and dogs Middle Fork Lake on a Summer Day Happy memories. It seemed so appropriate Today In her memory To make more with other friends Taking photographs. The world was changed by her loss Less And yet more As if her spirit charged the air. And I will forever Have her photograph. We sat on rocks Warmed by the sun Distracted by the dogs Giggled not unlike that other time Took photographs. Friends on a trek Photographs for the refrigerator Memories etched in our minds Joy And sorrow And photographs. (c) J. Binford-Bell

I drove down through what used to be the township of Black Lake yesterday. Yes, Martha, there is a Black Lake. And there used to be a town. It was a thriving community of ranchers in the late 1800's and early 1900's. This area had been homesteaded in that time by primarily the Trujillo family. Per the 1861 homestead act you could get deeded to you 160 acres if you worked the land for 10 years and made improvements. The menfolk of the Trujillo extended family did and then joined them together into a very large ranch. In the town of Black Lake - or what remains of it is an old school that is used for little art fairs, the UU Bar Ranch - which was used for filming all the Montana scenes for Lonesome Dove, Poorboy's bar and dance hall - now closed because of the death of the owner, and various adobe and log buildings that have been melting into the landscape. Us locals that live in "Black Lake" as opposed to Angel Fire have various inside jokes as to where we live he...

Beyond We are here but briefly Holding on To this land we consider solid As it vanishes behind us. Our mission is not to stay But journey To move from here to there And beyond. We travel sometimes together But alone At a pace not set By us. Our goal Is not to linger longer But to travel from here To beyond So when a friend goes Beyond our reach It is not to leave us But to lead (c) J. Binford-Bell For all that go before

A very strong (5.6 to 6.7 depending upon who you believe) earthquake hit a large section of central Italy following a series of smaller quakes on Sunday and Monday. Every news article reports an increasing number of dead and vague promises of those still buried under rubble. Centuries old Tuscan and Renaissance churches have been destroyed. Horrible but it is news I can grasp, understand, get my mind around. Despite all my reading on the economy and watching all the Sunday talk shows with debates between Republicans and Democrats and economists of conflicting mind sets I cannot grasp a lot of what is currently going on in the world even if it directly effects me. But I get earthquakes. I was taken to an earthquake park outside Anchorage, Alaska once and saw where the earth fell - down or in - what is the correct word here. And I have driven along highways that crisscrossed the San Andres fault in California and saw a huge reservoir that vanished overnight because the earth cracked. I ...

A funny thing happened on the way to the poor house. Yes, Martha, they used to have poor houses. Then they called them slum clearance projects followed by low-income housing and now tent cities it seems. Still a roof of any kind over your head can be a blessing even if it leaks. Mine thankfully doesn't. I always suspected on some level that poor was green. If you cannot afford the electric bill you do not leave lights, energy saving or not, on all the time. You lower the heat. You put on an extra layer of clothes. You don't waste money on bottled water and add all those plastic bottles to the landfill. And now I have bought the necessary cord and connections to make a clothes line which wastes no energy drying clothes. And I have cut down on the food budget. Weren't we told to not eat like our parents did? Down with the pork chops and gravy ! I like to eat good. And there are several items where only organic will do like eggs and dairy products and poultry. I generally buy...

I was looking at photographs of arches today for a picture idea for one of my large canvases. I ended up using Teardrop Arch in Monument Valley (featured on Creative Journey ) but I did not personally take that photo. But while looking through my photographs of the Colorado Plateau I found this picture taken on Queen's Garden trail at Bryce National Park. I took this on my sister's and my first roadtrip to Utah. We had walked down Queen's Garden trail and had fully intended to go back up it. But at the bottom there was an option for Navajo Trail. Should you ever go to Bryce National Park let me inform you the way to do this hike is DOWN Navajo and UP Queen's Garden. Leave your car at the visitor center and take the bus that stops at all the overlooks that way you don't have to remember at what trail head you parked it. A real plus when every single muscle in your body is crying for the sleeping bag. Bryce landscape can be a bit overwhelming to photograph. This one h...

The current economic crisis has me doing a lot of things I thought I had given up from my hippie days or my youth where I wanted to learn all the old crafts like spinning wool and tanning hides. I did a lot of spinning. But tanning hides required killing an animal first. I did canning, freezing, baking bread, making my own biscotti, raising geese, and angora goats (for the raw materials to do that spinning I had learned in the Blue Ridge Mountains.) I even died the wool I spun with natural dyes created from native plants. And I had many a clothesline. I was convinced that clothes smelled better when line dried. Haven't had one for a good dozen years. Winters here seem to freeze dry them. And if the wind is too high you risk losing those good sheets to the neighbors. Still why not put up a clothes line in the backyard to use for those days when the weather is pleasant? Every time I hung out jeans or comforters it would save on the electricity to run the dryer. Sounds really green an...