Sidetracked Charley

I have two in fact. My regular profile and my fan page for Binford-Bell Studio. Or I think I do. Seems this morning Facebook is having a melt down. There have been an increasing number of glitches of late. Facebook sites improvements they are making as a reason. That and their fantastic growth and most of that among a different age dynamic - the older set. We utilize the popular social platform very differently than the teenage set. First we blog. And we want those blogs to post on Facebook. And they say they can be linked in easily. Yes, it is easy to link a blog in but they don't live up to posting new material every two hours promise. So now Facebook is trying to head us off at the pass by making its Notes more of a blog platform with fonts even and the ability to underline and bold text. They are a long way behind on that! I would be happy if they would just do well what they were designed to do which is let us interact in real time around the world. This morning FB will n...

Not my refrigerator The above picture is not of my refrigerator door. That is obvious because I have no kids that draw pictures. However I take them and years ago found these plastic frames with magnets on the back so that I could post photographs of friends and fond memories on the refrigerator. Some of the pictures are very old. As are some of the magnets I have collected. Among the magnets is: Denial is a God-Given Survival Skill. And: I want a young man with old money. The latter is old enough I am willing to consider an old man with young money provided there is nobody else in his will. Then there are all the self-help magnets: Angel Fire Automotive, Timberlake Snow Removal, Colfax County emergency services and offices, Preventing Forest Fires, Fish and Game (or bears and cougars). And the not so helpful ones like Kit Carson Telecom, and Lovelace health clinic. I don't use either of those except to hold up a print out of The Four Agreements . Among the pictures are t...

My 2011 Old Farmer's Almanac Engagement Calendar arrived on Monday signaling the approaching end of 2011. Time to get the summer chores wrapped up, the wood for the stove ordered for the winter, the mower's winterized, etc. My shopping trip to Taos yesterday reinforced this. All the garden centers had sales on remaining plants, and the art store was awash with students looking for art supplies. I decided to take a tip from my blog friend, Becky, and prepare my beds this fall to get a jump on next spring. To that end I purchased some edging for an existing bed that is invaded with weeds and a new area around the aspens I want to turn into more of an island in the lawn. Not sure I have enough but I can make a beginning. I am told you edge the bed and then weed and mulch for winter. I am always so busy in spring with art fair prep that I am behind the minute I get the hoses out of storage. I also bought a "Nearly Wild" Rose to plant. This hardy species of rose bush ...

My New Nikon D90 One of my long time blog friends commented that he was looking forward to a positive blog from me. Not that he was whining about my whining - just the blogger way of wishing you well. So I figured a blog accenting the positive might be nice. Always thank the spirits for what is going right in your life. Above is definitely one of those! Cameras are for me a tool and a hobby and a form of Zen Meditation. Well, until I try to wade through the 278 page manual (already tossed out the Spanish versions). I love my new camera. So much so I am thinking of selling my Nikon D70. Was going to keep it as a backup. And the new puppy has a 18-105 zoom wide angle lens I like a lot. Don't know if you can see it in this particular picture but it has a port for a GPS. What is that about? Golden Bolete gnawed by squirrels I am also rather excited about the wild mushroom season and yesterday took camera with me to record a few of my finds. It has been a few days since it rai...

Magic Flute “Some people confuse acceptance with apathy, but there's all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and what cannot be helped; acceptance makes that distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will-to-action; acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens.” Arthur Gordon I was told that acceptance was the answer to all my problems. To not accept things as they are means to continually waste energy fighting against what cannot be changed. And only through accepting things as they are can we objectively make decisions about what can be changed and what cannot. And what we can do to help ourselves make it through difficult times. This theme keeps reoccurring in my life. In my youth I took the est training , "the technology of transformation," to transform my life. (Note: Est has now transformed to The Forum.) One of basic premises of est was to tell the truth about something and it would cease to have a hold on you. ...

A friend I had not chatted with of late asked how I was and I think I dumped. Things are not going well if you can cry through an episode of Psych. So I figured I would take a blog idea from my friend Bev and try a weekly sum up for my own clarity, if nothing else. 1) Vehicles : My van is still in the shop. It was suppose to be done yesterday but mechanic didn't call. And I could just not face a conversation with him at that time. Besides I was having a conversation with my sister over a new issue with her vehicle at the time the repair shop closed. BTW she has her new telephone. Did I mention she dropped and broke her cell? 2) Communication : Obviously not good on several levels. Debbie broke her phone right after the incident of the rattlesnake and ergo her kids in Texas were in a panic because they could not get her. Neither thought of going to Facebook were a picture of the dead one was posted. But her new phone was not delivered as planned and without her cell she could n...

Ooops, another frog image! But this one just seemed so appropriate. I feel like that bottom frog on the right. Things just seem to be piling up on me. If I were her I would just sink into the water and sneak away and leave the boys to hump themselves. Okay, that lowered the level. But yesterday I did just slip below the surface and leave the scene, well, mentally at least. I was not entirely successful but I avoided a divisive board meeting, a confrontation with a lately argumentative friend, and used the "sorry, in the middle of a painting" excuse to get out of several telephone conversations that showed every indication of heading to no man's land. And I have plans for the weekend of a clear escape from the valley. Sssshhhhhh, not a word. I see this escapism tendency as an improvement over my "sit still and take it" attitude demonstrated so well by that little female to the right in the picture. Course now before I started using escape routes I would want...

Clearing my schedule to allow for downtime and serendipity was the correct thing to do even though it ran counter to all my upbringing of living up to my commitments. I have taken my responsibilities so rigidly at times that in order to give myself permission to give in and give up I have to virtually cut off a finger or fall down the steps. A simple cold won't do it. I will muscle through like the trouper I was raised to be. But sometimes survival means just sitting still and waiting for rescue. I learned that when I was with the Civil Air Patrol and we were out flying over forests looking for a lost hunter. It also helps to take off the camouflage jacket and sit in the middle of a meadow. Not under the trees. I could be bleeding from multiple wounds and when asked by the EMT responding to the accident, "How are you?" I will answer with a smile, "Fine, and you." I was brought up to not whine. The last week has not been easy but I am a survivor and I will ma...

You just keep thinking, Butch First we worked together. Marc and I were employed by the same major construction company. And a careful perusal of our histories showed that was just when we happened to be in the same place at the same time. We had traveled the same path before finally meeting in Kansas City 23 years ago. And I wonder at times how many other lifetimes before this. It puts me in mind of Richard Bach's book Bridge Across Forever . Are we soul mates? Yes, I think so. But we did not get it right this lifetime and it has taken so much energy I wonder if I want to try it again. Of the 23 years there were only seven we were married. We were better friends than lovers, better lovers than mates. We were horrid as husband and wife. But through it all we were an are friends. And we shared all those stupid friendship things; all those same favorite movies and classic lines from them. There were so many they almost became a shorthand for verbal communication and others standing...

In the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge a mariner seems compelled to relate a tale of his killing of an albatross while at sea. The crime arouses the wrath of spirits who then pursue the ship "from the land of mist and snow"; the south wind that had initially led them from the land of ice now sends the ship into uncharted waters, where it is becalmed. Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. I always saw it that the man had to have agreement from even perfect strangers - forgiveness on any level, but one professor I had talked about the keepers of memory and if all his shipments were dead the mariner needed others to keep his story alive. It seemed a larger message than one of atonement. When we are young friendships seem such fleeting things and they come and go in our lives...