Sidetracked Charley

Cliff Homes by J Binford-Bell Took a look at my blog layout here and decided I needed a bit of a new look. Nothing like re-arranging the furniture to give you new perspective. And actually I was after a wider column for photos but then decided this blog is more about words and Creative Journey is more about pictures. But the lines do get blurred from time to time. Or sidetracked as the title for this blog would suggest. I am one of those people easily led astray. Today it was the battery not working the mower. But not being able to move the mower caused a whole other set of issues because what I thought I would do once the mower was out of the parking space was put in my lumber rack. So I stared at the computer screen for a while and then played a game of Bejeweled Twist. That led to the rearranging of the blog furniture as it were. And then to rearranging of things in my studio and then the arrangements I am working on for a memorial service. Nothing overly stressful mind you...

The bathtub drain by J. Binford-Bell It strikes me as I get older there are two paths through the minefield of life. One is to tiptoe carefully through it trying to follow the foot prints of someone who traversed it before you. And the other is to run full speed ahead while bobbing and weaving. Much of my youth I chose the latter method and survived only partly unscathed. After my parents died I tended to take a more conservative approach. It was almost as if I had done the dare devil thing to get their attention and now I could play it safe. Let me mention right here safe did not work. And it is certainly not gratifying. I do not care what your financial adviser, life coach, minister, neighbor, friend or parent tell you there are just entirely too many variables to the future to have any control over it. So run for it. Or dance through it. Or happy hop. In the fable about the ant and the grasshopper the grasshopper had a far richer life. I have a friend who is so sure that wh...

Road to Raton in May The last time I was out this way was May. Things looked dire for the high plains. I wrote a photographic blog at the time - Satori on the Road to Raton . I mention it because we have since gotten rain. And the only thing which saved me from my monkeys was the incredible green around me. Returning from Raton in July Neither picture is a photoshop trick. And in some places it was greener and the grass higher. What a difference a month or two can make. But I digress. The subject of this blog was to be my monkeys. I am never totally safe from my monkeys. They like to attack in the early hours of the morning when I cannot get back to sleep or the moment I walk into a crowded room or alone in a car with too many miles of windshield time. They can lead to that awful hamster wheel thinking about things you forgot, shouldn't have said, bills I didn't pay, people I must have pissed off or those just putting up with me, and my all time favorite - what mad...

So many steps Sometimes life gets repetitive but that was definitely not the case with this last week. Though at times like the ladders and steps up to Alcove house at Bandeleir National Monument it did seem a little overwhelming. Just take it one step at a time. But still there are some times when you are half way up you do not see where you are going to get the energy for even turning around and going back down. However, it was a very fun and busy week with lots of interesting experiences and photographic opportunities. At Old Taos Guesthouse I met new people, had fun with old friends and got out of Dodge more than once. I have taken enough photographs to fill the next couple months of the 365 Day Photography Challenge on Binford-Bell Studio . But have overwhelmed myself with post processing to do. Like the steps you just take it one photo at a time. Easier to skip photos than steps, however. But I got lucky with the steps - Alcove house was closed for repairs. Dar...

Your friend the smoke alarm I am not sure why but this image reminds me of Your Friend the Atom propaganda of my youth. I was skeptical of the atom being my friend too. And this morning I know the smoke alarm isn't my friend. I pulled some muscles or pinched some nerves in my back trying to kill my smoke alarm. The National Fire Protection Association is in charge of smoke alarms. It was formed in 1896 by a group of insurance firms. I bet you thought they had your life in mind. NO. Just property loss. And they have their say in all building codes. They are the ones that mandate smoke alarms be installed. They may work well in standard housing but they are just plain stupid in vaulted ceilings and great rooms that go up two stories or more.  And so begins the tale of my smoke alarm in the studio. My studio has a vaulted ceiling that at its peak is 15 feet above the floor. The building code says the smoke alarm has to be within a foot of the highest point of the ceiling. It ...

Steve Oliver by Janet Oliver My neighbor and husband of my best friend died the 10th of July. Eight and a half years ago he was diagnosed with a deadly cancer caused by Agent Orange. It is currently taking out a huge number of our Vietnam Veterans and not in a gentle way. Steven Ryan Oliver would have been 68 this August. And like his service in Vietnam as a Marine, he beat some long odds to make it this far. May he rest in peace. My experience with having him and my friend as neighbors was eye opening about the American way of death and dying. If you do not have an extended family being a care taker for someone with cancer might just kill you. The statistics are against you. I long ago dedicated myself to helping Janet through this ordeal. And she has had to totally put her own life on hold because of the care and attention he required. Even at those times when he seemed to be functioning well to the community. Until you have been there you have no idea. On Good Friday th...

Pick-Up Sticks the game Life has gotten very, very complicated. And obviously everyone thinks it is very, very simple. Just change it. Far easier said than done. We had an open range law in New Mexico at one time. And some legislature decided we were too populated for that and so they amended the law. We now only have open ranges on Bureau of Land Management holdings, Indian Land, and forest service property. Good luck with figuring out which of those you are on because they are not fenced necessarily. But to make matters worse when the welling meaning lawmakers decided to change the law they forgot one of the little parts of the law about it being the landowners responsibility to fence out the cattle. Get that? Not the cattle owner's responsibility to fence them in. Several following court cases that made it to state supreme court decided that fencing the cattle out only applied to immediate neighbors. So if the cattle got out of the owner's property and wandered merr...

I used to do a regular Monday Morning Chat Over Coffee blog. The purpose was to replace having coffee physically with friends. It seemed many of my friends, especially in the summer, get too busy for coffee and all the coffee places get too busy with tourists. And then I got too busy for the blogs. But coffee chats are an important part of community. It is where we catch up with the back story of our lives and it is where we gossip. Social anthropologists are now telling us that gossip serves an important bonding ritual and is beneficial to the community if not viscous or mean spirited. And who knows what is a glue in the fabric of a society Chats over coffee are also where we re-establish our bonds by what we tell of ourselves and our friends, and what secrets we keep or do not keep. In rural communities chats over coffee are often replaced by what  I have come to call windshield time when you get together to do the weekly shopping in the next town over or run to Santa Fe f...

Map of Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument Took another photographic outing to the lower end of our newest national monument. There are other accesses to the beauty this monument holds but from where I live the lower end is the easiest to access. Many of the highway travelers to Taos are familiar with the scene below taken after the horseshoe turn. Turning north off of Hwy 68 on to 570 at Pillar gets you into the beautiful camping and day access areas of the monument. Rio Grande Gorge in the Taos Volcanic Plateau The Rio Grande River is very low because of the drought but my photographic partner and I were thrill to find the river a bit higher than our last trip due to recent rains.  The gorge and canyon walls that enclose the Rio Grande in the monument area are primarily basalt. The Taos Volcanic plateau was formed by seven different lava flows. The remnant cones of the volcanos are throughout the park area. But between flows the run off created layers of...

Bedraggled As Mary Chapin Carpenter said some days you are the windshield and some days you are the bug. Or there is John Denver and some days are diamonds and some days are stone. And Joan Baez and diamonds or rust. Or weeks when things have gone from one extreme to the other so fast it is impossible to know where exactly you are. And it is not until it is all over you get a moment to just stare and try to find your bearings. By way of example I have been hauling water bucket by bucket to my poppies for a couple weeks now and they bloomed. And then it hailed. But I could not complain because when the hail melted it came to almost an inch of much needed moisture. I finished up the painting I have been working on for the Saturday Meet the Artists Guild event and got lots of great compliments on it. But I have been unable to come up with a title or a new painting idea to replace it in my creative mind. Or another avoidance mechanism. But there is that goal of six new pieces by...