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