Sidetracked Charley

End of Days 16 x 30 Watercolor on Canvas $1200 One day you are strolling along through your life making plans with your sister for a Maine vacation. Biggest worry is how to find someone to watch your house and your pets while you are away for two weeks. Since I am the house and pet sitter in my neighborhood that is a big enough problem. But then the pandemic hits and trip is cancelled. Problem solved? That problem at least. Studio is closed down by governor but the pet sitting business is booming. Especially Dog Gone Park play days. But the lockdown from the pandemic presents its own problems, but a new business line - masks. But everyday I worry about my sister who is on the front lines at a Texas hospital. We talk almost every day to relieve her stress. I learn things I did not need to know which add to my stress. News media begins to focus on stress from the pandemic. Having once had a very stressful job I know what to do. I dig out the old journal with my list compiled after my fat...

  Indian Summer always feels like extra time; a pause between summer and winter. Like spring fever it makes me lazy. I want to linger on the deck mostly cleared of deck chairs. I look at the hoses and think I need to get them rolled up and stored. But there is still time. I lie. Every day of sun is borrowed and so much remains to be done. The firewood has not been stacked. Not my job this year, part of the price, but if it does not get staked before winter it is me that has to dig it out from under the snow. I got the electric snow thrower ordered and assembled and sitting in the studio while I decide where to store it. If the wood was stacked it would be in the wood shed on the front row. I need to take care of the list. It is not like I have not been busy. Lots to do. Facebook gave me extra time by throwing me in jail for seven days. But it seemed to announce it was time to clean up my internet schedule. I deleted a lot of unused apps on my smart phone. Went through my photo file...

  I ventured on to social networking after my head injury. I was told to practice what I did not want to lose. It was a short list: writing, painting, and photography. I suffered the CBT while teaching skiing; something I had done for more than ten years. But it was almost immediately clear I had skied my last day. But skiing was just a love I did almost like aerobics. It was exercise for my otherwise sedentary occupations; freelance writing and making Mardi Gras Masks. My injured brain was having issues with the masks. Writing, however, was easy to practice on a computer. And I already had editors willing to assist me to continue writing. It was Y!360 then. For me it was therapy. But I made friends while making progress. And when Y!360 crumbled because of an unstable platform I followed my friends to other platforms. Facebook seemed to be where people I knew went. Sure it was not perfect. You had to keep your posts to 140 characters at first and then to 400. But I compromised by k...

  Not sure about the number. Know it is not the second such event. And have a feeling I have used the title for a blog more than once. And since Covid-19 demanded a lot of that. Now it would seem getting back to normal (lol) seems to require a lot more of that. The conversion of the apartment from long time rental to vacation rental was just one reappraisal. And a good one I do not need to rethink. I have definitely rethought my living space which is now devoted to office and sewing center. Not sure that was so much a thought/decision thing as reappraisal would indicate but a migration based on use. Guests hardly ever see the living room. The deck and the studio is where that happens. And I with the pandemic no guests and now a select few. I see more dogs than people. And the studio reflects that but looming ahead is the return of the Angel Fire Studio Tour. Things have got to change before that on the 25th and 26th of September. But the agonizing re-appraisal of which I am writing...

  Not gone away. Locked away. Not locked down for all that time. If varies with the numbers. Or now the colors. I think we were green but now are yellow. I remember all the colors after 9/11. That was based on security threat level. These are based on number of new Covid-19 cases. Does anyone care anymore? Or is it like the Texan who bought two of my photographic giclee prints on canvas, "People will do what they will do." That is certainly true in Texas. Trouble is they also do it in New Mexico regardless of what our color is at the moment. "One fish, two fish. Red fish, Blue fish," is that one of the Dr. Seuss books pulled by the family because of subliminal racism? And isn't racism in the eye of oppressed? And in this whole theme of lifting up the oppressed we seem to forget women still do not have equal rights, and in this year of Covid-19 they have lost the most jobs and their career paths to home school. The number counting, the locking away of our seniors...

On the Edge 30 x 18 Mixed Media on Canvas $1350           I began the Dark Times Journal when Trump was sworn in as president pretend of our country but years before I began my End of Days series of paintings which continues one by one to be added to. I believe our country, our world, our earth could end. We are on a cusp and the outcome is not certain.     But the human species cannot live without hope. Even if it is just for tomorrow. We go to sleep believing we will wake up even on days we might desire not to. Yesterday I opted for hope in a longer future. I have decided to move forward on plans, some from before Covid, some from just yesterday.      I have ordered seed for next year's garden season, but concentrated on seeds which I could grow in the studio in case there is not a summer. And I have been developing a plan for the redo of the hoop house. Part of the collapse problem was the pvc pipe which forms the hoops is past i...

Keep a weather eye on the horizon Oddly one of my favorite Pirates of the Caribbean movies was At World's End. It seemed a the time vaguely prophetic. And at the moment channeled. But then, I have always figured most creative artists, regardless of the medium, are closely tied in with the cosmic consciousness. I felt as far back as December a wicked wind was coming. Or in Star Wars vernacular, a disturbance in the force. In early March I was on a campaign to get things like my new to me vehicle accomplished and groceries stocked for spring break. When the lock down order came from our governor on March 11 I was not surprised in the least. Anxious yes, because Colorado closed its ski area's first and our resort seemed determine to welcome to Angel Fire. As an introvert I like my own company and I was in the midst of a very creative time. March moved into April and I was most concerned about the lack of rain. Then the morning weeping began. Not for me or my future with m...

It is not raining here I knew it had been a while since I posted a Dark Times Journal entry. But my last post was May 24th! My only excuse is things just got too dark on too many fronts. And my favorite time to join with my muse and wax poetic is in the mornings over coffee. Sadly it is when I cry most. There is a test Skinner did with cats where there were two boxes. He would shock the cat in the box it sat in and it would jump to the other. If he shocked it there the first time the cat would jump back to the original box. But soon it would not jump at all. It would just huddle down in the box and shiver regardless of the shocks. I think I am that cat. I have been that cat since I mailed in my primary ballot. And realized it didn't matter. Everyone was corrupt. Both parties were beyond saving. And just possibly our best hope was for all the old white men in government to die of Covid-19. Then I finally got my stimulus check. I wasn't that desperate for the money. For ...

There are times when this seems so unreal. Certainly this is not happening. And this disconnect from what is happens a lot in the age of Trump. Moments like when he gave his horror filled inaugural address which now seems to be coming true. Or is it all just Orson Wells redo of War of the Worlds . I went out yesterday for just the second time in the month of March. I have been self-isolating at first because of spring breakers. They always bring colds and flu and chaos. I choose my times carefully. I am an early bird so beating the crowds is very easy. But now that the Covid-19 virus is around all that much more important. Quickly going around the edge of the market to get milk to make yogurt and some cheese I glanced down some of the rows to see the empty shelves, and a couple loading a cart to over flowing. Later I caught a glimpse of them putting it all in their vehicle with Oklahoma plates.  The roads were not empty as I had thought. Not only were we all being advised...

No, not the southern border. Or even the northern. State borders. There used to be check points on the borders between New Mexico and California. Supposedly it prevented you from bringing illegal fruits? And vegetables? From one state to another. I can remember in college smuggling back papaya from spring break in California. I have joked in the past of nobody missing New Mexico if we decided to no longer belong to the US and where we could put up ports of entry on the major interstate highways: I25, I10, I40. News has reported there are seven states which are doing Nothing to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. Two are direct neighbors: Oklahoma and Texas. Because of the total and absolute lack of leadership from the top down states have been reacting piecemeal to the crisis. The various Governors in Washington and California, New Mexico, and Colorado have taken action for their own states. But while they have taken decisive action to hopefully head off the pandemic eleven states...

Lucky, as defined by me, is being in the right place with the right light to take the perfect photograph. So when a friend last summer suggested I try to refinance my house I didn't figure I had a chance in hell. But I got lucky and the refi went through. And for more than I wanted for the few repairs I wanted to I did not consider luck. Then came the broken transmission on my truck. That is my usual luck. Have money and something breaks to spend it on. As the Covid-19 entered our news I was deeply involved in finding a new to me used car. I had money after all. And as the crisis was wrapping up I was registering my 2003 Ford Explorer and getting insurance on it and showing it off to a friend or too. I really thought the new truck was quite lucky. Now the DMV office in town is closed. I got the Explorer within my budget so I got my 1942 Case Tractor lawn ornament too. A great landmark for my studio and businesses and the soon to be AirB&B. But now with social distancing a...

Where were you when you realized this was serious? I was having a 1942 Case Tractor delivered to my house as a lawn ornament/landmark. Through my life there have been a series of questions which are landmarks or turning points. Questions that still pop up in conversations with people who have lived through the same times. Where were you when President Kennedy was shot. At the student union building at University of New Mexico having lunch with friends from high school. One had brought a bag of Frito's. I have not eaten them since. There are a who bunch of when you heard someone was assassinated in the following years, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Stand out. Then there was Kent State. I was in Senator Charles Goodall's offices when the news broke with fellow staffers all stunned as we watched the news. The same staffers I worked with during Watergate. I was back in New Mexico when Nixon resigned. I was skiing in Red River when we attacked Iraq the first...