Sidetracked Charley

  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...

When I first moved back to New Mexico I lived in the small town of Questa. It was on a state highway from Taos to Colorado but if tourists stopped it was just for lunch at the Seville Restaurant or gas at one of three stations. It had no visible means of support beyond the Moly mine, some small town ranchers, and a barely under the radar drug trade. When I had lived in New Mexico before it was mostly in Albuquerque which was on Route 66, which became interstate 40. It had two bases, a major federal laboratory, and the University of New Mexico. And sure, some tourists. But they were under the radar like Questa's drug trade. In short I was totally unprepared for Angel Fire, New Mexico, especially since I had not moved to that town but a small rural backwater five miles south. I was looking to hide out in Black Lake. Silly girl. Income depended to some degree on Angel Fire. I taught skiing there. In Black Lake I made Mardi Gras masks which I shipped around the country at the A...