A friend and I recently drove up through Jemez Springs to Valles Caldera. This is a pretty easy day trip from Albuquerque, but I had never been to Valles Caldera and I calculate it’s been seven or eight years since I’ve been to Jemez Springs. I really do need to get out more.
battleship
I have fond memories of visiting the park around Battleship Rock (aptly named as you can see from the photos below) 10 years ago with a group of friends around dusk. The moon over the Rock was a wondrous sight. But seeing the Rock in daylight was no less grand.
We strolled around for a while, and I took a few more photos. Below is the Jemez River and a tangle of autumn leaves and blue sky.
volcano
Then we headed up to Valles Caldera, which is an 89,000-acre National Preserve. A caldera is a volcanic crater formed by the collapse of the central part of a volcano. This area was a privately owned ranch until the year 2000 and has only been a National Preserve for 12 years!
Fun fact: Some scenes from the new movie, The Lone Ranger, starring Johnny Depp, were filmed here. In fact at least two dozen different movies and TV series have been filmed at this location.
Although I checked my camera’s battery before I left home, it gave out before I was able to photograph the caldera itself, thus giving me a really good reason to return to this amazing and unusual place. We went on a 45-minute van tour that stopped at the edge of a forest of Ponderosa Pines, and so my last few shots were of–you guessed it–trees.
I do like trees. My greatest disappointment is that I wasn’t able to take any pictures on the drive back. The sunlight striking the fields of golden leaves was truly breathtaking. But now I know where to go next October to get my fix of autumn leaves.
These are a few of the quilted wall hangings created by my friend Sylvia. She bases many of them on designs from Dover books she’s collected over the years, adding whatever embellishments come to mind in the moment–beads, sequins, ribbon, shells, etc. I really admire her color and design choices.
The two of us collaborated on the design of a piece to hang over the bookcases in my living room. After we chose the fabric, she then did an amazing job of putting everything together. But I’ll let her tell that story–with pictures–in another post.
collage in progress
I don’t quilt, but I really enjoy arranging pieces in unusual or unexpected juxtapositions, which is kind of the definition of collage. I haven’t worked on one in several years, but I never stopped collecting material. A few weeks ago, I started this one, which is still in progress:
collage detail
Collage is a great way to create visual art if you’re like me and don’t consider yourself to be especially artistic. All you need are a stack of magazines, a pair of scissors, a glue stick, a piece of cardboard or poster board, and your imagination.
And when it’s read out loud—or set to music and sung—it’s also a great delight to the ear.
i carry your heart with me
Poem by e.e. cummings/performed by Michael Hedges (with David Crosby and Graham Nash singing harmony) from the album Taproot. Cummings is my favorite poet and Hedges is a wonderful musician.
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)
adventures of Isabel
Poem by Ogden Nash/performed by Natalie Merchant from the album Leave Your Sleep. I love the energy, the arrangement, the words, Merchant’s voice…everything! It’s my favorite tune on the album.
Isabel met an enormous bear
Isabel, Isabel, she didn’t care
bear was hungry, bear was ravenous
bear’s big mouth was cruel and cavernous
bear said, Isabel, glad to meet you
How do, Isabel, now I’ll eat you
Isabel, Isabel, she didn’t worry
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry
Washed her hands straightened her hair up
Then Isabel ate the bear up
Once in a night black as pitch
Isabel met a wicked old witch
witch’s face was cross and wrinkled
witch’s gums with teeth were sprinkled
Ho, ho, Isabel! old witch crowed
I’ll turn you into an ugly toad
Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry
showed no rage, showed no rancor
turned the witch into milk and drank her
Oh yeah,
Isabel!!!
Isabel met a hideous giant
Isabel so self reliant
giant was hairy, giant horrid
One eye in the middle of his forehead
morning, Isabel, giant said
I’ll grind your bones and make my bread
Isabel, Isabel, she didn’t worry
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry
nibbled on his zwieback that she fed off
When it was gone, she cut the giant’s head off
Isabel!!!
Isabel met a troublesome doctor
punched and poked till he really shocked her
doctor’s talk was of coughs and chills
doctor’s satchel bulged with pills
doctor said wow Isabel
Swallow this, it will make you well
Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry
Took those pills from the pill concocter
Then Isabel cured the doctor, yeah, oh yeah
ozymandias
And now for something completely different.
Poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley/performed by JJ Burnel (bass guitarist for the English group, the Stranglers) on the “b” side of his single, “Freddie Laker.” (Lyrics included in the video.) I confess to having once stolen a book from the public library–and it was the collected works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. I memorized this poem. I was in high school, but still, what was I thinking? What I’m thinking now is that this is actually pretty cool.
If you ever get an urge to peek into what’s going on today in Amsterdam, Ann Arbor, or Auckland; Denver, Dubai, or Dublin; Lisbon, Lodz, or London; Oahu, Oeiras, or Oslo; Riga, Rome, or Rotterdam; Taipei, Tehran, or Toronto; Venice, Vilnius, or Vrsovice—or more than 300 other locations around the world, you can satisfy it quite easily.
More than 400 people regularly post photos from wherever they live on City Daily Photo blogs. I originally found this amazing gateway into all parts of the world via the City Daily Photo portal, but the portal has been down for several months. From what I recently read on the CDP Facebook page, it should be coming back up soon, which is great news. It’s always fun to while away an hour (or more) by stepping virtually into a few other worlds.
In the meantime, there’s another blog, CDPB Theme Day, where you can see thumbnail photos from the bloggers who post pictures on the current month’s theme. Another way to locate CDP blogs is from the lists some bloggers post on their own sites. This list from a Seattle CDP blogger was last updated a bit over a year ago, but is still a happy hunting ground for photo blogs.
I’ve followed more than a dozen different CDP blogs over the past few years, some for a few months and others over the long haul. My current favorites, with sample photos, are:
Getting these bird’s-eye views into other people’s days, worlds, and worldviews reminds me how much more there is to notice and appreciate and consider than whatever may be right in front of me at the moment.
The story begins with Mark Johnson—a Grammy Award-winning music producer and engineer—hurrying through a crowded New York City subway. All of a sudden, he hears two monks making music, playing and singing in a language he doesn’t understand. He walks toward them and becomes part of the ad hoc audience, 200 or so people who have stopped moving toward their individual destinations in order to cluster together and listen to the music. If it hasn’t occurred to him before, it hits him now that music is a way to bring people together.
Back home in Santa Monica, Johnson is walking along a street when he hears the voice of Roger Ridley, a street musician who performs regularly on the 3rd Street Promenade. Johnson retraces his steps to ask Ridley if he can record him—and then take the song around the world to overdub the tracks of other musicians. That is the birth of “Stand By Me,” as produced by Playing For Change.
After 10 years, there’s a documentary, Playing For Change: Peace Through Music; then a CD, Playing For Change: Songs Around the World; and still later another CD, PFC2. The Playing For Change Band is formed with musicians from the U.S., the Netherlands, Zimbabwe, the Congo, Italy, and South Africa. As Johnson & company take all of these songs around the world, PFC stops along the way to develop eight music schools (in South Africa, Ghana, Nepal, Rwanda, and Mali), and then creates Playing For Change Day, an annual event to unite people through music and raise money to develop more music schools and programs.
Roger Ridley dies in November 2005. But the story hasn’t come close to ending.
~ ~ ~
You just never know the magnitude or the nature of the spark that could ignite—that could even change the world—through the simple act of creating something that’s meaningful in this moment only to you.
I didn’t have much exposure to either jazz or classical music until I graduated from high school into the wider world (one town over from mine). Among the group of friends I made in college, it was almost a requirement to own certain jazz LPs, among them Quiet Nights by Miles Davis, Song for my Father by Horace Silver, and My Favorite Things by John Coltrane. They provided the backdrop for the many serious discussions we held in each other’s apartments ’round midnight and well into the early morning.
When I got together with my partner, R.C., who was 14 years older than me and had for a time been a professional jazz musician (keyboards), we merged our music collections. His was much more extensive and diverse than mine, but those three albums were some of the few we both owned copies of.
Classical music made more of an impression on me than the jazz did, and somehow I didn’t let 30 years of living with a jazz musician impact my lack of appreciation for the music. That was his thing, not mine. When he died seven and a half years ago, I picked out a few CDs from his collection, let his son take all that he wanted, and donated the rest to the public library. I did play Kind of Blue by Miles over and over for months, but then I put it away.
Sonny Rollins
I developed my current love of modern jazz pretty much on my own several years ago by borrowing CDs from the library to listen to. After deciding who and what I liked, I built up my own modest jazz collection. I still don’t appreciate Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, or (don’t strike me dead, Lord, I did purchase one of his CDs) Thelonious Monk. I dug deeper into Coltrane, added to the Miles collection, and welcomed back Oscar Peterson, the Modern Jazz Quartet, and Gerry Mulligan. I also “discovered,” among others, Art Blakey, Lester Young, Teddy Wilson, Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, and wonder-of-wonders, tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins. Better late than never.
saxophone colossus
Sonny Rollins is one of the minority of his peers, it seems, who not only hasn’t succumbed to drug and/or alcohol addiction or otherwise died too young, but who is also still creating, composing, and performing. At 82, he just this month performed a 90-minute set at Davies Symphony Hall for the 30th annual San Francisco Jazz Festival. A few years ago, he headlined the New Mexico Jazz Festival, and I was severely disappointed that I wasn’t able to attend. (Wherever he is, I’m sure R.C. was shaking his head over that.)
One of my favorite albums of his is Don’t Stop the Carnival, recorded live at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco in April 1978. I was actually living there, but in complete oblivion, at the time, so I missed that, too.
Two of his best-known albums are Saxophone Colossus and The Bridge. I happen to like Sonny Side Up with Sonny Stitt and Dizzy Gillespie quite a lot, too.
His signature song is “St. Thomas,” from Saxophone Colossus:
And here’s “The Bridge,” from The Bridge:
One more: the title tune from Tenor Madness, with John Coltrane:
Everyone should have a little Sonny Rollins around for times that are already good (to make them even better) and times that are not so good (to smooth out the bumps or at least make you want to get up and move). Go, Sonny! Long may you run.
~ ~ ~
Note: Newk’s Time is the title of an album released in 1958. Rollins got the nickname because he resembled–and was once mistaken for–a major league baseball player named Donald Newcombe, whose nickname was Newk.
Now’s the time of year in Albuquerquewhen for nine glorious days—weather permitting—the blue October sky is peppered with colorful hot air balloons. And not just ordinary hot air balloons, but all kinds of special shapes—animals, birds, bees, cartoon characters, Darth Vader, even an ark! It’s the 41st annual Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, this year called “Blaze a Trail.”
Last year I watched one balloon drift over my apartment complex so low I was sure it was going to land in one of the parking lots. And I live a distance from Balloon Fiesta Park, where it had lifted off.
Joey and Lilly Bee, a love story
The other night I happened to catch part of a show about the Balloon Fiesta on a local PBS channel. The operators of two balloons, Joey and Lilly Bee (“The Little Bees”), explained how they manage to get both balloons to lift off at the same time, holding hands. Once airborne, Joey and Lilly turn toward each other and kiss before letting go of each other’s hands. These two are a familiar annual sight around here and beloved by enough people that they even have their own Facebook page.
balloons in flight
Here’s a video of one of the mass ascensions this year. So far our weather’s been good—sunny and cool in the morning, but not too windy. Let’s hope everything continues going up without a hitch this year.
There are not many places where can you wander around for days at a time under a sky filled with drifting dots of color. Even if you’re feeling down, you just have to look up. That’s one of the reasons why I love this place.
For the first 28 years of my life, I lived in Michigan, the Great Lakes State. We were inland from Saginaw Bay off of Lake Huron, so summers meant spending afternoons on the beach at Bay City State Park or driving up to Tawas City for the day. When I was a kid, our family spent a week or two every summer in a cabin on Higgins Lake, where there were daily motorboat rides on the Lake and weekends of waterskiing. Oh, yes, there was also a lot of swimming—but none of it by me. I never learned to swim and had a deep fear of the water for decades. I like to look at water, splash around in it a little, listen to the sounds of the surf or the waves, and even venture out on it in a boat once in a while, but that’s it. No swimming.
Not a happy camper. Can I get any farther away from the edge of this boat?
The first vacation my parents took me on was a fishing trip when I was about five years old. It meant leaving my baby brother behind and having my parents to myself. I loved every minute of it—except for the minutes when we were actually in a boat on the water, during which I reportedly whined or cried non-stop.
One day when I was a teenager, my mother, two brothers, and I were crossing on foot from the east side of town to the west side, which involved walking over a bridge. I refused to walk across the Third Street Bridge with them because I didn’t believe it was safe. Not only was it obviously decrepit, but you could look down between the wooden slats of the walkway and see the water! So I added a couple of miles to the jaunt by detouring solo to cross over the newer Memorial Street Bridge, which was constructed of concrete and steel. (Shortly after I moved to San Francisco, my mother sent me a clipping from the local newspaper with a picture of the collapsed Third Street Bridge.)
I lived in Northern California for close to three decades and spent a lot of time along the shores of the Pacific Ocean—especially the beaches at Pt. Reyes National Seashore, which is my favorite place in the world. I admit that if someone were to provide me with a cottage in Bear Valley and set me down in it, I would happily remain there for the rest of my life. Alas, that is unlikely to happen.
As it was, I moved to New Mexico, high desert with a rapidly dwindling body of water running through it that is still called The Rio Grande. Lots of other people have moved here from places adjacent to large bodies of water, and most of them sorely miss being near water. But I’m not one of them. I have realized that what all three places I’ve lived in have in common—and what seems more essential to me than water—are trees and lots of them.
Faded photograph: the view down the street from the last house I lived in in Michigan, October 1974.
I’m thinking about trees right now because it’s autumn and the first leaves are turning yellow and gold. And that reminds me of Michigan, where the leaves are turning much more spectacular colors of the autumn rainbow. I haven’t been back to see that in well over a decade and it’s the thing I miss most about my home state. I missed it even more when I lived in California, where deciduous trees are in short supply. But I’m satisfied with the golden oaks and aspens here because as long as there are deciduous trees, there will come the budding of new leaves in the spring.
Tree Spring Trail
And that is now my favorite tree-time of the year. I like the architecture of trees in spring when the pale shoots decorate their branches with lacy green filigree. I think you can see trees best in the spring. Sometimes I drive around in late March and April just to look at the trees. It almost makes winter worth it. Snow on branches is pretty cool, but only for the first 60 minutes.
Pino Trail
I loved to hike the trails of Pt. Reyes National Seashore in California, and I now love to hike the trails of the Sandia Mountains here in New Mexico. As long as there’s a trail in a forested area I can walk along—as long as I have trees—I’m home.
Faulty Trail
song of the trees
Here is Song of the Trees written and recited by poet, actor, and activist John Trudell:
give me a daisy 
