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to visit the Post Office, more accurately to gaze upon the 360 view of murals painted by Gordon Grant as part of the WPA's Art Program during the Great Depression.



Art. as I have said before, meaning nothing...
It is not necessary to live, can not sustain life or protect it.
But Art also means everything...
and does a very good job of declaring who we are and where came from.

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that actually includes such things as relocating nuns, earthquake, tidal waves and pirates, was built starting in 1782 by Franciscan Priest and the labor of the Native Chumash tribe, including a elaborate ditch system to bring water to the mission, surrounding gardens and orchards.

Through the wonderful gift shop and "ticket booth"...


 Here, posters annoucing the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the arrival of the Francisan priest to the shores of California have now become relics themselves...




We were there the Saturday after Good Friday, and early enough to observe the clean up from the Holy Week's festivities...

and the preparation for the celebration of Easter Sunday, the red being traded out for white...



Yes, I have a thing for churches, all sizes. Intrigued by the beautiful important missions as well as the more primitive village churches captured here, from the High Road to Taos...

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We picked a hike called Pelican's Roost and it did not take long for me to realize I was ill suited for the pace and the confines of being in the middle  of a fast moving train of people, hurrying up a steep trail on the side of a cliff...




Mostly I just stared off to the horizon and hoped the boat came back for us, I had heard it's engine roar and watched it move off to the other side of the island. The whole experience was unnerving, much more than the time I have spent on top of a mountain, looking down at valleys thousands of feet below.



where not only the passengers brought in that morning, but a few rather scruffy scientist who had been on the island for days or weeks doing research were ready to get back on the mainland...

Crossing the channel again, we took a meandering route and were rewarded with another sighting of a humpback, its black slick skin glistening atop the water. What great creatures has God created and what a privilege to travel along side them.

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Near one of the oil rigs that are paced off along the Santa Barbara Channel, a shallow shelf of a mere eight hundred and fifty feet or so, before the ocean bottom drops to thousands of feet, the show continued with a feeding frenzy on the surface of the water. Pelicans and seagulls swirling above...

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After perusing the Wyeth Exhibition at the Denver Art Museum, (my review here)we headed downstairs to partake of A Place In The Sun, featuring the painting of Walter Ufer and E. Martin Hennings, two artist of Germany decent that made their way from the East Coast to Taos, New Mexico both around 1915 and were funded by the mayor of Chicago, Carter Harrison and Oscar Mayer, yup the hot dog tycoon.


E. Martin Hennings, often painted his subject, nestled amongst the idyllic scenery in Northern New Mexico....



Walter Ufer was a different matter and through his painting he had something to say. Unfortunately, it didn't seem the curators and docents at the Denver Art Museum did much research on why he painted what he painted, focusing more on how he painted it.


Past that, she got about everything else wrong. Yes, I live in the Four Corners, very near Taos and  next to the Navajo and Ute reservations, have taught Native American children for about a decade, am an artist which can make me annoying on "the facts", but when I hear an official volunteer with the mini microphone and touch pad declare not slight errors but grievous misinformation on a culture she and the museum, according to the plaques beside the painting have no interesting in "getting right", it makes me cringe.

"Are these from Guatemala," asked one of the ladies, pointing out the brightly colored blankets Ufer depicted on several of his subjects. No response from the Docent.



Standing in front of Ufer's painting "Me and Him,"another of the ladies in the group asked why they looked so mad. The Docent's response, was..."Well, they are just a mad people."

Pause,,,,yes, she declared that the indegnious people who saw their land, culture and lives being taken over by the Western expansion of Anglo Europeans were just "cranky".

Then, pondering "The Solemn Pledge", borrowed by the DAM from the Chicago Institute of Art...



The Docent declared the painting depicted several generations of father and son, as they sent the boy off to Indian School where he would learn "how to be an Indian."

Okay...

I know the Denver Art Museum is well, an art museum, not a history museum. But to be frank, they aren't that good at getting the art part right either. As I mentioned at the top of the post, we also viewed the Wyatt show, featuring father and son Andrew and James. The reality is this, there is a wide, wide gap between being an artist and being a docent or a volunteer that works at an art museum, reading off the important bullet points listed for them....
             
               

Ease dropping in the Wyeth show, there were times I think the docents didn't really understand what they were reading off. I've been to enough museums and observed enough patrons to conclude they mostly want a short, ordered description to what they are looking at or sometimes just to be told what they should think about the painting in front of them. That is bad enough when the painting depicts something somewhat familiar to them.

But when the subject, the indigenous people surrounding Taos New Mexico already has  volumes and volumes of bad information, I can't stand anymore grievous misconceptions being added to people's perception.

The US Government did not set up Indian School to teach the native population how to be better Indians. They pulled children from their mother's arms, sometimes at gunpoint to literally "breed out the Red Man" by distancing the younger generations from their cultures, their language and their families. Cutting their hair, dressing them in White Man's clothing, beating them if they spoke their native tongues, teaching them a trade and often farming them out to be servants and laborers...


Thus many of Ufer's subjects were of the Pueblos Indians gardening and working for their White employers...

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So popular is the Wyeth legacy, started first by "the grandfather" N.C, Wyeth...


 whose was one of our great American illustrators of the Golden Age and whose "prop" boots were on display...

The DAM show, which when I was a kid and went Denver on field trips to the Art Museum, would love to keep the little badges that proved we had paid the admission, cause it spelled a "naughty" world. Sadly, this trip I only got a sticker that spelled out the full name, but I digress.

This show featured N.C. son, Andrew Wyeth ( 1917-2009).....


know for his muted palette of browns and earth tones,  his studies of the local inhabitants of New England including the Helga series...


and the Olson family. His most famous painting that of Christina's World, gazing up through the grass of the Olson's farm. The finished painting was not at the DAM, but one of his preliminary sketches was, showing the energy of the idea, that is often lost when the idea is worked out.




And I was Jon's whispering commentary, directing  him to appreciate the photograph of the wooden box on the shore line and telling him of Andrew Wyeth's frustration with gawkers while he tried to work and his solution.

The show was very telling, especially the progression of Jamie Wyeth , (1946-  ), showing him experimenting for his voice, painting such icons as Warhol....


his father and grandfather's influence showing in his palette and subject matter....

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The old Union Station has been a anchor on the Northwest corner of the Sixteenth Street Mall...

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We got our tree by train. That is the Durango Silverton Train up in Cascade Canyon, where the trees near the tracks needed to be thinned out, since hot coal ash spits out along the tracks. So early in the morning we drove over the snowy pass....




to Durango and load up in a sunny enclosed car.








The views were amazing for the hearty, climbing up past Missionary Ridge...

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Friday, we drove down to Santa Fe, like we do so many years, getting into the square as the sun was going down and the town was getting ready to light the plaza, and welcome Santa...




 including Design Warehouse, a staple for Santa Fe's  infamous lit paper stars.



Also how can you love it when Jame Bond saves the girl, at the same time hate it James Bond has to save the girl?

Well, that pondering is for another post, but after the movie we did go back to the Railyard and eat at the Second Street Brewery, where I partook of hard cider this time and Jon proved he can distinguish the subtle woody, fruity or hoppy flavors of several micro brews, presented to him in one sip taster glasses. Daughter #2 did do the driving back to the hotel. Garrett's Desert Inn, which is cheap in comparison to the other hotels down town right off the plaza.

Of course, Sunday, stuffed or not, we walked over to our and everybody else in the knows, place to go for breakfast, Pascals. Part of the fun is the waiting outside and people watching and listening  to the conversations, I confess.

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Headed over a few mountain passes to Vail, Colorado for my niece's wedding to a pretty neat guy, I might say. Daughter #1 and her boyfriend met us there, so it was just me, Jon, Daughter #2 and....

                                 


We skirted past Telluride, made our way up and over the Dallas Divide...


where we lucked out with the construction that warned of the possibilities of 30 minute delays.


The other side of Vail, and after dealing with a confused GPS, we found the Gore Creek Campground...



where we found my family setting up...


and then when the party was ready to start, out came the flannel, it's a Colorado thing.

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The Tri Boro Dining Hall was erected by the New York Ladies Auxiliary, Long Island Division, Florence Hoberman Auxiliary of Brooklyn.





 Screaming "Art Deco" in its Architectural Style, it was sometimes hard to focus on the speakers in the glowing auditorium ...






Oh, how hard it was not add my own creativity, my ballpoint pen just laying there, but alas, not my art school and not my time.... Read the rest of this post

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Is this, Bridal Veil Falls, complete with a very old house and hydro-electric power.

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This Friday, in downtown Denver, on historic Santa Fe, everything is going to the dogs, at least at
new exhibit,  Gone To The Dogs, which I have a privilege of being a part of. Those that follow me on Twitter, or Instagram, have seen this piece in process. I plan on getting a post up here, showing the progress, but not before I head over the mountains tomorrow, to take my daughter and mom to the opening night festivities at the gallery. Which will be part of  Santa Fe Art District's Third Friday premier night including many galleries staying open late, hopefully with a wonderful summer evening.

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I had to drive Daughter #2 into the larger town this morning to be part of a group of high schoolers who would be giving advise to the graduating 8th graders  about what to expect entering as Freshmen in the Fall. All year she has been part of a county wide leadership program, involving the two smaller "villages" and large town's students.

Trying to be efficient, I decided to take the dogs and walk them around the neighborhood of the middle school, waiting for my daughter to get done with her talk and then I could drive her back to her school, located in a much smaller community about ten miles, up the highway.

I often do take the dogs "to town" to walk but had never walked them south of Main. I don't think I will be doing it again, either. All towns have a neighborhood where the property values aren't so high, but the police seem to be called there regularly. It's often referred to as the other side of the tracks. Sometimes its the southern part of town, or in the floodplains or lowlands. The hills and slopes reserved for those with nicer homes where the views are better.

Not even a block from the parking lot of the Middle School, I was greeted by a gauntlet of harassing dogs behind chain link fences and no trespassing signs. I had to hold back my two sizable dogs and zigzag from one side of the street to the other, or walk down the middle of the street. Dogs who never leave their yards are a special kind of crazy. In more than one yard there were three of them barking and rushing the fence, which also contained broken down cars and rubbish. I hurried past an old beat up truck, its cab being used for storage or as a place to sleep, both windows carefully blocked by blue towels from the inside as was the windshield.

I took the first street back up to Main and crossed at the light to the north side, where I spend most of my time, my church, the yoga studio, the soup kitchen and our favorite restaurants all right there. I breathed a sigh of relief and loosened up on the leash I had been holding firm to the last three blocks.

Passing the county offices, I was greeted by smartly dressed assistant DA's, their Oakley sunglasses and mountain bikes atop their SUV hints at what they would be doing on their lunch break or after work. One more block and I turned left to walk down the tree lined median of the boulevard  most towns in the West also have. The dogs, now relaxed, sniffed the grass to discover the paths of the dogs and walkers already past by.  On both sides of the grassy center, cars rolled by at a slow pace and beyond them were cute Victorian and Arts and Craft houses, well kept up, with blooming trees and tulips in their front yards

I often walk the boulevard, much easier then trying to keep two dogs, one blind, on a narrow side walk. But I usually walk it the opposite direction, able to go almost a mile down to the library and park. But this morning, I had to get back around to the Middle School to pick up my daughter. The dogs only had two blocks of grass to sniff, before I led them south again, navigating a horrible intersection of three converging streets, where the neighborhood quickly becomes not so desirable, pressed up against the highway and the edge of town.

Things went okay for a couple of blocks with little traffic, I walked on the edge of the street to avoid the narrow sidewalks again. Then it changed, when at an intersection, I was greeted by a older lady in a old Trans Am. Apparently I was walking right where she needed to park and she intended to push me off the street, slowly rolling towards me, not having the time to wait at the intersection for me to pass by. So facing a car, I pulled the dogs up on to the curb, no sidewalk available there and stepped around some xeriscaping, so she could get settled in her parking place.

Now this all seemed extra humorous to me because all week I have been researching, thanks to you-tube and Gopro-  road rage, that between road biker and cars for a project and then today I get pushed off the road by a car. Let me just say, never take a bike tour of New Zealand and I wouldn't ride a bike in London.

Crossing back to the south side of Main, I walked by a large vacant lot where street vendors sell out of their trucks produce or puppies and a guy has been selling those fuzzy sports logo blankets for years, but lucky it was too early for anyone to set up shop. Next to the lot, a chain link fence cut off a narrow sidewalk and the highway coming into town, from the sports fields of the Middle School. I made my way around, kept the dogs close, impressed with the green growth of the school's Farm to Table program I was passing, neatly in raised beds in front of a greenhouse. One of the many programs in our community that is trying to bridge the gap between the North and South sides. Sadly getting kids excited about real food even has to be done here in such a rural area.

Continuing around the curve of the track field and bleachers, I would soon be right next to the large semitruck making their way up Highway 491, the main  north south thoroughfare in the  Four Corners. The sidewalk was narrow, but at least there was one. Then I noticed the biker, coming towards me, on the sidewalk. Not a road biker, or a recreational biker, but a DUI biker or can't afford a car biker. But still a biker on the sidewalk, who had no intention of riding on the road, next to the semi trucks. Unfortunately he could hardly ride a bike for the way he was rocking this way and that and either did not see me or did not care that well, I was in front of him. So for the second time that day, I got out of the way of an on coming vehicle, but this time, stepped down onto the road and keeping one eye on the large blue semi rushing towards me, maneuvered  around the biker and back up on the sidewalk before the whoosh of the semi passed me by. The look on the bikers face, was either of a man who had never ridden a bike before and was trying to learn or was too hung over to remember how, but I was convinced if I held my ground on the sidewalk he would have hit me or one of the dogs.

Yesterday, I cooked at the soup kitchen. We fed about a 100. The day before at the other church who cooks lunch for the community, they fed 140. If I put too many vegetables and beans in things, I hear about it, If the salad is too fancy I hear about it. If we get fresh herbs donated, I have to use them, because no one else knows what to do with them.  We need the Farm to Table programs schools are offering and we need the leadership programs my daughter is a part of.
Disadvantages economically, socially and in education are part of poverty. But teaching rural kids for almost a decade, working with families through our church and schools, cooking at the soup kitchen I have seen people too often not take the opportunities they could have, seeming to not want to move away from all they know and that is a testament to how strong our heritage, where our families have come from is.  Something I have been pondering after  reading....

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The lack of snow on the distance mountains and the warm temps have confused the trees here in the West...



 It is worrisome when old apricot trees start to bloom as early as they did this year. It is also worrisome when there is no more snow or moisture forecasted when there hardly has been any, even if that means we have apricots.
But, the snow or lack of it, the blooms, along with the green grass, baby cows and chirping birds are far out of our control, Spring, as long as God is willing, is a time that everything begins again.
This spring has stirred several new beginnings for us, or the hints of new beginnings, looking at three universities for both Daughter #1 and #2, one undergraduate and one graduate...
First, we spent some time up in Salt Lake where the blossoms were in full bloom around the State Capitol...


 to look at the University of Utah...

 a beautiful old campus up in the foothills above the city, where pasture was allotted for milk cows, beginning as an institution in 1850, three years before the Salt Lake City Temple's ground breaking. While we were there the Mormon's most important site was surrounded in pink...



Then it was over to the East Slope of Colorado to check out the University of Colorado in Boulder where we enjoyed a tour of the campus, including the Old Main building...

where the entire university was housed when it opened in 1876, the same year as statehood.
Then it was up to Fort Collins where the flower beds were already full of blooming bulbs around the even older campus...

established when Colorado was just a territory, when six local farmers donated land.


Seeing my girls, and friends of my girls...


loving on the horses near Olde Town, Fort Collins, touring campuses and pondering where they want to live, apart from me, is joyous and heartbreaking as a mother. But for new things to begin, other things have to end.
Something that was in my, our control, and signals a very big new beginning for us, our church "called" a new pastor. To clear up confusion, I am actually a "gentile". We and a few dozen families started our church about twelve years ago, we called our first pastor about a decade ago, now we have asked another man to move his family across the country and settled here in the rural West with small children to start a new life and continue to build our church....yikes!
But he is willing and we, the congregation are willing, so if God is willing this will be a good, new beginning for all of us!

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The first step to writing a novel is building a world and  in historical fiction it is more like having to recreate  a time and place that actually existed, a mighty undertaking. I love using photographs for my construction of Moonflower and I found a treasure trove in the Farm Security Administration photo archives from the Library of Congress. Taken during the depression and the war years and including much more  than Dorothea Lange's iconic images of a mother and her children...





                             
My family did not have to move off their farms in the depression. They are not from the Four Corners there is no polygamy in our history, but my great grandparents really really liked each other and my grandmother was one of thirteen children with six brothers and I have always heard stories of when they were boys....


and worked the Minnesota farm with their dad...




Sadly, I knew many of  my great uncles longer than I knew my grandfather, who died when I was four, but my childhood was full of trips back to my grandmother's brothers' and my grandfather's brother's farms.
For Moonflower, I decided that one of the universal truths I was going to hold on to was, big families are big families whether they are big because your father has four wives or because your Danish great grandmother and grandfather were really nuts about each other, sibling dynamics are probably very similar. One thing my grandmother would always say was, " don't kid yourself, the older children raised the younger."
One oddity I did copy from my family was my great uncle Harry, my grandmother's oldest brother was the same age as his uncle, my great, great grandmother's youngest son. In the book, mother and daughter overlap having babies...
Even family pictures from the sixties, have proven to be helpful, my great uncles and grandfather helping fix up a old cabin in the foothills near Boulder with my dad, a cabin about the same age as the era of the forties of  my story....

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