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Yjastros, February 2010
I went to the Performing Arts concert more as a matter of demonstrating that a bit of adversity would not keep me away from a favorite institution than in expectation of enjoying myself. The program was "Yjastros", which bills itself as the American Flamenco Repertory Company, based in Albuquerque. (Flamenco is not among my favorite art forms.) But enjoy myself I did. The troupe seems to me to have a rather more varied and subtle repertoire than other flamenco troupes - there was less emphasis merely on stomping your heels as hard as you could.

Much of the dance was accompanied by a singer, a very operatic tenor, whom I enjoyed, but, for the most part did not understand. (The one song slow and clear enough for me to follow had the chorus "duermete, duermete", which I cannot think he meant as literal advice.) The boss, one Joaquin Encinias, was a fat old man, who spent most of the show doing the percussion, mainly on caja. However, he did do a solo, which clearly showed that he still had all the moves, even if he didn't look quite as beautiful as the young people doing them.

Cante flamenco seems to be a recognized art form. I can't off hand remember hearing song at flamenco performances before, so I guess this guy is exceptionally good, or at least exceptionally memorable.


New Dog, April 2010
Well, I've a new dog to take care of me. Baxter seems to be settling in pretty well. He is a pretty laid-back little dog.

He still believes that if the neighborhood dogs start to raise a ruckus he is entitled to reply in kind, whereas I believe polite little dogs should not bark in the house. But if I say, after a couple of barks, "enough", he is willing to stop. An acceptable compromise.

He believes that the interval between breakfast and the morning walk around the block is much too long. He may still take that point if he persists.

He approves of the bridge group. There were a lot of people willing to give him a scratch. Since I left the doggie treats out on the kitchen counter, he was able to convince at least one bridge player that he deserved one. And there were a fair number of dropped potato chips and pieces of popcorn. (He didn't seem as hungry as usual for breakfast next morning.)

A couple of fence fairies came by and fixed my gate (Sue and Roger Simkin), so I guess I can introduce him to the doggy door, so he can be a bit more independent.


Hip, April 2010
It seems to me that the science of neurophysiology is rather missing from medical practice. It is the science that lies between neurology, the study of the nervous system, and psychology, the study of how the higher centers of the nervous system operates in conscious or unconscious thought. In medicine, the psychologist or psychiatrist is primarily concerned with abnormal thought patterns at or near the conscious level. The neurologist is primarily concerned with the diseases of the nerves - MS, Huntington's disease, Alzheimer's syndrome, etc. But there is a broad regime between, where the nerves are operating just fine, but something curious is happening at a very low level in the nervous system, in systems that are not at all part of what we call mind.

The most famous of these phenomena are the phantom limbs. It is common, in the case of amputation, that the amputee still feels as if the limb is present, and he feels that he can move it, and may feel sensations in it which are as "real" as any perception arising in a real sense organ. It is most distressing, of course, if the sensation from the phantom limb is intense pain, as there may be no phantom treatment for the phantom limb.

I suspect that this spectacular phenomenon is just the tip of the iceberg. I believe something very similar is affecting my recovery from my broken right hip.

I can, of course, stand on my left leg just fine. I cannot stand on my right leg. When I try, it is neither pain nor weakness that prevents it. When I try to lift my left foot off the floor, it does not hurt, nor does the right leg feel weak and unsteady. The left foot just does not come off the floor. I can no more lift my left foot off the floor than I can will the book off my table by telekinesis. It just doesn't work.

I theorize that deep in my nervous system, whether in the brain or the spinal cord I have no idea, there is an entity which has decided that it is a bad idea to lift the left foot off the floor, and simply forbids it. And the reason this might be medically interesting is that there may well be a better way to communicate with that entity than by limping. It would be nice to tell it "You don't have to worry too much about that hip, it is now screwed together with titanium. Can I stop limping now?"


Short Walk, May 2010
Took Baxter on a trail today. Not much of a trail - the loop trail at the Socorro Nature area, about a mile and a half, including the side trip to look at the acequia. He really liked it. OK, just six of those, end-to-end, to add up to the Chupadera trail. I could do that; maybe not all in one day, but I could do that.

Baxter does have a thing about cats, and I've been hoping for a self-confident feline to explain matters to him. So yesterday, we did encounter a cat within leash-length. The cat did explain that perhaps it might not be a good idea to get too close. So Baxter decided the thing to do was to bark vigorously from three feet away. After a few seconds of that, the cat decided he wasn't going to put up with that sort of abuse, and departed. Fraid the lesson was not sufficiently strong to make a permanent impression.

Baxter is really a very polite and obedient little dog, except in matters relating to cats. Except for that one matter, he is an exception to the trainer's aphorism, who said "If your animal does what you say the first time you say it, every time, I don't know what it is you have, but it isn't a dog."


A little longer walk, Memorial Day 2010
Well, I walked a very slightly more respectable trail, the Canyon Trail in the Bosque del Apache, about 2.5 miles.

Even at 8:30 in the morning, it was hot, hot. No more valley floor walks until it cools off a bit.

It was interesting in several ways. First, soft sand is not really a good surface to walk on with a bad hip. It was interesting, though to look back at my tracks; it was very easy to say "this guy has a really bad limp." There were a couple of aspects of walking on slopes that I hadn't anticipated. Going down a step where the trail surface slopes away at the bottom of the step seemed a bit frightening, and these had to be approached with a great deal of care and planning. Then, when the gravel rolled under my left foot, my right leg accepted the sudden load OK, but it was not very happy at doing so.

Baxter did very well, maintaining his enthusiasm the whole way, though by the end he resorted to the ploy of trotting ahead a ways, and then lying down in the shade of a bush while I caught up. When he first came to live with me his pads were as soft and smooth as a baby's foot. Walking around the streets a few blocks every day has caused a leathery patch to appear on the most weight bearing areas, but the outer pads are still smooth and soft. But he did fine trailwalking, with no complaints about his feet at all. But I don't think he is ready for the "tear pants" limestone at the Little Coyotes in the Quebradas. But plenty of time to get ready for that; it is as hot as the valley floor up there.


Mesa Trail, June 26, 2010
Walked the Mesa Trail today, about four miles. It is a trail I have actually walked before. The other time I walked it, though, it was covered with six or eight inches of fresh snow, somewhat increasing the level of difficulty.

My legs worked pretty well. However, I did get very tired, and had to stop and rest every few minutes, even going downhill. I'm clearly not up for long walks yet. I was averaging well less than 1 MPH.

Baxter knows the best walks are those preceeded by a ride in the car, and he often suggests, when we set off for a walk around a block or few in the afternoon, that maybe we should take the car for a while instead. But he has now learned that the very best walks of all are preceeded by my putting on the fanny pack. That really gets him spun up. He got a little tired too, and by the end of the day, was just trotting down the trail 30 yards ahead of me, only covering the rest of the neighboring countryside when I sat down to rest. He often strikes very photogenic poses on the trail, but never holds them long enough for me to grab my camera.


Class Reunion, July, 2010
I went to my high-school class 55 year reunion, and I thought I'd knock off a couple of other things while I was out. Since Baxter has only been with me for a couple of months, I didn't like to traumatize him by leaving him in a kennel. A good move - he was good company, and mostly behaved quite well. Left on the fourth of July.

First headed to Bogata to visit my sister Betty. Picked up a hitch-hiker for the first time in many years. He seemed pretty harmlessly middle aged, and claimed he had a job waiting for him in Oklahoma City if he could get there by Monday. I gave him a ride from Tucumcari to Amarillo. He claimed that he was a TV comedy show writer who was out of work because he couldn't stand living in New York. From other remarks, I think the ground truth of that is that he sent a couple of jokes to the Letterman Show, and that they actually used them. Only off note about him was when I dropped him in Amarillo at 2 PM, he said he wasn't supposed to be out past 2PM on holidays, leading me to wonder if the restriction was issued by his therapist or his parole officer.

Took the road from Amarillo toward Fort Worth that we used to take when we went to visit Aunt Emmie there. All those little towns with familiar sounding names that I hadn't thought about for a half a century. Claude, Clarendon, Childress, Quanah (where I spent the night), Vernon, Chilicothe (which suffered worst at the hands of time - the buildings looked like they had no maintenance since I had seen them last), Wichita Falls. Then turned east. Went through Sherman for, I think, the first time in my life, where my Grandmother Bonnie was raised, and I think, Dad was born. Then to Paris, where I had been before when visiting Betty.

Bogata is a wet place. The temperature was 72 when I took the dog for a walk at 7:30 in the morning. But that didn't keep me from being soaked with sweat when I got back.

Much to my pleasure, I found Betty doing about as well as could possibly be expected from a lady of her age. If I survive to that extremity, I shall have by then, in Charlotte's words, "checked myself into a place where they have somebody to drive me around and somebody to cook my dinner." Yes, she has a bit of a short-term memory problem. I've seen a lot worse in younger people.

Betty has quite a large lot - perhaps the equivalent of four ordinary building lots. Baxter approved of her back yard. Every now and then he likes to open up the throttle and see what the machinery can do, which he obviously can't do with a lump of an old man on the end of a fifteen foot retractable leash. Her yard was big enough for him to get up to speed, and even turn.

But there was his only misbehavior - he most unpleasantly freaked out over Betty's cat.

From there I headed for Canyon via Abilene. Shortly after leaving Bogata it got a lot dryer. I stopped at a rest stop just west of Fort Worth, and according to a sign, the temperature was five degrees hotter than Bogata, but the comfort index felt a couple of degrees cooler.

At Abilene we went out to Buffalo Gap. Mom and Dad farmed there for a while when they were first married. We went to a "Frontier Village" type place. They had sections dated 1883 (in which they had a treadle sewing machine of about the same model as the one Mom had and a churn essentially identical to one I used to make many a pound of butter), 1903 (in which they had a sewing machine about the same as the one my grandmother had), and a 1923 section, with a dentist's office that looked overwhelmingly familiar. They had what was claimed to be the oldest extant building in Taylor county, called the Knight-Sayles cabin. Mr. Knight came to Buffalo Gap to hunt buffalo, built the cabin, and settled down to become a rancher. He later sold the ranch, including the cabin, to Henry Sayles. Henry Sayles Jr. eventually donated the cabin to the Historical Village. I rather think Henry Sayles Sr. was my great-uncle, though I could be confused - he might have been my great-great-uncle. Also named after Henry Sayles is Sayles Boulevard, a wide street with many fine houses.

The area is heavily wind-farmed. For the better part of a hundred miles, from east of Abilene to Snyder, there is always a rank of windmills turning away on the skyline at a steady 10 RPM.

Again a host of familiar town names; from Abilene you go through Tye, Merkle, and Trent. Dad told the story of driving his 1913 Cadillac from Abilene to Trent and back, a round trip of 50 miles. The drive was considered remarkable, because he had neither a breakdown nor a flat, nor got stuck in the mud.

Snyder, Post, Lubbock, New Deal, Abernathy, Hale Center, Plainview, Kress, Tulia, Happy, and Canyon. Everything seemed like about the same size as I remembered; only the roads were better.

Amarillo and Canyon both had splashy adds for The Happy State Bank. One sign claimed it was founded in 1912 (or thereabouts), so I guess it must refer to the town (and it occupies a building there, one of the few going concerns). I suspect somebody with money fancied the name and bought it.

A couple of nights of a reunion dinner. A relatively few guys I have anything in common with; a chemistry prof, a retired surgeon, a retired dentist (including having spent a few years with the IHS at Zuni). I've not a lot in common with cattlemen and fishermen. On the other hand, the girls seem a great deal more interesting and pleasant than they did fifty-five years ago.

The day between, I was determined to hike the Lighthouse trail in the Palo Duro Canyon. The sign said 5.75 miles round trip, which seemed like a lot with my current hip, but I figured the trail is pretty flat, and I wasn't about to give up without a try at it. And yes, it was OK, and pretty flat, except, did I mention, HOT. Five years ago, I considered the trail itself too short, and took the Givens et al. extra credit loop, an extra three miles. Hard to remember that I've come down so far in a mere five years.

Arrived back home just in time to enjoy another rainstorm. One of the country top ten songs right now is "Where I Come From, Rain Is a Good Thing."


Colorado, September, 2010
One of the things about living in Socorro is careful balance between "I gotta get out of this town." and "But traveling is work, and tiring." So this labor day, "Get outa town" won. But didn't get very ambitious at it. Thursday, drove to Pueblo, Colorado, and spent the night.

Friday, went to Royal Gorge. Quite an amusement park has grown up around it in the last half century or so. I pretty well confined my amusement to walking across the bridge and riding the inclined railway, the two activities available and in which I participated roughly six decades ago. Yep, that there gorge is pretty deep, and the bridge is pretty high.

Baxter, while exhibiting no signs of hesitation about going across the bridge, much preferred to walk down the center of the wooden roadway, except in cases of obvious importance. These included small children at the side of the road who might be interested in giving him a pat, but did not include cars driving down the middle of the bridge.

In the inclined railway I was more interested in the engineering than in the gee whiz. In particular, I was looking at the concrete pads which held the steel beams that supported the rails. There were a few that I really could not see how in the world they got them in place. I was envisioning guys with pneumatic drills hanging from five hundred foot ropes trying to avoid swinging like a pendulum while making holes to stuff with dynamite to carve out a niche for the concrete.

I noted with interest that the bridge main cables had been replaced something over 20 years ago, and the inclined railway had just recently finished a major renovation. Nothing lasts forever.

We then proceeded west, across Monarch Pass, perhaps one of the most beautiful passes in the US to carry a major highway. Perhaps because of my upbringing - I was seven before I saw a mountain that couldn't be ascended in half an hour, and the for the next decade knew only the Rockies - I tend to think the Colorado Rockies, and the San Juans especially, are the way that mountains ought to look, and that other ranges really have to struggle to come up to that standard. Few make it.

Curecanti National Recreational Area is a series of artificial lakes on the Gunnison River. The shores are solid with campgrounds and boat ramps. The beaches were lined with fishermen, and the waters were dotted with fishing boats, float boats, speed boats, but only one sailboat.

I found a trail that was advertised as four miles, 600 feet of elevation gain, moderately strenuous. Bah. Three miles and a half, maybe 400 feet of elevation gain. I was robbed.

Saturday I spent at Black Canyon of the Gunnison, the south rim in the morning, the north rim in the afternoon. I have vague memories of seeing it sixty-odd years ago, and looking at steep slopes from a car window. It is steeper than I remembered. At at least two places - Devils Point on the south rim, Balanced Rock on the north rim - there is a little-less-than-waist-high railing which one can lean over and look straight down, and I mean really straight down, for a thousand feet or more. I am mostly not bothered by heights, though I would have appreciated another six inches to bring the rail up to waist height, but I do have the peculiar fear, as I lean over such a thing, of seeing my glasses flip off my face and rapidly vanish into the depths, leaving me to grope my unseeing way back to civilization. These overlooks are really much more impressive than the thousand feet from Royal Gorge bridge to the river below. That just looks like looking at a toy river in a diorama, or out the window of an airplane. These are truly vertiginous.

National parks tend to take the attitude that parks are for people, and dogs are barely tolerated, only in areas where the people are thickest. But we were fortunate to find the South Rim trail, which permits pets, and runs for a mile along pretty spectacular views of the canyon. So there and back, and a few walks out to viewpoints were Baxter's permitted excursions.

From the south rim there is a road that runs down to the river. My first impression was that the road must have been built on a dare - "You can't possibly build a road there." - "Yes I can" - "Can not" - "Can too". But then I found the road terminates at Crystal Dam, and was undoubtedly built to enable its construction. At the bottom, there were campsites and fishing areas. Being a bit more isolated than most, it would have been a pleasant place to camp.

Sunday I stopped in Ouray to visit Betty Donovan for a few minutes, to compare limps. She seems robust, happy, and busy. She was off gallivanting until 11 PM Saturday night, and we had only a half hour visit before Church Sunday morning. I considered inviting myself along to go to Church, but decided that as well as getting out of Socorro, part of my motivation was getting out of going to Church.

She has finally given up on Ouray in the winter, though, and has rented a condo in Arizona.

Ouray has a new trail called the "Ouray Perimeter Trail". If you've been to Ouray, you know that being on the Perimeter means being able to look down the chimneys of the nearest houses. OK, I exaggerate, but not by much. I walked up the street from Betty's for a couple of blocks to Cascade Falls, where there is a nice new bridge over Cascade Creek to carry the trail. I turned left on the trail, which runs uphill for a few feet and then begins to circle the perimeter. To clarify, the trail ran uphill, and Baxter ran uphill.... The trail comes back down again at the hot spring, across the street from the Tourist Information booth. Apparently, had I turned right, the trail runs all the way to Amphitheater, where it meets the complex of trails that start there. There were quite a few people out enjoying a Sunday stroll along the trail.

I had various possibilities in mind for the rest of Sunday, including hanging around Red Mountain, and seeing where one or two of the fascinating "National Forrest Access Roads" went, or going to Chaco Canyon again. But I decided I was tired of sleeping in a different place every night, and just drove on home.


Mesa Loop Trail, September 2010
Well, I just walked the Water Canyon Mesa Loop. Last walked it with Marin a year ago May. That took about 7 hours. Today took about 7 hours 15 minutes. I guess the trailwalking muscles are OK again. But the limp continues.

I guess I'm ready for Chupadera Trail. But I'd like about 20 degrees cooler - it's about 1,500 feet lower than Mesa Loop, and I got pretty hot. Baxter and I could have used a bit more than the liter and a half of water I brought. Baxter, like Artemis before him, wants water split 50-50 when it's hot.

Last week I bought baby back ribs for dinner. First time since Baxter came to live with me that I had dead mammal with bones in it. He approves of the selection. It has also led him to take more interest in just what it is that I am eating. When I sit down at the table, he comes by with his nose elevated for a sniff. He didn't use to do that.


Loma de las Cañas, November, 2010
Went walking in the Quebradas. The hill I was headed for involved crossing a barbed wire fence, which I was a bit worried about, whether I could get over it, in my current state of impaired agility, without damaging myself, the fence, or my pants. First time I went there, the fence was in very poor repair, and I could just sort of walk through it. But, apparently, so could the cattle, so two or three years ago, the rancher fixed it up and made a first class fence of it. But I needn't have worried. Apparently there had been a bit of rain recently, and when I got to the fence, I found fifty feet of it neatly laid out along one side of the arroyo, and a wide clear path through the middle.

The Loma de las Cañas is a medium large hill. It had been a couple of years, so I took a bit of a wrong turn going up, and the slope was a bit steeper than if I had gone up in the proper place, but the recompense was that the view on the way up was really nice.

Got to the top of the hill and started down the other side. The arroyo I usually walk down was sort of choked with brush at the top, and I couldn't see how far that continued, so I took a longer, less steep path down. About that time, the dog vanished. This is not unusual - he is so much faster than I am that he often takes off to investigate something, and counts on coming back and finding me in about the same place as he left me. He usually shows up again after a few minutes, or, failing that, if I call him, he usually shows up within the minute. So I got to a point where I thought he might be interested in which way I was turning, so I called him. He didn't show up. I called again, and still he didn't show up. So eventually I started up the hill again, calling him all the while. I had a mental picture of him with his beautiful tail entangled in an ocotillo cane, unable to free himself. I got back to where I had last seen him, an elevation gain of maybe a hundred and fifty or two hundred feet, and still no dog. I was looking around, trying to figure out what to do next, when he sauntered out from behind a rock and said, "Well, I was tired. What's got your shorts in a twist?" I could have killed him.


Nutcracker, December, 2010
Went to "Nutcracker" at the Performing Arts Series. This was a really good company, the State Street Ballet from Santa Barbara, California. The guy who played Fritz, the bratty brother, was especially good, performing all sorts of impossible moves apparently effortlessly. He reappeared later as Mother Ginger (Mother Goose in some productions).

Still and all, ballet is not one of my favorite art forms. Opera takes a good deal of flack for having totally silly plots. Ballet is an order of magnitude sillier. The plot synopsis of the first act runs to four very short paragraphs. The plot synopsis of the second act is two paragraphs, but only one sentence is really about the plot. This is way lighter even than Cosi fan Tutti.

Part of my jaundiced attitude toward ballet is that I regard dancing en pointe as belonging somewhere on the scale between Mayan head flattening and Chinese foot binding, perhaps near ballplayers who take steroids. If OSHA were given jurisdiction over theaters, we'd see some changes, believe me.


Christmas, December, 2010
This year we went to a rented "camp" in Lake Placid, NY, for Christmas. The "camp" was actually a large, two story house.

I had booked a rather tight connection in Boston - an hour and a quarter with change of airline and of terminal. So it was a bit of a race. ABQ to Chicago went OK, but the flight from Chicago to Boston was almost an hour late leaving (and of course, they didn't say why, just that the airplane was late arriving). But then we made up about fifteen minutes on the way to Boston. I thought there was still a chance. But when we got to Boston, and rolled up to the jetway, the jetway refused to cooperate. It took them about twenty minutes to get a maintenance guy to look at the jetway and say, "yep, it's broken," and get a new gate assigned, so I debouched into the airport about the time my flight to Lake Placid was leaving.

As usual these days when I get in trouble, I squawked for help. Bill started for the airport, with intent to take me home for the night, and Marin fired up her laptop to find another way to get me to Lake Placid. She found a possibility about the time Bill was pulling into the airport, so in the end, he ended up just driving me from terminal E to terminal B, and I was able to get on an airplane for Plattsburg. Marin showed up there about the time I got there, to take me on the 45 minute drive back to Lake Placid.

Christmas eve, we wandered around downtown a bit, and I stopped by a grocery store to buy ingredients for posole, a traditional New Mexico Christmas eve dish. Cooking it was slightly complicated by the "vegetarian" and "no chile" factions, but we ended up with an enormous pot of soup, with chile on the side, and a reserved small pot of vegetarian style. Grandson Jasper made homemade tortillas to go with. I suspect they would have been better if I had had the comal hotter. Remarkably, we managed to get through the whole pot before leaving.

Christmas day was the usual massive gift opening affair. Perhaps not as exciting as some years, with the youngest person present being 10 years old, but satisfactory, nonetheless. Marin got me a last minute Christmas present, a new suitcase, noting, when she picked me up, that my old one was in an advanced state of disintegration. (It would have made it back home - I think.) Kevin made Christmas dinner, pretty much singlehandedly. Marin and I went walking the dog, and when we got to the Jackrabbit Trail, which was dressed for cross country skiing but still suitable for foot traffic, we decided to walk up it a ways. Got to Lake Placid Lean-to, for about a four mile round trip.

Day after Christmas, we went to the Bobsled run. They were offering bobsled rides from the halfway point, so most of our party went along. They put two or three passengers between a driver and a brakeman, who know what they are doing. I suspect the driver navigates the course as surely as I drive around the Smith's parking lot. At least I hope so. It looks like a lot of work, and a lot of people, involved to give us the ride, which I much appreciate. As well as the driver and brakeman, there was a shuttle driver to drive people to the start, and another to drive the sleds from the bottom to the top. And there was a guy with a snow shovel continuously grooming the area where the sleds came to a stop.

As well as the half length, the rigor of the ride was ameliorated by getting the passengers nicely seated and then kicking off very gently, instead of the drama of heaving the sled down the track and leaping in. I spent most of the ride thinking, "OK, we can't possibly get going any faster than this." The ride ended at a rising turn, for which the course for the sled was along an absolutely vertical wall. Turns out I had an advantage - people without glasses complained that the wind hurt their eyes. So - half a mile in 42 seconds. Nice.

The next day was cold. Actually, the temperatures were about what they had been - a bit below zero at night, warming to a two digit temperature in the afternoon - but there was a breeze. I hate wind. I stuck inside, pretty much.

On the Tuesday, I rode with Marin and family back to Ithaca. The next day, we spent wandering about downtown on foot, the principal objective being the building the Ithaca Quakers have just purchased for a meeting house. In it's youth, it was a restaurant, and in middle age remained so, gradually losing stars as it aged. To get it in good shape (I would say, in very good shape) for a meeting house will cost about twice the purchase price. Marin and family are very involved and devoted to this process.

Monday/Tuesday was a major snow storm on the coast, especially in New York, where city counsel members were taking care to get themselves photographed with a snow shovel in hand. We missed all that, and even Bill, in Boston, drove home Tuesday with very little problem.

Thursday we went to Syracuse to the Imax theater at the science museum there. Movie was about sardines. Pretty good museum. Then they dropped me off to get on an airplane for Boston.

New Years Eve Bill and family and I spent wandering around downtown Boston. We were there too early in the day for most of the New Years Eve festivities, but we did get to see one set of ice sculptures, with an Egyptian theme. It included the most cheerful looking Sphinx I've ever seen.

New Years day I flew home. My seat mate said he was at the airport in Providence the previous Wednesday, when his airline called and said his flight was canceled, and the earliest replacement they could offer him was Saturday. Since he was older than I, and more retired than I am, I think he didn't push too hard for an earlier flight.

It was bitter cold when I got home. 44 degrees when we left Boston, 22 degrees when I arrived in Albuquerque. That night, it got down to 9. Sunday was so cold I only walked the dog around the block, and otherwise stuck close to home. Monday was more normal temperature. On the Friday night, the temperature at the VLA site reached -22. Curiously, the temperature up on the top of the Magdalenas was much warmer, only about -5.

I think the dog saved up all his hair while I was gone, and the minute I showed up, it all jumped onto my black pants. With the low temperatures making very low inside humidity, static electricity makes the dog hair cling fiercely.


Fishtank Ensemble, January, 2011
Fishtank Ensemble plays gypsy music. The ensemble is the same instruments as a zydeco ensemble plus an acoustic base. But it doesn't sound much like zydeco. The overall impression, from the few songs where they told us what it was about, is that the music sounds a few steps happier than the situation it is talking about. What was characterized as the quintessential breakup song sounded like she was really pretty glad to see him go. What was characterized as the Romanische version of the Lord's Prayer was a pretty lively waltz. The only song in which the music even hinted at seriousness was about a man dying in prison praying to God to take care of his son.

Some of the ensemble were very good indeed. The fiddler had a carefully cultivated mien of insanity, which fit very well with the music. The bassist was advertised as a world class slap bass player. So now I know what slap bass is. Anyway, by bowing, plucking or slapping, he seemed to have a remarkable ability to extract whatever sound he wanted from the instrument. (The bass was borrowed from the Tech music department; Rona was a little worried that it would withstand the assault.) The vocalist had a remarkable range, from a cheerful folksinger type sound to a growling contralto to an impressive operatic mezzo. She also played the saw, and could do a remarkable imitation of it, and sing duets with it.

This was the Betty Clark Memorial concert at the Tech Performing Arts Series.


Cold, February, 2011
We had a light dusting of snow Monday night, then it turned cold. Coming home from work Tuesday, the streets were as slick as I've ever seen them in Socorro. The slightest touch on the brake activated the ABS. But on the ice, the ABS merely hums pleasantly, instead of growling fiercely as it does in other circumstances. I cruised at about 12 MPH, and started slowing down half a block before the stop signs, to be sure I could stop. There were some maniacs roaring around at 20 MPH.

When I got home in the evening, it was 16 F and snowing right along. Naturally, Baxter wanted to go on his usual walk. We did one of the shorter ones.

Wednesday it was 4 F when I got up, and about six inches of snow on the ground. Snowed another inch or two during the day. Was 6 F when I got home, and Baxter said it was walk time. We managed six or seven blocks. I was wishing for a ski mask; I might have one somewhere, though I haven't worn one for forty years or more. Baxter was reared in Houston, and he doesn't know about snow. He is cheerful enough about rooting a bit to pick up the smells he wants, and he has enough fur that the temperature seems of no consequence, but he keeps getting ice between his toes, and comes to me saying he needs a sticker removed. I tell him to suck it up.

Thursday morning it was -12 F when I got up. This is by far the coldest since I moved to Socorro. Previous record, for me, was -9 on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, 1975. But a bright, sunny, cheerful day. I decided to operate on a two hour delay, so it was up to -5 when we did our walk around the block. Predicted high is 22 today, and normal temperatures by the weekend. After I got home from walking the dog, the car refused to start, and I didn't feel like walking a mile on icy streets, so I ended up with a three hour delay for the day. It was a comparatively balmy 13 F when I got home, so Baxter and I went on a more or less normal walk.

A friend who lives near Bosquecito said it got down to -26 F at his house. At the VLA site, it hit -40 for a short time. That's cold.

Thursday night was predicted to be relatively warm, and I guess it was, if you consider 0 F warm. Was actually quite pleasant outside Friday morning, with no wind, and warm sun, and the car willing to run. Prediction for Friday is almost up to freezing, and normal temperatures over the weekend.


Lake Powell and others, April, 2011
Spent the last week on a southwest vacation with Marin and Larry and their two kids, Jasper (15) and Thea (10+).

So Friday I met Marin and Family in Flagstaff for vacation, etc. We spent the night there, since they had an early start and a complicated journey to get from Ithaca to Flagstaff. Saturday morning, we drove up to Grand Canyon, and discovered that it was National Parks' free week, so I didn't get to show off my Golden Age Passport. So we found a nice little trail to walk down for a three mile round trip, to get a feel for the place. The Grand Canyon just is so big, the mind just can't get wrapped around it. We walked a mile and a half down the Kaibab trail to a little ridge, less than a quarter of the way down, and the first restroom. Nice view, lovely weather, not too many people (at the rest area where we stopped, there were maybe fifteen people hanging around while we were).

Came back up with my shoes and pants thoroughly covered in red dust. Marin commented that Larry, who was wearing shorts, looked like he had fake suntan lotion on his legs.

Stopped at a few overlooks on the way out of the Canyon, including the iconic tower which appears on a lot of Grand Canyon literature. We learned was built as a souvenir and gift shop about 1930, with a Hopi decoration theme.

Went on to spend the night in Page, Arizona. This is the youngest town of its size in the US, founded in 1957, in support of the Glen Canyon Dam, which makes lake Powell.

So Sunday morning we showed up at the boat rental place at Wahweap Marina, to get our houseboat. Bob the instructor told us how to run it, how to park it, etc. A lot of information in not much time, but with three adults and two attentive kids listening, we could reconstruct just about anything he said when we needed it. Turns out houseboats are a remarkably forgiving system, capable of surviving all sorts of abuse from souls like us who knew nothing, but nothing, about power boating. They are built on two tough steel pontoons, and have motors smarter than the average operator, capable of keeping themselves out of trouble.

So off we went, learning as we went such details as how to steer (the steering is considerably less responsive than automobiles, creating impressive zigzags when you over correct), how to navigate (just look at the numbers on the buoys - but 3A, 3B, 3C threw us for a while - we didn't seem to be making progress past buoy 3), how to anchor for the night (you beach the nose and then run ropes from the stern to anchors on the beach to hold you in place).

So we drove up the lake all Sunday afternoon, at a stately five knots, picked a nice beach (we thought) to spend the night, and had Jasper make us chile for dinner.

Monday morning, off and running again, up to Rainbow Bridge. That is one of the natural scenic wonders that I previously had little expectation of seeing, as it can be approached only by water. Unlike the arches which adorn the desert canyon country and are formed by wind erosion, Rainbow Bridge was formed by running water. It is an extreme version of the oxbow phenomenon, where a meandering stream cuts into its banks eventually to the extent that it cuts through the neck and shortens its course, leaving the curve, the oxbow, abandoned. In this case, the oxbow just happens to support a two hundred foot tower which arches over and connects with the opposite bank.

It was one of the few times I have eschewed Marin's usually very good advice - she thought the canyon was too narrow, and we should turn back. But we pushed on in, through very narrow passages (in some places, if we had met somebody coming the other way, I think one of us would have had to back up), and tied up at the dock at the trailhead. It was a short walk, maybe a quarter mile, to Rainbow Bridge itself, indeed an iconic object. The trail went to Rainbow Bridge, and Rainbow Bridge only. In that country in general, God has an inexplicable preference for the vertical. One doesn't just go wandering cross country.

There there were lots of people, a large tour boat, and several smaller power boats; several tens of people. Unusual for the trip. We probably spent more time underway without another boat in sight than we did in company.

After we left Rainbow Bridge, we stopped at Dangling Rope Marina for gas. When we had told the folks at Wahweap Boat Rental that we might go to Rainbow Bridge, they essentially said "That's nice, have fun." The gas attendant at Dangling Rope had a rather more severe attitude. I gather the conversation between her and Larry went something as follows: Attendant: "Where you folks headed?"
Larry: "Back to Wahweap."
Attendant: "How far up did you get?"
Larry: "Rainbow Bridge."
Attendant: "You took a houseboat into Rainbow Bridge?!"
Larry: "Yeah. Sort of narrow in places."
Attendant: "In those narrow canyons the wind can get very tricky."
Larry: "Well, we were in and out before noon, and it was pretty calm."
Attendant: "Just don't try it in the summer. It can get very crowded up there, with no room at the dock for a houseboat, and maybe no room to turn around."

That night we beached in Dungeon Bay. It was a poor choice; knowing what we know now, we should have backed off and looked for another beach. The beach was a couple of inches of sand over sandstone. But fools we were, we stayed there. I cooked dinner. (A strong indication that Jasper is not your typical American teen-aged boy occurred when he walked by as I was paring a turnip. "Hmm, that looks tasty," he said.) After dinner, we built a fire from dead, drowned, bushes on the beach, and made s'mores with the marshmallows we bought at Dangling Rope.

Sometime after midnight, a thunderstorm came through, with attendant winds. We dragged one of our anchors, the bow came off the beach, and the boat swung around parallel to the beach. Marin, sleeping in the living room, was the first to notice that we weren't where we should be. She woke up Larry, who came through my bedroom on the way to the stern to see what he could see from there. Jasper stuck his nose out and asked what was up, but then went back to bed. After some consultation, we decided to run the motors in reverse, to keep a little gentle tension on the anchor lines, and try to stabilize things until morning. For some reason, we could only start one motor, but whatever.

When it got light, we could better assess our situation. For one thing, the reason the second motor couldn't be started was that the rope from the dragged anchor was wrapped around the prop. So we untangled that and passed that rope through to the bow, where it could do some good, and applying torque with the motors and pulling on that rope quickly swung us back to our original position.

Then began the adventure of the gangplank. The gangplank is a steel girder maybe seven feet long, with two pegs at each end that fit into a channel under the deck. The gangplank was conspicuously missing. We had seen it in the water as we brought the boat back into position, so finding it should be no problem, right? Wrong. We sent Larry into the 50 degree water to the place where it had to be. He didn't stumble across it. We put Thea and Jasper on foam cushions, to let them probe deeper spots. Nope. We searched the whole area. Nope. It finally showed up under the houseboat, to which it was attached by a steel cable, sensibly enough.

At this point we called a break, and took a hike of a couple of miles to go look at what the guidebook called "Moqui Steps", a set of carved steps running up a steep canyon wall. It was a nice place to hike, for once with level terraces, and reasonably easy places to get from one terrace to another. I've rarely been in such a well traveled location, though. Walk twenty yards in any direction, and you find another set of footprints. Marked trail surfaces abounded, as did cairnettes. I suspect this is a combination of footprints lasting an unusually long time there, and the Indian sheepherders keeping an eye on things, with only the occasional tourist off the marked trail.

So back to the gangplank. The plan was to slack the anchor ropes enough that the boat could back up a few feet, allowing adequate access to the gangplank and its channel. Duly done. Except after backing up, the boat decided to rotate around, to parallel the beach in the other direction, and it payed no attention to what I was doing with the motors, trying to tell it to come back around. When it swung past parallel, I told Jasper to cast off the anchor ropes to avoid fouling the props, and we would run out to water wide enough to turn around in, and then run back in. So we did. I just made one little miscalculation - when you have a 48 foot boat turning on a tight circle, it turns out that the stern goes around a rather wider circle than the bow. I thought I was doing fine, until Jasper told me that the stern was perilously close to shore. At this point I made another wrong decision, turning the bow outward to mid channel, which swung the stern even further shoreward. We quite gently grounded on a sandstone ledge, where we stuck. We stopped the motor on the shore side, to prevent grinding up the prop, and one motor was not enough to back us off.

Marin and Larry showed up on foot. Marin decided that having the boat thoroughly stuck was an advantage for reinstalling the gangplank, so we tackled that first. We ran through several arrangements trying to get it in. The one that finally worked involved Marin swimming down and putting a loop of rope around one of the lower pegs, which I could pull on and support much of the weight of the gangplank, while Larry, under the boat, supported most of the rest. Marin, in the water with one hand on the boat and the other on the gangplank, and Jasper, prone on deck, could actually see where things needed to go, and inserted the upper pegs in the track, at which point the track was supporting half the weight, and they could slip the rope off the lower peg and get them inserted in the track. Definitely an all hands operation, except for Thea, who was keeping the anchors company a quarter mile away.

Marin decided she didn't want to use the boat in these narrow waters again to go pick up the anchors, so she sent Larry and Jasper off to bring them back, carrying the forty pound anchors a quarter of a mile. When we got assembled again, Marin, Larry, and Jasper got in the water and shoved us off, and away we went, no worse for wear.

Tuesday night we finally did it right. We spent the night in Gunsight Canyon, running up a sheltered inlet, out of the main bay. In the main bay, there were a couple of other houseboats parked on the verge. We disdained this unsheltered spot and ran on in, to a lovely little beach. When we beached, the sound was not the "scruuunch" of Sunday night's gravelly beach, or the "ka-hunk" of Monday's grounding on sandstone, but "sssSSSSsssp", as we whispered up the lovely sandy beach. Carefully preparing for the previous night, we emplaced the anchors in truly bomb-proof positions. Marin fixed quesadillos for dinner, and Jasper provided a lovely chocolate-strawberry-banana pastry for dessert. We were tired from last night's shenanigans, or at least I was, so nobody even much went ashore. Wednesday morning Larry went for a brief run over the dunes, but again, I didn't even go ashore.

We turned in the boat a little after noon. The checkout apparently consisted of checking that we had washed the lunch dishes and that the props had no new dings. Apparently our minor misadventures were within the parameters otherwise.

We drove on to spend the night in Kayenta, AZ, a sad little dusty town on the Navajo Rez. Its saddest feature is that apparently nobody can fix things; whether by lack of training or by lack of wherewithal to purchase parts is unclear. Marin felt the need to do laundry. The guest washing machines in the motel were out of order, so we went across the street to a laundromat. One third of the washing machines were marked "out of order", and another third had their coin mechanism maladjusted to the point that they were unwilling to accept quarters, at least from strangers. A third of the dryers were out of order, and another third were labeled "cool dryers", that is, dryers without working heating elements. (This is a concept that can only work in deserts.) When we finished the laundry and went out to eat, it was quite late; we had been running on Arizona Time (MST), and Kayenta runs on Navajo Time (MDT), so by their reckoning we showed up to eat at 8:00. They were out of fry bread and tortillas, which doesn't leave much possibility in terms of local food.

Next morning we went on a tour of Monument Valley. Here the preference for the vertical collides with the preference for the horizontal. The buttes here are really no more vertical-walled than the ones we have been living with for the last three days, but the buttes are quite isolated on a horizontal valley floor, giving a surrealistic tinge to the landscape.

Then on to Mesa Verde. We stayed at the lodge on the National Park grounds. It was the first day of the season, and things were a little disorganized. For instance, only about half the rooms had telephones - the instruments had died over the winter. But this disorganization showed up most clearly at the restaurant. They were clearly understaffed as well as unorganized, and they preferred to preserve their standards of elegance rather than reorganizing to maximize throughput. I would have preferred to get my own coffee or even bus my own table had it resulted in faster food.

Mesa Verde was fascinating as usual. Some of the ruins a very well preserved, and show without much restoration. The big theme this time around is that the cliff dwelling phase was a relatively short one, and the cliff dwellings might have been only intermittently occupied even then. Most of the living was up on top, and cliff dwellings occupied mainly for defense. But they would have been hard to get to for somebody in my state of decrepitude.

After Mesa Verde, we drove in to Durango, and had dinner with Larry's brother Roger. He and his wife were airing their opinions that genetically modified food should be disallowed. In a move of a sublety I would have not thought him capable of, Larry egged me on to jump in, and, jumping in, to press for the other side. Fun anyway.

Spent the night in Bloomfield, NM, and got up the next morning and drove into Albuquerque for lunch, and to have a rudimentary 11th birthday party for Thea. I then dropped the Clarkbergs at the airport, and hied myself home. I was tired.


Hips become symmetrical, April, 2011
Well, I fell down and broke my other hip. Reactions have been of the "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" sort. Yes, I should have known better. In retrospect, I had been stumbling and even falling in the weeks before taking the fateful spill. I should have taken corrective action.
So, a repeat drill: pinning operation and three days in Presbyterian hospital, followed by two weeks in Health South rehab facility. When they were ready to let me go, Bill came and saw me installed at home.
Darn, it takes a long time to recover.



Faust, July, 2011
Faust by Gounod, Santa Fe Opera.
I was expecting something more cosmic from this opera. They got on my wrong side just off the bat. The critic in the program came out and said Gounod wasn't really much like Goethe, and said this was good because Goethe was a bit of a bore.
Of course, I don't really have that much grounds for comparison. I read the equivalent of a Cliff's Notes version of Goethe's Faust something over half a century ago. This was to set the stage for our careful study of the equivalent of the first act of the opera. Anyway, Goethe impressed the heck out of me, and I did not take kindly to the bad-mouthing.
Goethe's Faust was a man of substance and learning. Gounod has extracted from Goethe only the themes of youth and love (or possibly lust). Gounod's Faust is an old man made young again, but having learned nothing. Possibly less than nothing - he seems to have forgotten those forces which shaped his first youth, and made him a learned teacher. He can think of nothing but to seduce, and then leave, the innocent Margarite. She is seduceable because her protective brother is off being a Prussian soldier.
Margarite is a bit of a disappointment as well. I remember nothing of Goethe's Gretchen, but surely she had more substance than Margarite. The devil waves a diamond necklace at her, and off she traipses on the road to Hell.
So she is seduced and abandoned. The brother shows up and is rather upset. He challenges Faust to a duel. Being a trained and valorous soldier, he would seem to have a certain advantage. To even things out a bit, Satan stabs him in the back. His annoyance at his eminent death leads him to curse his sister, whose dalliance has led to it. As typical in opera, the curse has great efficacy.
I do like Gounod's Satan better than Goethe's Mephisto. He is a gentleman of style, elegance, and unexpected abilities.
The opera ends with the abandoned Margarite murdering her illegitimate child, and facing the gallows for doing so. Faust and Satan show up to save her, but she refuses to go with them, and faces the gallows in expiation. Satan claims Faust's soul, but the suffering Margarite lends him a certain nobility. So everybody ends up dead and/or miserable, including Satan.
Of course this is par for grand opera, and I don't hold it against Gounod. I really like Riggoletto, which ends in the same miserable way. But it ought to have more weight than an obtuse old man trying to recapture the lustiness of youth.



A wedding in Utah, August 2011
So I went off to Salt Lake City for my granddaughter Eliza's wedding.

After mulling for a while, I decided to fly, rather than drive, thereby condemning Baxter to a week in the kennel. Oh well. Flew up on Saturday. In the ABQ airport, they were sort of randomly assigning people to the metal detector or to the scanner. I drew the scanner for the first time. They were concerned by the fact that I was using a cane, and gave me a fiberglass one to use to walk from the X-ray to the scanner. Mine has a steel core. Although not a sword, I think it would make a fine bludgeon.

Got in about dark Saturday, spent the day Sunday over at my brother Bill's. He is now living in a three bedroom apartment with his friend and her teen aged daughter. The family he lived with for years are getting a divorce, so that family is in turmoil. I rather think Bill misses their girls, who are slightly pre-teen. This teenager is OK, but is definitely in the "adults are not worth listening to" stage. (As is my fourteen-year-old grandson, who has a most remarkable filter so tuned that words spoken by an adult do not even rise to the level of consciousness.) For a while, this friend was importing her two-year-old grandson, but Bill was finding him a bit much.

Bill looks about the same as he has done for the last decade. He is a little less steady on his feet, but doesn't use a cane, because, he says, when he leaves the wheel chair he is usually using both hands to carry something. He made much of the fact that sans cane, my mobility is no better than his. His friend asked if I was the older or the younger brother. (He is nine years my senior.)

Monday morning I went down to Provo to introduce myself to my great grandchild, who is a month or so short of her first birthday. A pleasant little girl, very solid, who is clearly thinking seriously about walking (and thus vastly increasing her circle of assured destruction).

Monday afternoon, the father of the bride and another co-grandparent arrived. (The mother of the bride had been in town for a while; My son was off at an academic conference in Detroit.) Then we went to pick up my daughter and her daughter, who had had an adventurous airline trip. Weather delay in Chicago Sunday caused them to miss their connection, and they ended up spending the night in the Chicago airport; then Monday they flew to Salt Lake via Burbank, because those were the airplanes with open seats. Then we all went out to dinner with the groom's family. Unfortunately I got stuck at the grownup's table - the kids table would have been more fun.

I hadn't seen Eliza since she was a teenager, and I was struck by the fact that she had become quite a pretty young woman. Or maybe an impending wedding does that to people.

Tuesday, the wedding took place in the Jordan Temple, with only good Mormons present, per Mormon custom. When they came out, lots of family gathered around for photography.

The reception was that evening, in a park. After a slow start, it turned out to be a very nice party indeed. (Invitations read 6:00 PM to 8:42, but attendance was pretty sparse until 7, and things were just barely winding down when I left shortly after 9.) The bride's dress was made by her sister, including a very nice veil. In fact, all three of the bride's sisters wore dresses from the same manufactory, a summery yellow check. Their niece had a matching playsuit.

Next day, I stopped by for another visit with Bill. Got a little confused when I went to apartment 9-101 and found a flock of strangers. Turns out that I had turned a little early, and was in Timber Gate Apartments, which are virtually identical except for minor niceties of trim. Bill says that's for the hoi polloi, across the wall (there is no access from one to the other except by going out to the main street) from the upper crust in Farm Gate Apartments.

In the SLC airport, I went through the metal detector, and it turns out that two shelf supports worth of titanium in the hips does not set it off.

Back in New Mexico, I proceeded directly to the Santa Fe Opera. I was signed up for two operas on successive nights, thinking that might be less stressful than the round trips. Did that once a couple of years ago, when I could amuse myself on the intervening day by going for a walk in the mountains, near the Santa Fe ski area. This year, I spent the time sitting around reading my Kindle in the Santa Fe Plaza. Very picturesque, but I would have preferred my Lazy Boy. The opera the second night was performed without intermission, so we got out at about 10:15, a much more reasonable time for the drive home than I am used to (more traffic, though).

Baxter seems to have forgiven me for abandoning him.



Pittsburgh and Green Bank, October 2011
Having occasion to go to Green Bank on observatory Business, I natuurally chose to go via Pittsburgh and daughter Doree. Doree is, as usual, mostly about dogs. She has a dog, which she says is really Kelsey's, which is pretty certifiably crazy. The dog, appropriately named Riot, recognizes Doree, Kevin, and Kelsey as reasonably safe human beings. The rest of us are frightening monsters. When I walked into the room, there was an immediate fusillade of furious barking, and the dog was clearly ready to attack if I made any move that might possibly threaten her safety. Actually, if I was sitting down, Riot would cheerfully come up to me for a pet, either on her own or as part of the "me too" brigade which occurred if any of the dogs saw another getting attention. She even came up to me for a pet once when I was standing beside the bed. But if I stood up from a chair, she immediately went into fight or flight mode, barking furiously, crouched with her legs tense ready for anything, with her hackles raised.

The big news about Green Bank is that they have hired a head cook who is pretty good. Observatories are not famous for high cuisine, but in years past Green Bank ranked in the basement, and perhaps, even there, surpassing only San Pedro de Atacama. We were very well fed indeed, and I frequently yielded to the temptation to overeat because it was good. I did have minor gastric disturbances at the time, but the only time I regretted indulging was some very tasty vegetarian wraps with artichokes, which I afterward spent a day burping garlic.



Baxter, November 2011
Baxter has a bad back. Couple weeks ago, he seemed to have some sort of pain, mostly noticeable in that when he went to scratch the grass in the middle of a walk, he said, "Hmmm, that doesn't seem like a good idea after all." Then I went off to Green Bank, and left him at the kennel. A few phone calls back and forth and they ended up takin him to the vet a couple of times. Each time after a steroid shot he got a lot better, but then relapsed. After I got home and picked him up, he was clearly not right and getting worse - soon he could only walk by dragging his himd feet behind him. So I got a referral to a specialist in Albuquerque. There they gave him a cat scan (not a dog scan?), and then operated immediately on a herniated disk. The surgeon called me up and said something to the effect that it was among his favorite herniated disks, because the hernia was very large (satisfying to work on for major improvement), and not very hard to get to. They kept him in the doggy hospital for a couple of nights. They sent him home with a set of aftercare instructions that were clearly tailored for a much sicker dog than what I had. So I ended up mostly ignoring them. Doctor's orders for first two weeks:

No stairs or steps. I carefully led Baxter to the ramp off the back deck. He jumped off the side of the ramp. After the first couple of times, I gave up. He jumps off the deck.

Walks no more than three minutes. He regards walks of three minutes or less as verging on cruelty to animals. He extended the walk by the simple expedient of refusing to turn around. What, I'm going to drag a five day postoperative dog around by the neck? He consented to a walk around the half block, about six minutes.

Don't let him jump on furniture. I wasn't up to 24 hour surveilance, and kept finding him on the him on the bunk bed in the spare bedroom or on the couch in the living room.

He looks a little odd with this great incision on his back, and shaved patches on his legs, where, I guess, they put in IVs. But every now and then he comes up to me and says "I'm fine; can we go for a walk now?" (He claims that two walks each day of at least four blocks each were written into his contract when he came to live with me.)



Truchas Christmas, December 2011
Christmas was nice. We rented a retreat center in Truchas, NM, for five days. We had various family groups coming and going during that time. The initial lot was the Hong Kong Clarks, the Salt Lake City Clarks (including Michael's girlfriend), the Donovans, the Lundgrens, and (slightly late) the Clarkbergs. On the day after Christmas, the Lundgrens left, replaced by the Koffords and the Zilches. So, crowds.

I was a little late arriving, due to a weather delay, but I got there in time for dinner. The weather problem was not at Santa Fe or Truchas, the high altitude places, but because the night before, I-25 north out of Socorro was closed for snow. It opened in the early afternoon, but I-25 south didn't open until the following morning.

Truchas Peaks Place is a somewhat idiosyncratic house with room for everybody. (Their literature claims it sleeps something in the high thirties, so our mere 22 had lots of room to spread out.) The great feature of the house is the library, which is a large room lined on all sides with bookshelves, stocked with perhaps 20,000 volumes (to some extent reflecting the taste of the owner, who is a psychologist, but still with plenty of general interest reading if you need something at your bedside). And Truchas itself, while not as mountainous as some places in New Mexico, has a view to die for as you leave town heading toward Santa Fe.

For me there were two major highlights. The first was the fashion show. This was put on by a crowd of seven cousins, ages 6 to 23. The fashion items were made of wrapping paper, grocery bags, and lots of tape. And a very fetching set of items they were. Perhaps the most memorable was Thea's Truchas Peaks Place dress, a nicely shaped full length dress mostly of wrapping paper, with a fashionable hat commemorating one of the dining tables which had a warped top.

The other memorable event was that a few of us were going to go on a short hike. So we set off on the road to the trailhead. But the road became, in the language of the trade, increasingly snow packed and icy. Finally we got to a hill which Marin's rental car declined to ascend. Furthermore, it declined to back down the hill, saying that its heavier nose should point downhill. Since the road was only a few inches wider than the car was long, this posed a bit of a problem. But with a good deal of backing and forthing (and a couple of judicious shoves from the guys who had dismounted) the reversal was accomplished. So we ended up just hiking a couple of miles up the road, never making it to the trailhead. (I actually went rather less than the rest of the lot - I'm slow.)



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