Thursday, September 19, 2024
Apologies
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| Salomé with the head of John the Baptist - Aubrey Beardsley, 1894 |
I consider myself a bit of an impressionist writer, at least with my travel blogs. I try to paint a rather rough picture and don't always stay within the lines, even add verbiage with little semblance with reality when I feel that it is called for.
And as we all know, I am prone to hyperbole and exaggeration, especially if it furthers a feeling and a good story.
I received this letter yesterday from a good friend and was set back on my heels a bit.
Hi there, well my grandparents lived their productive lives in Salome and grandfather worked the Santa Fe railroads building them across Arizona and my grandmother was the town nurse, only woman to own an explosives business( on what’s my line on tv) and they owned many gas stations up and down that hell hole road to Wickenburg… I think my grandfather was also the County Supervisor- lots of my interesting history in that desert with nothing….my dad, grandparents and uncle are all buried in Wickenberg…
Ps - none of them were drug addicts (lol)
I felt terrible for demeaning my friend's ancestral homeland in my blog, especially since I was mostly kidding around.
I have always wondered about the people who lived in places like Salome, Baghdad, Ludlow and Amboy.
The truth is that I don't know very many of them and have no right to make such gross judgements. Maybe they are merely people like me who can't stand compression (or authority) and needed to find a place to escape?
I am sure that Salome and Aguila are full of wonderful hardworking people and always have been. I wasn't being serious. My friend laughed off my apology but I still feel kind of bad.
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
Back to where I been
I was in a very remote section of the desert and there was simply no there there.
I found myself wondering about those brave and hearty folks who ventured on this particular terrain and said:
"This is it dearest, we shall go no farther, we have found our little paradise. This is where we shall plow our field and fruitfully multiply as the good lord hath ordained."
Clean dry air and 110 degree heat notwithstanding, the general area is not anyplace I would ever consider putting up my shingle.
And who knows, stick me in a dilapidated single wide with a broken axle and enough gin to float my passage and I could probably even finally finish that novel I never really started.
You need that sort of solitude to write properly.
This particular stretch of nowhere would probably be a fertile environment to start your own cult or religion, if you ever had the need for followers and creed. Not situated all that far from hellfire and damnation, if fact I think that it is the next town over.
But I am getting ahead of myself. Why was I even here? Certainly not to pontificate, Edward Abbey had mined this stretch of literary terra firma so brilliantly that there was no reason to try to one up him, not that it was even possible.
Besides at my age in my late sixties, most of the really big thoughts have since flown out the window. Now it is about intake and outflow and complaining about the new locations for arthritis and similar ailments. Base shit.
What was I doing again? Oh, that's right I was driving to Prescott to hang out with some old friends and hit a Navajo rug auction. I had got up and got out of the door at five on Friday morning, the GPS took me up Winchester Rd. and finally I took the 10 to the Wickenburg turnoff and the lovely old gas station that I was forced to capture, entropy and spray paint being the hallmarks of the new apocalypse we were promised by our savior as payback for all those ungodly thoughts and actions we thought we could dodge.
Can't cloudsit with the big guy and the harps before you indulge in a little fiery introspection and look at life's book with a bit of honest clinical objectivity and soul searching.
At least my car was running, reasonably full of gas and still had four wheels, still fully capable of delivering me from my sandy purgatory if not hellhole barring any unforeseen intervention from Yahweh or his minions.
But the Anza Borrego couldn't take me last week and I will be damned if I let Ms. Mojave have her way with me today. Begone desert!
I saw a general store, decided not to stop, for some reason.
Nothing personal but no one needs water that bad and I still had a little that I had brought with me. I would wait until Prescott.
Case they are looking for another skull.
They are both funny and Sandi is a talented potter.
I think I am more comfortable at this stage of my life in pine and juniper forest and high desert than the lizard and scorpion type of sandier habitat.
Broken beer bottle desert.
We went and previewed the auction, which benefited the Smoki Museum or wait, that was struck as not woke enough, the Museum for Indigenous Peoples, really rolls off the tongue.
They call it MIPS, it is shorter and a hell of a lot easier.
Saw more than a few that I liked but didn't know how the game would be played and the nature of the reserve prices and those details can prove quite challenging.
It was festooned with multiple kokopellis, lizards, lightning, rain, antelope and even llamas.
Very rich and unusual iconography.
We left and had a tour of the courthouse.
Town just ain't been the same since all the Californians moved in.
We had a great meal at a Spanish place, Gato Azul. They didn't serve cat mind you, we weren't in Ohio, it was merely the restaurants cute moniker. I had a lamb chop tapa, perfectly cooked and a papas y queso appetizer.
The guests seemed to be of a similar hue and chroma, I asked Bob when I might see some brothers? He laughed.
On the way home they regaled me with tales of Big Nosed Kate, Doc Holiday's squeeze, born exactly one hundred seven years and one day before me and she who had found employment in a "sporting house" in Dodge City at the age of twenty four.
Prescott was the birthplace of the Roughriders, Teddy Roosevelt believing that hard bitten ranchers would be tough foes on the battlefield.
Damn right.
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| Buckey with the star |
He told me about friend of Roosevelt, gambler and one time Prescott mayor Buckey O'Neill, who had the unfortunate timing of emerging from a foxhole exclaiming that "Sergeant, the Spanish bullet isn't made that will kill me" only to be promptly hit in the forehead with the next volley and a quick departure from this mortal coil. Timing is everything.
We went to the auction the next day, separate cars in case somebody needed to bug out early.
Who is she?
Read about her. She has a chapter in Mark Winter's master weaver book. 80 years old, just took a left turn off the traditional path and forged her own way, design wise.
She incorporates ancient Hohokam wall art and cave paintings as well as some fanciful figures. There is a llama in this one. I have now seen quite a bit of her work and this is the slickest yebichai border I have ever seen her do.
From Toh-atin Gallery:
Esther Etcitty was born in 1944 in a traditional Navajo Hogan near Sanostee, New Mexico, about thirty miles southwest of Shiprock. The major trading posts for Navajo weaving in that area are Two Grey Hills and Toadlena. She attended boarding school in Sanostee and in Albuquerque but did not finish because she was needed at home to help with the family.
Esther is one of the featured weavers in Mark Winter's book, The Master Weavers, Celebrating One Hundred Years of Navajo Textile Artists from the Toadlena/Two Grey Hills Weaving Region.
Her weavings are different than most of the work featured in the book. As a young weaver, she made traditional Two Grey Hills styles and some geometric weavings, but about 25 years ago she found her own pattern. She started weaving natural wool colored pictorials with Kokopelli (the hump back flute player) as the predominate design. This mythological figure is commonly found in the rock art of the area.It also includes horned toad, sheep, rock art figures and Yei’s woven into the background.
Etcitty is one of the few weavers acknowledged by Winter as a Master Weaver who does not make geometric patterned rugs. She has laid her claim to having created one of the most unique individual artist designs in Navajo weaving.
I like this weaving, very hip and different, not sure anybody else will but I get that sometimes. I got it for a good price should make a little money and enjoy it while it is mine.
They put so much red chili in the food that it is almost too much for me to bear. Gut buster. We ain't in Californee no more.
Place has been going downhill for about fifty years but I still come back.
I left early the next morning for Santa Fe. I was completing the purchase of a wonderful collection that I was working on in August.
I stopped off at John Fillmore's, who was kind enough to perfectly clean an 1853 Hirishige print for me, no charge.
Thank you buddy!
I can't wait to put it on a metal stand, so lovely, in both color and architecture.
My friend treated me exceedingly well, as did his wife, and we had dinner at Harry's.
We finished our transaction the next morning and I decided to hit the road.
It was actually cold and rainy, a wet Monday, everything was closed and I got the sudden impulse to skedaddle.
We can talk for days but I needed to make tracks.
John gifted me a pair of really stylish and minty Rod Patrick smooth ostrich cowboy boots which set you back quite the kronar.
Finally got her to crack a smile.
I continued on yesterday morning. Santa Fe and back in five days.
Was colder in the desert this run than at my house, by a long shot, having left in 100° days .
Got home yesterday afternoon, little worse for wear.
Very good short trip.
Left early in the morning today to unpack the car.
Thursday, September 12, 2024
Sudden Gray
A woman that I know, a very nice woman by the way, made an abrupt exit from town recently.
I am not sure about the particular reason why.
She is a bit younger than I am and had black hair with a tinge of gray.
My hair used to be like that but now it is very gray. Nothing lasts forever.
Anyway I saw her a week or so ago and I was amazed to see that she suddenly had major gray swaths running through her hair.
I don't believe that she had ever been dying her hair but suddenly she was very gray overnight.
I asked a person who knew her better than I did about what was going on and she intimated that their were some family things that necessitated a sudden move as well as some medical issues that she was not at liberty to divulge.
No problem.
I mentioned this to my coffee klatch and one of them whose father was in Okinawa in World War II, Ed, said that his dad told him of people who had gone gray in a single battle over a period of days.
I had never heard of anything like this, have you? Can emotional trauma produce instant hair color loss?
I did a little research on this and read that Marie Antoinette's hair turned white the night that she was led to the guillotine at the age of 37 so if the story is indeed true, I guess it can occur that fast.
Other reasons for loss of hair pigmentation are vitiligo, an autoimmune condition that can result in the loss of hair pigment, vitamin D3 and B12 deficiencies, thyroid disorders, genetics and stressful "life events." I would guess that my friend's color loss falls into the latter category.
Thankfully scientists have found that hair color loss that is the result of stress is somewhat reversible when a person is freed from the underlying stress. I hope that my friend moves into a less stressful place.
Steady Eddy
I loved the New York Mets, like every other boy in my seventh grade class at South Woods Middle School in Syosset, New York in the miracle season of 1969. We were glued to our transistor radios that year.
Outfielder Ron Swoboda lived close to me in Syosset, on Cherry Lane and I will have the starting lineup of the team committed to my memory forever.
The Metropolitan first baseman was an original Met, breaking in with Stengel and the club in 1962.
He was a Met for eighteen years.
For his career, the Bronx native posted an average of .261, with an OBP of .316 and a slugging percentage of .377. Kranepool has his name in the Mets’ record books. Besides ranking first in games played with 1,853, he is second in plate appearances (5,997); third in hits (1,418), at-bats (5,436) and total bases (2,047); fourth in doubles (225); fifth in RBIs (614); ninth in walks (454); ninth in runs scored (536); and 11th in triples (25).
Ed was a steady player, his numbers weren't earth shattering but he was a remarkable pitch hitter.
Kranepool was a .396 over a five-year span from 1974 to ’78. In 1974, he set a record for highest batting average as a pinch-hitter in a single season (minimum 30 at-bats), going 17-for-35 — a surreal .486 clip that still stands to this day. For his career, he had 90 pinch-hits, six of them home runs.
Unfortunately he is the fourth Met of the miracle season to pass. away this year, joining Jim McAndrew, Jerry Grote and Buddy Harrelson.
You need your superstars to win, your Seaver, your Cleon Jones and your Tommy Agee. But you need lunchpail guys like Kranepool too. Thank you Ed for all that you did for the New York Mets!
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
More keeping score
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| Oblivion? © Rick Griffin Estate |
It took approximately 18 years to hit five million views on the blog, give or take. Last April 11th, if you feel the need to fact check.
If things unfold as they appear to be unfolding, the next million will be eclipsed in approximately three hours or so, tomorrow morning at the latest.
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| Bingo! |
New Offerings
I am slowly making progress getting new items up on the website. Up to about 8% at this point, I think. Woefully remiss. But I don’t want to wait until I finish, I thought that it was time to share some recent acquisitions with you. You will be able to find more information regarding all of these pieces on my website.
Have so much more to photograph and put up...
An Allan Adler (1916-2002) sterling silver hand hammered service for eight, six across, with three extra serving pieces in the Starlit pattern. I believe that this is the fifth Starlit set I have had the opportunity to sell. It is probably my favorite Adler pattern, along with town and country.
One of the rarest and greatest Paul Landacre (1893-1963) wood engravings, Baldy from 1932. Very small edition, Lovely condition. Full margins.
A large (48 x 36″) oil from Fletcher Benton (1931-2019) circa 1961, executed after he returned from Paris.
A lovely still life oil on paper by the New York painter Robert Kulicke (1924-2007)
A sweet oil on board with thick impasto depicting two sisters by Peggi Kroll-Roberts (b. 1954)
A classic Taos street scene woodcut by the late Barbara Latham (1896-1989).
Two works by the famed Santa Fe artist Bettina Steinke (1913-1999), an oil and a pastel of a young Jody Folwell.
A wonderful decorated ceramic platter by the seminal potter and teacher, Daniel Rhodes (1911-1989).
An oil on board depicting a Tibetan man from Colorado/ New Mexico painter Mark Daily (b. 1944).
The lovers, a wood engraving by the unsurpassed Anglo-American artist Clare Leighton (1982-1989)
