Barry Clark's Blog
- Truchas Christmas, December 2011
- Baxter, November 2011
- Pittsburgh and Green Bank, October 2011
- A wedding in Utah, August 2011
- Faust, July, 2011
- Hips become symmetrical, April, 2011
- Lake Powell and others, April, 2011
- Cold, February, 2011
- Fishtank Ensemble, January, 2011
- Christmas, December, 2010
- Nutcracker, December, 2010
- Loma de las Cañas, November, 2010
- Mesa Loop Trail, September 2010
- Colorado, September, 2010
- Class Reunion, July, 2010
- Mesa Treail, June 26, 2010
- A little longer walk, Memorial Day 2010
- Short Walk, May 2010
- Hip, April 2010
- New Dog, April 2010
- Yjastros, February 2010
Barry Clark's home page
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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