Sonoran Desert Camping and Sunset

We recently went camping at Pichaco State Park, about 40 miles north of Tucson. The lower altitude are part of the unique Sonoran Desert. It is a lush desert, with saguaro, cholla, barrel and pad cactus, palo verde and mesquite trees, creosote bush, and ocatillo. The campsite had all of these and some great lava rock outcrops.

A trip highlight was seeing the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. It is an amazing place with the whole range of Natural Histort - a botanical garden, a zoo and geology exhibits. It also has opened an Art Institute with classes and exhibitions. One of the two exhibits open now is just stunning - the Fiesta Sonora runs till Jan 10 2010 and I highly recommend it.



Alas, the underwater beaver pictures did not come out but I liked the Bighorn Sheep ones.

And the sunset was subtle, but lovely.

Amazing Travel Accomplishment

I gotta brag:

I just finished paying the credit card bills from the trip and was rather amazed that the vacation sub-account is far from being empty. When we planned the trip I established a Not-To-Exceed Budget and a fairly detailed Target Budget that was about $500 less.

The bills are in now and for the first time, we have come in under the Target Budget by about $200. We were not doing the trip on the cheap in any real sense, but I guess I finally have got the hang of estimating.

Milverton Idyll

The village of Milverton, in Somerset, on the border of Devon, feels like a home place to us. Pauline, intrepid soul, knew of us through a number of common Sierra pack trip friends, though we had never met. She invited us to stay sight unseen back in 1992, and has never been rid of us since.

Her peaceful house and wonderful garden are where we have the rest and relaxation parts of our vacations to Europe. Pauline has no TV, only classical music and weather on the radio, and it is so very sweet to just be still. The entertainment is quiet conversation, a walk to the village

shop, or helping prepare the spinach bed. She takes good care of us with an absolute minimum of fuss. It is the kind of place where the milk still comes in bottles, the apples come from the backyard, and one might know the name of the hen that laid the morning egg.

We reminisce about the Sierras and

how good it was to go riding over the mountains before the lawyers got to it, and discuss the places we have seen and want to see in England. Pauline translates "biro", "Ford Prefect", "council house", "concessions", "hoover", "O-levels" and much more. We help her with rock music crossword clues. We watch birds.

The village has a lovely old church, one shop, one pub, 4 streets and maybe a dozen connecting lanes and paths. There are many gardens of note, many ancient red stone walls, and a lot of artists and craft people. It looks very much like St. Mary Mead looks

like in my mind.

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures!

Whew! The pictures from the trip have all been through the basic post-processing routine and the ones we feel others might like to see are posted on the Picasa web site: http://picasaweb.google.com/cathy.hoaglund

They are in the public folders. This is another attempt to balance the preferences of many people. We feel compelled to tell people about the interesting things we saw and to show off some photos we are really proud of capturing. A lot of our friends do really enjoy looking at photos, as we do, but others have a strictly limited attention span and we cause their eyes to glaze over rapidly. This way the non-photo-enthralled can skip it or buzz through a dozen or so and it will be OK.

But getting them up here is certainly been a lot of work. I think I am going to collect an informal sample for a future post on what it takes to be a hobbyist photographer. If anybody reading this would like to contribute, please leave a comment or send me an email with your answers:

1 .When you are on vacation or otherwise having a major picture-taking day, how many pictures do you shoot? (under 25, dozens, a hundred or more, several hundreds??)

2. How long does it take to prepare your pictures afterwards? How many hours per day of shooting?

3. About what fraction of pictures do you throw out? (Ours is about 40% I think - if you compare the show set to the originals, but we keep a bunch for reference that we don't show or print.)

4. What else do you do with your pictures besides purging the duds? For example I rename them so the Rich & Cathy shots are mostly interleaved, and do some minor cropping, straightening or contrast adjustment where needed. The we add captions and title slides. Then upload to Picasa, and last, make prints of the ones that we feel are worth it. Oh yeah, and I burn CDs.

What other things do you do to organize your pictures?

The Trinity Capital Hotel, Dublin

The Trinity Capital Hotel was bundled with the airfare, and was a pleasant surprise. It is right around the corner from Trinity College's College Green entrance, a very busy intersection and handy for the busses. The decor fascinated me - so many very large things of very diverse style but all working very well. The restaurant - Cafe Cairo - also had very good food. But it was very noisy - it has a fire station next door and is close to the train and tram lines.

I think that the following picture should take you to a slide show in Picasa.

2/6/10 - TOOK ALBUM DOWN TO MAKE ROOM FOR MORE STUFF

Trinity Capital

Arthur's Day and Night, Galway

We were in Galway for what turned out to be a major Irish holiday - Arthur's Day. In 1759 Arthur Guiness signed a 9000 year lease - yes, nine-thousand years!) for his new brewery. In honor of the 250th anniversary the Irish threw an enormous party, with pints either free or 2.50 Euros. The streets were packed and there was music everywhere. Made me kinda sorry I can't stand the stuff!

There was a huge toast to Arthur at 17:59 exactly - but we had lost track of time and missed it.

Sparklers were used a lot, though you can't see much here

This was the best of the many, many groups playing Irish traditional music in the early evening, though it was clear that the party would really just get started about 9:00 - too late for the likes of us!

Dublin Details

Dublin is not a pretty city, like San Francisco or San Diego. It is not as overwheming as London or New York, and it lacks the dour, handsome dignity of Edinburgh. But what it does have is an abundance of interesting architectural details. In this respect, it reminds me a bit of Boston. Here are just a few such details - although they were photographed on a gray day, I think the interesting bits come through. The "Dublin Shots" link should take you to the Picasa site if you want to see more. {Warning: As of Tuesday 10/7 I am only up to day 3 out of 15 so this is far from complete at this point.}



Door and weather vane from Dublin Castle

Chimney Pots, Dublin

Travelling Once more

We are on our way again after a long gap.

I don't propose to post exquistly detailed and exquisitely boring chronological accounts of what we did each day during our trip to Ireland, Wales, and England - that goes in the travel journal files. (Well, it is boring to most folks, anyway.) But there are so many little things and pictures to share. The logo above will identify such postings which may be nothing more than bullet points. If you, Dear Reader, want to know more or see more on any of these topics just leave a comment.The first batch:

• Irish newspapers are in one of two formats, tabloid or true broadsheets - 8 columns, maybe 18 or 20 inches wide. I don't think the US still has any in that size left and I am glad of it, since I lack the skills to cope with a paper that big. But I must announce sadly that the content is far better over here.I can read everything of interest in the Daily Courier in less time than I can get through 2 pages in the Irish Times, despite skipping most of the local interest stories.


• Irish television is completely uninspiring and the news is only slightly better. The three biggest stories this week are the upcoming vote on the Lisbon Treaty (every pole has a Vote Yes and a Vote No poster), corrupt and greedy financial officials (so what else is new?) and the Championship Ploughing Meet - a very intense celebration of rural skills and values that is amazingly important to people. The man at the next counter at the bus station was clearly struggling with a choice between paying his bills and taking his family to the ploughing competion - he finally peeled off nearly everything in his wallet to buy the tickets.


• An area in which the Irish show superiority is in their manhole covers and other Art Underfoot. There are unexplained plaques all over Dublin, and Galway has excellent manholes.

Fun Places to Take Visitors in the Prescott area:

My aunt, who is herself new to the area has some visitors coming at a time that we cannot be around to share. She asked me for a list of places that we might want to take them.

There are all the big places on the tourist maps - and there are plenty of them! There are also the music, theater and art events listed in the Daily Courier. But this recent post from Walking Prescott reminds me that there are many other sights prized mainly by locals:

Walking Prescott: Western kitsch galore!
The Lone Spur and Zekes

Where and what else is a good but lesser known event or restaurant or store or what-have-you?
Nominations from me:

1. The Petroglyph Hill in Vista Park, Prescott
2. The new Slick Rock trail in the Dells off Heritage Park
3. Lynx Lake and German Night at Lynx Lake Cafe
4. Peavine Trail
5. The Equipoise statue, the Library Lizard, and the Yavapai College Lizard by Heather Johnson Beary

I have a lot more ideas too - let's see what we can come up with!

A Century Ago Facebook Was Named The Penny Postcards

Elizabeth Bernstein wrote an August Wall Street Journal column titled “How Facebook Ruins Friendships”. She writes about the way Facebook and Twitter and their kin have reduced the actual time spent for friendship maintenance by using it for an obsessive urge to share the utter minutia of life. We don’t really need to know what all of our friends did for lunch or what their video game scores were… but if we primarily communicate that way, we are not likely to discuss serious or complex matters either.

The author made some very good points about the social network phenomenon that I will have to give some thought to (if I ever get caught up with Facebook and email.)

But I suddenly realized I have a very closely parallel phenomenon documented in my postcard albums. From roughly 1905 until the outbreak of World War I, the western world was swept by a tremendous fashion for exchanging postcards. It was very similar to Facebook – the messages were short and semi-public, and there were competitive urges to gather a lot of pen-pals, (the “friend list”) of the day. Pictures were a large component of the fad – though the appeal of some of the images on the cards escapes me as thoroughly as does the appeal to send Facebook quizzes and farm animals (whatever that is about!)

I went to the first album on the shelf, (happened to be Pre-WWI Holiday Greetings) and found one more common factor. A century ago folks didn’t have enough interesting stuff to fill the communication channel either!

Here is an timeless example:

The sender has picked out an attractive card with a simple clean design. But when we turn it over and look at the message, all Ivy could come up with is "best wishes from friend Ivy". T'was dull, Ivy

Not all cards still have much appeal to me - this religious themed birthday card is not my cup of tea. "A Birthday Themed Message from the BIBLE" with its proverb never got sent. Maybe the purchaser realized it would be near the castor bean oil in popularity.

The next example is another attractive card - with, I guess something timeless in the difficulty in thinking of something to say to the grandparents. The message "To my dear Grandma on her birthday from her loving Martha Ann" was not informative bit probably appreciated anyway.

The card after this one reflects one of the aspects of the Postcard Craze - the exchanges that sometimes got rather out of control... The Thanksgiving card is embossed with a yellow and brow ear of corn. On the back it is marked "2" and starts: "Your cards were new to me and beautiful but my dear you did not owe me five. don't return so many one will do for me. don't mind how many I send - for I forget after I do send them." (and more that is hard to read.) It is one of the longest messages in my abum

But ultimately this whole message is like sending stuff to other Facebook people just because you can, not because you really think the recipient cares. Or like forwarding the email of the 500 lb dog or the albino deer or the work cartoon that you have seen three times because - like the anonymous card writer from a century ago "don't mind how many I send - for I forget after I do send them".

The more things change, the more they stay the same!

I have returned to High School - in my mind. I found my yearbook and began wondering how everyone turned out. I have joined Facebook, and found a few of my good buddies, and a few with whom I had nothing in common then and nothing now. I was not part of the "IN" clique, but I was lucky to have a good set of friends with brains, people who also found this to be an interesting world, worth learning about. And I am happy to discover that a number of them have quietly prospered.

So the images bumping around in my brain are from 1970. What ever possessed the yearbook editors to think we would look like ourselves with the girls in best dresses and the guys in suits and ties? And why do I remember so few faces?

And also - what ever happened to Mary MacIntyre, my best friend? How did we lose each other?

ArcoSanti and Montezuma's Castle

Granny J just posted some interesting shots of her trip to Cordes. which occurred at about the same time we did a interesting two-place trip to that area. We took the New England ladies and some good friends and went to see Montezuma's Castle in the morning, and ArcoSanti in the morning. I find it interesting to compare our day to her observations : Walking Prescott: Which Cordes has the antiquery?

But before talking about that, lets look at some of the pictures. I was going to put up some 10 shots but this editor has me nearly screaming with frustration. There must be something
I am doing wrong - if it is this hard to get the pictures where one wants to talk about them
there would be bloggers foaming at the mouth on all major street corners, and I have not noticed that.

Pueblos were the original arcology - densly populated dwellings where industry, agriculture and the arts are seamlessly integrated with living quarters. Architecture + Ecology - centuries ago.


Montezuma's Castle shares with all the ancient
pueblos a great sense of mystery. How did
the Sinagua come to live here, and why did they
leave?


The second question is more compelling, since in many ways the situation seems to be idyllic. They lived in a handsome edifice with enough people to make life interesting, but not terribly over-crowded. They did not live in the cliff for defense, but because it made sense to leave the fertile land by the creek free for farming. Today the dappled shadows play over the many colors of the sycamore trees that seem to melt into the light, but then there would have been lots of vegetables and grains.


This was very much like Paolo Soleri's vision for ArcoSanti, a few dozen miles south. He has a grand idea that we could drastically reduce our impact on the earth by living more tightly packed, so that the work and leisure activities for the residents can all be an easy walk. The plans involve elevators and moving sidewalks, evoking images of Asimov's "Caves of Steel" and Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll", and filling several members of our SF oriented party with nostalgia for the future that never was. The experiment he has constructed here had the start of that, but it never got close to getting a critical mass of talent and resources, and it probably never will.





The structures are intriguing - but empty. The place is allegedly designed for 5000 people, though in reality 500 would overwhelm the infrastucture. But there are only about 50 people living there now, and only about 1o of them were visible on a mid-week day. There were very few signs anybody actually lived there - the orange kiddie vehicle in the shot above and a friendly cat were about it. As Granny J mentioned, there were no concessions to age or infirmity - not a moving sidewalk to be seen, and darn few benches.


Perhaps the Sinagua people suffered a loss in leadership too. Today Paolo Solari is 90, and there was no mention of anyone who will fill his shoes - no one with the vision and charisma he has. The bakery closed for lack of interest, and the person who was interested in agriculture moved on. The only industry seems to be making handsome but very overpriced bells. Nobody is fixing windows or painting the rusty spots.


The boom and bust that Granny J talks about, with abandoned buildings and McMansions for commuters, is exactly what Solari hates and is trying to avoid. [previous sentence corrected] But he had a equally impractical notion that he could get everything together and make a self-sustaining micro-economy in a Big Bang, all-or-nothing kind of way. He needed a whole population of people out of an Heinlien or Niven story to come and bring wealth and competance in many areas at once. Instead, he got grad students.

Pets live on ... in my screensaver

I have been using my new toy, an Epson Perfection scanner, to turn some dusty boxes of memories into handy digital images. I would like to share a couple of my favorite pictures of Dandy - Our Australian Shepherd that - the very best of dogs. I found his baby picture, and a couple more that remind me how much fun he was.

Dandy 1983
With Rich at the Devil's Punchbowl, . CA at Joshua Tree National Monument, CA, and at Red Rock Canyon, CA


Come to think of it, this also shows that hubby Rich is pretty fun to be around, too. At least, it shows that we know great rocks when we see them.


{I find that getting the pictures where I want them is no easy task! I think I will need to be getting advice from the other local bloggers!}

First Postcards to Share

Here are two early cards of people in canoes.


The first one is depicts a large number of people attending a band concert in Detroit in canoes. It is fun to lo0k at the young men with their bowties and the young women with their parasols and wonder if they ever
knew they were put on a postcard.

And what are the guys in the bottom center handing off from one canoe to the next?

The card is postmarked 1911.

No fancy stuff like zip codes

or full city and state names
needed then - just

Box 71, Sta F (?), Cinn O

The second one is unused, but it has an undivided back and is probably from before 1908:

I find it very interesting that this

is actually a card put out by a

railroad line to (apparently) promote

deer hunting by canoe

Introduction

Hello Out There

This blog probably should be called "Cathy's Latest Folly", because I certainly don't have the time to do right by something like this. But I can't resist starting to play around with this technology. I have been inspired by some of the excellent local bloggers, and want to get in on the conversation.

Another thing that has gotten me started is that we have been getting ready for our first big yard sale. We are intending to substantially shrink the pile of boxes of books and postcards and jigsaw puzzles currently filling the garage. So, of course, we have been doing little else this last month except going through boxes to see what we can part with. And, also "of course" we have found so many things that we cannot part with! The postcards, in particular, have been neglected for a decade and I had forgotten how many great images there are. (And how many duplicates I had!)

So the plan here is to post a few photos or postcards every now and then and talk about why I like them (or not). It will probably be pretty low volume for a long time... but I guess that doesn't really matter!