Spring, Mules and The Race is--almost--on!

Spring is springing and I am thinking maybe we won't get a frost to kill all the fruit and new green things coming out. Maybe. My apricot tree is bursting into bloom as are other fruit trees all around town. I have seen filaree blooming and some other early weeds also. I'm ready even though we have had a singularly mild winter, really. Compared to most places it has been almost tropical but winter is still winter, even here in what my brother calls "the Promised Land."

I've talked a little bit about mules before. We worked with them a lot as well as the horses I have spoken of in prior posts. There is a little monthly magazine called Mules and More. I began to subscribe to it about a year ago and around the end of 2013 sent them in some photos and then they asked for info on the pix and a little essay, which I wrote. I got the March issue today and lo and behold, little speckled mule Beano and me are right there on the cover!! It might not be Time, Life, or People but hey, a cover shot is a cover shot!! Like whoo-hoo!!! If you go to www.mulesandmore.com you can see that cover right on their home page. Inside there is a two page article with some more photos. I plan on doing a few more small features for them in the coming months but this was a neat surprise today when the mail arrived. I just had to share. Here is the photo as it looks in my collection,

Late note: I got some contributor copies of the magazine today (Sat, Mar 1) and will give away one or two--autorgraphed of course--to comments made on today's. post!

And as for the race, that's the Iditarod, of course! The ceremonial start in Anchorage is tomorrow--less than twenty four hours now, and then real start is Sunday. Then they are off for a rough journey of nearly 1,000 miles across mountains, rivers, and parts of the frozen northland. It has been a mild winter in the northernmost state too--snow is scarce in places and the trail is going to be brutal with mud, raging steams, soggy slush and a really hard go for the mushers and the dogs. I am worried about them but they will race...and someone will win.

Naturally I am rooting for my gal, Aliy Zirkle. She has been second twice and got closer last year than the previous one. I am hoping this is her year but she has smaller and lighter dogs than some of the men and it may be pretty hard on them. However she has a wonderful rapport with her team and is one courageous, tough and determined lady. The pundits give her a good chance and you can bet that barring some disaster she will be in the first few if not Number 1. Go Aliy!!  And here is a shot of Aliy and her dogs last year; I lifted it and maybe should not share but anyway... This was her entry into Nome and the finish, about twenty minutes behind the winner. Consider that difference in terms of nine days and nearly 1000 miles and it was darn close!! And look at those dogs--do they look dead tired and wrung out?  This is so totally awesome!! I'd give a lot to be there and see the finish. I'd be crying I am sure.

Oh, I wound up with two copies of this year's official program which is full of insider info and stuff about the race. Comment on this message for a chance to win that extra copy. I hope to make some new fans for this fantastic event! I support it with at least a small donation every year and talk about it every chance I get. They call it "the last great race" and I do not think that is a misnomer.

Memories...

My mom would be 96 today if she had not succumbed to ovarian cancer back in 1996. I still miss her. Sadly she did not live to see my first book released although she had read preliminary drafts of a couple of my novels that eventually were published and liked them. She wrote some poetry herself, many themes and views not that different from mine, done some twenty to thirty years later!

It took me a long time to appreciate her. Maybe this is common for mothers and daughters. She was quiet and mostly seemed very meek. I always thought she let my dad run rough shod over her but that was not always the case. There were times when she stood solid as a rock and would not budge until he did what she felt was the right thing. She was a very brilliant woman and I also thought she often wasted her abilities but now I am not so sure. At any rate, it was her choice and I do not think she had too many regrets. Although she got a good education and made top grades from the start to the end of her schooling, she still belonged to a generation where being a wife and mother was the epitome of a woman's work. Actually we were both tomboys, to some degree, as she had enjoyed going hiking to gather berries and nuts and see the wild creatures with her Dad as a girl. I was just a bit more of a "cowboy girl," growing up in Arizona instead of Kentucky!

In retrospect, she excelled in her chosen career and nurtured and encouraged her three children in many ways, certainly instrumental in whatever successes and achievements we each were able to claim at various times. So happy birthday, Mom, wherever you are. I am sure we will be together again in time and I hope that you can look down or across and see me and not be too disappointed. I know I did not meet your standards in all that I have done but much that you taught me lives on today in a thousand different ways. Thank you for being my mother.

Today I look in the mirror and sometimes see a lot of your face in mine. And that is not a bad thing! I have the Witt eyes at least and some of the bone structure although there is a lot of Morgan there as well. Genetics are a funny thing. I can't really remember you as young and pretty as you were in some of the early photos I've been scanning. I saw you more as you aged and became careworn and troubled by the problems the family encountered and endured. In most way I have had an easier life than yours was.

Here are a few old photos. The first picture is Mom with her parents and tall brother in the summer of 1942, shortly after she was married. The next one is a close up of her at about the same time. Then the third one is our whole family. I was about sixteen and a half, Charlie was not quite eight and Alex was a baby, maybe five months old. At that time, Dad would have been 47 and Mom 39. So long ago... Now only Charlie and I remain in this realm.

Life without Love

...is merely existing. I testify that Love is an essential part of truly living and without it, one can exist but it is a very lifeless and empty kind of life. But I have some very specific criteria and parameters for what Love is!

 We certainly  toss the word around with reckless abandon. We "love" ice cream, our favorite sports teams, our new car, a chic dress or cute outfit in a store window. That's not love--it may be liking or enjoying or supporting but it isn't love. To me Love (and I use the capital letter to differentiate between the careless and the meaningful terms here) has to have certain things. Love has friendship/kinship, devotion, respect, caring, and unselfish bonding--we don't love just because it feels good or gives us a temporary pleasure or thrill! . And it must have passion as well.. Again I use the word in a particular sense. There is of course amorous or sexual passion but there are many other kinds as well. To me it expresses an almost holy or divine depth of feeling, connection, need/want/desire and perhaps purpose.

So to really live we must Lovc and Love is much broader than the care we feel for casual friends and our various fads, enthusiasms and wishes. What am I passionate about? Quite a number of things and they do tie in to Love. I strongly believe in care, protection, nurture and support for children and animals, for the elderly and ill and for the earth itself. I think we are here to give this to the maximum degree we are able and I cannot think of foul enough punishments for those who abuse and mistreat those who are weaker, vulnerable and less fortunate! Yes, I do love children, animals and our world. I try to love my fellow humans although some of them are distinctly un-lovable! That is part of the Druid philosophy and ethic by which I try to live.

I love a number of friends, mostly in a platonic way and a few in a less sisterly way I suppose. In this I am a bit more selfish than I wish I was, perhaps, because I know I am drawn to certain people and feel a connection to them while others are very two-dimensional and exist along the periphery of my world like cardboard cutout figures. I may feel empathy, sympathy, pity or some mild respect for some of them but the depth of feeling is not there. I can't help it whether it is 'wrong' or not.

I suppose I'd have to say I also love certain activities. It means a great deal to me to create things of utility and hopefully also of beauty. I enjoy working with my hands and making things by sewing, stringing beads, cutting, polishing and shaping stones, drawing or painting. I especially enjoy putting words together into verses and tales, all of these being things I have done since the middle or later stages of childhood and youth.

I love my companion animals and give them the best care I can afford and certainly invest a lot of my time, emotion and attention on them. In the past I had horses and mules and I have had dogs much of my life. Without them life would be much less enjoyable for me despite the fact they can be frustrating at times and like small children, needy and heedless in seeking what they want or require. But that is okay and it is their nature, a mechanism by which they survive, so I do my best to fill their needs and be patient with them.

I love my brother, my children, grand children and great grands--although I often get cross or frustrated with them. That does not take away from the love but is just a small bump in the roads of life that we have to navigate. Sometimes emotional 4-wheel drive is really needed since some of these bumps can be big boulders and major washouts but get past them we do and that usually strengthens the bond in the long run.

So here on the eve of Valentine's Day, I celebrate Love in its vast array of shapes and colors, its diverse textures and tones, its incredible power and the wonder of it. Truly, Love is the One True Thing and the closest we can come in our present lives to a sense of the awesome encompassing entity that we call variously God, Godde, the Power that Be, the Universal etc. Love is a divine and sacred gift, one we should always respect and cherish, honor and appreciate. We need to be both careful and completely generous and free in our giving of it and sometimes realize that accepting or taking it back is equally critical. To reject love is to reject the sacred. That does not mean we have to subject ourselves to unwanted attention and demanding, possessive behavior from others but  probably look at the reasons why and try to help that person find a better way to meet his or her needs. It's all a juggling act but if Love was not real and here and ours to reach out and accept, life would be grim and empty indeed.I am so thankful that Love is!!

So today and throughout your lives, I wish you all, my friends and readers, Love in all its splendor!

Gray is not my color--a diatribe?

A writer friend recently blogged about her unhappiness that a certain nameless novel and its sequels have caused a major shift in the way the New York publishers are buying and marketing fiction. The basic premise now is, if it is not super kinky-hot, don't even go there. Now I am a huge advocate of the old "diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks" principle and I think there is room out there for a tremendous range of subjects and levels of 'heat' in fiction.

I  freely admit that I do write erotic romance, both hetero and GLBT varieties. (Romance because it is first about love and conflict and 'issues" and very secondarily about sex) I do basically believe that love is something that can come to anyone in any way and that there is no such thing as "bad" Love regardless of who the parties are in terms of color, gender, politics, religion or much of anything else. I would say let's keep physical love expressed within a species of  "consenting adults" except perhaps in the case of some fantasy where shape-shifters of many kinds may be hit by Cupid's arrows. However, although there are very explicit love scenes and some of the cruder words used in my fiction, there are several things on which I draw a hard, black line. If what is going on does not at least speed up my heart beat and respiration a little bit, it will not get written. And I am totally not into any form of pain, humiliation, domination and such. Just do not go there.

Yep, a long time ago when I was experimenting and trying to establish my own person hood and what my on buttons were as far as sex went, I got caught up in some things that quickly taught me what I do NOT like or enjoy. Due to a number of experiences in childhood and growing up, I set a high value on my own independence, freedom and self-determination. My theme song could be, "Don't fence me in." So you will find very little of what is commonly called BDSM in my books. No, gray is not my color and although I may someday steel myself enough to read at least the first book in that trilogy, just to be informed, I will not see the movie (as I cannot afford to throw away the ticket prices which are far from the fifty cents etc. we paid for matinees in my youth) when I would probably have to get up and walk out at some point. At least based on what I have heard about this phenom.

For this reason I cannot believe the current 'fad' should be a limit on what the major houses are willing to buy and publish.  The reading public may be titillated for a time by 'dirty, kinky' little books--and I consider them little because they are ignoring a zillion other huge and important issues and aspects of the human condition to focus in on one very small and narrow one. I would think we as a civilization have matured to where we do not titter and tee-hee over naughty little jokes and crude cartoons as we might have done in middle school. Are we still not free of the Victorian pretensions where we have to put skirts around furniture legs but have a veritable sewer of filth flowing ignored beneath the rugs? (Prostitution and human/sex trafficking  to include children of both sexes were all very high during the Victorian era.) Looking around, I guess not. .

Yeah, as they say "sex sells" but once it becomes so blatant and common that we have to go ever farther to keep up the high (yeah, it seems its  like an addictive drug in this; with ever a larger dose or more potent strength demanded) just where are we going to stop? Incest? Necrophilia? Animals? We're already deep into the child porn--which literally makes me want to gag and then commit mayhem on the "perps."  Maybe it is time that the 'silent majority' (I am pretty sure we still are a  majority) stood up and began to cry foul. Freedom and openness and such are good; I have no desire to go back to the strict censorship and narrow requirements (like twin beds for married couples in movies!!) that were once in place but IMHO the pendulum has swung about as far as it can and still retain a modicum of civilized and decent humanity.

Comments and discussion welcome!!! Let me hear what you think.You can agree, cuss me out, blow raspberries or whatever you choose!! Should we have some limits on all the media that perhaps public opinion and voting with our dollars will establish or should we let the sky (or the depths, as the case may be) set the parameters? Is there anything that is too gross, too offensive, too crude and vulgar and disturbing to write about, sing about and portray in film and live theater? I may be old fashioned and stuck in the mud for all I know. I can only view a lot of things from my own admittedly narrow perspective.

Year of the Wooden Horse begins!

If you follow Chinese astrology and calendar at all, we're at the leading edge of the year of the Horse. In addition to the sequence of animals, there are five elements that also rotate through a sequence and this year's is wood. So we have the wooden horse. I do not think we are talking here of the broomsticks some of us 'rode' as kids before we could even aspire to a pony. But wood is the element of life and perhaps aspirations since trees reach for the sky. Horses are very powerful beasts even in Chinese lore--and I really do like some of the ancient horse images in Chinese art. I won't expound or explain all that as many can cover it better. Instead I thought it was an auspicious time to revisit some more of my past equines.

A dear friend of mine from those early days has taken up painting and she is working on a picture of me with my beloved Tina. I am really excited about this. That mare was so very special. I think most anyone who has worked with quite a few horses has one or two that they recall as being extraordinary in one way or another. Tina was definitely one of those! She was middle aged in horse years before we retired her from the active work she did so well and let her bear a couple of foals. By then we'd added a registered Appaloosa stallion to our herd and he sired two fine colts with her. Sadly neither of them turned out to be spotted but at that point the breeding for color was still not really well established to the point where any Appy produced 100% colored offspring. I am pretty sure Chief had some Quarter Horse in his ancestry although he was marked with a nice "blanket".

Tina's first was born on March 16, 1964. He was the image of his mother, also a blood bay with a star instead of her blaze face (which was almost a star and then a snip, very fine line between them) and quite a handsome little guy from the first, He ended up, along with his brother, being favored roping horses and 'cow ponies' on a big ranch out west of Prescott, AZ. The second foal was born on my birthday, April 27 in 1965. He was a bright sorrel with some white socks and a big blaze. He was a big stout colt but took a lot out of his dam. In actuality she never really got back to good health afterwards. We probably should have let her rest a season in between the foals but we did not. Twenty twenty hindsight is always so clear.... She stayed up and going long enough to wean him, but we lost her that winter. Broke my heart, of course!

Anyway here are shots of Yavapai Chiet, Tina again with her first baby, and the two colts that we named Bravo and Rico. Sadly I did not get to break and train the two colts although I had worked on Brave some--he was nearly two when we had to shut down the business and I shortly went off to collage. I could tell though that he was going to be an outstanding horse and was later told that both of them were. They went to a good home and did valuable work, anyway. I am glad of that.

First, me riding Chief. He was a pretty well-behaved stud and very manageable. He'd been roped off etc.  He was a gorgeous bright sorrel red with the nice blanketed rear and generally a Quarter Horse build, about 14 1/2 hands tall..

 Next is Tina with Bravo on his first or second day! And below is Rico at about the same stage. And last is Bravo as a long yearling, shaping up to be a pretty good looking guy even in a winter coat.

I wish I had good color shots of them all but color film was costly in those days and I could barely afford the black and white I used to picture my pets!

So no wooden horses here but may you ride this year's mascot off to your dreams and a wonderful year! Happy trails, all!!

Playing with Rocks and Words

It is kind of amusing how things we start in childhood tend to go with us throughout life. Although of course I really had many other toys and things to play with, I found two less typical playthings at an early age. Since my conscious memories begin in the old mining camp of Jerome, AZ, I discovered the wonder of stones at a very early age. I joke that there wasn't much else for kids to play with there which was of course not true but rocks were certainly plentiful! Most kids started out throwing them but I always "threw like a girl" and a rather uncoordinated and awkward girl at that, so instead of throwing rocks, I sought out pretty or unusual ones and brought them home.

"Mom and her &(^%***%^  rocks" became a family joke after I was married and had kids of my own. My daughter would threaten to kill me if I once again repeated the tale of the time she accidentally crossed into Mexico with a bunch of mom's rocks in the back of her Toyota pickup and had a heck of a time getting back into the USA although she can laugh about it now.

Maybe in some ways I have the last laugh since I learned some lapidary skills which is the craft of cutting, shaping and polishing gem stones to make objects of art and beauty. I learned silver smithing as well, so that I could put some of those 'pretty rocks' into pieces of jewelry. This is still a hobby I pursue at times and I still have a pretty extensive rock collection--stones from Kentucky, Colorado, California, Arizona of course and now New Mexico. Crystals, agates, quartz, petrified wood, geodes and a lot of good old junkerite and leaverite. Those last two are rock-hound terms, kind of... Geologists and the more scientific rock hounds tend to pin an 'ite' onto all sorts of formal rock names. So this is a bit tongue in cheek. Junkerite of course is rocks that are junk, probably have no commercial or real value but are curiosities and odd things you bring home from various treks. As for leaverite, that is the stuff you should have listened to the inner voice that said,, "Leave 'er right here." Only mostly you didn't. So I'm still playing with rocks, a lot of years later. And above is a picture of my little Rojito as a "rock hound" in truth while I was cleaning and  going though part of my collection I had just rescued from my old home in Arizona about this time last year.

Words came rather naturally to me as well. Some of my early memories are of my dad writing madly away on what he was sure would be the great American novel while he survived on severance pay from a war industry job after moving to Arizona very long ago. No, it never sold but that is beside the point. He did write and later on publish quite a batch of articles and short fiction over the years. Thus I grew up thinking that putting words on paper was a natural thing to do and could maybe even earn money!

At age eight, shortly before the brother I now share a home with was born, I wrote a few simple verses, my initial poetic efforts. Within a few more years I was writing my own versions of Nancy Drew stories and then Zane Grey and other authors I was reading avidly. I also soon discovered the fun of puns and double entendre and other mischievous uses of our very strange English language. We have so many words and phrases that lend themselves to this, too. And I was taught by example the fine art of satire and sarcasm, which seem to come easily to most folk with some Celtic blood, especially Irish. Over the years I became known among friends for ridiculous puns and the elaborate "fuzzy puppy stories" that are crafted to lay a pun on as the punch line. Doggerel and nonsense verses much klutzier than those of Lewis Carroll or Ogden Nash were also a trait I showed.

Here is one very bad limerick to illustrate: (No rotten tomatoes please!! It is just in fun!!)

An Irish lass named Mary Claire
Had a voice all pronounced sweet and fair.
She thought she'd be the rage
When she took to the stage
But fell flat on her Londonderry Air.  (Okay, boo and hiss!!)

And lastly, I actually combined both of my old time 'toys' into a verse some years back, words and stones! And no, I was not "stoned" either in the vernacular of the Hippie Era or literally as those who break Sharia Law might be in some places. Just having some verbal fun.

              The Stoned Poet?

I would take words and use them like stones:

stack them up carefully, building a wall;

batter and scrape the flesh from the bones;

running, kick one before me as if t'were a ball.

I would take words and use them like stones:

heap them between us to keep you away;

throw them at you 'til you leave me alone;

or offer as treasure, to entice you to stay.

I would take words and use them like stones:

circle them round to keep you with me;

strike them to music to hear their deep tones;

lie down amongst them, become one, you see. . . .

I would take stones and use them as words:

agate, jasper and turquoise my verses would be.

Bright send them flying, wilder than birds

to draw your attention so that I might flee.

Fleeing and running, I stumble and fall,

trampled beneath the wild verbal herds.

No ear can hear a rock should it call,

but I would take stones and use them as words.  

                                                      GMW c:1982

Another Day Trip

This past Sunday, Ginger and I hopped into Red Hot Mama about nine in the morning and took off for a day of sight-seeing and exploring. We took more back roads and did more walking this trip and I think that made it even more fun!

Our first stop was right here in Alamogordo since Gin had not yet had her morning walk and was a little fidgety. We pulled off on the east side of Florida Ave just before it runs into Highway 82 which goes up to Cloudcroft and over the mountains to eventually reach Artesia. Someone was once trying to build some kind of an amusement park there and I snapped a few pictures of the strange ruins left behind. Here is one; may share more later

 After that we headed on out on Highway 54 north, passing through Tularosa, "Tulie" to the locals, and toward Carrizozo, taking a side road out to the Three Rivers Petroglyph area, a National Recreation Site. I was dismayed to learn that dogs were not allowed on the trail so decided to forego a look at the ancient rock art until another time. Instead we drove on out the road that soon became gravel instead of paved and discovered a really neat place! It's a small chapel with an adjacent cemetery sitting at the foot of two conical hills, both topped with crosses and winding rugged trails making their way up to the peaks. It is clearly old and very picturesque. I do plan to go back but did snap a couple of pictures. Santa Nino means holy child in Spanish, a probable reference to Jesus. I think the rest says de Aturbia but not sure as the fence obscures the somewhat faded lettering.



From there we went back to the highway and on up to Carrizozo and then to the west a few miles to the Valley of Fires, another National Recreation Site with some very interesting lava flows from a relatively recent (perhaps historical times) eruption in the area.I stopped at the office to get my Senior Pass card which admits me to a wide range of Federal facilities, such as Forest Service and BLM recreation areas, National Parks and Monuments and these lesser sites too. We got out and walked a bit as they do allow dogs there (why the discrepancy I have no idea!) but the wind had come up and taken a sharp edge. It was a good 15-20 degrees cooler than down at Alamo! So we had a fast light lunch and went on our way.

Last we went back through Carrizozo and out on the same highway to the north a few miles and then took a county road that goes out to an old mining camp and now kind of outpost village called White Oaks. Again I want to go back but did get a photo of the beautiful old school house there. There are a few other picturesque buildings as well.

We then headed home but it had been a fine outing and driving slow on some narrow, winding and even unpaved roads took me back to many happy adventures from childhood on. It's always been something I enjoyed, whether sitting in the middle in Mom and Dad's first Jeep as a wee tyke or riding in my late husband's 1950s vintage GMC pickup when we were going together, mostly with my soon-to-be step daughter perched on my lap. It's just so neat to get off the beaten path and have some of the wonderful rural and remote country pretty much to yourself!