Coincidence?

On our sunroom wall hangs a New Guinea war mask from the Sepik River region. We bought it from a villager on a trip we made there in 2000. It worships the crocodile king, one of the Founders of the tribes there and it has a tortoise on its headdress. When we returned home to California, we hung it our living room wall but the mask didn't seem happy there. There was no 'spark' to it. After a year or two, I took it down and relegated it to a corner of the bedroom, dark and unhappy, until we bought the house here in Superior and put it in with the things to be moved here. It was one of the first things we put up when we moved in three years ago. As soon as Bill hung it on the wall, we got tingles down our back. The warrior mask was happy. It gazed upon Apache Leap mountain and it wasn't going to budge off its wall. It seemed a curious thing to me at the time. How could a mask from a far off land like Papua New Guinea find happiness in a copper mining town of the Southwest? Evidently, it's not so far-fetched.

Today, I went uptown to get my hair cut. The beautician is lively lady, about my age, and married for more than forty years to her high school sweetheart. We have a good time discussing things while she cuts my hair. Today, she started talking about the Native Americans and their inability to drink alcohol. I commented that it was the same way with the Australian Aborigines. She agreed and told a story about her husband getting accosted by a drunken Aborigine one time. I asked her where that occurred and she said Cairns. I laughed and said, yes, Cairns was where we had run into Aborigines too. Then she said her husband worked for a mine that sent him to Indonesia and she had visited him there.

I was awestruck. "You didn't go to Irian Jaya, did you?" I asked. "It's on the same island as Papua New Guinea."

"I certainly did!" she agreed. "And it was the strangest place I've ever been. Why, when I got up that first morning and looked out the window, what did I see but this man walking down the road wearing a penis gourd!"

I whooped with laughter. "Did you visit the Spirit House too? And see their thirty foot phalluses?"

"Oh my, yes!" She covered her face with her hands while she laughed harder. A woman sitting across from us and getting her hair colored and who obviously had never visited the likes of Papua New Guinea had a puzzled smile on her face. What were these women discussing?

"I cannot believe you've been there too," I told her. "I had no idea this was such a small world."

"My dear, the copper mine industry goes all around the world. There aren't that many places where it is mined. It is one of the biggest mines in the world in Irian Jaya. So that is why the miners go there. That's the way it is." She shook her head but kept smiling.

And so it is. There aren't that many copper or gold mines in the world. This happens to be the same good region for those valuable ores. Maybe that's why our New Guinea mask was so happy to reacquaint himself with the same sort of mountains he'd come from. He recognized a kindred spirit in the mountains. I might just be being fanciful but as my grandson Sage says, this sort of weirds me out! Small world, indeed!

Small Town Terrorism

Our crime committee is getting down to the nitty gritty these days. A hard core group of between twelve and fifteen of us are now meeting once a week to hash out a host of items. The end of the month is a week-end festival in town called Apache Leap Days. The Crime Free Superior group is going to have a booth to get the word out to the community that we mean to do things in a different way and to recruit more members. We're selling raffle tickets for a kid's bicycle and we're going to have information and sign up sheets for our citizens' group: Volunteers In Police Service.

The biggest hurdle we've bumped up against in this basically small town of four thousand souls is a Biggie all right. It reeks of Old World politics or crime ridden neighborhoods of big cities. I certainly never expected to find it in this pretty little town. But it's here all right. The other night we heard story after story about it. It's name is Retaliation.

I don't know how long it's been going on. But Retaliation seems to be the word on every body's lips and why the public at large is loathe to tell the police what they can plainly see happening on their streets and sometimes even their door steps. It was said that mothers and fathers of grown children won't even turn in their own kin because they are afraid of their own family using violence against them. Employees witnessing criminal acts while they are working refuse to give details because they are afraid of being beat up, or worse and/or their property vandalized or destroyed. Retaliation seems to be the poison that is vaporizing this community when it comes to getting rid of the bad guys. And it has got to be stopped.

The chief of police told us that the word we've got to get out to the community is that Retaliation will not be tolerated in Superior any longer. That we've all got to be good witnesses and stand up for the victims that come forward to testify against these small town thugs. It is only when the bad element sees the good folks step forward and say, "Stop this! This isn't the way it's going to work anymore!" that we can get back to the way things should be.

I have to pause here and tell you, I never dreamed this basic struggle of Good vs Evil, the Light Souls against the Dark Souls could be playing out in a small mining town in the Sonoran Desert in this twenty first century. I mean, if this had been Tombstone, perhaps, a hundred and thirty years ago where the Bad were running amok and you didn't know if the lawmen were the good or the bad, then, I'd believe you. But I really, really thought things were different now. Well, duh! I'm fifty-eight years old and you can call me naive, for I never would have bet things were this bad here.

Our group has been told by others that they've tried to change things, and sorry, it doesn't change. They've 'been there-done that'! I know. I know: it's hard to change things when a group of Newcomers swoop into town and decide to 'clean it up'. The Old School folks don't especially relish a band of Do-Gooders changing things. But we're going to give it a shot. We certainly don't aim to piss off the locals, those good law abiding folks who have had to live with such a slimey underbelly of fear and lawlessness all these years. But I really feel that this little band of "Do-Gooders" might just change things after all and bring about some change. It's going to take a lot of work, but I'll keep blogging on now and then about this group and let you know if we pass or fail.

Unexpected Surprise

We wanted our Boonie trip into the desert to be a special on Saturday. My niece, Lavon and her husband, Dan were visiting from Vermont and we wanted to take them and their family into the desert and show them an extra special day. Dan had never visited Arizona before and this trip was a fast one: arrive on Thursday and depart on Monday, so the one day Boonie trip had to show him a good time!

We departed for Battle Axe Mountain around eleven, in two cars. I was driving the Ford Explorer with half the crew and Bill took Dan, Lavon and Al in the FJ Cruiser. We were armed with rock hammers, canvas collection bags, binoculars, guidebooks on birds and wildflowers and rocks, cameras, ice chests with drinks and cheese and deviled eggs and snacks galore. Oh yeah, lots of 15 and 45 sunscreen too. The weather was perfect: mid-eighties, no clouds and the wind, light, if any.

Last Wednesday, Bill and I scouted out Battle Axe as a likely spot. As soon as we spotted the carpets of golden poppies blooming up its flank, we knew that "THIS" was the spot we'd bring Dan and Lavon and the girls to see a springtime Sonora desert. Dan was anxious to try his hand at gold panning and in the canyon at the bottom of the mountain was still a gurgling brook just waiting for the gold pan.

It took a bit of an effort to get both cars as far as the canyon. Fact is, there is a nasty boulder that needs to be straddled some half mile shy of the stream. The Ford Explorer could not muster up enough clearance to giddy-up over it, so after some manuvering, which involved watching my poor faithful car almost hung high center, Bill climbed in it while Al, Glo, Dan, Lavon, Kim and I pushed on the hood (the youngest girl, Jenny, was busy holding Chuy) and it finally eased backward off the rock. Bill backed it into a clearing, we unloaded the picnic goodies and transferred them into the Cruiser, then half of us hoofed it the rest of the way to the clearing for the picnic. No, I'm sorry, I forgot to take pictures of the almost stuck car. I remembered that after we'd gotten it free.

On the walk down the streambed, though, Glo and I stopped frequently to take pictures of the towering cliffs and mountains above us. They were beautiful besides the poppies, the sun was hitting the red rocks just perfectly. Towards the top of Battle Axe, nearly four hundred feet above, there were some unusual cactus formations (I thought) but couldn't think what kind of curly cue cactus they might be. As we reached the picnic place, we ran into a couple on four wheelers and they asked us if we'd seen the bighorn sheep. Really? Where? They pointed to the top of the mountain. What I had thought was curlycued cactus was the horns of a bighorn sheep peering over the edge at us. We grabbed the binoculars and spotted nine of them. They were busy checking us out just as were were busy getting a look at them.

They spent the next hour or so scrambling all over the peak. They were a lot more mobile on it than I would ever be! We took movies and pictures of them. Bill even climbed the neighboring bluff and got a better 'birds eye' view of them with his camera. So that's the pictures I'm including here.

I would never have guessed we would find such a surprise for our Vermont relatives. If we'd planned it, we wouldn't have found them. So it's really the unexpected that makes the best surprises!

Wasting Time

Way back in November, I wrote a blog about my future retirement entitled "Butt Sitting" and what I expected to be doing (or not) in my upcoming months once we officially retired. At the time, I was so wound up with work and obligations, any down time appeared to be a breath of fresh air. Since January, I have gotten very used to time, almost at times, an abundance of time and I sincerely hope I am not frittering away any of it. But it's given me a new perspective on time. (It wasn't that long ago that my friend Pam and I were commiserating with each other that the one thing we longed for was 'more time'!)

In the past two years, I have neglected my little shirt business SOMETHING FISHY just dreadfully. I let my inventory of tropical print shirts get down to something like six. Last year I think I only made five. And this was down from my 'good years' of the sideline business of close to a hundred and twenty a year. (Yeah, I was cranking them out in my 'spare time'!) With more time on my hands, I have returned to the peace and calmness of the sewing machine and have produced ten so far in the last month. I have set up a tiny little sewing nook in the basement, right next to the macaws' cages, and set myself in there for a few hours every few days and voila! SOMETHING FISHY's inventory is growing. I wanted to explore the possibilities of selling on EBay so last night I listed my first shirt. It took me close to two hours to figure out how to do it (properly) and get all my data correct. So, time well spent? We'll see.

And then, of course, I've been trying to blog a lot more than I was while I was working but that takes time too. Sometimes, I worry that I'm not blogging enough. I know there are a few you faithful readers that check on me daily and I regret to say I am only blogging not even every other day. But some days... there's just nuthin' to say, is there? So I feel guilty if I'm not blogging enough, but also guilty if I'm sitting at the computer every night writing and not sitting and socializing with Bill. (Hmmm, cloning might be good....)

Today on the news there was another story about the Virtual Lives websites on the Internet. I know (virtually) nothing about these, save what I hear. But it do sound disturbing! Folks create a character for themselves (like writing a novel) and then interact somehow with other folks who are also re-creating virtual lives for themselves. They end up marrying (so do they have virtual children???!!) or messing around and it sounds like a great deal of gratuitous sex is involved too. They pay each other real money for weddings and sex and whatever else they dish up. Do they have to spend real money for groceries too? And does their gas cost $3.00 or more a gallon? Or don't they worry about those sorts of things? I'm curious, however, not that curious that I want to log in to see what's going on. From the person they interviewed on the tv this morning, it sounds like the real world problem of folding laundry and washing the dinner dishes, in fact, even making dinner, has fallen into the cracks while the person was busy with their virtual life.

Now, I don't know about you, but my own life in both the before and after retirement phase has been busy enough and full enough that I certainly don't need a made-up one. But maybe some folks just have more 'time' than the rest of us!

P.S. The picture I posted is of the emergence of the wildflowers in the desert. Yesterday, we made time and and took a drive into the boonies and found these bluffs liberally sprinkled with golden yellow California poppies. I couldn't resist! Wait until the lupine (bluebonnets) join them in a few weeks. Just gorgeous!

Tribute

His name was Cody. He was eighteen years old. He lived in the neighboring community of Globe, another small mining town deep in the Superstition Wilderness. He was a high school senior. He had a job at the local Wendy's drive-in. He had a girl friend and the rest of his life ahead of him. He drove a small car and lost control of it on top of the mountain one Saturday night returning from Phoenix. His car swerved across the road and hit a semi-tractor truck and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

It's not a new story. It's a story that unfortunately gets retold each year in our communities across this land and fills us with sorrow. Cody's story, however, was still unfolding two weeks after the accident that took his life.

On Saturday afternoon, his friends and co-workers got together to honor his memory by holding a car wash and bake sale at the Wendy's where he was the cook. They wore bright red tee shirts with his picture emblazoned across the front, along with his name and his birth date and date he passed. High school kids manned buckets and hoses to wash cars against one wall of the Wendy's. Smaller kids held posters and signs on Highway 60 letting passersby know a car wash benefit was in progress. A teenaged boy sold nachos and hotdogs at the entrance to Wendy's. Someone's mother sat at a long table inside which was covered with homemade baked goods for sale. Another poster inside the Wendy's told Cody's story and there was a picture on the wall with him smiling down at his friends. A small donation jar stood on the counter where folks gave their orders.

The feeling in that place was alive with their love of the boy. Bill and I stopped in for a mid-afternoon lunch and were overwhelmed with the depth of humanity coming from all those red tee shirted clad folks. I read the poster and felt like bursting into tears. Sombody had done a great job summing up the life of this young man and sharing it with total strangers. While we stood and waited for our sandwiches to be made, the lights in the dining room shut off. Bill and I looked at each other, but said nothing. The electricity in the kitchen still hummed and workers went about their business. In less than a minute, the dining room lights flicked back on. We waited a few more minutes. Once again, the dining room lights flicked off. A manager, standing at the counter, turned and muttered something and went to the backroom. A few seconds later, the lights came back on.

Bill turned to me and raised his eyebrows. "You think he's here?"

I nodded. "He sure appears to be."

Our sandwiches came and we took them into the dining room and sat down. Midway through them, the lights went off again. The mother who was selling the bake goods looked up at another red shirted "Cody" volunteer lady who just entered. "That da fourth time dim lights go off!" she shouted. Then she nodded emphatically and crossed herself.

I met Bill's eyes. "Others know he's here too, don't they? They're not afraid to acknowledge it, are they?"

"He sure is. He must be real impressed with how many people turned out for the benefit."

"When he was alive, I wonder if he knew how many people loved him?" I asked. "This is pretty impressive."

We finished our meal and went outside. A young boy stood at one end of the Wendy's, wagging his sign about the car wash. We nodded that we were going to get in line to get one. His face burst into a jubilant grin. We parked and walked over to a girl and young man collecting money for the car wash. As Bill jammed a twenty into the donation jar, I asked them, "You folks must have loved your friend a great deal."

The girl nodded. "We sure did. He was just the Best!"

I turned away, my eyes tearing up once again. I think he knew. I'm fairly sure he was there in spirit and just tickled by the outpouring of affection shown by his friends and co-workers. I hope he knew, before he passed, how important he was in his community. But if he didn't know it then, he surely knows it now, after the tribute his friends put on for him in Globe on Saturday.

The Back of Beyond

We journeyed into nowhere...desolation...a landscape of natural delights and spiraling jagged mountains and hillsides of slippery stone today. No place we traveled was the same on one side of the mountain as it was on the other. There were white rocks in one gully; ruby red rocks glistening from a cliffside on the next turn; full sandstone yellowy formations in a further valley; slope after slope of regimented saguaro forests; and one burbling stream after another to ford with the intrepid Cruiser. We had ourselves "A Day!"

Glo and Al came up from Casa Grande for this foray into the desert outback and Chuy accompanied us, of course. We told Bill to lead us where he wanted to go, we were glad to follow. Bill thought the back side of Picket Post would be a good place to try. He was thinking of a road he'd seen disappear in that direction but never got to follow, so that's where we headed It turned out to the Best of the Best! (so far, at least!) We stopped first at some lichen rocks erupting from the earth into big crumbling sections. They looked like big loaves of bread that hadn't been kneaded well and turned into crumbs when taken out of the pan. They were sturdier than just crumbs, however, and allowed themselves to be climbed and Bill got all the way to the top of the highest peak and took some wide angle shots of the mountains looking back toward Superior. We picked up chunks of rose quartz that was hiding under the brown crusty outside of the rocks (again, like good white bread hiding under an overbacked crust... was I hungry or what?), and we ended up picking up a surprisingly good assortment of rocks. But then Bill could see the road went farther west, so we piled into the Cruiser and continued on.

We traveled up one mountain and skittered and chattered our way down the other side, then ford streams and lumph over boulders and rocks in the streambed. Then we'd start winding our way up the next mountain. On one of those ascents, we moved aside for four ATV's to come past. We asked the leader about the road they'd taken and he said at the next fork, they'd gone left and run out of road. He thought the way to the right was clear. Then he looked longingly at Bill's Cruiser. "I've got one just like yours," he grinned abashed. "But my wife won't let me take it off road." Bill smiled back sympathetically, "That's what they're made for."

At the top of the next mountain, we stopped to take more pictures. We could have been perched on top of the world, we had the whole Superstition Wilderness scattered out before us. You could even see the Weaver's Needle twenty or thirty miles away standing sentinel. As we gathered back into the car, Bill's phone rang. It was startling to get a phone call in the so-called "middle of nowhere". It was our friend, Pam, calling from Dillon Beach. We started jabbering away to her, trying to tell her how gorgeous the view was right from there. And it was equally hard to try and remember that it's still winter and raining in Dillon Beach when it was sunny (though chilly, yes it was!) in Arizona. I couldn't help but feel the wee bit apologetic for having things be so lovely for us.

So that's why I wanted to send this picture today and tell you folks, whereever you are!, that it's just Ducky here in Arizona. And we're having a really lovely time even if we miss you folks at home. And if I haven't met you yet, then you'd better book yourselves a trip to Arizona, for this is just the best place I've had fun in for a coon's age! Look at what you're missing!

Chuy Finds His Beach

Well, it took some doing. Ever since we removed the puppy from his natural beach environment six weeks ago, Chuy has been bereft of his beach. We told him he'd find it again in the summer when we returned. But he kept looking for his old familiar places and yesterday, he appeared to find it. There was no seaweed and no little boys to play with but Chuy was in his element.

On the southeast side of Picket Post Mountain we found a burbling mountain stream, shooting up over boulders and creating raceways and calm ponds. It was surrounded with sheer rock walls on the canyons and here and there were scattered just enough yucca and desert spoon that it looked like a movie setting. Chuy plunged right in!

He began biting at the mini-rapids that swooped past his mouth, trying to capture the rushing water. He picked up sticks with his mouth and watched them float down the stream. Several times he stuck his nose completely underwater and began digging furiously. I told Bill maybe he was trying his own version of panning for gold. Within twenty minutes, we had ourselves a thoroughly wet, thoroughly exhausted desert puppy.

I have never had the opportunity to see this much water in such an arid place. Everywhere we go up here in the mountains there are streams and rivulets and running water everywhere. I thoroughly expect it to be one of the best wildflower seasons ever. Guess I'd better get the I.D. books to classify them. But as for Chuy, he's finding out the desert may be the second best place to find a good beach. If only the little boys were here for him to play with...!