For the Greater Good

The Land Exchange Bill is stalled in the Senate and it doesn't look like anyone can bring about a resolution for Resolution Copper before the new administration comes in. For all of the questions and strife it has caused for some in this tiny town of Superior, one thing is clear. Superior and its residents NEED this copper mine. They're not going to survive without it. Any why they are not getting it, is not clear.

What is CLEAR is that a lot of hanky panky and Big Money is going on behind closed doors regarding the legislation that could make this new copper mine a reality. Three years ago, Arizona's Governor Napolitano was for this bill. Now, she's distanced herself to no help at all. And why would that be? Since if the mine goes through, the fiscal impact on Arizona's economy would be between 600 and 800 million a year, for upwards of sixy years. Isn't that saying something in this economy that's bordering on Depression when jobs, - any jobs - are scarce to come by? Wouldn't anybody who is leading a state be proud to sponsor some legislation that would bring those kinds of Buckos into their state's coffers? Guess not.

Why not? Well... evidently, personal gains have gotten in the way. There's an environmental bigshot, with Big Money (he's married to a DuPont... and you know what? I've NEVER been a Jeff Gordon fan!) who has put up over a quarter of a million dollars the past two years to politicos to defeat this proposed land exchange that would make the copper mine a reality. The environmental bigshot is Bill Roe and he is highly regarded in Arizona's environmental community, like the Nature Conservancy. He has donated money to Janet Napolitano's PAC groups and others as well as big donations to Obama's elections and the Democratic Party. The man is determined to stop the mine. He claims he only wants Resolution Copper to add another choice bit of land to the bill, that along the San Pedro River near San Manuel. That's what he claims. But Resolution Copper doesn't own the land Mr. Roe is interested in having. It is owned by BHP that owns part of Resolution Copper but they are not a bit interested in taking that out of their pocket to make the Resolution Copper mine a reality. And why should they be? It sounds like political blackmail from where I am.

At first, I have to admit, I wasn't Gung Ho for the copper mine to move into this town. I've been worried about water quality and the fact of a mine going in two miles down that might implode the mountain. But there's a heap of technical stuff I don't understand and won't live long enough to begin to understand. So I have to hope that the Right Things will prevail to mean there won't be a huge environmental disaster around here. What is Paramount right now is what is the Greater Good? I believe it is for the young families around Superior and Pinal and Gila counties that don't have jobs or a good enough job to provide for their livelihoods. It's for this super little mining town of Superior that is hanging on by her darned fingernails as she slowly slips away brick by brick because there isn't enough business to sustain business in what could be a bustling little town.

What I'm saying is this: It's time for the politicians to stop thinking of their damned personal gain and start thinking about their constituency and get the Lead Out and get this bill moving through the Senate and House again, - before this next Administration starts all over again - and make this Land Exchange a reality. Forget the dealings of these "do-gooders" Environmentalists and these politicians who aren't looking out for anybody but themselves and do something for this corner of Arizona. We need this mine. AND WE NEED IT NOW!

Message Received

The evening the kids left for Dillon Beach, I retired early, settling down in bed at seven with a book and my bad cold. I left Bill and the puppy in the front room watching TV. Tad and Erin departed at three that morning, saying they hoped to get as far as Bakersfield or Los Banos to spend the night before going on to Dillon Beach the next day. (It's a sixteen to eighteen hour drive from here to the beach, for those that don't know. One extra long day in the car.) Erin promised she'd call when they got home, so I wasn't expecting a call that evening.

Earlier in the week, Bill had changed the ringtone on his cell phone. All summer long he's been having "In The Summertime" playing whenever someone calls in. But this week, he'd gone through a lengthy process and was having it play Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldiers". I guess because it put us in the mood of Caribbean vacations. We've always taken our trips in October and November and even though we're not traveling this year, it's that right time to do it, you know?

Okay, so now I've set the scene for you: I'm in the far bedroom down the hall dozing over my book (it's real boring and I should just put it down and start something else, but I'm determined in my old age to finish every book I start - something I never did when I was younger and working) and Bill and Chuy are in the front room watching C.S.I. when all of a sudden, the television and satellite go blank. Bill looks at the TV wondering what happened when the stereo next to his couch lights up and the song "Buffalo Soldiers" wafts out. The song plays a few bars and Bob Marley's voice fills the room when just as suddenly, it turns off and the TV magically comes back on with Bill's show on it.

Bill came in to tell me about it. "You're not going to believe this..." He told me the story.

"Was it a message from your dad?" I asked. Whenever we experience unexplained electrical disturbances we tend to think it's a Sign from the Other Side that our loved ones are trying to get us a message.

"If it was, I don't know what They're trying to say," Bill shrugged. "That They're aware I changed my ring tone? Why should that matter?"

"I don't know either." But I shivered. His story was "cweepin' me out!" as Sage would say.

Not ten minutes later, the land line phone rang. It was Erin. She sounded exhausted but happy. Tad had driven them home in one fell swoop. They'd been home for an hour or so but she wanted me to know they were fine.

I hung up, considering. Was Bill's message from his dad who wanted Bill to know Tad had arrived home safely? It was one way of getting us to take notice. Or was it just one of those unexplainable Freaky Things that happen now and then? But why "Buffalo Soldiers"? I prefer to think we had a Sign from the Other Side.

Behind The Times

Sorry for the long delay in Blogging. It feels as though I've been stuck in slow hardening concrete while I've waited for the Writing Muse to strike me. But she hasn't dealt any blows lately, so I thought I'd better write something anyway.

We've had a fun visit with our son, Tad and his new wife, Erin and the effervescent three year old Ronnie. It was a week of Fun and Activities but Ronnie left us with a souvenir of a dandy cold so I'm still blowing and hacking. That's part of the charm of living with a Preschooler, a new cold or flu symptom monthly. When our kids were small, we tended to have one Sickie at least every two weeks. It took roughly ten days to feel well again and in that four day window, another bug would bite and another kid (or parent) would go Down For The Count. My dad used to chide me for not taking enough vitamins to ward off the frequent colds, but I didn't listen then. Well, I do listen now and Bill and I take enough Vitamins to build a small wall daily, but still that wasn't enough against the California Cold Ronnie brought to us. HA!

So days are chugging along here, now that the election is behind us and Thanksgiving and Christmas are looming. There's a Toy Run (motorcycles) going on in Globe, Miami and Superior today to benefit seven families for the holidays who have fallen on Hard Times. Santa driving a side car with a winsome maid just zoomed up our street for the first stop of the Run (a local bar). So that's a Sign of the Times. Bill and I weren't participating in that ride for our local Free Dump Day is going on out at the dump and we were volunteering for that instead. As it is, I'm staying indoors with my cough and he went out in the blustery thirty m.p.h. winds blowing off Apache Leap on this not cold but thoroughly Windy November day. My neighbor came out and told me, "You know, in Southern California, they have the Santa Ana winds. Well, they are mild in comparison to ours. These are known as the Apache Winds and the Apaches are much fiercer than Santa Ana." So there! Definitive proof it's worse here! (But thank God, no fires for us here in AZ.)

And I'm sewing like mad, trying to get enough shirts made for a craft sale my sister and I are doing in Florence in three weeks. So every spare moment I have, I'm huddled over the sewing machine or cutting out another shirt. I watched Ronnie one afternoon last week while his folks were out playing golf.

"What are you doing, Grandma?" he asked.

"I'm cutting out a shirt for you, Ronnie. I thought I'd sew you a shirt," I answered.

"I don't want a shirt." (Typical Three Year old.)

He left and returned in a few minutes. "What are you making, Grandma?"

"I'm making you a shirt, Ronnie," I answered. "The same shirt I was working on a few minutes ago."

"Well, I'm still not going to wear it!" He turned and went back to his toy trucks.

"Well, I'm still going to make it!" I countered.

That's it from this end. When I quit coughing so much, I swear I'll Blog more.

Ghostly Doings

Happy Halloween, Everybody! Chuy is all dressed up for Trick or Treating but would prefer the "treats" rather than the "trick" of donning one of Mom's five costumes she's carting around.

I haven't seen my Requisite Ghost yet for the season but I got a dandy story the other night. The town council has moved into the old CAAG building downtown. In its heyday, the two story building was used as a barrroom/bordello/hotel (I guess you take your pick) and numerous ghost stories abound. We attended a night meeting there this week and when we left, I asked one of the people who work there if they'd had anything to report in the ghostly realm.

They had. They said doors that supposedly were left unlocked would mysteriously lock, day or night. Or vice versa, doors that were locked were found to be unlocked. One person said that she'd heard somebody using the bathroom one night when she was there alone. It bothered her and she stood in the hall for several moments watching a shadow move under the door from the lit up bathroom. She even heard the toilet fixture creak as when somebody sat down on it. Finally, she screwed up her courage and opened the unlocked door, only to find an empty room. (I think I'd be fleeing into the night, vowing, "Never again!" if I'd had that experience!)

The most amazing story I got so far was that a team of Ghosthunters had come up from the Valley to study the building. They'd been hearing the stories and wanted to see for themselves what was going on. It was daytime and they talked to the current staff of the building and went over it with their digital equipment trying to find EVP's or energy spots. When they finished for the day, they stood across the street and took some pictures of the building. When they got back and studied what they got, they were in for a suprise!

Standing in the doorway of the building, looking directly at them across the street, as though asking them what their business was, was a small statured Hispanic woman, dressed in a long black dress, a high black lace collar framing her neck, much as would be worn at the turn of the century. Is this the woman who walks the floors of the CAAG building and inhabits the toilet and messes with the locks? For it must be her building after all, if she has been here for a hundred years or more.

Tonight, the town has a big Halloween parade. Folks will park on Main Street and decorate their trunks and dispense candy treats to the little folks who dress up and Trick or Treat on the street. We're going and I'm donning a Mardi Gras mask of feathers and hand out goodies. But I'm also going to make it a special point at some time in the evening to go across the street from City Hall and snap a picture of this old building. Then when I get home, I'm hoping for a really ghostly 'treat'!

Life in a Small Town

The Circle K store down on Hwy. 60 was robbed at gun point last week. It was at midnight and done by two local residents of the town. The idea of this is leaving the brunt of this town's residents cold!

During the past three years, the town has beefed up its little police force and enacted a co-operation with the Pinal County's Sheriff office when they needed help. But we haven't had any armed robberies during that time.

Fortunately for the town, our police arrested the two men in their twenties who 'did the deed'. Their names were posted in the paper for everybody and their brother to see. According to some of the older residents, that's a First too. Normally, when somebody did something wrong, especially if it was a Somebody of Note who was related to other Notable Somebodies, the name(s) of the accused would never make the paper. So it appears we're headed in the right direction, but...

On the other hand, an armed robbery was committed in our town last week! Us townspeople had better do something to help stop this if we don't want to see things change drastically for the worse. We have let our Crime Free Superior meetings lapse while we pursued other interests: the elections, the Trash Committee, recycling, the Christmas program for all the children, toy runs for underpriveledged families. There's a whole host of THINGS the lot of us are working on to make this town a better place for ALL the citizens. But... an armed robbery was committed here last week and it looks to me like we should and could be doing something better to assure it's not going to happen again.

Life in a Mining Town

Sometimes, it is easy to forget that Superior is a Mining Town. Though the true copper mine closed up close to forty years ago, the people that live here still regard themselves as miners. It's like fishing, once a fisherman always a fisherman. So are the miners. Once a miner... etc. Currently, Resolution Copper which bought the old Magma Copper Mine is doing reclamation on the old site just west of town, in preparation for getting the land exchange through Congress for the new site east of town up near Apache Leap. So mining activities go on in this town, even though for the most part, townspeople like me aren't that aware of all the mining activity that is occurring. Until last week, that is...

On Monday, we heard and felt a big boom of blasting in the morning. It reminded us that yes, we do live in a mining town. On Tuesday, Bill and I were sitting in the office working at the computers when another blast boomed out. It sounded like one of our earthquakes in California.

Chuy was laying in the hallway and looked up, tense and worried. "It's okay, Chu!" I reassured him. "You livin' in a mining town now, Dog."

He remained halfway up on his haunches, not ready to resume his nap. What was wrong with his people that they hadn't bolted out of the house? Wasn't that what Sane Folks would do?

"Go back to sleep, Chuy," Bill ordered. "You're okay."

Down in the basement, I heard the macaws flutter around and squawk. They were thinking earthquake too. They're really good earthquake predictors, and usually give me about a thirty seconds heads up. But this had thrown them for a loop too. No early warning sound waves for them this time.

We went back to work and didn't think anything about it, until a few days later. We were walking down Main Street and stopped in front of City Hall to read the notices on the bulliten board. I was curious to see a letter with Resolution Copper's letterhead. Seems on that Tuesday that Chuy was so concerned with the noisy blasting, a forty pound chunk of rock became airborne and traveled twelve hundred feet before crashing through a roof of a house on the north side of town. Though the house was occupied, fortunately the person escaped injury. Resolution was investigating the accident as were folks from the Federal Mining Safety office so they were letting Chuy and the other townspeople know that until the investigation was complete, blasting would be discontinued for the time being.

Crap! Never in my wildest dreams would I have worried about an errant rock blown across town from the mine to come crashing through my roof! What a wake up call that would be. No wonder Chuy and the birds were worried! They had already assumed the Worst Possible Situation. Bill said the rock would be bad enough, but what if you had your attic stuffed with junk and odds and ends of furniture? Then it would become a possible instrument of doom too. I think our attic is relatively empty. Bill goes up there occasionally to crawl around and fix stuff. But it gives me something else to think about.

On the bright side, however, we do live south of Main Street. The mine is located north of it. There'd be a few more rows of homes before rocks would rain down. But wait until they start blasting out the new underground mine near Apache Leap. We live right under the shadow of the Leap, so I've got something else to keep me awake at night. HA!

A Room With Color

Since we lived in a mobile home for thirty-five years with wood paneling, when we moved into this house in Superior with its totally white painted walls, I thought I was in heaven. I loved the isolation it brought to my furnishings, colors would stand out, everything always looked 'clean'. Of course, the decorating magazines and books I've been picking up this year to help me 'finish' the decorating were touting color on the walls, banishing the white painted walls, that 'sterile' look.

I even had a discussion (argument) with a younger friend, Jean-Marie, this summer about my white painted walls. She not only espouses color on the walls, she even touts two color walls, the more the merrier, in her book. White walls, she stated, were passe and it was time for me to break out some paint. Not so!, I argued. I'd lived for thirty-five years with brown wood paneling and I was enjoying the sterile white look. But it was so Yesterday!, she exclaimed, get with it.

Well, Jean-Marie, you should see the house now, or even better in a few weeks, when we finish,for Bill and I have discovered Color. We ran up to Ace last Sunday and picked up four gallons of color. We put a new acrylic painting in the living room with a Southwestern theme and the wall was begging for a tan background. So we spent forty minutes painting a white wall in the living room a creamy tan color and it looked good. And it was Easy. Bill did the cutting in with a tapered brush and let me roll on big swatches of paint with a roller. It was water clean-up and we finished in under an hour. Yeah... Easy! And boy, did it look good! And now our other walls looked.... plain.

So the next day, we broke open a can of mint green and started on the opposing wall, the fireplace sits between these two walls. We thought it was a nice light mint green, but the color must have changed a bit when they mixed it, for it turned out to a medium turquoise. Suddenly, that wall now demanded all the attention in the living room. Astounding how the walls were competing for whose attention would be drawn to it! Immediately, Bill broke open a gallon of dark persimmon we'd bought for some work outside and applied it over the fireplace. It picked up the orangey-brown tones of a new Australian print we just hung. Zowie! Now the fireplace wall was screaming for notice!

Suddenly, our living room was a riot of color and we still had another wall to do which would connect with the dining room which flowed into the kitchen... Man, this was fun! But what colors now and where would it end?

Wednesday, we headed down to Mesa and a big Lowe's store. We spent an hour and a half in deliberations (Hey, folks! This stuff takes time!!!) and bought four more gallons of paint, a lemon yellow, lime green, a grape lilac and an iridescent teal green. Now we were cooking!

We came home and entered the sun room. The sun room has big windows looking out onto Apache Leap but the back wall is a solid white. Bill drew out four big ray over the doorway into the sunroom, running big blocks of diagonal color into that wall. The first ray is a brilliant sunny yellow. It just begs you to wake up and get going! The second ray was the lime green. Once on the wall, it almost screamed chartreuse, it was so greeny-yellow. What next? A beautiful tangerine that could hold its own against the other colors. The fourth ray? Well, it's basically under the table that sets there and I'm opting for my pretty grape lilac but Bill is favoring a chocolate brown, so that hasn't been painted yet.

But get this: yesterday, we moved outside. Before I came home, Bill painted the upper and lower driveways a light green. The retaining wall on one side, next to the house, he painted a pale yellow. We thought a lime green on the opposing retaining wall would be interesting. So that was my job. And it's bright all right, but maybe throws the deserty pastels for a loop. (Meaning: It may get repainted.) While I was on that, Bill painted the front step that dark persimmon color and the front walk the pretty lighter tangerine color. Today, he painted the area around the front step the bright lemon yellow. We are lookin' Good, I tellya!

So okay, Jean-Marie! I stand corrected! Color is the way to go. I don't know how far we're going with this, but right now, we're having a really good time with it. And like Bill says, if we don't like it... we can always re-paint!