In the shadow of the Sandia Mountains, the County Line Barbecue is packed this Friday night.
The entertainment tonight comes from the “Radiators”, who are singing and swinging with an upright bass, mandolin, lead guitar and vocalist, playing originals and top 40 hits.
The County Line has Texas longhorns hung on its walls, pictures of cowboys and horses in every dining room, and acoustic guitars signed by musicians who have played here since it opened. The men’s bathroom has a poster with pinups of the 50’s that is nostalgic for guys over ninety. There is an unusual horseshoe chair you can sit in for luck,and, in the front entry of the restaurant, a “Love Testing Machine.”
Barbecue and blues blend well, and, even though their marriage has been tempestuous, they could take the ” Love Machine ” all the way to the Moon.
Next visit, the house ribs will be a must try.
Good ribs, baked beans, cole slaw, cornbread and potato salad all help chase the blues away, and keep them at bay.
The National Anthem is one of the most played songs in America. If you have played in school bands, military bands, marching bands, or are a musician who has performed at any sporting or public event, you have played the familiar melody since you were very young.
In America, individualism is worshiped, but so is big Government.
After the National Anthem, the color guard marches off the putting green and we golfers all find our assigned golf carts and roll out for a shotgun start to the golf tournament.
This golf tournament is a fundraiser for Lifequest, a group that mentors juveniles locked up in jail, believing that the Bible and good mentors will keep juveniles from going back to jail after they serve their time and are released.
Regardless of our place on any line, we know mistakes are made and not every child has a good home to come from, or a good home to go back too.
Listening to the National Anthem, I know my battle line in the sand.
If it wasn’t for mistakes, we wouldn’t be human, and, politician’s sons and daughters need to be on the front lines of any war their parents start.
At the entry to the Fountain Hills Park are a number of statues, some seated on benches, some standing, all with commemorative plaques and praising comments. The figures cast shadows, some longer than others. Most of the statues are of men and most have been Presidents of the United States.
Presidents, as we know from watching those we have voted for, have lots of good speechwriters, lots of philosophy and confidence.They enter office with one mindset and leave with another. Leading the United States, on a day to day basis, is like trying to keep water in a glass that keeps springing holes. You enter office believing you can benefit the country knowing that half the voters believe you are aren’t worth the time of day. Presidents leave office hoping they didn’t have to deal with war, a disastrous Depression, or any number of calamities that come upon a nation. You are glad, when your term is up, to let someone else drive the stagecoach.
This morning Lincoln and Reagan look like old friends and it would be revealing to sit on a bench on a moonlit night listening to their stories about unruly cabinet members, hostile Congressmen and women, an unrelenting negative press, and military misadventures.
There are those who would like to cart these two men and their memories away, store them in a warehouse providing props to the movie industry,
We expect far too much from our Presidents, and our Government.
This country will rise and fall on the efforts of us who will never have a statue of ourselves in a park..
Escaping Chicago in the winter months, Greg and Judy stay in Fountain Hills, Arizona and perform every Saturday night at a close to their house Fountain Hills eatery. They are joined tonight by a friend from Seattle, Tom Wakeling, who plays bass with Lee Konitz and likes to jam with Greg and Judy when he has the opportunity.
The restaurant is full and Chadd, a student of Greg’s, and my teacher, drove us over from Albuquerque to enjoy Greg, Judy and Tom’s performance. It is one thing to talk about jazz, but the best learning comes by listening to players who know how the music is supposed to be done.
The trio plays standards out of the Great American Songbook, takes requests, and play tight, yet loose, in this small unpretentious Italian restaurant.
The accumulated professional years,of these three, nears a hundred. How do you put a value on an art that vanishes in the air after it is played? They never play the same song the same way.
Even better, than the music tonight ,is going out for an after closing bite to eat with the gang after instruments have been packed away and the restaurant/bar shuts down for the night.
Jazz musicians, musical God’s that they are, still eat the same kind of food the rest of us do.
Henry David Thoreau got tired of his rat race in the 1800’s and retreated to Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts to live a simpler life.
As a transcendentalist, he believed getting close to nature would get him closer to truth, wisdom, God, and peace. He built himself a little cabin on Walden pond, took daily walks, observed nature, documented his thoughts and daily chores in a book he called ” Walden, or Life in the Woods. ”
My road trip mission is to help Chip and Lori get a start on their simpler life in the middle of Nowhere, in Arizona, not far from Saint John.
With 80% of Americans living in cities these days, the things you can’t do, in a free country, are astounding.
The 20% of Americans who live outside city limits are an independent breed.These folks move to a different drummer, value individual liberty, work, helping your neighbors, keeping government at bay, They used to be everywhere, be your neighbors, go to your church, run for office. Now, they are scurrying out of the city as quick as they can get their backpacks together.
When all Hell breaks loose, do you really want to live in a city, anywhere?
Henry David Thoreau’s book is still resonating, a hundred and fifty years later.
I’ve heard, though, that even Henry would sneak back to town to have dinner with sympathetic readers and talk shop with Ralph Waldo Emerson over a glass of wine and a big piece of the widow Smith’s award winning Angel Food cake.
Sometimes you just don’t know what you are missing till you try something else.
Pat has been persistently trying to move Scott to a DSLR for several years. ” I Phone cameras are good for what they are, ” he has always maintained, ” but cell phones make telephone calls and get you on the net. If you want good pictures you got to get better equipment. ”
My DSLR stuff has been collecting dust, but, on this trip, Scott has taken his Nikon DSLR out of its case and taken a few photos.
The entire process is like discovering that you can eat soup with a fork, if you like, but it is easier and less messy to use a spoon.
So, here are a few photos taken with the Nikon.
I like them and hope Pat likes them too.
Next trip, there will be substantially more of them.
However, I’m not ready to toss out my fork.
The materials employed to make these mobile constructions are exquisitely simple – wire, fishing line, paper mache, paint.
One touch of one hummingbird and all of them are flying, fearless in space, reminding me of hummingbirds in the Costa Rican Monteverde Rain Forest, reminding me of a hummingbird in South Fork, Colorado, reminding me of hummingbird’s gravitating to a feeder on brother Alan’s back porch overlooking the Palo Duro Canyon in Texas.
These hand made hummingbird’s in a Santo Domingo art gallery, all dance in front of me, in an orbiting circle, set in motion by a little tap by my right hand forefinger.
Setting things in motion is what us humans do, instinctively, all the time.
My right forefinger, on my laptop mouse, starts this post’s video in motion too, with a slight gentle left click..
The front and back metal gates to the massive Cathedral, in the center of the Zona Colonia, are not four hundred years old. They look that old, however, and the faces sculpted unto them look eternal and primordial.
There are the faces of Luke, Mark, Matthew and John from the Bible. There are faces that show basic human emotions that continue, regardless of time and place. There are insignia of the Spanish Crown, familial and political dynasties. The weathered corroded faces remind me of Gothic figures peering down from old churches in Europe telling us we are not perfect and will be rewarded for our sins in terrible ways I cannot imagine, even in my most harrowing of dreams.
Each art form tries to convey human emotions with its own materials and methods.
Music uses sound to suggest romantic interludes, fierce battles, fear invoking scenes. Art uses color and line to show the three dimensional world on two dimensional surfaces. Sculpture, as done by old masters, uses clay, bronze, marble or stone to show us who we are and who we should be. These weathered faces on the gates convey anger, remorse, pain, love, tenderness, regret, hope, betrayal.
These faces draw me closer instead of pushing me away.
I would like them much better if one of these guys was laughing.
Even back then, people working on this Cathedral liked a good joke, even if it’s telling sometimes got them locked up in the dungeon for a few nights with a hundred lashes and not even a pot to pee in.
Just off Colon Plaza, straight east past the Pizzerella pizza parlor, Juan Voight shows up to work every day.
He says he has been an artist since he was a little boy, teaches at the college just behind his little outdoor work space, and makes his living as a full time artist. He works deliberate. Watercolors demand precision, a good sense not to let the brush stay too long in one place, be too wet or have too much color in the bristles. Watercolors can be quirky, like water itself.
Juan’s items for sale include originals, but, also popular, are postcards he runs off in series of 100 and sells three for $10.00 U.S. His prints are of scenes one sees in the Zona Colonia – the Cathedral, the Plaza Espana, the Parque Colon, the Alcazar de Don Colon.
Juan remembers me from an earlier conversation and takes the time to make me a special carrying pocket for my postcards, carefully recording his name and instagram gallery url on the outside.
I remember the studios of Carlos Paez Vilaro, the Uruguay artist ,and Roberto Ibarra, in Montevideo, and Ann’s studio in Granada, Nicaragua, and my mother’s studio in the downstairs of our home in Albuquerque, paintings in all stages of completion hanging on walls till they were shipped to competitions or hung in galleries.
I remember the Cerulean Gallery in Amarillo, Texas.
I remember street art everywhere.
Juan’s works are a combination of creative spirit tempered by the hands of a craftsman..
The medium you work in makes demands and determines your process and product.
Scotttreks postcards average two hundred words each.
You can’t say too much in two hundred words,but you never want to say too little.
According to one of my first guides, Alberto, this Godfather Street is where parts of the movie ” Godfather ” were filmed.
Alberto, who is missing one leg, but transports quickly, even with crutches,took me on a tour the other day to the Plaza Espana, which is close, and the Alcazar de Don Colon.
This Godfather street, like the famous Lombard Street in San Francisco, is already famous. We watch enough movies that movie streets become even more recognizable than the streets in our town.
This street is a tough walk, uphill, but not as tough as some. The little multicolored house fronts look traditionally Caribbean and a wine bottle stuck in one of the pedestrian rails looks like a good solution to sticking the bottle in your back pocket, or purse, or pitching in onto the street below.
The Godfather street this Monday afternoon is not busy. People at the bottom and top stand on corners to visit and a horse and carriage whisk past me as I snap a few mementos for Scotttreks.
This is a place the Godfather would have hung out, drinking and smoking a fine cigar while deciding the direction his crime organization was going to go.
Even in crime, you have to always be concerned with competition.
Recent Comments