This rock, more than a stone but not a boulder, in Embudo Canyon in the Albuquerque foothills, has been moved onto the trail, by something other than wind, water or wishes.
It appears to have been lifted from a nearby mound of dirt. Where the rock used to be, on the mound, is a small hole that matches it’s size perfectly.
” Let’s move it back, ” Alex laughs.
If we move the rock back will some cosmic order be disturbed? Has moving rocks become against the law in an open space monitored by cameras and posted signs? Maybe the rock likes it here closer to the trail and doesn’t want to go back to where it was?
We keep walking quickly through this crime scene.
This situation has man’s dirty fingerprints all over it and I’m not putting things right.
Not wanting to get involved is a perfectly normal thing to do these days.
Eric, a retired Army Ranger, who patrolled streets of Iraq in full battle gear, has told me violence is a way of life and controlling or neutralizing it was once his mission as well as his livelihood.
When I talk with a man who has had to take another human life, regardless of reason, it makes me listen closer.
At Dion’s Pizza for lunch, the inscription on the man’s T shirt ,ahead of me in the order line, reads, simply, “ Deliverance of Controlled Violence. ”
I am at a loss to fully understand what this means? Is violence bad, or does it depend on what force is used to accomplish? If you use violence to subdue a violent person are you breaking the same law they are? Does this guy’s uniform legitimize his kind of violence? State violence- acceptable? Individual violence not acceptable?
I don’t know violence like Eric ,or this SWAT warrior, but I know about words.
You only need to get a few cattle to head for the barn to get the whole herd moving in the same direction.
Sweet talk and glorious words beat violence any day when you want to control, suppress, or channel human behavior.
The war for our minds is always being waged.
The LaFonda Hotel has been a fixture in Santa Fe going back decades.
The current hotel was built in 1922 on a downtown site where the first Santa Fe hotel was built in 1607 when Spaniards came to town. It is on the register of the Historic Hotels of America, was once owned by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad, and from 1926 to 1968 was one of the famous Harvey Houses that took care of train passengers riding from back East all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
In the 1900’s this was the favored haunt of trappers, soldiers,gold seekers, gamblers and politicians. The hotel, in the 1920’s, was designed by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter and John Gaw Meem and is still a favored watering hole for New Mexico state legislators and government officials who populate Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, affectionately called ” The City Different” by those of us who live in our state.
Santa Fe itself has long been a refuge for writers, artists, movie stars, and the local newspaper, ” The Santa Fe New Mexican ” is the oldest continuously operating newspaper in America. The world famous Santa Fe Opera is close by as well as Canyon Road with a gallery every other mailbox.
Up to Santa Fe for the day, Joan suggests I visit Boston. I’m thinking the Boston Tea Party Ship and Museum would be my cat’s meow.
While the LaFonda Hotel is super comfy, charming,historical, quaint, revolutions always ring my bells.
Joan misses some ambiance, on the phone, fixing who is watching her kids , and when, with an unaccommodating ex in Boston.
Fortunately for me, I haven’t fought in these kind of revolutions, and divorce and wedding bells, remind me of cannonballs whizzing by my ears.
The New Mexico Rail Runner is New Mexico’s foray into mass transit in a state that is rural except for four larger cities along the Rio Grande north to south. In 2018, our entire population was just over two million. The impetus was to spend federal money on a project that was doomed to failure from the start but gave governor Bill Richardson something to crow about besides knowing the leaders of North Korea. The project started in December 2006 and has proved critics to be astute.
” Ridership on New Mexico’s commuter rail system has tumbled so far during the past decade that legislative analysts now recommend closing or limiting service at one location -in downtown Bernalillo….. the state should not open new stations and focus on making the Rail Runner Express more competitive with those commuting by car…. ” (from Train ridership continues to fall in New Mexico, Albuquerque Journal, 2019)
” Last year, the train made 2.8 million on fares, while the cost to operate the Rail Runner was $28.4 million. Plus, the department estimates the total debt repayment over 20 years amounts to $784 million….. “(KRKE News-May7,2015)
This train, Scotttreks suspects, will be here long after Scott is gone.
Closing the Rail Runner and putting the savings into free health clinics would have been a better return on taxpayer money than subsidizing government workers who lived in Albuquerque but commuted daily to Santa Fe.
It’s hard for all of us to find a Doctor in New Mexico, especially when we need one.
Knowing this state like we do, residents don’t understand,or like, the waste and abuse of power by their elected officials, but they keep voting them back into office, decade after decade.
It takes a lot of hard and dedicated work to stay one of the poorest states in the Union.
Part of the Albuquerque Botanical Gardens ” River of Lights ” package, for $110.00 per couple, is cleansing souls.
After the train ride, those who participate, write bad memories from the past year on a piece of paper, fold the paper, and toss it into the fire. They also write positive goals for the New Year ahead, on another piece of paper, and toss them into the flames too.
This isn’t as dramatic as the burning of effigies in Cuenca, Ecuador, but it has the same catharsis..
Joan and I throw our goods and bads into the fire and head to the Shark Cafe for dinner.
A big lesson I learned in Belize, is that it is better to eat shark than get eaten by them.
The big task tomorrow is figuring out how to wrap this night up and put it under the Christmas tree.
This group belongs in cabarets in Berlin, London, Paris, after World War 2, without the smoke, SS Officers and floozies.
A first response to new music is often to discount or find faults with it because it is new. Another response is to recognize new music as new, overpraise it, and find no faults at all.
I leave criticism in my back pocket. If all music were the same, or all posts, or all websites, or all opinions, or all people, it would be a sadder world.
During one of the songs, vocalist Tina Panera, holds a hat up and sings a sad song about ” this old hat..”
I am enchanted.and drop a crisp bill into Tina’s old hat so she can buy herself a less comfortable new one.
Musicians know lots about tip jars, old hats, sad songs, war and peace, love, injustice.
You hear some great music in airports when you least expect it.
I’m getting whisked back on a time trip in the Albuquerque Sunport International Airport and I don’t even have to go through security or board a plane.
Wars experienced vicariously are much better than those you have to fight in.
Sax Rats is our saxophone quartet – two alto saxes, a tenor sax, and a baritone sax.
It is cold this evening as we load into Dan’s van, drive down, set up, begin our first music set at the Holiday Stroll in Old Town, Albuquerque.
” In college, ” Chris tells us, ” I did gigs and made $50.00 a night and was happy to get it ”
” The other day, ” he goes on, ” I did a jazz gig and still made fifty. ” he laughs.
Chadd, my saxophone teacher, has a sign on his studio door that describes a musician as a person who will work most of their life to get enough skills to play music in public, play a several thousand dollar instrument, drive a hundred miles to a gig in a six hundred dollar car, spend fifty dollars on drinks, gas, and food out of their own pocket, make seventy five dollars for the night’s gig, and wake up the next morning with a hangover and barely enough money for huevos rancheros..
I expect we will be back at the Holiday Stroll again next year.
Latest government stats say the U.S. doesn’t have any inflation.
Musician pay certainly proves their point.
Starbucks in my city are ubiquitous.
For a couple of bucks for fresh coffee I can mingle with tech savvy people who lean towards globalism, free healthcare for all, living wage checks from Uncle Sam, electric cars.
This morning, in my local Starbucks parking lot, a horned toad occupies a Toyota car hood waiting for his chauffeur to bring him a Frappe.
The truck has a locked security cover over its bed because Albuquerque is a “Breaking Bad ” city and wise people here lock their doors, always.
Crime, these days, is on all our lip’s but the conditions that breed crime here won’t be fixed soon. Crime was once a morality problem but it is now talked about as an economic/social problem. Our Mayor assures us that If we pump enough money towards our crime and homeless issues, and do better with rehabilitation, things will be hunky dory.
This little guy doesn’t nod at me as I go by. He reminds me of a green gecko I once glued to the hood of my painter’s truck, a synthetic stuccoed Mitsubishi ” Mighty Max. ” He reminds of the beautiful green gecko on the front porch screen door of my quarters in Ms. Sue’s Haiti Children’s Home.
Why, I keep wondering, do I keep running into the same things, the same people, the same ideas, in different places, across time?
I’m sure this horned toad has an answer, but this morning he doesn’t share it.
If a horned toad likes Frappes,though, I’m believing I should give them a try.
Trying to get through the day without coffee, for horned toads and humans, is fraught with disappointment.
Begun in 2014, Scotttreks is a rolladex of Scott’s time travels for those who remember what a rolladex looks like, what it was used for, how it was used, until computers sent them to antique auctions.
Hot on Scotttrek’s trail, I flip back to 2014, to Uruguay, to the beginning. Usually, things that make trips worth remembering and posting about, makes them look even better when I relive them.
In Scotttreks, little moments are everything.There is no crew to blame for screw ups, and, in President Truman’s famous words, ” The buck stops here. ”
Flipping through the last five years, like a kid eating cotton candy, it isn’t hard to see how travel,writing, and picture taking grabbed me.
Somewhere down this travel pipeline, I’ll get past putting things down on paper, leave my phone and computer at home, sip pina colada’s on a far away beach close to my little room in a modest local guesthouse feeding the landladies cats as the sun goes down into the ocean.
At my most favorite local cafe a dark skinned waitress will smile as she fills my coffee cup and suggests that I get back to writing and taking pretty pictures.
I will smile back and sweetly say, ” Tomorrow is the day. ”
Some sculptures exhibited are behind glass, others are open to visitors to peer at closely, peek at the small shadows in the creases of the faces. Some of the work is utilitarian, made to ornament balustrades and pillars. Other works stood in temples before kneeling worshipers and burning incense.
Antiquity never quite leaves us, though we try to leave it.
Conserving the past, especially if it is someone else’s, is precious.
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