There is art everywhere on Calle Conti, leaning against walls in pedestrian walkways, stacked deep in little shops along with Dominican Republic baseball caps and knick knacks. The canvases are small, medium, and large, but all seem to have been painted by the same pair of hands.
Bolo’s, on a different street,catches my eye. Outside, by the gallery’s front door are three colorful masks and browsers can see quickly that there is space inside the gallery to stand back and look at the arts and crafts sold inside.
The galleries featured artist this month, Almanzar from Haiti, has displayed a series of self portraits done in a pointillist like style, with subtle girl colors.
The black sales woman has music on, a glowing smile, and is gracious enough to let me take my time and just browse on a quiet afternoon in the middle of the week.
I do wonder about an artist that does a show of self portraits.
Why would someone you don’t know want to buy your self portrait?
Wouldn’t they really just want to buy one of themselves?
Pat reminds me to dig deeper into amber, when I’m in the Dominican Republic, highly valued by Kings and royalty way way back when we had Kings and royalty.
Tunneling deeper, I walk myself to the Museum of Ambar at 454 Calle Arzobismo Merino Street in the Zona Colonia, four blocks from the Plaza Colon.
Brunilda, standing inside the Museo’s front door, opens it as I reach for the door handle,and warmly welcomes me inside with a cheerful ” Good afternoon.” She leads me upstairs on a guided tour of the amber exhibit that gives me a history of the amber industry in the Dominican Republic.
For those who need a refresher on amber –
Amber is tree sap that has stuck around millions of years.
Jurassic Park popularized amber with its premise of bringing dinosaurs back to life by extracting blood from insects preserved in amber who had bit dinosaurs, then using dinosaur DNA inside the insect blood to create real dinosaurs.
Amber sometimes has bark, roots, leaves, vegetables, ants, termites, lizards caught inside it.
Amber comes in lots of colors, shapes and sizes.
“Blue Amber ” is found only in the Dominican Republic and if you hold ” Blue Amber ” up to light you see the blue tints.
Amber,dropped into a saline solution, floats. If the amber you have doesn’t float, it isn’t worth the price you paid for it.
After our tour, Brunilda escorts me to the museum retail store.
Even though I’m sold on amber, i don’t buy anything today.
Not taking money when I go on little expeditions is one of my best travel precautions
I want to see a movie about a tourist caught in amber who comes back to shopping life in the twenty third century.
The first thing he wouldn’t be able to buy would be a battery for his cell phone.
Homelessness is no stranger in urban environments.
Disparity, economic and otherwise, is visible in older rougher parts of cities, worldwide,where no one with money wants to live. Urban flight has created downtown areas where people, who have nothing. sleep on sidewalks and warm themselves, on cold nights, over fires burning in empty fifty five gallon oil drums.
We have homeless in Albuquerque who construct cardboard houses by the freeways. They push their shopping carts down sidewalks and congregate at bus stops. They stand at major street intersections with hand scribbled signs full of bad spellings asking for money. As most of us, who have volunteered to help, or have been homeless, know, this homeless army is Veterans, college graduates, parents, brothers and sisters, friends, people who have run out of luck,people that no one is looking for. Most have dropped out, many are drug addicted or mentally ill. They are lost, covered with anonymity in the midst of plenty.
Even wealthy societies haven’t come up with solutions.
This soul,in the passageway on my way to Colonial Square, is tossing food to pigeons. They come waddling closer as she throws a handful of popcorn out. They are not timid, not afraid.
There is something Biblical about this scene.
When I see someone with nothing, give what they have,Jesus becomes more than just a possibility.
Stan has had back yard chickens for a few years.
They weren’t something he wanted as a childhood dream, but his adopted kids wanted chickens so he built them a first rate coop, feeds them, keeps their cage clean, and can’t kill them because his daughter would cry.
” Do they lay eggs in the winter, ” I ask?
” They slow down, ” Stan says, ” they lay eggs four or five years. ”
” Then what? ”
Stan takes a moment and judiciously answers, ” Leave the coop and the gate to the back yard open and hope they take a trip and forget how to get home. ”
Chickens are eaten all over the world, but looking at them makes me uneasy.
Why do I want to eat an animal that lives in a cage and pecks in the dirt for its food?
What does Stan do with the cage when his kids grow up and leave home?
The coop is too small for Mother-In-Law quarters and it doesn’t come with a big screen TV.
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.
Llamas are an important working animal in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and other high Andes South American countries used to transport goods where vehicles can’t go. This llama,far from its home and relatives, is boarded at Dave’s daughter Kim’s house in the country near Larkspur, Colorado.
” Kathy, my ex, rents them out to back packers, ” Dave once told me in one of our conversations. ” She just finished a month long backpack trip in Oregon …..”
Some men talk about their ex-wives with disdain. Dave was different.
This llama gives me a look of disdain and I trek back inside with the rest of the mourners.
A slide show on a television shows high lights of Dave’s life; his marriage, the birth of his children, his life as a young man, photos of his father and mother, pictures of him smiling. Dave would be pleased with the turnout, not pleased with the preacher, pleased with Kathy and Kim. He would be back in the kitchen tasting treats if he was still with us. His dog, Chaco, has lost weight and acts anxious as he sniffs for Dave but he can’t find him.
When I get home I’m going to dust off my walking shoes and take a trip to Mexico, a trip Dave and I talked about for the last two years but didn’t get around to doing for his health issues, which he rarely talked about.
When I get to Mexico I’m going to smoke a stinky cigar for Dave even though I don’t smoke, and have a drink of Crown Royal even though I hate blended whiskey.
Dave will be pleased.
This fountain stands in a plaza in Albuquerque’s Old Town and this morning, while Alan and I walk the square, local birds play and preen in its cool waters.
Birds enjoy showers and they don’t need soap, soap dishes, or towels.
From their songs, I don’t think they have a care in the world, and, at the moment, neither do we..
If I could sing like these birds, I would sing opera and clean up several times a day when it gets hot just because I could.
This morning, I enjoy the fountain, the birds and my brother’s company. I whistle ” Bye Bye Blackbird ” softly, and plan on coming back soon. Our family used to come to Old Town once a month to eat at La Placita and browse the shops around the square.
Life, I have heard people say, is ” for the birds.”
I don’t, for a moment, believe a word of it.
This morning, in the rough, I don’t look for my errant drive. One of our foursome’s little dog, Winston, was bit by a rattler and died on another course a few weeks ago. A golf ball,even a new one, is not worth coming face to face with a poisonous viper.
Winston 1 never barked while we were putting though he sometimes ran up to the cup and looked down inside it to see what we were all looking at, then gave us a funny look when he didn’t see anything.
We all miss Winston 1, but Gary has already found Winston 2, a little bigger than his predecessor, looking much the same, but with a different personality..
Winston 2 spends most of his time, on the golf course,sleeping in his carry cage and exploring only when Gary lets him out on a leash.There are plenty of predators on a golf course and some of them have two legs.
None of us want to see a Winston 3.
Seeing a grown man cry is humbling.
In Charlie’s front entry, his project materials are carefully spread on the floor.
There are drills and hammers, paint brushes, screwdrivers, scissors and a set of instructions, if needed.
In Charlie’s newest project, the rocking horse rockers are made first with each part drawn on good wood, cut, sanded,primed and painted. The next step is attaching the separately made body and legs of the horse, to the rockers, with glue and thick screws. The last steps are doing details; a bridle, a saddle with stirrups, a mane, eyes, a mouth and tail with accessories from his wife Sharon’s sewing room.
The rocking horse, when time to visit arrives, will be loaded in the back of their SUV and delivered in person to Memphis, Tennessee.
At night, Meghan will talk to her horse softly, and, when things are tough, will wrap her little arms around the horse’s broad head and give it a kiss.
There is always more to a rocking horse than a set of instructions, screws and nails, and paint.
Charlie takes everything into consideration.
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