Each day there are people and things to be colored.
Rainbows fade if they are not brightened up.
Flowers lose their delicacy in the hot desert sun and always need a make over.
Oceans take a slew of work to keep the best blue.
Dino, created by Charlie for a grand daughter, carries his own set of primary colors wherever he goes, ready to step into artistic action.
Dino is taking a road trip soon and will find himself in a child’s bedroom on the other side of the country.
Late at night, he and his soon to be best friend, will hide under warm covers and color the world the way it should look all the time.
Dinosaurs don’t have to be the bad guys.
They can be our best friend too.
ATM’s have become many people’s money solution.
They are in countries all over the world and you can get cash in countries where no one speaks English and all the writing looks like hieroglyphics. The ATM’s accept debit and credit cards, let you make deposits, check balances and transfer money across accounts.They are open twenty four seven and have small service fees. There is a phone number to call if something goes haywire but we all hope we don’t ever have to call because talking to customer service techs in India is dicey.
This simple, hand penned sign, by the ATM, is a plea for help. It was left leaning against a wall behind a trash barrel, so one guesses the writer got money and did take his Sister for a nice meal at the local Jack in the Box.
This sign promises your money will be spent on food rather than drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, or other vices.
Whether we should trust what we read, because the writer asks us too, is a great leap of faith.
The only thing that seems questionable in this plea for help are the letters, ” No B.S. ”
I wouldn’t have written that, if it was my sign.
When someone tells me ” No, B.S..” there is usually plenty of it that follows.
Bazookas are old technology but World War 2 vets will tell you a thing or two about their effectiveness in the war they fought in.
This plastic army man, with his bazooka pointed at me,his helmet securely fastened, his feet planted and secured by a heavy application of scotch tape, looks at me with a stern no nonsense attitude.
Mounted atop the snack bar register, he is protecting the money, and, throws me back to grade school days when we kids actually played with these Army men, taped firecrackers to them and stood back as they were blown up with the striking of a match.
These days, Army men still wear uniforms and helmets, but they have put their bazookas in museums. Army men, these days, are likely to be killing people with their computers, sitting in a room thousands of miles from the battlefield.
This cash register is protected, and, at night, when employees have gone home, this army man goes to the refrigerator and helps himself to a beer.
Fighting makes one thirsty and there doesn’t seem any end to war.
The UNM south golf course is a championship course.
It has ankle deep grass in the rough, tricky greens, deep traps, rolling fairways and a few doglegs that would make a dog blush. You wouldn’t want to walk this course unless you were a mountain goat and a masochistic one at that. The greens on all the holes have multiple breaks and the greens keeper always puts the pins where you would expect with someone who fights with the wife a lot.
On the back nine there is a short par four dog leg to the left that wraps around a little pond with a huge cottonwood between the edge of the left fairway and the pond. Long hitters can try to fly the cottonwood and drive the green while the rest of us mortals lay up to the right and have a wedge shot into a small tight green guarded by a big trap.
The pond is shaded by the cottonwoods and a gaggle of ducks live there. When we golfers drive our carts down the fairway, the ducks waddle out to meet us and sample treats we bring from home.
Growing up with ” Donald Duck” makes ducks seem approachable though we know these guys have a dangerous bill. If the ” Donalds ” get really bothered they usually turn back to their lake and paddle out to the middle where they can safely weather people storms.
Today, we give them treats and they stay out of arm and golf club reach. We all hit our approaches to the green but no one makes their birdie putt. Walking off the green, we can hear the ” Donald’s” quacking like television sports announcers.
Whether they are ” cute” or a ” Nuisance” lies in the eyes of the beholder but they make a tough day on the course a little less disheartening.
Waiting for the Doctor, after a nurse has checked my oxygen levels, put me on a scale, written down my issues on her note pad, the examining room is as basic as the intake procedure.
There are some Q tips in a little jar next to the sink. There is an examination table with a paper sheet on top of it..There is a secure box for used needles, a few magazines in a little rack on the wall. A medical equipment tool is close by. There are posters on the walls warning and informing about flu season, shingles, sexually transmitted diseases and a chart that indicates what weight I should be for my height. In some rooms like this, doctors display their certificates of graduation from medical schools and photos of their kids.
In most examination rooms, wherever they have been in the world, I have chatted with this exact same bone guy on the wall.
What I can’t figure is why he is always smiling and why he has such a good set of teeth?
Put him in a nice set of clothes and give him a drink and he could be life of any party.
206 bones is a lot of architecture and the God who designed, and assembled us, combined functionality with a fantastic attention to detail.
If our bones don’t line up, we are in a pile of trouble.
He tells me I have weight on since the last time we met, and the worst things about skeletons is that they don’t lie.
Colorado is one of the leading states in the tiny house movement in the United States.This state has over 20 builders who have built tiny houses, has an annual Colorado Tiny House Festival in Brighton, and a Colorado Tiny House Association that advocates for the development of the tiny homes industry.
The tiny house movement, whether in Colorado,or elsewhere, is driven by people looking to spend their money differently. Instead of sinking hundreds of thousands of dollars into a site built house that has expensive taxes, upkeep, and unused space, people can get into a tiny house for a fraction of the price and spend their saved money on activities and experiences they would rather be doing than mowing the lawn.
This tiny house is parked on a lot in Southfork, Colorado, and, though locked, gives an idea of its roominess and livability by peeking through its windows.There are five different models to choose from and the builders of these models can custom make a tiny house to fit any budget and need.
The best thing about tiny houses, after looking at these models, is – they don’t have an engine.
Bigger the better, is a slogan that is reaching it’s limits in America.
American’s are downsizing, looking small ,seeking control of their lives. These days you are more defined by what you do than what you own.
Living in one of these homes means you have finally realized you don’t need stuff you thought did, you don’t need deep roots to feel rooted, and small is very big.
The reflection of the clouds,on the lake’s calm surface,quiver. The reflection of the forest’s trees, on the lake’s surface, reaches across the lake almost to the bank we are fishing from and look as if trees themselves are growing out of the lake, right in front of me.
If I had a long enough arm, I could reach down and scoop up these clouds in the palm of my right hand and they would wiggle like the fishing earthworms we just dug up in a close by field.
I know the clouds and forest on the lake’s surface are reflections. The real clouds are in the sky and the real forest covers the rugged mountain sides directly to the south of us, across Hermit’s Lake.
If my mind can be even temporarily fooled by nature’s slight of hand, how much more of what I see is not what is really there?
When scientists come up with better measuring sticks, we might start seeing more of the world as it is, not fooled by reflections, optical illusions, mirages, black holes, mirrors and miracles..
There will, on that day, as Jerry Lee Lewis sings in his rollicking rock and roll classic,be ” a whole lot of shaking going on.”
The last time I saw this sign was in Montevideo, Uruguay at the Ramon Massini Hotel/Suites. That sign was in the lobby near a coffee machine operated with tokens you bought from the front desk.
This afternoon I see the same sign at Candy’s Coffee in Westcliff, Colorado.
It is like seeing an old friend that you have lost touch with and figured you would sadly never see again.
I’m sure I’ll find this sign hanging somewhere else in the world down my road, but, at the moment, I don’t know where.
Being able to still be surprised is something I’m thankful for.
Knowing that drinking coffee means I’m not dead, I enjoy my cup at Candy’s all the way to the bottom.
If I were superstitious, I would believe this sign is trying to tell me something that I haven’t yet grasped.
County road 40, cutting away from Colorado State Highway 69, takes me straight to the Alvarado Campground in the nearby Sangre de Cristo mountains – the end of a long driving day from New Mexico.
The campground,in the Pike and San Isabel National Forests,is where we camp out during the 2019 Mountain Hay Fever Bluegrass Festival in Westcliff. It is a summer July, warm, and these brilliant blue and white flowers are growing in no discernible order in these cow pastures. This pastoral scene should be printed on a grocery store container of vanilla ice cream.
County road 40 is two lane and well maintained and flat as the countryside we are cutting through. On each side of the road are barbed wire fences that keep cattle in their fields as well as designating people’s property lines. In old times, ranching folks hung cattle rustlers and used buckshot on kids getting into their gardens. Now, lawyers shoot it out in court for all of us and disputes in the sandbox are for judges to decide instead of pistols and rifles.
This evening, as the sun drops and night coolness is coming, I can see these cow’s don’t give a damn about fences, or us,or my philosophy, whichever side of the fence they,or we,are on.
I drive past them at 30 miles per hour, the posted speed limit, hopeful that tomorrow’s bluegrass music makes this long drive worth doing.
When you listen to bluegrass music there should be a few cows in the neighborhood,like this, just to make the music sound more authentic.
Setting up camp this evening will be a happy chore long overdue.
In 1936, television wasn’t even someone’s dream.
In 1936, families and kids brought their dimes to this theater, looked at the marquee, found seats in what now are uncomfortable chairs, and watched westerns and newsreels from around a world just coming out of a Great Depression. The concession inside the theater would have had sweet treats for the kids, high school ushers who showed people to their seats with little flashlights, and a grizzled World War 1 vet still seeing his war on the screen.
The theater changed management in 1963 ,and, again, thirty years later.
Now, the Jones Theater shows movies on weekend nights and has one Sunday matinee.
Theater’s these days can’t compete with Netflix or Amazon Prime, cable TV, an internet streaming world news, 24/7, as it happens.
Now, people go to the theater to sit in a dark room with a bunch of strangers, eat popcorn, and remember what it was like when they were little kids visiting Grandma.
In 1936, you never would have seen a movie about Elton John, or anyone like him.
Our tolerance for difference has been irretrievably expanded.
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