The news we have these days is apocalyptic.
Across the world, an unseen virus, emanating out of China, is obsessing people and governments. Daily, we are shown body bags and stressed hospitals, see death totals that are not yet of the Black Plague category.
Total economies are shut down and we are told our jobs and businesses are not essential, but you can still buy pot and alcohol. Some people, driving the same streets they have driven for decades, are fined for being on the road and neighbors are told to call a hot line to tell the government who is not following orders. Banks are closed and you have to make an appointment for most services, and you are questioned if you want to take your money out of the bank. Congress magically finds 2 trillion plus dollars when we have been arguing about healthcare for decades, and bails their crony’s out, again.
Walking, quite by chance, out my front door, I am greeted by a rainbow masterpiece. This double rainbow, just fading, has the right proportions, right colors, and a gorgeous, rich lustre. It is quite breathtaking, radiant, and rejuvenating.
Troubled times will pass and then talking heads will analyse and tell us what they want us to believe has just happened, politicians will claim they fixed the problems they created, and life, will go on.
In a year, most of this will be forgotten, but the precedents created will live with us, forever.
Part of travelling is bringing back stuff.
There are memories and words and photos on all trips, but there are also objects that get packed in your suitcase and brought back home. Maybe it is a piece of art from Uruguay? Maybe it is a recipe? Maybe it is a T shirt or a special cap? Maybe it is a new watch or a pack of seeds to try something new in your garden?
This little insect box, from a market place in Panama, hangs in a hallway at home.
Insects, as most of us know, can be good – like ladybugs, or bad – like mosquitos. Most often, we feel insects before we see them. Casual research suggests there might be as many as five million species on the planet with only a million species identified and described.
There is still plenty for ” bug lovers ” to do on our planet.
My insects on the wall are the best kind. They don’t wake me up, bite me, or talk trash. They remind me of great engineering designs and adaptability. We’re not in this world alone, even if we think we are.
If I were to take a trip into the jungles of Panama, I’d meet all of these guys on a first name basis.
Somehow, I like them on a wall, in a box, the best.
Inside Meow Wolf, there is a house, a mysterious house whose owners are no where to be found. They have their left artifacts; an old desk, an old saggy comfortable couch, a bathroom with toothbrushes still in the cup, closets with clothes hanging, a washer and dryer with clothes to be cleaned. As you roam through the house you find rooms just like you would find in a normal home, but, here, the rooms don’t look like our houses and it has secret passageways, and tunnels and challenges.
In a performance area of the installation, these two young men juggle and do acrobatics for their modern audiences, much like they might have done for ancient kings when the castle was dreary and the king threw a party for some of his political allies.
When this performance is done, we wander through the rest of the house, getting lost, finding rooms we have already been in. Finally, sensory overloaded, we leave the house and its ghosts and go find a green chili burrito and cup of coffee.
Getting lost in someone else’s house is okay, but you never want to be at a point, in your house, that you can’t find the bathroom.
Meow Wolf is an immersive, interactive, art installation in an old bowling alley in Santa Fe, N, M. It has become a tourist destination and once you enter you will be challenged. It was started in 2008 as an art collective. This is what the creators, with over 400 employees, and installations in Denver, Las Vegas, Santa Fe, and eventually Phoenix, say about their effort.
” Meow Wolf creates immersive and interactive experiences that transport audiences of all ages into fantastic realms of story and exploration, This includes art installations, video and music production, and extended reality content….. Inside, guests discover a multidimensional mystery house with secret passages, portals to magical worlds, and an expansive narrative amidst surreal ,maximalist, and mesmerizing art exhibits….. Meow Wolf champions otherness, weirdness, challenging norms, radical inclusion, and the power of creativity to change the world…… ”
When I came out of the installation, I was glad to be back to my pedestrian reality.
This, I’m certain, is just preparing the way for the dystopian, not so distant, world, of artificial intelligence and technology.
I’m missing days when you sat in a rocking chair on the front porch and watched storm clouds rolling in over the freshly plowed and planted fields.
We can’t stop technology, and as easy as it makes our lives, it comes with costs.
Most RV’s spend most of their life in storage. Sometimes they are kept in their own garages like prized thoroughbreds. Most often they are parked in driveways, back yards, side lots – uncovered, unprotected, unloved.
Scotttrek’s classic recreational vehicle is kept in storage at a local Airstream dealer, and, for sixty dollars a month is safe, unmolested, and underappreciated.
Times are changing, though, and the Sunrader will be started up, loaded up, and prepared for a different future.
It may be that the Sunrader becomes a more than recreational home away from home.
In troubled times, it is nice to know that you have a bathroom,a kitchen,a place to rest your head, a hot shower and refrigerated air.
The temptation has always been to sell this RV and save the sixty dollars a month, but when push comes to shove, insurance is always worth what we have paid to have it, when the time comes that we need it.
The Albuquerque International Balloon Festival was begun in 1972.
A local radio station, 770 KOB, which is still with us, was celebrating their 50th anniversary. They convinced Sid Cutter, who operated a small airport in Albuquerque, and had the only hot air balloon in New Mexico, to let them use his hot air balloon as part of the celebration. The rest is history.
In 2019, there are 588 balloons in the sky, 866,414 guests, and 671 pilots from around the globe.
Standing on a hill at the Juan Tabo picnic ground, this early morning photo is of balloonists beginning a mass ascension into clear skies. The city of Albuquerque spreads out almost as far as you can see and the balloons look lazy in the skies. There will be events, competitions, and spectacles during the festival and fun will be had by all.
The festival runs, this year, from October 3rd, 2020 to October 11th. The official website gives specifics, videos, photographs, reviews, news about the next balloon extravaganza to hit our city.
From the top of the little hill, Scotttreks gets an easy look at the balloons, without parking issues, crowds, and expenses.
Not liking heights much, if I had my choice, I would opt out of ballooning for snorkeling in the Caribbean with brightly colored fish and pina coladas in the middle of the afternoon.
The balloons, this morning, look like periods in a novel, jumping off the page, glad to be away from all those crazy human misconceptions, yearnings, and propaganda.
At the Albuquerque Zoo, there are plenty of animals; birds, monkeys, a tiger or two, penguins, giraffes, jackals,zebras. They are well cared for in their little enclosures and we can stand at a rail and admire their coloration, adaptations, behaviors. There will come a time when the only animals we will see will be in zoos, but there are still places in the world where animals spend their days and don’t ever see a human.
Pushing the ball just ahead of its huge mouth, this playful hippo walks in his pool because these river horses don’t really swim, but walk along the bottom of rivers or pools, as they hold their breath under the water. They are speedy and quite dangerous in the wild.
Until Scotttreks does its next safari, these zoo animals will have to do.
If I were to organize a parade, this star of the show would have to be in front.
While turtles are cool, hippos, looking ungainly and mis-proportioned, steal this show with quite surprising grace, and playfulness.
This is a scene from a local Wal-Mart, a scene many Americans are now becoming familiar with.
This is the Russia we used to see on national TV, in the sixties and seventies, and talk about in high school when the benefits of Communism were trumpeted by the hippie in the back row. Now, reality, has come to roost, in our neighborhoods.
In the space of several weeks, ten million Americans have been laid off, private businesses have been shut down and called ” not essential ” by people who have never run a business. Ideas of ” social distancing ” and ” flattening the curve ” are flown from flagpoles, and executed in marching order by federal, state, county and city governments. Hot lines urge citizens to call and report neighbors for daring to keep their business open so they can feed their families.
Where we go from here is unknown, but it isn’t going to be something I accept, or like, and must resist.
!984 took a while to get here, but we are living a good dose of it now.
At this point, with almost seven hundred posts, thousands of photographs, almost a hundred videos, and five years on line as Scotttreks, it seems like a Dedication is due.
Many, if not all, literary works, art, music, drama and dance presentations have dedications, moments at the front of the effort that recognize significant influences on the person who has taken the time and effort to put things out there for others to enjoy, analyse, pan, or profit from.. Sometimes it is a wife, children, teachers and mentors who get the nod. Sometimes it is personal secretaries and editors who help ideas get to a place they can be loosed on the world, Sometimes dedications are to God, Muses, spirits and traditions
There are plenty of places and people to dedicate Scotttreks too,but it seems right to thank my parents for giving me their name, their attention, their love and concern.
While they haven’t put the words in my mouth or on paper, haven’t suggested what I do or don’t do, they always wanted the best for us that we could make for ourselves.
This little blog, with places still to go and time left to go there, is dedicated to Julia Ann and James Lowell.
I like to think they are reading the blog, wherever they are, happy that I am happy writing it.
Halloween creeps closer as leaves start to fall, pumpkins appear in windows, hot air balloons arrive for the annual Balloon fest in Albuquerque, creepy spiders turn up in school cafeterias and jackets become more than optional.
It is a sparkling day and these three skeletons, in an Albuquerque North Valley front yard, don’t dress up, worry about hair style or designer clothes. They look content in their birthday suits without the excess weight, blemishes and imperfections that the rest of us have to carry wherever we go.
Next holiday season, I will set up my front yard like this too, but give my skeleton family a television to watch Netflix, game shows, soaps, or Dr. Phil.
In a few weeks this congregation will put on their Pilgrim outfits and be chasing turkeys around the yard with hatchets. A few weeks after that, they will be hanging Christmas lights in these front yard evergreens and singing carols by a manger,surrounded by animals and angels, Mary and Joseph, welcoming Baby Jesus to the planet nuthouse.
Bones keep popping up in Scotttreks, and, to be honest, we all need one day a year when creepy stuff camps in our front yard and ghosts and goblins have their say.
The last thought that hits me, between my ears,as I speed away in my car, is that if we had to wash each of our bones, our showers would take all day and family members would rightfully want to kill us.
R.I.P. is not bad advice, whether we are skeletons, or not.
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