Posted by admin on August 18, 2012 in
Birds,
Travel A couple of days ago Betty and I motored north out of east Texas up US Highway 259 into McCurtain County, Oklahoma, towards the small town of Idabel. I can recall my oldest living aunt, who would have been born around 1903, talking about that town when I was a kid. I have no recollection [...]
Tags: Arizona, Arkansas, Banta, creative writer, Dante, Egrets, filmmaker, Idabel, internet, McCurtain County, Mount Pleasant, murder, Oklahoma, rake, Red River, Red Slough, Rodgers, Sibley, swather, Texas, tractor, Tyler, wood storks
Posted by admin on April 20, 2012 in
Musings Tuesday last was tax day and as I usually do around April 17, I ponder taxes, money, accountants. All of this, of course, fuels imagery that erupts from the past: characters, events, some funny, some sad, some unwanted, some I am glad I remembered. In 1979-1980 I worked for a big corporation in the ag [...]
Tags: Arizona, audits, cattle, cowboys, dust, feedyards, flies, Gila River Indian Reservation, manure, ropes, San Tan, taxes
Posted by admin on April 13, 2012 in
Movies,
Musings Our daughter, Sarah, and her husband, Baruch, are expecting their first baby in July. We have grandkids already. One, Justyce, is already zooming her way to young adulthood. The prospect for the arrival of a newborn is damned exciting. As I think about this new granddaughter, the season is Spring and outside the daffodils are [...]
Tags: Allman Bothers, Arizona, Baruch Ellsworth, Casa Grande, cast iron stove, cotton farmer, cowboys, Dire Straits, Geronimo, Idlewild South, James Rodgers, John Huston, Justyce Rodgers, Man in the Wilderness, Memory of Elizabeth Reed, movies, painter, plumber, prickly pear, Richard Harris, Richard Madewell, Rolling Stones, Sarah Ellsworth, sheep herder, Spring, Sticky Fingers
Posted by admin on April 6, 2012 in
Dust Storms,
Musings The wind blows in Idaho this time of year. Totes the angry vestiges of another aging winter. Grass leans, limbs break, birds balance in the tops of aspen branches that tilt away from the gales that holler off the east Oregon desert. Time moves east to west around here, the wind sweeps west to east [...]
Tags: Alamogordo, Apache, Arizona, Avignon, Black Range, Cloudcroft, Gila, hurricanes, Idaho, New Mexico, Palais de Papes, San Andres Mountains, Sonoran Desert, Spring, storms, typhoons, Western Bar, Western Cafe, white sands, wind
Posted by admin on March 30, 2012 in
Books,
Movies Last week Betty and I watched the 1992 rendition of Of Mice and Men starring Gary Sinise and John Malkovich. This particular adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel of the same name was predated by a 1939 version starring Burgess Meredith, Lon Chaney, Jr. and Bob Steele. Sometime around 1952 or 1953, at 111 Beech Street [...]
Tags: Arizona, Bob Steele, books, Burgess Meredith, Casa Grande, chocolate chip cookies, Gary Sinise, John Malkovich, John Steinbeck, Lon Chaney Jr, movies, Of Mice and Men
Posted by admin on March 9, 2012 in
Musings,
Travel Back in my mid-to-late twenties I worked at a feedyard in southern Arizona. Every late winter/early spring, cattle buyers descended from heaven with boxes and boxes of asparagus bartered fresh out of the fields of the Imperial Valley of California. Gifts to us, the working stiffs trapped with a gazillion flies, and miles and miles [...]
Tags: Arizona, asparagus, California Trail, cantaloupe, cattle buyers, Council Bluffs, feedlot, ice cream, Independence Rock, Mormon Trail, Oregon Trail, promised land, rain, saints, St. Patrick's Day, Wyoming
Posted by admin on February 10, 2012 in
Elko,
Musings,
Travel The halfway point of winter in the northern hemisphere has arrived here in Idaho with dry and warm weather. Trapped in some kind of drought, I suppose I should be saying stuff like, “We need snow in the mountains, we need rain on the flats,” or maybe I should be circling around dancing with my [...]
Tags: Arizona, Elko, Henry Real Bird, horses, Nevada, New Mexico, Paul Zarzyski, Ruby Mountains, snow, tamales, The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, Wallace McRae, Wild Horse Crossing
Posted by admin on January 13, 2012 in
Musings Recently Betty and I journeyed to the Southwest to show our film and visit family members who live there. On the way back to Idaho, we visited a few places that we had not seen for many years as well as a few places that were on our wish list. One of the destinations was [...]
Tags: Arizona, Canyon de Chelly, cattle, Chinle, Chinle Creek, cottonwood, First Ruin, Hopi, horses, ice, Idaho, Navajo Nation, petroglyphs, pictographs, quick sand, rock art, Ute, White House Ruin, winter
Posted by admin on October 21, 2011 in
Musings I am a desert rat and have since childhood mouthed dialogue about the beauty of the mountains vis à vis the desert. The mountains generally have no sand and wind that drives the sand and pits the paint job on your new Mercedes Benz, no short-legged plants, no spiny cacti, but trooping phalanxes of spruce [...]
Tags: Arizona, aspen, Autumn, bitterbrush, Boulder-White Cloud Mountains, cacti, cattle ranches, color, Galena Summit, ice, Idaho, Leaf peepers, maple, mesquite, New Mexico, palo verde, pronghorn, rain, Sacramento Mountains, sage, Sawtooth Mountains, sheep ranches, snow, Sonoran Desert, Stanley, Stephen King, Sun Valley, The New Yorker Magazine, winter, winterfat, Wood River Valley
Posted by admin on October 14, 2011 in
Movies When I was a kid in southern Arizona, I went caving and spelunking with a guy who was a middle school teacher in the town where I lived, Casa Grande, Arizona. We walked into basalt cave mouths in the Silver Bells and Silver Reef Mountains, and into our own little Sawtooths. We sniffed around for [...]
Tags: Arizona, basalt, bison, Casa Grande, cave bears, cave lions, cave paintings, Chauvet, film, France, Germany, horses, Lascaux, mine shafts, movies, Neandethal man, Paleolithic man, rattlesnakes, T. S. Eliot, The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, University of Tubingen, Werner Herzog, wooly rhinos
