Here is a photo of the chicken palace at dawn
and here is Monet’s Haystacks at Dawn.
You’d think he was painting at 7,000 feet.
Archive for the 'Appearances' Category
The 44th annual Hozhoni Days Pow Wow was held at Fort Lewis College, and Indians came from all over the region to help dance Spring into creation. The drums beat all day, and the young men were heartbreakingly beautiful. When I saw this pair racing to the auditorium, I had to do a mental readjustment because this is the Dad with the child, not the Mom. The mothers and grandmothers are the ones who made the costumes.
That’s so cute I need another shot.
These guys are dressed up like I’ve never seen, and my my my the flower of young manhood is something to behold when it’s decked with fuschia plumage.
There were people from many tribes, and there were many types of costumes. The variety in headdresses was awesome, and there was a special prayer of thanks to all the birds who contributed to this pow wow.
This is a man’s headdress.
The women’s costumes were also beautiful. I think the green dress is entirely beadwork.
One by one the costumes were magnificent. All together, it was almost too much to take in.
Here’s a woman with a lot of elk ivories on her dress, and another woman with military connections. Can you see the little girls with the bells sewn onto their dresses? A lot of the little boys had bells on their ankles, and they stamped around making a Spring racket.
Here’s a scene from the bleachers, with young teenaged boys in plumes; the Moms who stitched and drove are having a ball. How many thousand hours of handwork does this photo encompass?
These men, and the boys who want to be men, danced as a prayer. It was as though this is what real men look like and this is what true men do, and the rest of the time they’re disguising themselves as Anglos. It was as though daily small town life has been muted to black and white, while pow wow days are in Technicolor. It was like the one true thing. It was dreamtime made real.
When my twenty pounds of chocolate from the Bloomers Sale disappeared in a corner of my coffin freezer, it occurred to me that you might like to see what else is in there. Heck, I’d like to see what else is in there.
Some of it is recent. In addition to the chocolate, there is
- 2 gallons of cider left over from cider pressing last fall,
- 2 organic turkeys (80% off the day after Thanksgiving), and
- 25 pounds of buffalo that was just recently added. There’s
- 15 pounds of fish and
- 7 pounds of butter from 1/2 price sales. From last summer, we still have about
- 10 pounds of lamb and sadly, about
- 7 pounds of lamb ribs that are getting old. We get a few lambs for the freezer every spring, which includes many packets of lamb ribs. Do you know what to do with lamb ribs? I don’t. There’s not a shred of pork, which makes me wonder about getting piglets this spring.
The fruits and vegetables are less manageable. There are are at least
- 30 pounds of tomatoes (a few pounds dehydrated, 10 pounds peeled, and 20 pounds frozen whole like little baseballs). I was glad to find
- a bag of raspberries, of blueberries and some applesauce. I was less excited by the
- 15 pounds of peeled and pitted peaches from 2 years ago. And the freezer item that absolutely has to go is
- 20 pounds of apricots.
There are a lot of roadside apricot trees around here, and apricots are easier to freeze than they are to use up. So in honor of the weekend, I’m processing apricots Sunday: one batch with raspberries, one with habaneros, and maybe another with ginger juice. If anyone has a good apricot recipe, please, pass it along.
I didn’t realize I had so much food downstairs (and I’m not the only one; most of my neighbors have coffin freezers too). I pretend that it’s rational, but I think that deep freeze satisfies some ancient imperative. I’m talking primal satisfaction. I mean, this Anasazi granary and my deep freeze would qualify as things that don’t look alike, but are.
Exactly three months ago Sunday, shortly after ski season started, I got a phone call at noon. “I broke my face,” Sam said. He had landed short when he jumped a road, and his knee hit his lip. He looked like he had a cleft palate.
Bob picked him up at the ski area, and I met them at the hospital. I realized that my child had become an autonomous individual when the doctor came in and my sixteen year old took charge. “I’m Sam,” he said, and shook the doctor’s hand. “Take your time with this, Doc, ’cause I have all day.”
He went home with seventeen stitches in three layers. I hit my face with a ski last spring and had twenty-eight stitches, so we knew the naturopathic drill of vitamins and later massage with castor oil . Three months later you can see that his scar will disappear in time.
My stitches came out exactly one year ago (Sam took my scar picture and I took his) and it’s amazing to me that you can’t tell which cheek the ski went through (left on the photo).
I don’t know if time heals all wounds, but certainly castor oil can take care of the scars.
The dog and the parrot looked different but were alike.
Here are two things that look alike but are different.
This is the Butcher’s Guild in Antwerp, Belgium, the Vleeshuis completed in 1504, and here is a closer shot of the brickwork called bacon because of its alternating layers of sandstone and brick.
Here are the cliffs across the valley
and from farther away.
There is something about this southwestern snow and sandstone confection that those Belgian butchers would have just loved.
I’m in Vermont for five days, and Bob and Sam have no problem but the dog falls apart. When I’m gone she spends her days moaning under my bed, mourning my absence until I return. Bob suspects that someday she’ll expire from overexcitement at the airport.
Bernese mountain dogs are farm dogs that understand property management the way bird dogs understand pointing. The females bond with one person that they use as their reference point, and they do whatever they’re told; Jessie hasn’t needed a leash or collar for years. She keeps deer, bear and turkeys out of the gardens, she makes it safe for me to hike alone, and she is ardent in her devotion.
“When a dog isn’t on task,” announced Sam, “it’s only job is to conserve energy.” If he’s right that explains Jessie’s behavior: without the object of her affection she has no task, so the only thing left for her to do is to sleep.
I have a friend with an African Grey Parrot. He’s a nice parrot with lots of tricks, and devoted to his owner. But when my friend travels, the parrot plucks the feathers from his chest. By the end of a long trip the parrot looks so sad and abused that he’d make a good PETA exhibit. That small grey bird and my big dog have more in common than you’d think.
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