Two years have gone by. I'm still living. Cancer diagnosed last year. Surgery; chemotherapy.

Well, 2011 was a bit of a wash out as far as blogging went. Haven't even been reading others' blogs. My latest preoccupation is with Blipfoto. Plans for the year? Few so far. Dulcimer festivals. Walking . . .

27 March 2014: should I start another blog elsewhere?

Winter came early?

      This was the scene at Hannagan Meadows on Saturday 5th November when a party of us went for a walk in the Bear Wallow Wilderness area to the campsite where the Wallow fire is alleged to have started from a 'dead' campfire. I was happy that Kathy dug out thermal underwear for me as the temperature stayed below freezing all day.

      This is the time of year I get a little nostalgic for the wet, sometimes frosty, often misty autumn mornings of England. In other words I miss miserable weather.

     I came here to post this and also to see what was going on in the Bloggosphere as I have a new distraction at Blipfoto . I wanted to specifically see what Kim Ayres is up to . . . 

     My favourite American holiday is coming up - Thanksgiving. Now what do I have to be thankful for?

    

Summer's done?

     

     Well, spring sprung and half a million acres of forest went up in smoke; we evacuated to St John's with ten cats and three dogs and a trailer full of the books, pictures, musical instruments and papers I thought I couldn't live without. But that was just for one week; I just spent another week visiting some of Kathy's family who spend summers in New Mexico. All I needed was a volume of Edward Abbey essays, a hat, walking stick and a stout pair of walking shoes and a notebook . . . see the pics on Flickr. Oh, and I did take musical instruments and played jigs and reels and sang a few songs . . .

      And as you see my beard is back greyer than ever:

   

I feel springtime coming on

so off comes the excuse for a beard

Twelfth Night

and Epiphany gone . . .

HODIE CHRISTVS NATVS EST

December already?

     

     What Have I been up to for the past month? I've been reading  Edward Abbey: a life by James M. Cahalan. I finally read Abbey's Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness and The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West. Just a taste of Abbey's prodigious output. 

    I have been occupied the past couple of days cataloging my little collection of books on LibraryThing. The site is huge and uses many resources on the Internet. I have found some long forgotten books. Here are a couple:

     Brian Pattern is a Liverpool poet . . .

     My subscription to The Countryman lapsed many years ago but I still have many of the older pocket sized magazines issued when he magazine's home was still on Sheep Street in Burford, Oxfordshire. It's now back in the country in Yorkshire.

The Hill and other snapshots

     Yesterday morning Tuesday 9 November 2010

and this morning

     I don't have anything to say for myself. I'm still recovering from all the driving and sight seeing I did whilst Johnny was visiting. When we went up to Big Lake and through Apache National Forest  to  Alpine I took only one snapshot before the camera batteries died.

     I've lived in Arizona for just over thirteen years and am only just now getting around to reading Edward Abbey

     And here's a picture of Chloë. She's just over a year old now.

Til next time

     Drove John to PHX Skyharbor Airport yesterday. Long and leisurely drive through White Mountain Apache Reservation, Salt River Canyon (a few more snapshots) through Globe and on to Apache Junction skirting Superstition Mountains. Now I'm feeling at loose ends a bit. I look forward to reading John's account of his visit. His first visit to the US was nearly thirty years ago. I lived just three short blocks from the beach in Venice, CA then and didn't have much time off work to explore California the way we've been travelling around Arizona and New Mexico.

Another trip

     to New Mexico this time. Santa Fe which means: ART. Specifically traditional and contemporary Native American art and Georgia O'Keeffe. On the way home we visited the Acoma pueblo.

 Cathedral basilica, Santa Fé

 Acoma Sky City mesa

looking north at mile-post 60 on US60 in New Mexico
and below the same view, nearly, last February.

Day Trip

    Stayed close to home today with a little drive to St Johns and up US180 towards Holbrook. Turned right seventeen miles before getting to Holbrook to drive through Petrified Forest N.P. to Painted Desert. The weather was not cooperating the level of the setting sun was just right to capture the colours but there was a band of cloud in the wrong place and the park closes before the sun was low enough to shine under the clouds. The sunset was a good one whilst driving home via Sanders.

 Crystal Forest

 Some of the few crystals left

Raw, unpolished petrified wood in Rainbow

Route 66

 This car ain't gonna make it to California. It's facing the wrong way.

Tiny ray of the setting sun reached the Painted Desert

     Back in a couple of days. Off to Santa Fe and Taos, NM tomorrow.

Tour two

     The Route

     Tuesday 26 October. Hwy 260 through: McNary, Pinetop-Lakeside, Show Low, Linden, Overgaard-Heber, Christopher, Kohl Ranch, Star Valley, Payson, Pine, Strawberry, Cottonwood then up Alt 89 to Sedona and then Flagstaff for the night.

     Wednesday 27 October. Historic Route 66 West onto Interstate 40 to Williams. North on 64 (US 180) to the Grand Canyon and through the South Rim part of the National Park to US 89 at Cameron and north through the Gap, and Cedar Ridge to Page for the night.

     Thursday 28 October. State route 98 east out of Page through Kaibito then north on US 160 to Keyenta, left onto US 163 north to Monument Valley continuing on US 160 through Mexacan Hat, UT to US 191 south back into Arizona and east on US 160 through Red Mesa to Teec Nos Pos and the five miles to Four Corners then back to Teec Nos Pos and east on US 64 to Shiprock, New Mexico then south on US 491 to Gallup, NM for the night.

     Friday 29 October. Another trip along a remaining section of Route 66 to Interstate 40 east towards Grants Pass turning off at Route 117 to El Malpais, The Narrows and south to Quemado on 32.  Had to make the 22 mile detour to Pie Town; we weren't in the pick-up and I didn't want to punish the car with thirty miles of un-metalled road. Then the last 75 miles home on familiar US 60.

Sunset Rocks Sedona.

Poor pic of Grand Canyon

Monument Valley

Four Corners

El Malpais

Pie-O-Neer, Pie Town 

The Tourist

     We have a guest visiting from England. Now the blog will become a travelogue. We spent three days in Tucson where I showed our guest where we used to live. We explored the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum; Saguaro National Park, West; Catalina highway up to Summertown and Mount Lemmon; San Xavier and on the third day we went to Tombstone. 

In the silver mine

 

Be sure to read the story of Edward Schieffelin and how the town got its name.

 American kestral at ASDM

Looking across to the Rincon mountains east of Tucson from the Catalina Highway

Michaelmas

     and Goose Day

Fallow

Barking . . . absolutely barking

as only the English can be at times. I made time to watch Two Men Went to War at the week-end. It is an account of events that one would believe could not have happened. But they did. A sergeant and Private of the Army Dental Corps land on the northern coast of occupied France in 1942 on a mission to blow up the Scharnhorst . . . with hand-grenades . . . and without permission.

     The paragraph I quoted in the last post from the book I'm reading made me wonder if a journey in the opposite direction made by a Jewish boy with crates of artwork and furniture would have been possible in 1942?

Sunset

and a rainbow from a week ago

and the hill again this evening

     Finished reading Death In Venice. This novella should be read at one sitting. That is I should read in a secluded place where I can not be disturbed or distracted.

I am now reading a French mystery in translation published last year in France as Le Paradoxe de Vasalis. This paragraph in chapter two gave me pause:

      This didn't stop Jacob and his family finding themselves utterly alone when the SS came for them in August 1942. After a stay at the Dracy Interment Camp, they were sent to Dachau. Happily, a week earlier, an intuition had caused Jacob to send his eldest son to London, accompanying several containers full of pictures, sculptures and furniture.

 

Came across this

When rummaging through old files  . . . 

Rules of "gooder" grammar

   1.      Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects. 'course these days you're just as likely to see confusion among there, their and they're.
   2.      Prepositions are not words to end sentences with. Unless you are Winston Churchill, "This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put."
   3.      And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. But I'm sure lots of writers do it?
   4.      It is wrong to ever split an infinitive. Yeah, if you're writing Latin.
   5.      Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat)
   6.      Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
   7.      Be more or less specific. Vague ambiguity is much more fun to puzzle out
   8.      Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary. Guilty.
   9.      Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies. Or redundant tautology
  10      No sentence fragments. Guilty again.
  11      Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.
  12      Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
  13      Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
  14      One should NEVER generalise. See number seven.
  15      Comparisons are as bad as cliches. Metaphor is more demanding
  16      Don't use no double negatives.
  17.      Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
  18.      One word sentences? Eliminate.
  19.      Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
  20.      The passive voice is to be ignored.
  21.      Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
  22.      Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
  23.      Kill all exclamation points !!!!
  24.      Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
  25.      Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
  26.      Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed. Ha, ha.
  27.      Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." See number two.
  28.      If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
  29.      Puns are for children, not groan readers. Augh.
  30.      Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
  31.      Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
  32.      Who needs rhetorical questions ?
  33.      Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

AND FINALLY....

 34. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out. I often words out.

author unknown: circulated by e-mail

Rain . . .

     This is how green the hill this afternoon from the rain of the past few weeks. It's not been this green for over ten years.

The Other Side of the Hill . . .

Took a little drive this morning heeding this sign:

And this caught my eye:

~ping~

     Breaking the silence. 

     Listening to a two part dramatization of Magister Ludi The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse. Another book I have to finish reading.

    I first came across Charles Cameron's Hip Bone Game several years  ago.

Silence

Nothing better to do?

       Whimsically thinking of past fads. In the late 1970's machines calculating biorhythms were a popular distraction.  Circadian rhythm is familiar to us all. I shouldn't have been surprised to find calculators on the web. 

      This one tells me I've lived 21799 days.

     Froggy has a few more bells-and-whistles to play with.

     If you care to join Care2 then you may leave comments.

     The more grounded scientifically minded among us would more likely start at this wiki article about chronobiology

Point Of View

     POV on PBS tonight is a documentary about the unresolved economic injustices between blacks and whites in South Africa remaining since the abolition of apartheid in 1994. The film is called Promised Land. This interests me as I've recently read the Power Of One by Bryce Courteney.

     I recently found this thought expressed by eden ahbez: [Some blacks hate whites; some whites love blacks; some blacks love whites and some whites hate blacks.] It's not an issue of black and white, it's an issue of haters and lovers.

Good afternoon

The hill.

Ah, blessed rain; not a monsoon down-pour but a steady rain.

Good morning

Yoda thinks, "Gardening, schmardening. My catnip alone you be leaving".

Nepeta cataria

And what have I been up to?

Planting, watering and watching the herbs flower. Don't trust me on the Latin names when I provide one, I've lost the labels.

Columbine Aquilegia chrysantha

Speedwell Veronica spicata

Yarrow Achillea

       When I'm not reading, playing music or even wasting time sitting here at the computer listening to BBC Radio 4 on iPlayer I can now play all my old vinyl discs. Wow, both sides have music on them. I felt like dancing this morning; boy, am I out of physical shape.

There was an old woman tossed up in a blanket,
Seventeen times as high as the moon;
Where she was going I could not but ask it,
For in her hand she carried a broom.
"Old woman, old woman, old woman," quoth I;
"O whither, O whither, O whither so high?"
"To sweep t' cobwebs from t' sky,
And I'll be with you by-and-by!"

Mid-Summer's Day

      I finally, after taking too long to get used to the altitude and dry heat after being in the moist air of England at sea level for the past five weeks or so, feel like posting a picture of the hill again. Culverts and the bridge that carries route 260 over the Little Colorado are being worked on hence the trailers and other works paraphernalia parked by the road.

       Kathy and I have planted a few more herb and vegetable plants and tidied up the yard and gardens a bit. We are fostering a dog for the local voluntary animal rescue.

      I am currently reading Paul: The mind of the Apostle by A.N. Wilson; Robin Hood by J C Holt and Walking English: A Journey in Search of Language by David Crystal.