Monthly Archives: May 2016

May16

Ajo Cemetery

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Blaize Sun

I was looking for a garage sale, but I found the cemetery instead.

I didn’t need more stuff, so I decided to walk through the cemetery instead of browsing through the discards of someone’s life. I ended up spending almost two hour there.

One thing I noticed about the cemetery is that based on last names, it seemed to be quite integrated. People with what seemed to me to be Anglo names were buried in close proximity to people with what seemed to me to be Latino/a names.

In addition to many professionally carved headstones, more than a few of the graves were marked by amateur endeavors. I liked the handmade crosses and handwritten signs. They seem more personal and loving than cold stone. Seeing people’s handwriting (sometimes messy, sometimes with letters ever-so-carefully written) made me recognize a real connection between the living and the dead. It’s easy for me to look at graves in a cemetery and think of the people buried there as in the abstract, but seeing the handwriting on grave markers as a connection between the living and their dead, made the dead seem more like real people.

I saw several things in the Ajo Cemetery that I’d never seen at other graveyards.

The first thing I saw was saguaros! In the cemetery! Saguaros in the cemetery! It wasn’t a huge shock, as the cemetery is in the Sonoran Desert and saguaros grow in the Sonoran Desert, but I was surprised to see the huge cacti. These were some seriously big saguaros, which means seriously old, saguaros. I’m glad they didn’t get pulled up or cut down to make room for the graveyard.

I love this photo with the two saguaros presiding over Ajo Cemetery with A mountain in the background. I wasn't even trying to get the mountain in the background, and I didn't realize the Ajo "A" would show up so clearly. This is one of those photos I look at and think, how did I do that?

I love this photo showing the two saguaros presiding over Ajo Cemetery while A Mountain stands in the background. I wasn’t even trying to get the mountain in the background, and I didn’t realize the Ajo “A” would show up so clearly. This is one of those photos I look at and think, How did I do that?

I’d never seen graves covered with painted gravel before, but I saw them at the Ajo Cemetery. I saw a couple of those, each with the gravel painted different, bright colors. I wonder why. Why gravel, I mean. I sort of understand people who think painted gravel looks prettier than plain gravel wanting to paint it, but why put gravel on a grave site in the first place? Maybe to try to keep the dust down?

When I visited the Old Kernville Cemetery (read about that experience here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/05/29/old-kernville-cemetery/), I encountered a couple of graves upon which an unopened Bud Light had been placed. In the Ajo Cemetery, I encountered grave sites upon which other beverages had been left. I saw bottles of water, Coca-Cola, and Jarritos. I wonder if this offering for the dead is particular to the dessert.

I saw several creepy things at the Ajo Cemetery.

The first creepy thing I saw was a rather disturbing inscription on the headstone marking a baby’s grave.

I’m not trying to be snarky or offensive about someone else’s grief or how that grief is expressed. I know that people mourn in different ways. Also, I give this family props for staying optimistic in the face of losing their baby. But I feel freaked out by this sentiment of “my baby’s dead, but God will send me a new baby, and I won’t even miss the old baby.” Let’s just say I don’t think this is the way I would grieve my lost child.

The second creepy thing I saw was a collapsing grave. Yes, I got as close as possible so I could look into the hole. Yes, I stepped gingerly, gauging my weight so I wouldn’t fall in. Yes, I experienced a mild fear of an arm reaching out and grabbing my ankle. No, I didn’t see a coffin or bones. No, nothing grabbed my ankle.

I hope someone comes along soon and repairs Donald P. Harrison’s grave.

The third creepy thing I saw harkens back to the DIY grave markers. It may be a bit difficult to believe that I actually encountered in a cemetery the grave represented in the next photo, but I promise you, the photo shows exactly what I saw.

I saw so many graves of children in this cemetery. It seemed like there were more children’s graves than I normally see in graveyards. Maybe Ajo was not only a town with families (as opposed to settlements populated with predominantly hard-living men), but a place where life was rough and survival was difficult. All of those graves of kids got to me, and I felt rather melancholy when I left.

I think cemeteries are making me sadder as I get older.

Ajo cemetery is located at 1181 Cedar Street in Ajo, Arizona.

I took all of the photos in this post.

May16

On the Road (Again)

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Blaize Sun

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I said good-bye to the saguaros and hit the road again.

I stopped at the Circle K on the way out of town, and in addition to gasoline for the van, I got one of those huge styrofoam cups (sorry Mother Nature) and filled it with icy cold slushy frozen red sugar water. I never suffer from ice cream headaches/brain freezes (even though they run in my family), but I repeatedly suffered from esophageal freezes as I drove through the desert evening.

I’m getting pretty good at this driving thing. I only had to make one pit stop (as my dad always called potty breaks during family trips) in the 157 miles between my starting point and the city where I spent the night.

I’ve also improved in the changing lane department. I no longer shriek in terror when I pass another vehicle. Everything I know about passing, I learned from observing Mr. Carolina.

I was going to sleep in the Wal-Mart parking lot, but was happy to see a Flying J sign on my way into town. I’ll take a truck stop over a Wal-Mart any day. I did go to Wal-Mart to pick up some supplies. After shopping, I sat in the parking lot for a long while with the side doors open, trying to cool off the inside of the van before bedtime.

I was surprised when I got to the Flying J and discovered it was a tiny little truck stop. It was more like a convenience store with a gas station for cars, a gas station for big rigs, and a little bit of parking for both. There were maybe ten parking spots for regular vehicles. I was too tire to go back to Wal-Mart, so I parked, hung my side curtain, and crawled into bed. The night passed uneventfully, but I hardly slept.

I was out of bed before 5:30 and driving by six o’clock.

I’m proud of the fact that I made the trip without GPS and without getting directions online before I started. I used maps, road signs, and my previous experience to get where I was going. I did ok.

I’m tired. I am going to plan my route for tomorrow because I have several errands to run in the city I will arrive in. After my errands, I am going to head halfway up the mountain to stay with my friend before training on Tuesday.

I’ll soon be saying hello again to the sequoias.

May14

10 Ways to Support a Writer

Posted on May 14, 2016 by Blaize Sun

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It came up on my Facebook news feed again, a meme titled “10 Ways to Seduce a Writer.” It was written by Amanda Patterson, and you can read it on the Writers Write website.

Seduce? Merriam-Webster says seduce means to persuade (someone) to have sex with you; to persuade (someone) to do something. So is this basically a list of ten things to do to get what you want (wink wink, nudge nudge) from a writer? I find it a rather creepy thought process: buy books for a writer and the writer will have sex with you.

Maybe the writer who wrote this list (perhaps a writer who was hoping to be seduced?) meant it as a list of things to do to develop a deep and lasting friendship with a writer. Maybe.

Don’t get me wrong. I would really like it if someone bought me books. (Actually, I do have a dear friend who occasionally buys me books. I am pretty sure he does not want to have sex with me.) I would like it if someone took me to dinner near a bookstore and sent me to a writer’s retreat and introduced me to new independent bookshops. But I don’t know if I would be seduced. If seduction is going on, there better be kissing. I agree with what Neil Gaimen said:

Many writers figure out that they’re being seduced or flirted with if someone is actually kissing them.

Also, while everything on the list sounds nice, I don’t know if most writers have time to be whisked off to restaurants and tea gardens (Tea gardens? Is that a West Coast thing?) and bookstores and writing retreats. Most writers I know are slogging through life on little sleep with barely time to put on pants in between dropping kids at school, picking up groceries, trying to make a dent in the laundry, and possibly even (gasp!) working a mind-numbing “real” job. Most writers I know are trying to fit some writing in the gaps between kids, significant others, housework, and personal hygiene. I propose to anyone trying to seduce a writer, try supporting that writer first. The seduction may come later (if the writer can stay awake).

10 Ways to Support a Writer

Listen to the writer speak about her/his “process.”
Buy the writer cute new pajama pants so there’s something clean to wear when the laundry (still) hasn’t gotten done.
Clean up the writer’s hard drive so the computer moves faster than a cold snail on Monday.
But don’t touch anything on the writer’s desk! Each pile of books and scrap of paper sits where it sits for a reason. “Cleaning up” will not be helpful. If you want to help, do the laundry.
Happily participate in endless discussions such as “Which character name–Fiona or Astrid–is more believable?” and “Is there a copyright on hobbits?”
Bring sustenance of any kind to the writer so s/he can spend another hour at the desk without starving.
Amuse the children. An hour (or 15 minutes) of quiet is precious.
Coax the writer away from the laptop and into the sunshine so s/he doesn’t suffer vitamin D deficiency (again).
Sympathize when the poet-writer laments the lack of rhyme for the words “orange,” “silver,” and “purple.”
Don’t run away when the writer is grumpy, discouraged, tired, disheartened or unwashed. Your support might be what the writer needs to finish the masterpiece (or the 2,000 word article on muscle cars that buys the groceries this week).

May13

Arcosanti (Part 2)

Posted on May 13, 2016 by Blaize Sun

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The first thing my friend and I realized as we started the tour at Arcosanti was that visitors who were not on the tour were not allowed to walk freely through the community. I understand the reasoning; I’ve worked in the French Quarter and know that dingdong tourists running around the neighborhood can be a giant pain in the ass. I understand that people live at Arcosanti and the people living there don’t want visitors wandering into private areas. What I don’t understand is why the guy on the phone made it sound like we could see whatever we wanted for free if we didn’t want to take the tour. My friend and I later agreed we were glad she’d gotten the Culture Pass and glad we’d gone on the tour. I would have been sad had we gone all the way out there and only seen the Visitor Center Complex.

This photo shows one of the housing structures at Arcosanti.

The next thing my friend and I realized was that the senior citizens on the tour knew very little about intentional communities and cooperative living.

I’ve never lived in co-op housing, but through the years, I’ve had several friends who did. I understand the basic concepts.

The Fellowship of Intentional Community website says,

An “intentional community” is a group of people who have chosen to live together with a common purpose, working cooperatively to create a lifestyle that reflects their shared core values.

This definition spans a wide variety of groups, including (but not limited to) communes, student cooperatives, land co-ops, cohousing groups, monasteries and ashrams, and farming collectives. Although quite diverse in philosophy and lifestyle, each of these groups places a high priority on fostering a sense of community–a feeling of belonging and mutual support that is increasingly hard to find in mainstream Western society.

Among secular communities, the inspiration [for launching a new community] is typically based on bold visions of creating a new social and economic order–establishing replicable models that will lead to the peaceful and ecological salvation of the planet.

This is what Arcosanti says about itself:

As an educational organization dedicated to learning-by-doing, developing the community is an important component of creating this urban prototype. We are not a planned community, but as Arcology city design suggests, as our diverse group of residents live, work and play in this integrated setting, culture and interaction are encouraged vs. dissipated.

Several of the senior citizens referred to Arcosanti as a commune during the tour. The use of the word commune to describe Arcosanti showed the preconceived notions of the visitors, because our tour guide never once used the term. The definition I found for commune (a group of people living together and sharing possessions and responsibilities) is only 2/3 correct for Arcosanti, because while the folks there live together and share responsibilities, I don’t think they share possessions. (Well, maybe they share the means of production, but I don’t think they share personal property.) And the way those senior citizens said commune, it was obvious they were thinking free sex and reefers.

The first community area we visited was the foundry. The Arcosanti website calls the foundry,

a beautiful open air studio overlooking the Agua Fria River valley, shaded by a Siltcast Apse.

This photo shows the foundry/studio which is partially covered by a siltcast aspe.

We did not see a bronze pour on the day we visited, but because of my recent visit to Cosanti, I had a pretty good understanding of how the pour worked. If I hadn’t already been to a pour at Cosanti, I would

These are molds in the sand into which the molten metal is poured to form bells.

have felt a bit confused by the information given and disappointed to not get to see the molten metal which forms the bells.

The next place we went on the tour was an area consisting of an amphitheater ringed by living quarters. This is where the senior citizens asked a lot of questions and I lost what was left of my patience.

At some point in the tour, someone asked about car ownership at Arcosanti. Our tour guide said not everyone in the community owned a car, so folks carpooled when they went into town. This seemed to concern many of the folks on the tour. I didn’t own a car until I was well into my 30s, so carpooling doesn’t seem so strange to me, but some of these folks acted as if sharing a car were on par with several people sharing one pair of shoes.

Later, while the group was standing near the amphitheater, someone asked if there were any children in the community. Our guide said there were. In fact, she told us, three generations of a family live at Arcosanti. People in the group wanted to know if there were a school in the community. The guide said the children go to the nearest public school. But how do they get to school, someone asked with just the slightest edge of panic in the voice, if there aren’t enough cars? Our guide looked genuinely perplexed for a moment, as she had never said there weren’t enough cars. She’d only said folks shared cars and carpooled, but somehow that had been translated into a dearth of cars. Does the school bus come down that terrible road? someone wanted to know. (Much grumbling about the awful dirt road followed. I thought the road wasn’t so bad. Folks who thought that road was terrible better stay out of New Mexico.)

Notice the windows at the top of the living quarters in this photo. Those windows are made from sliding glass doors.

One woman had been looking at the living quarters which form a sort of open half circle around the seating area and stage. She voiced her concern about the sliding glass doors at the tops of the living quarters. What was to keep someone from simply walking out of those doors and falling two stories, she wanted to know. Our guide explained the sliding glass doors were not level with the floor, there was a barrier of a couple of feet between the bottom of the doors and the floor. Well, in California, there are codes! she said. That’s where my patience ended and I muttered not quite under my breath, That’s why we don’t live in California! My friend looked at me and said, This is the Wild West, baby! Then she pointed the thumb and forefingers of both hands like six shooters and used them to shoot imaginary bullets into the air while saying Pew! Pew! Pew! (That’s her sound for bullets being shot.) She and I started laughing, and I didn’t care what the senior citizens thought.

This is what I don’t understand: if a person thinks the way s/he lives is the only correct and proper way to live, why would that person bother to leave his or her neighborhood and look at anything else? (But I digress.)

After the tour, my friend and I thought about eating in the Arcosanti cafe. The food smells coming from in there were so good! I was ready to plunk $10 for the lunch buffet. My friend went and checked it out and didn’t see anything on the line that fit into her dietary restrictions, so we headed out

I did enjoy my visit to Arcosanti and applaud the work being done there

to embody a “Lean Alternative” to hyper consumption and wastefulness through more frugal, efficient, smart, yet elegant city designs.

May12

Arcosanti (Part 1)

Posted on May 12, 2016 by Blaize Sun

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My friend had never been to Arcosanti, and asked me if I wanted to go there with her after we visited Cosanti. I said yes to Arcosanti too, especially when I found out we could use a Phoenix Library Culture Pass to take the tour for free.

(According to the Phoenix Public Library website,

A Culture Pass gives a library customer FREE admission for two people at participating arts and cultural institutions. Passes are available on a first-come, first-served basis. They cannot be renewed; they cannot be placed on hold.

Customers are limited to one pass per family at any one time, up to two passes per month.)

The Arcosanti website says,

Arcosanti is an urban laboratory focused on innovative design, community, and environmental accountability.
Our goal is to actively pursue lean alternatives to urban sprawl based on Paolo Soleri’s theory of compact city design, Arcology (architecture + ecology).

This photo shows some of the buildings of Arcosanti.

Built by over 7,000 volunteers since the commencement of the project in 1970, Arcosanti provides various mixed-use buildings and public spaces where people live, work, visit, and participate in educational and cultural programs.

Every year Arcosanti welcomes 50,000 visitors who come and experience firsthand the vision and architecture of this vibrant educational community in the beautiful high desert of central Arizona. If you have a few hours you can enjoy a site tour, a meal in our café and a visit to the gallery selling our world renowned Soleri Windbells.

Before my friend picked up the Culture Pass, we discussed if we really wanted to go on the tour or if we wanted to go to Arcosanti and just look around on our own. My friend even called Arcosanti to find out what we could see if we didn’t take the tour. The guy on the phone made it sound like we could could walk around the place at our own pace if we decided against the tour. But we decided if we could take the tour for free with the Culture Pass, it would be silly not to. (For folks with no access to a Culture Pass, tours are a $10 suggested donation.)

We arrived early for the eleven o’clock tour.

Looking down from the top floor of the Visitor Center Complex to a room below.

From I-17, we took the Arcosanti Road exit (exit 263) and then drove the mile and a half down a dirt road to get to community.

We climbed the stairs to the top of the Visitor Center Complex, where my friend showed our Culture Pass to the guy at the counter. The Visitor Center Complex houses the cafe (from which the smells of delicious food were emanating), some exhibits pertaining to Arcosanti (such as a cardboard model of the community and a retired crucible from the foundry), and lots and lots of brass Soleri Windbells for sale.

The crucible was quite interesting. According to the handwritten sign posted next to it,

[a] crucible is used inside a furnace to heat ingots of metal into a molten state in order to be poured into molds.

We could have used that kind of information during our visit to Cosanti!

The sign further stated,

[t]his crucible has participated in over 250 pours in Arcosanti’s bronze foundry, producing many of the bells here in the gallery.

The Visitor Center Complex is open in the center. One can stand on the too floor and look down into the cafe below.

This is the view of the cafe seating down below.

As my friend and I looked at the bells (bells! bells! bells!), an Arcosanti representative (a volunteer? an employee? a community member?) approached us and said the tour would start soon, when a group taking the tour arrived. She said the tour would begin with a video, so my friend and I went to the video viewing area and took seats.

Another view in the Visitor Center Complex, this one looking down and outside.

It wasn’t long before a large group of well-dressed senior citizens (probably 40 to 50 people) filled the video viewing area. There was some old-man banter between the man sitting next to my friend and one of his buddies; my friend and I rolled our eyes at each other.

The video was quite informative and told a lot about Arcosanti and its founder, Paolo Soleri.

According to the Arcosanti website,

Through his work as an architect, urban designer, artist, craftsman, and philosopher, Paolo Soleri explored the countless possibilities of human aspiration. One outstanding endeavor is Arcosanti, an urban laboratory, constructed in the Arizona high desert. It attempts to test and demonstrate an alternative human habitat which is greatly needed in this increasingly perplexing world. This project also exemplifies his steadfast devotion to creating an experiential space to “prototype” an environment in harmony with man.

When the video was over, the large group was split into two groups, each with a tour guide to show the visitors around the grounds. Our group first looked at the cardboard model of Arcosanti, then we moved outside.

Because the story of Arcosanti looks to be a long one, I will continue it in a second part.

If you want to visit Arcosanti, it

is located one and a half miles (unpaved road) Northeast of Arcosanti Road (exit 263) on I-17, near Cordes Junction, North of Phoenix.

I took all of the photos in this post..

May10

Cosanti

Posted on May 10, 2016 by Blaize Sun

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My friend asked me if I wanted to visit Cosanti. I wasn’t even sure what Cosanti was, but when she said free, I was in.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosanti,

Cosanti is the gallery and studio of Italian-American architect Paolo Soleri and was his residence until his death in 2013. Located in Paradise Valley, Arizona, USA, it is open to the public. Cosanti is marked by terraced landscaping, experimental earth-formed concrete structures, and its sculptural wind-bells.

Paolo Soleri invented the word Cosanti…[by] fus[ing] two Italian words, cosa (meaning “things”, “property”, “matter”, “business”) and anti (“against”).

The structures at Cosanti include the original “Earth House” (which is partially underground), student dormitories, outdoor studios, performance space, swimming pool, gift shop, and Soleri’s residence. All are set amidst courtyards, terraces, and garden paths.

Location and orientation of the buildings is significant. Many structures have been placed under ground level and are surrounded by mounds of earth so as to be insulated naturally, year round, for moderation of their interior temperatures. Soleri also designed south-facing apses (partial domes) situated as passive energy collectors, accepting light and heat in the lower winter sun, deflecting it and creating shade in the higher summer sun.

Cosanti (and the related Arcosanti project) are famous for bells which help fund them. (The Arcosanti website [https://arcosanti.org/cosanti] describes them as bronze Windbells.) My friend had been to Cosanti before, but had never seen the pouring of the bells. We went on a bell-pouring day. (Some days bells are poured at Cosanti, and some days no bells are poured. If you want to see the bells being poured, call ahead [(480) 948-6145] and get the schedule.)

We knew bells would be poured during certain hours (9am to noon, I think), but no particular time was promised for a pouring event. We arrived at approximately 10am and walked around the grounds.

There were no informational signs on the grounds of Cosanti. When we arrived, we knew we were in the right place thanks to the welcome sign near the driveway (pictured at the top of this post). After that we were on our own. There were no signs explaining the function of any of the buildings or how those buildings were constructed. There were no docents milling about answering questions.

This is the foundry where the bells are poured. While we watched, a half dozen men scurried around making preparations. The boxes on the ground hold the molds.

We stopped at the foundry to see what was happening there. The foundry is where the metal is melted and the bells are poured.

This is the red-hot hole in the floor of the foundry.

In the floor of the foundry, there is a red-hot hole. Solid chunks of metal were being fed into the red-hot hole to melt.

While the metal was melting, half a dozen men were moving around the foundry, preparing the molds. The molds are made from sand contained in boxes before, during, and after the pour (until the molten metal hardens).

My friend and I had some questions, so we went into the gift shop, looking for free information. There was no free brochures or pamphlets telling the history of Cosanti or discussing its current function. There was a Cosanti guidebook in the gift shop, but the price on it was $10.

No way was I going to spend $10 on something I was probably only going to look at once. I understand selling a book with lots of information about the project and its founder, but it seems like the more casual visitor might just need one page explaining the basics. (My friend flipped through the display copy of the $10 guide until she found the answers to her questions.)

The gift shop was filled with bells for sale. We looked around, but neither of us bought anything. (My friend’s family has two Arcosanti bells, both of which were gifts. I don’t have anywhere to hang a bell, even if the $32+ price tag were in my budget.)

My friend and I walked around the grounds some more and looked at buildings for which we had no context. When we made it back to the foundry, we found life there was getting exciting. Two men had donned protective jackets and protective chaps with covered the fronts of their pants. They’d also put on helmets with protective plastic shields. They looked serious.

Working together, the two men removed the crucible filled with molten metal from the red-hot hole. They carried the crucible between them, each holding a long pole on either side of the extremely hot pot. They brought the crucible over to the line of sand molds and carefully poured molten metal into each mold.

After the pouring ended, one of the workers answered questions from the onlookers. Then it was all over until the next pour.

I did enjoy my visit to Cosanti, although I wish there had been more educating happening. It was neat to see the bells being poured. (Who’s not impressed by a red-hot hole, a glowing crucible, and molten metal?) I would go back, but only because it’s free.

Cosanti is located at 6433 E Doubletree Ranch Road, Paradise Valley, Arizona.

I took all of the photos in this post.

May8

This Summer

Posted on May 8, 2016 by Blaize Sun

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I’ll be heading to my summer job pretty soon.

Of course, as I learned last year, when a summer job starts, the actual weather of summer may still be weeks away, especially in the mountains. There’s no way to tell what sort of weather I’ll encounter this year. I’m worried it will be too hot, even at over 6,000 feet.

I’m worried about mosquitoes too. Last summer mosquitoes bit me a few times, probably less than ten. Apparently it’s quite unusual to see so few mosquitoes at my campground. I think the lack of the little bloodsuckers was due to the dry conditions. While I’m no fan of drought, a minimally itchy summer was nice, and I’d like to have another one.

My plan for this summer is to spend more time on the mountain. Last year I went to civilization nearly every week. That used up a lot of gas, and when I was out and about, I bought things I could have probably done without, such as restaurant food and books and yarn and postcards from thrift stores. This year I want to use less gas and explore more of the area near my campground.

Last year my weekly excursions were necessary to shower and use the internet. This summer I am going to try a different plan.

My co-worker lives about 15 miles from my campground. Last summer he invited me several times to come over to his place and shower and do laundry; I never took him up on his offer. He doesn’t know it yet, but I do plan to take him up on his offer now.

In the community where my co-worker lives (the word “town” is too grandiose for the place), there is a small grocery store (more like a convenience store, really, but with no gas pumps) with an shaded outdoor patio. The store has internet access, and the owner told me last year that I am welcome there any time, even when the store is closed.

To tie it all together, the post office were I plan to set up general delivery is just down the road from my co-worker’s little community.

This means if I go to the small community, I will only have to drive 30 mile round trip to do the things I need to do, instead of the nearly 100 mile round trip I would have to drive to go to civilization. This new plan should save a lot of gas.So if three weeks a month I can shower and do laundry at my co-worker’s house, pick up my mail, and use the internet at the store, I can spend less money than if I go to the closest big town, even if I have to buy something at the store in order to support the people who are letting me use their internet.

I’m not sure what less trips to civilization is going to mean for this blog. I don’t know if I am going to be able to write and schedule a week’s worth of posts in one day. I may have to go to an every-other-day or three-times-a-week schedule. Please know that even if a new post doesn’t come up every day, I’m still out there, I’m still writing, and something new will appear eventually.

The best way to stay abreast of my writing is to subscribe to this blog. If you aren’t already a subscriber, it’s easy to sign up. Look to the right of where you are reading right now. You’ll see a button labeled Subscribe. Right above that button is a box where you can type in your email address. Once your email address is in the box, click on the Subscribe button. Once you are a subscriber, you will receive an email notification whenever a new post is available for your reading pleasure.

Have a great summer. I plan to do the same.

I took this photo.

May7

Happy Birthday, Bill Kreutzmann

Posted on May 7, 2016 by Blaize Sun

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Bill Kreutzmann is a drummer. He was one of the two drummers for the Grateful Dead. (Mickey Hart was the other one.) The band’s keyboardists came and went. Mickey Hart left the band for several years. There was even a period when the rest of the band kicked out Pigpen and Bob Weir because they didn’t feel those two were taking their jobs seriously. But Bill, Bill was there through thick and thin. Oh, he might have been high as a kite, but if you hear a drum being played in a Grateful Dead song, you can bet Bill was on board.

According to Wikipedia,

Kreutzmann was born in Palo Alto, California, the son of Janice Beryl (née Shaughnessy) and William Kreutzmann, Sr. His maternal grandfather was football coach and innovator Clark Shaughnessy.^[3] Kreutzmann started playing drums at the age of 13.

At the end of 1964 he co-founded the band the Warlocks, along with Phil Lesh, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan. Their first real gig was May 5, 1965, two days before Kreutzmann’s nineteenth birthday. In November 1965, the Warlocks became the Grateful Dead.

Kreutzmann remained with the Grateful Dead until its dissolution after the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995, making him one of four members to play at every one of the band’s 2,300 shows, along with Garcia, Weir and Lesh.^[6]

Bill is currently playing with his band Billy & the Kids, which includes

Aron Magner on keys, Reed Mathis on bass, and Tom Hamilton on guitar, with additional special guests and surprises along the way.

Bill’s Wikipedia page also says,

Kreutzmann’s memoir, Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead, was published by St. Martin’s Press on May 5, 2015.^[25]

[amazon template=image&asin=1250034000]I read the book last summer. Here’s the review I wrote of it:

This book is an absolute must-read for any Grateful Dead fan. (If you just like a celebrity tell-all memoir, it’s good as that too.)

In this book, Bill Kreutzmann–the first, last, and every time drummer for the Grateful Dead–tells his stories from his days with the band. It feels like he holds nothing back. He tells of the drugs. (It’s kind of a wonder Bill can remember anything at all, after all the drugs he took over so many years.) He tells of the sex. (Thirteen ladies in one night, and I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you which sexy revelation made me scream out loud.) And of course, he tells of rock-n-roll.

Bill doesn’t stand behind the door to say which Grateful Dead songs were his favorite to play, which ones he most liked to listen to, and which ones he didn’t care for. He offers his two cents on the debate about Donna Jean’s singing. He’s not shy about saying which keyboardists he thinks were truly members of the band and which ones were just filling in. He tells how he felt when Mickey returned to play drums with the Grateful Dead, and what he thought of the related bands that came along after Jerry died and the Grateful Dead disbanded. I don’t agree with Bil on all counts, but I sure enjoy knowing his opinions.

The stories in the book are told in more or less chronological order. In lots of cases Bill tells a story, then says, “that reminds me of the time…,” then tells about something that happened years before or after the original event. It works though. It’s like listening to your grandpa’s stories (if your grandpa were involved in one of the best rock-n-roll bands in history): the telling might be rambling, but the stories are so good, you barely notice.

At the end of the book, the reader realizes this whole story is a love letter to Bill’s wife Aimee. It’s also, of course, a love letter to all the Grateful Dead fans. And it’s even a love letter from Bill to the other members of the Grateful Dead, his brothers, Bill calls them many times throughout the book.

This book has an index, which I find super sexy. (Oh! How I love a rock-n-roll index.)

Happy Birthday, Bill, and for all our sakes, I hope you have many more.

May6

Beep! Beep!

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Blaize Sun

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Growing up in the Deep South, there was a lot I wasn’t taught about the Southwest.

For example, I wasn’t taught that the saguaro cactus is

found exclusively in the Sonoran Desert.

[The cactus is found] in southern Arizona and western Sonora, Mexico. A few stray plants can also be found in southeast California.

(Thanks to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum for the info.)

I grew up thinking all cacti (I did know the plural of cactus was not cactuses) were pretty much that same and all cacti grew in all deserts. WRONG!

Nor did I know much about the roadrunner. Oh sure, I saw the cartoon Road Runner on Saturday mornings, but I didn’t necessarily believe a roadrunner was a real creature. I saw Bugs Bunny too, but I knew rabbits couldn’t talk (much less sing opera), so while I might believe there was a bird called a roadrunner out in the big world, I was pretty sure it was nothing like the one on television.

I was right about that.

I didn’t see a real live roadrunner until I was an adult. I was so excited when it ran across the road, I bounced up and down in my seat and squealed.

Of course, the cartoon Road Runner looks a lot different from a real, live roadrunner. Real roadrunners are mostly brown, while the cartoon Road Runner is decked out in shades of blue. The cartoon Road Runner is much taller than a real roadrunner, and the decorative feather flop on the top of the cartoon’s head is much bigger than anything a real roadrunner has going on.

But still, when I saw the real roadrunner hurrying across the highway, I knew exactly what it was.

According to the All About Birds website

A bird born to run, the Greater Roadrunner can outrace a human, kill a rattlesnake, and thrive in the harsh landscapes of the Desert Southwest. Roadrunners reach two feet from sturdy bill to white tail tip, with a bushy blue-black crest and mottled plumage that blends well with dusty shrubs. As they run, they hold their lean frames nearly parallel to the ground and rudder with their long tails. They have recently extended their range eastward into Missouri and Louisiana.

WHAT?!?!?!? Roadrunners in Missouri and Louisiana? THAT is exciting, but how is a desert bird going to adapt to all the humidity?

Not too long ago, I woke up with the sun. It had been hot out, and there weren’t many other people around, so I hadn’t hung my side curtain when I went to bed. The lack of curtain helped with airflow, but when the sun rose at 5:45, there was a lot of light in my face.

I was looking at Facebook on my phone and hadn’t even put my glasses on when I heard a thump on the van. I looked up and saw…something…standing on my side mirror. My vision is very poor, and I can’t see much past the end of my nose without my specs. (Yeah, I’d been holding the phone close to my nose.) I suspected it was a bird on the mirror, but I wasn’t sure. Maybe it was some kind of super jumping desert squirrel that had leapt up there.

I reached out for my glasses, thinking my movement would scare of the critter. Nope. The critter didn’t go anywhere. I got the spectacles on my face and saw a roadrunner on my mirror. A big roadrunner. A roadrunner with a tail as long as (maybe longer than) its whole body. It turned around a few times on the mirror, so I got a good look at it from all angles. Then it flew up to the roof of my van, where I heard it thump a couple of times as it walked around. When all was silent, I knew the bird had flown away.

If I’d been in a cartoon, an anvil or a safe would have crushed my van. Thank goodness I’m living in the real world.

Since I didn’t get a photo of the roadrunner, I’ll post one of a saguaro in bloom. I took the two photos of the saguaros.

May5

AZ International Marketplace

Posted on May 5, 2016 by Blaize Sun

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I recently shopped at the AZ International Marketplace on the second day of its grand opening weekend.

First, the particulars.

According to the AZ International Marketplace Facebook page, the store is comprised of

100,000 Square Feet of Groceries and General Merchandise from all over the world…Hundreds of thousand of products can be found in this marketplace.

It’s located at 1920 W Broadway Road in Mesa, Arizona, and is open 9am to 9pm every day.

I went with a friend and we walked down every aisle in the store.

Most of the packaged food seems to be Asian. A lot of the Asian food is highly processed, snacky food. We saw a lot of crackers, chips, cookies, and candy. In addition to the junk food, we also saw a lot of dry noodles and rice, as well as spices and sauces and oils.

In the middle of the marketplace is a large meat department. If there is a part of a cow or pig you’ve always wanted to cook and eat, you can probably find it in that meat department. My friend is a vegetarian, and I don’t buy and cook raw meat, so we didn’t stay in the meat department long or even look at all the items available. However, I did see cow lips for sale for the first time in my life. There were only a few cow lips left, so maybe they are popular in some dish I don’t know. Next time I have access to pay TV, I hope to see an episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern in which cooking with cow lips is explored.

Just past the large meat department is a large produce department. In addition to many fruits and vegetables I am accustomed to seeing in supermarkets (red peppers, yellow peppers, green peppers, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes), I also saw huge jackfruits, tiny bananas, and bundles of cinnamon sticks which looked like doll-sized bundles of firewood and smelled delicious.

A small part of the store (a back corner really) was dedicated to prepackaged food from Africa. (Reminded me of the time I rode the It’s a Small World ride at Disney World and the entire continent of Africa was represented by three brown children and a pink elephant.) In addition to several brands and varieties of red palm oil, we also saw Mama’s Choice plantain fufu mix, bags of cassava starch, and Tropiway brand fufu flour in both cocoyam and plantain flavors.

The marketplace also boasts a rather large section of food from East India. Unfortunately, by the time we made it to those aisles, I was in overload and didn’t get any photos of interesting East Indian packaging. We saw huge bags of spices, prepared vegetarian entrées at the good price of $1.69 per serving (I resisted loading my cart with them), cans of gulab jamun (delicious dough balls soaked in sweet syrup), and jars of ghee. I was most interested in the ghee, which looked a lot like the ghee I recently made: solid and pale yellow as opposed to the translucent liquid I was expecting. Maybe my ghee wasn’t a disaster after all.

We were looking at different bouillon powders when my friend picked up a package and declared it penis in a can.

Ok, obviously, that’s a mushroom. The can is even labeled granulated mushroom bouillon. But I’ll be damned if that doesn’t look like a walking penis. Do people in other countries not see that and think PENIS? Maybe Americans (or maybe it’s just me and my friend) have very immature senses of humor.

One of my favorite packages showed these kids carrying a giant peach. I don’t know what kids in rompers or a giant peach have to do with the dried noodles in the package, but I like the illustration a lot.

One of the most impressive parts of the store (at least to me) was the cooler containing tofu. I didn’t count the varieties, and I (stupidly) didn’t take a photo, but there must have been 15 to 20 kinds of tofu in the cold case. Some of the tofu had been pre-fried, and there were an assortment of brands. It’s the most tofu I’ve seen in the same place at the same time.

I apologize for this washed out photo. I have problems dealing with my flash. I hate taking photos in artificial light.

Maybe because I’m an anthropologist at heart, I’m fascinated by products that seem completely normal in one culture, while closely resembling torture devices in another. Case in point: the ear pick. American culture says it’s dangerous to stick cotton swabs in the ears. Another culture says it’s ok to shove wooden sticks with scoops on the end into the ears.

In addition to aisle upon aisle of “international” food, at least one-third of the store was dedicated to American (as in U.S.A.) or at least North American food. We saw Eggo waffles and Aunt Jemima. We saw Oreo cookies and canned vegetables. I was surprised the store carries food available at any supermarket in the valley, but I guess they want the place to be a one stop shop.

I was most surprised to see that food from Louisiana is apparently exotic enough to have its own sections. Louisiana food perhaps seems less exotic to me because I grew up in Louisiana. But I was not expecting to see an endcap dedicated to Cafe du Monde coffee and chicory. I was also not expecting to see three sizes (including gallon jugs) of Louisiana brand crawfish, shrimp, and crab boil. Where’s the Zatarain’s? my friend asked. Unfortunately, it looked like Louisiana brand had a monopoly on the Louisiana products. There were all sorts of Louisiana brand products available for purchase.

To round out the food selection, the marketplace sells a variety of housewares (throw blankets, bowls, cooking utensils), cleaning supplies, and electrical appliances (rice cookers, teapots). Shoppers can also buy incense, joss paper (also known as ghost or spirit money), and other paper items to burn as offerings to ancestors.

While I did find some bargains at the AZ International Marketplace (on Huy Fong sriracha Sauce, children’s toothbrushes to fit in my little mouth, and sport sunscreen that’s not supposed to run into my eyes), I certainly did not find everything in the store to be inexpensive. Since I hadn’t been shopping at other international markets, I don’t know how the prices at the AZ International Marketplace compare to similar markets in the valley, or if any of the other international markets in the valley can be considered similar to this one. If I lived in the area, I would probably go back and compare prices on items I’ve been buying at other stores, and I would probably take advantage of the good deals in the produce section. I would also probably do some experimenting with all those varieties of tofu. I would not use this store as a one-stop shop or my go-to market. But walking around it did make for a fun afternoon.

I took all of the photos in this post.

Rubber Tramp Artist

One woman's stories, rants, and observations

Monthly Archives: May 2016

Ajo Cemetery

On the Road (Again)

10 Ways to Support a Writer

Arcosanti (Part 2)

Arcosanti (Part 1)

Cosanti

This Summer

Happy Birthday, Bill Kreutzmann

Beep! Beep!

AZ International Marketplace