About Me

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I am mundane and magical, Silly and serious. I am an underachiever who suspects that someday in the eternities I may yet blossom and even fruit. I am a collector of spirits and essences, a studier of mood and nuance.I have many many faults and yet I've always been loved. I am a good friend, but I will let you go if you so desire. I believe in Somewhen. I laugh easily and cannot often cry, which I know is a Flaw. Like You, I am a work in progess.

Friday, October 31, 2014

A drawing I am working on. Posting it in stages (it will be like a mandala) because I have a tendency to ruin drawings and right now I like this one. It is a replacement for a Balance assignment. I turned in a piece that was truly hideous. Can't leave it like that, so trying again.



this is a cropped version



and a detail


Sunday, October 26, 2014

This was my response to our texture assignment in art. I really liked the ideas and images that came to my mind but rendition sucked. 


Spent a long and intense portion of last night in my personal vortex. It was so bad I almost started wring about it. But, what good would it do? Is it kind? y'know those kinds of questions. And, I couldn't see any good except maybe some personal understanding so I tried to just get through it. The interlude WAS interspersed with interesting thoughts and uncountable images of textures I wish I could draw and interesting compositions. Also very detailed images of birds. Why? I don't know! But I am so sick of that vortex!

Monday, October 20, 2014

More pics. I eventually made my way to Capitol Reef State Park (don;t think I'd ever been there before. Along the whole trip I kept seeing signs for places I had such fond memories of or places I have wanted to go or brand new places. I wish there's been more time. When my camera finally kept saying "Please reinsert memory stick" I made a quick decision to just go home (which my GPS said I could make before dark) instead of going through Bryce and Zion as I had intended. Zion is less than an hour from my house and Bryce is about 3 hours away. I can go on a day trip.  I found a restaurant going out of Capitol Reef and t was MUCH better than I had hoped. The ride home WAS scenic and relaxed and I made it home well before dark  and was greeted by my family who I was happy to see. The dogs didn't eat or drink while I was gone and Bruce had a relaxing time but I think he was glad to see me.














I LOVED my recent 2 day trip. I got a late start due to exhaustion and needing to get some supplies (like a charger cord for my GPS. could not find that cord for anything!- turns out Radio Shack was getting those cords in that afternoon, but they weren't in then. So, though I had an old atlas I bought a new GPS. I'm glad I did. I've since rehomed the old one) I needed a few other things too so instead of leaving around 6 am as I wished I actually left town at about 9 or 9:30. I decided to cut out Dead Horse Point and Moab from my trip and just head for the cabin. I had wanted to make sure the cabin I would be in had a fireplace so I asked the comper consider any. It did not (though I thought I saw that it was rtesupposed to on the information) The person I talked to offered me an upgrade (and whew what an upgrade!!) The offered cabin is between Monticello and Blanding (closer to Blanding) It is in an un-GPS-able area, out there totally by itself. He gave great directions on how to find it from Monticello or Blanding. The thing is a 3 story wood cabin, solar powered with its own well. It has a wood burning stove. Well, here's the cabin info
My Home For a Night

The 3 bedroom 1 1/2 bath is just what's available to renters. It's actually much larger than that. I didn't care about the Direct TV or many of the other amenities, but the wood burning stove and the wifi were good. That cabin includes a full kitchen, a bathtub big enough to immerse in, a wrap around patio and a flippin' PIANO! I was very much looking forward to getting there.

I decided to take the shortest time route and so started up I-15. I hoped I'd be hungry by the time I got to Beaver because there is a cheese factory there. I wanted to try the squeaky cheese everyone around here raves about, but I made scrambled eggs and cinnamon doughnuts for me and the dogs at about 6am and wasn't hungry at all by the time I hit Beaver. Yes folks, I went alone. When I worked for AT&T and could afford to  trek travel I did that a lot, or with Miles or with Miles and the girls and Jane, or on daytrips with a few other people. Traveling with kindred spirit is the BEST but traveling by myself is my second choice. Bruce doesn't like to travel so he declined and I asked on Facebook but no one took me up on the trip.

My first actual stop was Cove Fort. I'd driven by before many times and had never stopped. I thought it was time to rectify that even though I wasn't looking forward to the proselyting. It's an LDS historical site. The history of the LDS and particularly how Utah was settled fascinates me, but I no longer consider myself LDS. I don't consider myself religious. I do consider myself spiritual and I try to keep an open mind wondering if changes in beliefs are part of a good experience in life. I don't know and I am not going to pretend that i do. Anyway, Cove Fort was interesting looking even before i got out of the car. I have pioneer forbears.They came from Europe, England and Norway if i am remembering right. Then they took that long trek to Utah. I am not sure if  any of them went through Nauvoo or Missouri but the pioneers that were in those first groups to settle in Salt Lake City probably thought they were settling where they would live for the rest of their lives. But not so. Brigham Young was wanting to build a self sufficient set of communities that were interdependent and not dependennt on the outside world. There was a man by the name of Hinckley (I forget his first name right now but he was the grandfather of a recent church president Gordon B Hinckley  and he and his family had settled in Coalville (which is a lovely pastoral valley now - or at least when i was last there. He was hardly settled in when Brigham Young called him to go build a fort. Cove Fort. This is fairly close to Fillmore where my own great grandfather had a farm and where my grandmother was born. He immediately said yes and he and his family trekked 10 days from Coalville and he commenced to build this fort. It's made of volcanic rock and limestone. I took a million pictures there and hoped to remember a lot of the stories but when I got back I learned that I will probably need to replace my camera. Most of the pictures did not come out well at all. But here are some. And if you ever get a chance to visit and you like local history, well, I say it's well worth the time.



Initial views of Cove Fort


The Hinckley cabin disassembled and numbered, brought to Cove Fort and reassembled. The Hinckley's had 11 children. I was TRULY impressed at what they fit into the cabin and I think these people were probably happy and healthy




a couple bad shots of the inside of the cabin. I sure wish the Cove Fort pics had turned out

entrance= the walls are 18" thick


One of the two giant front doors


the black locust trees planted by the founder. they have much exceeded their usual lifespan and they now have been diagnosed with a disease so they are being cut down in November. There are some (2 or 3) of their saplings that will replace them. I was sad to learn they are being cut down


The stable area. The stable could hold 27 horses


a garden area. the Sister who showed me around said they had just recently taken up most of the garden for the winter but she went on about the good eating this spring and summer they'd had



One side of rooms. Each room had a chimney because it had it's own fireplace an there were interconnecting doors inside so people did not have to go out in inclement weather I took so many pics of each of the rooms. Sick they didn't come out. They had rooms for women and rooms for men. The rate was 50 cents a night for half a small bed. Then there were rooms for the family, a VIP room mostly used by Brigham Young when he was down. A big kitchen a laundry room, a post office and a telegraph office


The other side


The stable again


a one horse stagecoach


The telegraph office (working)

There were also other outbuildings like a bunkhouse, a blacksmith, an ice house and a structure where they could hoise up oxen to shoe them (I'd never known they shoed oxen!) Apparently oxen will fall down if you left a leg, unlike a horse or mule so there was this rather elaborate support. Those people used EVERYTHING The was a coat and the issionary asked us to guess what it was, we thought beaver maybe, but it was a horse hide from a horse that had died. They saved their own hair and used it for utilitarian and decorative purposes (hair sculpture!) Not much was wasted and the craftmanship and care was beautiful. I really enjoyed Cove Fort

I proceeded down I-70 and a good while later saw a turn off for Dead Horse Point. I had decided not to go but I changed my mind. Wish I hadn't. I did get an annual pass to State Parks and a t-shirt at the visitors center but was shocked by signs asking visitors to turn off any faucets they saw running (in the bathrooms) because there was no natural water source for the park so water was being trucked in from Moab.. I thought WTF? this park is formed by the flippin Colorado River!!!!! But indeed when I went to see the goosenecks I remember most fondly it was bone dry! (None of my Dead Horse Point pictures turned out) I was so sad. My happy mood (I'd actually been in a lot of moods but they had been variations of happy) disappeared and a new blue black mood took over. It was awhile before i reached Moab and oh MY! has it EVER grown!!!! I was hungry and would have liked to eat there and be a tourist but I wanted to make the cabin beofe dark and to do that there was no time to stop. And no time for Hole In the Rock which I passed right by or Fisher Towers or anything. I just kept driving through places where you MIGHT get one radio station, usually country (NOT my favorite) By the time I got to Monticello I knew I wasn't going to find the cabin before dark. So I decided to stop for dinner (hadn't eaten since breakfast) I stopped at a convenience store and asked if there was a restaurant- the cashier told me there was and where and as I left she came running after me. "Ma'amm did you know your jeans are riipped?" "No" I'd had a little hole about a back pocket and she told me they were ripped all the way. I grabbed another pair of jeans and hurried inside where I had to wait forever for a bathroom to change and OMG It was ALL the way ip and down past my knee and I hadn't known it... How long had it been like that? Anyway, freshly changed I went to the restaurant which was a dive. But....the food was much better than I thought it might be, I had a homemade vegetable soup and a buffalo patty and a baked potato which I ate little of because the yellow stuff on it was unlikely to have been butter. but the meal was refreshing and thought it was dark by now I figured I wasn't too far from the cabin. There were so many deer crossing warnings I was starting to hallucinate deer and I was very tired and ready to stretch out. It took me awhile to find mile markrs (on the opposite side of the road from me and then I really cant see at night so I ws straining to read them. The place I needed to be was between mile markers 55 and 56 near a big lake (which I did not see at all. Finally I saw the place I had to tuen. I did. Followed the road 2 miles as directed and nope... nothing. I was by then on completely dark unpaved unlit roads. I got loster and loster and loster. I did not even know how to get back to where I'd been. This was a remote place and something Bruce said about me being naive enough to tell people i was traveling alone got into my head in a very bad way. I was making up EVIL stories in my head and getting more and more scared and desperate. Then, in the most surreal way, animals started crossing the road in front of me... mostly little animals. I couldn't tell what they were and some did not look like mammals. then there was a spate of rabbit and more little animals. Finally a palomino HORSEwet across the road right in front of me. I honestly felt like I was in the Twiilight Zone and wondered if I was going to die that night. Eventually, I don't know how, I found my way back to the highway and wondered desperately what to do. I was so tired and scared I thought about trying to drive home. I doubted I'd make it. I was verry drowsy. I thought about trying to find another room but it was UEA and everything was likely booked. I decided to try to find the cabin again. I drove in circles along that highway between those 2 mile markers until finally I saw the country road I was supposed to be on. But I could not find the green gate and had to go back. Finally I saw what must be it and drove and FINALLY (about 11pm) there was the cabin! it was so dark...they had 2 solar lights in the flower containers and weilding one of those like it was a light sword I attempted to key in the door code. Thankfully it worked. There was a loaf of homemade bread and some butter on the counter, I assume as a welcome. I pretty much collapsed. I did eventually bring my stuff in and eventually explored the cabin (found a note on the wood burning stove forbidding its use which ticked me off) located the bed I wanted and answered Bruce's messages. Told him I had just gotten there and I had been scared half to death. Told him about the animals (it seemed somehow Lovecraftian) He was glad I was safe and told me he loved me and to go to bed. And that's what I did. Sunrise woke me up and I wanted to get pics. 




My rather pitiful pics from the cabin. Know what I loved MOST there? Now the bed was comfy and I needed it but what I loved most was the blinds! no strings or anything you just moved the up or down and they STAYED. I too


k a shower and loaded the car and added fluids and vamoosed. Hardly any time n the cabin at all. Finally saw the lake they were referring to in the daylight. thought I would get gas and have breakfast in Blanding. I found a combination gas station, convenience store, A&W and bowling alley and this really amused me. The card readers on the pumps did not work so i went iin to pay. They kept my card! I asked about that and they said I could have it when I came back. So I filled up and expected them to run it but they instructed me  to do it. I asked about the whole loopy procedure and they said a lot of people just eft afte fillig the pumps so they hold something of theirs till they paid. Jeepers! One of the cashiers told me where I might find a restaurant but I didn't see it and decided to head towward Bryce. I was hoping something nicer would appear. I ran into...miles and miles of miles and miles. I practically felt like I had the whole area to myself. Almost no other cars, the morning was gorgeous and I was in another million happy moods, There was a radio station from Four Corners that I found I liked even though I was unfamiliar with the songs. the sky was such beautiful shades of blue and the clouds seemed playful. It was wonderful! The unoccupied by people space was so big I found myself urgently needing tto pee and no place to do that in a bathroom. Stripping in the desert was kind of hilarious. It was near the Colorado River, which in this place had water. I was just joyful and grateful and free and happy!
















Looks like I can't add any more pics!!