Category Archives: Colorado

Colorado, GeekWorld, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Making Our Peace With Wildfires

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Spring                                                                              Maiden Moon

Figured out yesterday how to use Amazon’s Unlimited Photo cloud service. It comes free with Prime. Because I put so many images in my blog, I have an unusually large number filed away for future use. I began the uploading of the photos yesterday and the service is about 2/3’rds done this morning. It will finish sometime today.

Then, I sat down and learned how to use Dropbox. It’s free storage, about 2GB, is plenty for my novels, short stories, essays. I started copying files there yesterday, too. It will take a little time, but once I’m done, I’ll just have to update whatever current work I’m doing.

These two are in anticipation of a possible wildfire. No need to lose your work these days.

Today I’m going to work on putting together our emergency kit which will include the memory card which has the photographs of all our stuff. In there will also go insurance policies, titles, deed and manuals for various things since they will testify to exactly what we own. Our estate documents and our living wills. That sort of thing.

After a year of trying to put together an external sprinkler system, I’ve decided to not pursue it. Why? Well, for one thing nobody here builds the kind of simple system I want. I’ve investigated all the possible vendors in the state. That would mean I’d have to work with somebody who didn’t know what they were doing. Which would make two of us.

Perhaps even more to the point, I read an article by a wildfire expert who said that if you follow the firewise zone recommendations, which I am, that most houses will survive a fire. The deputy chief of the Elk Creek Fire district said that our house was well situated to survive a fire, in large part because we have a short, level driveway on a primary road, Black Mountain Drive. The perception of the fire department is important because during a fire they drive through the area and in essence do triage. These homes will be ok on their own. These can survive if we protect them. These homes will burn. You want to be in the first two categories. And we are no matter the sort of fire.

ECFD LOGO

Also, I decided to make my peace with losing our house and garage. After I finish the fire mitigation work, taking down trees and making sure we have a our zone free of combustibles around the house, I’m going to rely on luck and the Elk Creek Fire Protection District. Should that not prove enough and we lose everything except our lives and the lives of our dogs, we’ll build again. What could be safer than an area that’s already burned out?

It felt freeing to come to this decision. Both Kate and I agreed that losing our stuff would be very, very far from a cataclysm. We could rebuild an energy efficient house suited to our needs.

All part of settling in.

 

Colorado, Mountains, The West, Weather +Climate

Snowpack

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Imbolc                                                                          Maiden Moon

Winter snows have more long term relevance here than in Minnesota. The snowpack in the Rockies, especially the mountains whose melting snows feed the Colorado River, influences water availability in nine states including drought battered California. So when we get a late March snow like the one going on right now-about a foot when it’s done according to Weather Underground-there are lots of happy people. This snow and a couple more apparently coming next week are welcome because we had a dry February and a dry, up until now, March.

snowpack graph

 

 

Art and Culture, Colorado, Mountains, Park County, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Urban Art

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Imbolc                                                                              Valentine Moon

Cities. In 2008 a global threshold found over 50% of the population in cities, a percentage calculated to be 70% by 2050. Cities have many charms, their bulging populations are testimony to that. I found an artful charm in Denver last night.

The Rocky Mountain Land Library had a pop-up evening at the Denver Architectural Collaborative on Santa Fe. The Collaborative is in in the middle of the Santa Fe Drive Arts District which holds, on the first Friday of every month, a gallery crawl. Last night was the first Friday.

So, while discovering what the Library planned for its Hartsel location in South Park, I also had the opportunity to experience the first Friday event. While the Library’s exhibits, books and people were interesting, the galleries and people and food trucks were exciting. As often happens, the temperature in Denver was higher than ours at home, 57 degrees to 35, so the night was warm, filled with people wandering from gallery to gallery.

 

The district runs for five blocks or so. There are museums like the Museo de Las Americas and Denver University’s Center for the Visual Arts, many galleries with a wide range of art, artist’s studios, funky restaurants and best of all food trucks with a wide variety of fare. Last night there were gyros, wild game burgers and steaks, barbecue, Mexican among many others. The crowd was mostly young, the fabled millennials of Denver out on the prowl.

This place made me feel alive, at home.  These are my people and there are a lot of them.

Colorado, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Winter. Again.

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Imbolc                                                                                    Valentine Moon

Feb 23, 2016
Feb 23, 2016

Chinook winds brought us warm days, several in a row. Snow melted in the unshaded portions of our yard, though several inches remained over most of it. Today, though, all is white, curvy and gently rolling. We got 10 inches + overnight. Another powdery snow and it’s still falling. When the weather predictions for snow come out, we’re almost always in the area targeted for more snow. And this year, most of the time, we’ve exceeded the predictions.

Right now the snow falls in big, fat flakes, what I’ve come to think of as flour sifter snow. Somewhere above us an angel or an aeronautical giant has a huge bin of snow, a gigantic screen on the bottom. They’re working that bin back and forth, back and forth.  The lodgepole’s branches, already bent toward the earth, bow down even more. The aspen outside this window (I’m in the house in our home office.), our only deciduous tree up here, looks on, placid and stripped down for the season. Waiting.

The solar panels wed us even more to the cycles of weather and the sun’s angle. When snow covers the panels, no production. When the sky is cloudy, production diminishes. As the days lengthen and the sun rises higher in the sky, production increases. The solar panels are our photosynthesis. We have become plants. Sunshine = energy.

Asia, Colorado, Great Work

Draft Horses

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Yule                                                                                     Stock Show Moon

More Tai Chi for arthritis. Second class yesterday. Our group of 5 shrank to 3 Kate, me, and another woman about our age, maybe a bit younger. But all of us with arthritis of one sort or another. In other words, people of a certain age.

This is a chi gong style, different from the work I did with Great River Tai Chi in Minneapolis. Arthritis makes tai chi more difficult so the creator of this style modified the moves and the attitude. Both are important. The moves are less crisp, more fluid, less dramatic. The attitude is not perfection but persistence. Keeping people moving is the prime goal of this style, so adjusting the moves to what your body allows is the key.

20160123_130029After tai chi, we went back the National Western Stock Show, this time just Kate and me for one of the draft horse events. Our interest in basic agriculture/horticulture and our interest in Irish Wolfhounds, plus our Midwest rural roots, made seeing these giants of the horse world interesting.

It was a long show, almost four hours. These horses, though, whether pulling buckboards or traps, in two hitch or four hitch combinations, were a pleasure to watch. True horsepower in its original form. Their muscles rippled. Their eyes were intense and their individuality was on full display for those who could see it.

20160123_135636Mules were part of this show, too, though I found them much less interesting, at least visually, than the draft horses. While making sure what a mule was, horse + donkey, I discovered that male donkey, a jack, almost always covers a mare. The result of that union is a mule, usually sterile. On occasion a stallion will cover a female donkey and the result of that union is called a hinny.

The last, and best, part of this four hour show was the weight pull. These horses, in two horse pairs, were attached to a metal sled (no wheels) filled with sand bags. They started at seven thousand pounds or so and ended at fourteen thousand, gradually increasing the load until none of the pairs could pull it beyond twenty feet. (my video)

The heart of these pairs was on display as they dug, pulled easily on the lighter loads, or put shoulders and haunches to bulging as the loads got heavier. With the exception of one pair all the rest put all they had into each pull. It was clear they enjoyed the challenge.

Getting a team connected to the sled, accomplished by putting the sled’s hook ended chain  through a metal coupler on the horse’s pole and bar, was often the most interesting part of the pull. Why? Because the horses pull when they think they’re attached to the load, often dragging those trying to hitch them up away from the hook.

Always interested in draft horses. Now even more so.

Colorado, Dogs, Family, Holidays, Memories, The West, Third Phase

Super Dogs

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Yule                                                                             Stock Show Moon

Took Gabe and Ruth to Superdogs at the National Western Stock Show yesterday. We started attending back in 2010. That year I took Ruth on the shuttle. We got about two miles from home. She turned to me with a slightly scared, sad look, she was 3 I think, and said, “I miss my mommy.” I called Jen, she talked to Ruth and we went on.

Since then we’ve seen rodeos, dancing horses, many superdogs, lots of cattle, some pigs, sheep, alpaca. The exhibit halls are full of large metal pincers to hold cattle and other large animals while branding and medicating, fencing, horse stalls, lots of pick-ups and other motorized things like Bobcats, Kubota tractors and John Deere machinery. Trailers of all kinds and lengths. Rope. The big Cinch booth with all things denim and boot.

That first year Jen and Ruth were watching a sheep competition and a reporter from the Denver Post caught them in a picture that went on the front page. It’s become a family tradition although this year it was just Grandma, Grandpop and the kids.

We ate lunch at the Cattleman’s Grill, a large open air restaurant with oilcloth covered 8 foot tables put together in long rows. Like a big family reunion. Lots of cowboy hats and boots, kids.

After that we wandered the exhibit halls. Gabe and Grandma went to the petting zoo where they got their hands on sheep, goats, pigs while Ruth and I examined the Western Art Show and Sale. Ruth and I liked the show. It had some wonderful sculpture, especially a small stone owl, landscapes done in non-traditional (that is not sentimental) manners, and some excellent paintings of animals, in particular one Brahman bull. He was a distinct individual in this full head portrait.

The Superdogs show either has gotten better since we first saw it or I’ve lowered my standards. This year was fun. These canine athletes, most of them rescue dogs, catch frisbees, do the high jump, run through plastic tunnels at speed, race along raised platforms and have a helluva good time. They are high energy, eager animals.

We’ll be back next year. Who knows what wonders we’ll see?

Colorado, Sport, Third Phase

Orange and Blue

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Yule                                                                                 Stock Show Moon

Orange and blue. Everywhere. The receptionists at Urology Associates on Friday. A couple at Tai Chi yesterday with Bronco’s sweatshirts and sweatpants. All Broncos all the time in the Denver Post and on Denver TV stations. This metro area is Bronconutso. For me it went, Vikings beat Packers. Yeah. Vikings lose to Seahawks. Packers win. Sigh. Packers lose. half hearted yeah. Now – nada. No colors for me. No excitement before the big game. Just NFLost.

A sunny but cool Sunday. Clear air. Sun dogs. Snow that could use some freshening. Very quiet, almost holiday quiet.

Kate and I drove over to Nono’s, one of several very good New Orleans style restaurants. I had the Ragin’ Cajun, grits and eggs. The place had pushed together tables, one with adults and the other with their kids. Noisy. Also why we never want to live in an age-segregated community. No vitality. Sun Zombie City.

 

 

Colorado, Humanities, Latin, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The West, US History

Stock Show Weather

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Yule                                                                                 New (Stock Show) Moon

The Denver metro has Stock Show weather. Stock Show weather is cold as opposed to snowy, not surprising since the Stock Show runs the three weeks after the first week of the New Year.

We got 5 or 6 inches of snow overnight. The next few nights will be in the single digits or low double digits, cold by Colorado standards. Just getting cool by Minnesota’s. It rarely gets chilly here, that is well below zero, though it does happen. Still, as I told Greg, my Latin tutor, this morning, I wouldn’t care to visit Minnesota during a chilly period. Not anymore.

A couple of weeks ago Greg gave me an assignment. Match my English translation against other English translations, then figure out where and why we differ. This means I’m moving closer to the sort of translating I sought when I began this long journey. In order to proceed honestly I still have to translate the Latin first, then check others. This way I don’t engage in cheating, making my translation fit someone else’s interpretation. But, done in the proper sequence this method allows me to begin polishing my language, getting beyond a more literal translation to a more literary one.

Getting back to regular, that is daily, Latin work has been frustratingly slow. I’ve allowed holidays and illness to intrude. Understandable, not helpful. After this morning’s session though, I have a feeling I’m back at it. Greg said I did very well with the material I prepared. That means, when we sight read the Latin, I easily and accurately translated what I had put through the English translation match.

With my workouts somewhat regular now, illness and holidays again, it feels as if I’m returning to the productive rhythm I had in Minnesota. Now I need to add writing on a novel and/or the reimagining book. Working out, Latin and creative writing are the three legs to my stool, each necessary in their own way.

The art will come along, too.

Art and Culture, Colorado, Humanities

Marginal

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Samhain                                                                       Christmas Moon

We saw the last of the Brother/Sister trilogy yesterday afternoon at Curious Theater, “No guts, no story.” Marcus, the Secret of Sweet. This trilogy, which used Yoruba mythology heavily in its first two plays, lightens up on that in the last one. It is a complex story, one I’d need to see the whole again to piece it together with any confidence, but the trilogy gives the background, both cultural and mythic, to the coming of age of a young gay black man in Louisiana.

Though uneven at times in the first two plays, this last play stays focused and gets at the multiple challenges of being different in a community already oppressed for difference. The trilogy is about outliers, about the challenges that face them in daily life, about the deep mythos that can ground them, but often doesn’t.

Sexuality is, at best, a confused and highly charged aspect of human life. And, that’s for the normative heterosexual experience. Move into the homoerotic and the layering of doubts, fears, joys, ecstasies increase. Place that in a southern Christian African-American community, a community with the history of enslavement as yet another force pushing sexuality to the margins and the burden on one young boy is immense.

If you get the chance to see these plays, this drama and this playwright will open your mind and your heart.