Incommunicado

I've been off the posting grid for a few days. My stay with Melvin and his son Bob (I'm not making this up) kept me on the move and intellectually busy with not a lot of computer time.

They were so kind to me, beginning with a repair to Grace. She has very low ground clearance, somewhere in the neighborhood of the thickness of a piece of paper. When P and I were in Taos I backed up in a driveway that looked to have the slope of that same piece of paper. It did not, apparently, because we heard a scraping sound when I pulled out. A nasty, mean, expensive sound which turned out to be a broken water line to one of the fresh water tanks, meaning there is a second tank so it wasn't a fatal error but one that had to be fixed eventually.

When I got to Tucson and got an oil change I asked the garage to take a look. The mechanic came into the waiting area with the look of a surgeon delivering bad news. Not only was one thing broken, another thing was also broken. Don't ask me to get technical. I just know things were broken. When I got to Melvin's he gave me the name of an RV repair place which told me they were booked until the end of May, as was probably every other place around. Oh, grand. How the heck was I supposed to get this thing fixed? Melvin and Bob to the rescue. Bob kept running back and forth to the garage for this fitting or that tool. Melvin spent at least a couple of hours in the Tucson sun on his side under the van, repairing the water line. I don't want to harp on his age but if I'm as spry and sharp as he is when I get there I'm going to start buying lottery tickets because I'll be living with magnificent luck. Grace is now fixed and they saved me at least a couple of hundred dollars. I love these guys. They're on my list of favorite things. 

Melvin chauffeured me around in his Chevy Volt, an electric car that gets about 627 miles to the gallon when it has to run on gas. We went to the Desert Museum, Saguaro National Park, and Bisbee, AZ, a cute, quirky little town near the Mexico border. We talked for hours about everything, which made me realize how much I'd missed in my life by not having meaningful conversations about anything with the person who'd been so important to me. It was very hard to unfoist myself from them but I didn't want to get to the stinky fish stage so I did and headed to Mesa, AZ.

I'm now at the home of the woman who shared a hospital room with me when our first sons were born. Judy and her husband Pete moved from Michigan to Lake Havasu, AZ not long after we moved from Detroit to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. We haven't seen each other since 1979, lost touch somewhere in the 80s, and reconnected via Facebook. 

It's poignant to see the love they have for each other. Just like my long conversations with Melvin and Bob, the laughter and instant friendship among us, seeing the deep affection Judy and Pete have for each other makes me kind of sad. They were telling me a story about something last night and one of them jumped in to correct the other. This may seem a nonstarter to you, but had I done that to the ex-husband it would have resulted in instant shut down that would have persisted for some time. When it happened between them last night it was nothing to them; the other just picked up the story and on it went. I've missed so much in my life and never really realized it, but my eyes are open now.

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Thought of the day:

Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option. (Attributed to Mark Twain but I'm not convinced)

A new foist

I've given my friend S a break from five days of me and have foisted myself on another friend, Melvin Shaffer. He's a World War 2 photographer I met when I was working at a museum in DC (no, not the Smithsonian). I got in touch with him because he was an expert on a collection of photos I was processing. I've wanted to meet him in person since I first corresponded with him and missed my chance when he was living in Richmond, Virginia. I again missed my chance when he was living in Santa Fe and I was traveling near there. But he's now in Tucson and I've nailed it. Maybe seven years after first learning about him and his extraordinary memory, I'm finally here.

The photo collection I was working on at the museum was from the MAMAS collection, which stands for Museum and Medical Arts Services. About 100 photographers were sent to the European and Pacific theaters to document what they saw. Melvin was 18 or 19 when he was sent to Africa, southern Italy, and France, and took about 500,000 official photos and thousands of feet of motion picture film. He donated his personal photos to Southern Methodist University, which has created a wonderful online exhibit that Melvin captioned himself. These photos are well worth your time to peruse. The captions really complete the exhibit because those are the words of the guy who was there. Those in the Flickr set are photos from the collection I processed and were put online by museum archivists, including myself. There's some fascinating stuff there. I could email Melvin and ask him about a particular image and even though he wasn't the photographer he could tell me who shot it and what the circumstances were. When I say extraordinary memory, I mean it. He remembers details from decades ago better than I remember last week.

I told him this is my favorite photo from the collection. Just look at that woman. Serene, in control, confident. I'm in love with this photo. I'm still in love with it even after he told me it was staged as a bit of propaganda because I know there were nurses just like her on planes just like this.

MAMAS D45-416-45G. Courtesy of the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

 He then sent me one of his favorites, if not the favorite.

At the very height of the invasion of Southern France I was lying behind a sandbank, occasionally sticking my head up to take advantage of every photographic opportunity that might make itself available. On one occasion I glimpsed this French woman on her bike peddling furiously through the middle of the firing between the U.S. and German troops. I do not know why she took such a chance. What reason could possibly compel a person to do this? Her face clearly shows fear and determination. Her physical condition suggests to me a lactating mother. Did she make it to whatever destination she felt such an urgency to reach? Sorry, but I do not know. (Courtesy Southern Methodist University)

We had 13 shoebox-sized boxes of MAMAS photos at the museum but unfortunately none of them were Melvin's. His and the other photographers' official photos were sent to the Medical Museum, as it was then called, after the war and have since been misplaced. He told me last night that the photographers split the entire collection into three representational sets, and because planes didn't have a high success rate of getting where they were going, they were sent on three planes, as a way of assuring that at least one of them would make it to the museum. The photos did make it because he saw them himself when he was back Stateside. He also worked on them for a time himself after the war, but no one knows where they are now. As an archivist, this makes me want to start hauling boxes off shelves (the archives I worked in had 5000 bankers' boxes in storage at a warehouse) and as his friend, it breaks my heart. They're unique images that have never been published anywhere and probably haven't been seen by anyone since the late 1940s.


I'm a lucky, lucky woman to know a fascinating person like Melvin. His recollections are detailed and sharp and bring history incredibly alive. I'm so lucky.

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Thought of the day: 
When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world. (George Washington Carver)

I'm official

I'm now officially cruisingat60, and my friend S and I had the best time celebrating. We started at Tanque Verde Ranch where she treated me to a lovely buffet lunch complete with bright pink prickly pear margaritas, very pretty, but we agreed they could have used a bit more of a kick. OK, a lot more of a kick. One turns 60 only once. 

A bit wind-blown.

S's home backs up to 60 acres of stunning, privately held land, a part of the Sonoran desert. The cacti are starting to bloom and I can't believe my luck that I'm here to see it. But the blooms in the desert, as lovely as they are, are no match for some we saw at the ranch. 

These blossoms are easily 5"-6" across.

A bloom in profile.

The back sides are maybe prettier than the fronts.
  

We were walking around the ranch before lunch and saw a road runner stalking its own meal. It pounced on this poor lizard and broke its tail off in the process. The tail flopped and twisted until the bird choked down the lizard and then hopped over to finish it off too.

 

After lunch we drove to Sabino Canyon where we took a tram ride up the mountain. It's a stark landscape but in the spring water collects in stream beds and makes nice picnic and swimming spots while it lasts.

The tram driver took our picture before heading back down the mountain. It was a good day.

 

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Thought of the day:

The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate. (Oprah Winfrey)

Santa Fe

The first time I went to Santa Fe I was 17. That spring, about a week before my birthday, I took an ungraceful dive down the front steps of my house while heading out to school. In my defense, I was wearing a groovy pair of purple platform heels. I broke my leg and spent the next eight weeks in a cast. At that time I was in the midst of a deep crush on my biology teacher, all of 7 years older than I. He arranged with my mother to drive me back and forth to school in his baby blue VW. Be still, my heart! To this day I don't know how he got my mother to agree to that, except she had no other way to get me to school. Then, to her dismay because I'm sure she thought she'd let the fox into the hen house, when he decided not to return to teach at my school the next year so he could finish his Masters degree, he started calling the house, asking to take me here and there. Yes to a Detroit Tigers game but only with my little brother as chaperone. Yes to a fantastic used bookstore in downtown Detroit, and I don't know how he managed it but we went without a chaperone. But no to a Bob Seger concert. How could she?! I think it was about this time she came to the conclusion that a trip to see my older brother in Albuquerque would be a great idea and off I went.

Part of the entertainment my brother arranged was a trip to the Santa Fe opera. I'd never been out of the Detroit area, had never been on a plane, and for sure had never been to the opera. It was magical. We saw The Marriage of Figaro. It was outdoors on a silken summer night and I'll never forget that I got it! I actually understood what was going on.

But on to last week. When I picked up P at the airport we headed north to Santa Fe. I think I could live there if I could afford it which I can't.

One of my favorite things to photograph is churches. Maybe it's a holdover from being force fed Catholicism, but I love the old style churches and the just-out-of-reach mysteries they hold. The Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi in Santa Fe is a beauty in the traditional style and I was enthralled as soon as I stepped in the door. And for the spiritually aware, here is another powerful place. I felt it, no question.

I usually photograph churches with a tripod and take a couple of hours doing it, but not this time. Mass was starting soon and I had time for just a few hand-held pictures.


Not much of a picture but I love the legend. Don't just love one another, but do it constantly.

The play of light through stained glass windows is always interesting - not just the illumination of the window but the unintended places it falls.

This is one of the most realistic (what I think realistic would look like) crucifixion statues I've seen.

An honest-to-goodness relic of St. Francis. Who am I to say it's not?

Stations of the Cross are a favorite detail of mine, partly because they're unique. 

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We also went to Loretto Chapel.This is the place with the famous staircase that has two 360 degree turns and is said to have had no nails used in its construction. Legend has it the carpenter was St. Joseph. It's lovely and graceful.

The altar is wood painted to look like marble and you could have fooled me.

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Leaving there, we pursued more earthly delights with a wonderful meal of tapas, dining al fresco, another favorite thing of mine. I have a lot of favorite things. P persuaded me to have my picture taken but only with the assurance it would be taken from a distance and with a double layer of gauze over the lens.

As if there aren't enough places to go, Santa Fe is on the list of places to revisit. Taos, visited later in the week, did nothing for me, but Santa Fe is special.

P.S. The biology teacher? I graduated the following year and prepared to go off to the University of Michigan, thinking hot damn! I can see [this guy] now; Mom won't be there to say no all the time. What did he do? He went off and got married. I just know, 42 years later, that he still pines for me and had to settle for second best.

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Thought of the day:
Nothing spoils the taste of peanut butter like unrequited love.  (Charley Brown (Charles Schulz))

It's gorgeous in Tucson

The sun is out, it's the mid-70s, a little lizard thing is climbing the screen, and the birds are chittering. I saw three javalinas this morning and I'm all set for life; no need to see any more.

I'm staying for a few days at the home of my friend S, who (whom?) I met on Flickr several years ago. We both lived in Virginia then, but obviously she moved to Tucson. I'll stay here a few days then foist myself on another friend for a few, then onto a third friend for a final few. I need to keep cruising because you know the comparison of fish and company after a few days. Then I'll meander my way to Petrified Forest, hopefully by way of Canyon de Chelly.

I drove in from Albuquerque yesterday after taking P to the airport. It's a seven-hour drive through some beautiful country. We had such a great week together. As much as we were friends before, we discovered we have so much more in common than we thought, although talking politics bores the socks off me. After living inside the beltway for ten years, politics are like javelinas to me. But we're already deciding where next year's adventure will take us. My vote is for Bryce and Chaco Canyons.

There will be more interesting, hopefully, posts soon, with visuals. Off to Adobe Lightroom I go.

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The greatest gift of life is friendship, and I have received it. - 

Hubert H. Humphrey

Too soon old, too late smart

I just finished a book given to me by one of my dearest friends - Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know, by Gordon Livingston, M.D. I had to hurry to finish it because my friend P, who's traveling with me this week, picked it up while I was "cooking" dinner one night, it might have been tuna sandwiches, and immediately started saying, I love this! It's going home with her.

It's just a slim little book, 168 pages, one you'd see at the bookstore and dismiss as pop psychology. It's not. The thirty essays offer common sense reflections on the issues that affect us all: relationships, choices we make (or don't), motivation, change. Some of them were so spot on it felt like the author was talking to me, starting with the first chapter.

The author says, "I have learned that our passage through life consists of an effort to get the maps in our head to conform to the ground on which we walk." We all compare our idealized life to our actual life to one extent or another. Now think how much rationalizing, excusing, ignoring, or compromising we do to make the reality of our life match up with what we want it to be. Any sane person knows no one's life is idyllic but the choices we make can mitigate the amount of jockeying we have to do, starting with how we choose our friends or partners.

If I'm ever again in the market for a life partner, and God knows if I'll ever be ready to risk that again (the topic of another essay called Happiness Is the Ultimate Risk), I'll follow Dr. Livingston's advice. He says to look for a list of virtuous character traits, the list being topped with kindness, from which a capacity for empathy and love naturally follows. We may not be able to define this emotional art form, but we know when we're in its presence. 

This is the part that resonated with me: "The best indications that our always-tentative maps are faulty include feelings of sadness, anger, betrayal, surprise, and disorientation." Yes. The map in my head and the map on my ground were in such dissonance that I lived with these feelings often and for a long time. Isn't it disconcerting what we get used to and come to accept?

I took particular note that brooding, distance, and coldness are nowhere on his list of desirable traits. I know better now and will always be alert to the alluring presence of kindness, empathy, compassion, and love, whether I'm looking for a partner or a friend. Life is too short, and the possibility of sweetness too fleeting, to have to align maps again and again.

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Thought of the day:

Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open. (Elmer G. Letterman)

Who the hell is that?

Grace has a very small mirror, maybe 4"x4", on a cabinet door right above the sink, right in front of my face. That means every time I look up from the sink I'm looking at myself. This isn't something I deliberately do these days because holy cow, I'm looking old. I saw my doctor within the last six months and she asked me my age and I told her. I mean, she's a doctor; she must have heard everything by now, right? So I told her and told her the truth because she has the means to verify it. She looked over at me appraisingly, and said, you look good! She didn't say for your age but you and I both know she was thinking it.

Well, in that past several months I've caught up to my age or something. It could be I'm seeing the effects of some weight loss (something else I can honestly say Thank you, dear! to Bob the ex-husband for), or the stress in that same stretch of time, or it could be I'm getting old. Wait, older. I won't be old until I'm well into my 80s. Middle age lasts a long, long time at my house.

I looked into that mirror the other day, quite accidentally, and was caught in an evil spell that wouldn't allow me to look away. My face is going south! And east and west, but north has lost the fight. What is this slackness, these lines that someone mean would call wrinkles? That map across my forehead? Those vertical lines between my eyebrows that common folk call frown lines but what I prefer to think of as lines of deep contemplation? These little jowly things along my jawline? I remember them in my mother's and aunt's faces but also distinctly remember forbidding them from mine. Well, hello, here they are.

I gathered some courage and took quick glances at the rest of the body. First off, let's agree that gravity works. If it wasn't for a bra, there would be nothing horizontal about my breasts. The skin on my arms and legs has texture! It's not supposed to have texture! I remember smooth, don't I? I'm sure I do. There are actual waves in the skin on the inside of my thighs. Yeah, they're shallow but I can see them. I'm hoping it's just the angle. Age spots, prominent veins, and, frankly, ugly knuckles on my hands but in all fairness the ugly knuckles might have been there all along. I'm not even going to look at the rear view or linger on the belly. I've seen enough.

Believe it or not, people used to say I was pretty, that I had a lovely complexion. The thing is, I didn't think of myself as pretty. I knew people thought that but I didn't feel it. We're so hard on ourselves, aren't we? Now I see some photos of myself from back then and am blown away by how beautiful I was, and I never knew it. I wish I had; I would have taken full advantage of it. I don't know how or for what, but why let it go to waste?

Somehow I don't think in 20 years I'm going to look at photos of myself taken today and be blown away by how good looking I was at 60. What I'm waiting for is for some of this inner beauty that I'm supposed to have to start seeping out. I'm waiting...... Until then, I guess I'm going to have to get through life on my merits. I hope I don't run out.

Edited at 8:15: Overnight, and I know it for a fact because it was not there yesterday, a wattle has not sprung up, oh no, it has pooched out and down in my neck. It's the beginning of the end.

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Thought for the day:

I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that. (Lauren Bacall)