Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Scofflaw
So, life just gets more interesting. I’m sitting in the lobby of the magistrate’s court, waiting to get my BENCH WARRANT removed. I may be here all day, and it’s my own damn fault. I forgot that yesterday morning was my hearing for the speeding ticket, and I was lollygagging around in Santa Fe, having breakfast with J.
By the time I got back to Ghost Ranch and remembered that this was the week of my hearing, it was too late to do anything about it. I called and said that I thought my hearing was 9/27, but that I couldn’t find my paperwork; they verified that it was 9/25, I had missed it, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to prevent the judge from issuing the $100 warrant. I sighed and said, okay, so what do I owe for the ticket to which I’d pled Not Guilty back in August. They said, it hasn’t been assessed yet. So, I couldn’t just pay over the phone, I had to see a judge, and I couldn’t come by that afternoon because the judges had all left. I could do a walk-in on Thurs.
I decided to come in today anyway, because I don’t like having a warrant out for my arrest and I’m hoping to get fines reduced.
All this to avoid a $250 speeding ticket.
An hour later....
I was just typing that when I was called to the window. The clerk had checked with the judge, who fortuitously was available to fit me in before she began her day of meetings. I gather that this was unexpected, as I’d been told the judge had a full docket. I think my judge was there because she cancelled a morning appearance in Chama, since she had a 1 pm meeting here in Espanola.
Don’t ask me, it’s a hellava complicated world. ANYWAY, she said she couldn’t toss out the Bench Warrant, because it was already recorded and my excuses (no memory, lost paperwork, road construction on the route from ABQ) were not sufficient. Only accident or illness would work. She had to have a legitimate excuse, because she gets audited. However, she could reduce it to 14 hours community service, and my volunteer work at Ghost Ranch will qualify. I come back again on October 10 to bring the paperwork.
The ticket was thrown out, because the officer was also a no show. Woo hoo! I was totally guilty. (Just not 65 mph in a 45 zone guilty.)
She was a lovely Hispanic woman who used to bring her Kindergarten class to Ghost Ranch. We had a nice chat about the drought, the legal system, and northern New Mexico. Then she put on her robe and left the court to begin her day. I waited for Mario to finish printing up my paperwork.
Then, I walked across the parking lot to the conveniently located MVD office, My number was called 30 seconds after I got it. I got my license reinstated, updated my voter registration, and took care of the address problem (I’d updated my address, but the cops told me I also needed to get a new license.). Total cost: $27 to reinstate the license, $18 to get the new license. And a day spent in Espanola judicial district.
The license picture is nicer, at least.
I’d talked a fellow volunteer into bringing me in, since I didn’t want to drive with a bench warrant out. Good call, as the Bench Warrant meant the license was suspended and driving on a suspended license is a REAL problem. (What a Catch-22!). Sharon is currently in Santa Fe, running some errands, and I’m settled with my knitting, portable keyboard, book, and iPad. I had totally not expected to finish this process in under an hour! Life is fine. The only frustrating thing is that NOW I have to say that my license has been suspended (for less than 24 hours) every time I renew it.
I’m such a scofflaw. And I used to be such a squeaky clean citizen. New Mexico has been bad for my character, clearly.
Sent from my iPhone
Sunday, September 9, 2018
Tales from a Contented Sloth: Summer at Ghost Ranch
I joined the Ghost Ranch community on April 30, and stopped journaling and writing to the Gang of Four. It seemed that, since I was no longer traveling and being a nomad, the daily missives were less necessary, at least from a safety point of view. I had housemates and workmates, and I was staying put. Still, I rather missed the focus of a daily message to friends, even though the letters I did write were remarkably lacking in news. Every day could be an adventure, with enough variety to make me feel like I was traveling inwardly, if not outwardly, but for the most part I was a contented sloth.
1. Settling in
There’s a huge windstorm blowing the dust around. I am unpacking my boxes and it looks like I’ll be able to bring most of what’s in storage because this is a very large three bedroom farmhouse. I’m alone at the moment so I got to pick the best room with the best view (of Pedernal.)
I was lodged in the old farmhouse. It has three bedrooms and living area and a long enclosed portico/conservatory outside the bath and two bedrooms. The only fly in the ointment was the mouse that I saw in the bathroom, and the fact that the clawfoot tub wobbled when I stood in it. It felt like I was going to topple out. The next day I put in a work order, but I ran into an acquaintance from Taos, and he told me to put a quarter under one of the feet to shim things up. Worked like a charm. Later, we discovered ants, camel spiders and the occasional scorpion, but my housemate handled those for most of the summer, as did the lovely whiptail lizards.
2. More housesitting
In late June I house-sat for my boss’s friend, S. She’s a retired nurse practitioner, on a kayak trip off Quadra Island. It's a small world: I have fond memories of a trip to April Point, watching birds drying their wings, fishing (V displaying her catch with a grimace), and eating salmon with a huckleberry compote. Also playing with phosphorescent water off the dock...but that was the place en route. Memory fails me.
So, while S was enjoying the waters of the Pacific Northwest, I was watching smoke from the Sardinas Canyon forest fire, feeding the horse, donkey, and chickens and enjoying a pretty awesome house and garden. It’s a half hour drive to Ghost Ranch, but it’s a beautiful drive so I was fine with that. The $50 she gave me didn't even cover gas, but it’s more than I got on my travels! And I expanded my skill set. I remained cautious around Ruby, the semi-skittish horse, but on a later visit she came up to me and rubbed her head against my shoulder, so I counted that as a personal triumph.
3. The Library and other projects
The Library is open 24/7, so I can justify any schedule I choose to work, which is nice. Because it's always open, the checkout system is manual and depends on an honor system. With the help of intern college staff, I started barcoding most of the library and discovered a bunch of titles that never made it into the online catalog. So I guess I’ll have to be less snarky about the guests who insist on using the old card catalog (which I’m not allowed to move, along with the unused newspaper poles.)
I don’t know why I started this big project...I could have just sat back with the status quo instead of trying to get circulation and inventory into the 20th century (forget about the 21st). And there are plenty of peripheral things that I could have been doing: hikes and tours are actually encouraged for work time, because the more I know about the Ranch offerings, the better I can share them with guests. However, the national forests surrounded the Ranch were closed during June and much of July, because of the severe drought and fire danger. Even before the closures, the heat kept me from even considering much hiking: I wandered down Box Canyon one morning and tried Matrimonial Mesa another morning: both hikes were abandoned before I reached the end. I only planned to take an hour for Matrimonial: it goes along a ridge looking down into the Chinle formation and across to Orphan Mesa, and it gives a nice birds' eye view of the Ranch. My plan was to start at the trailhead near my house and come out by the Staff House and Dining Hall, but I kept getting lost trying to find the proper end of the trail. I retraced my path twice, drank up all the water, and spent 2 hours acquiring a sunburn before I gave up. Still, it was a beautiful hike and I found a piece of petrified wood while I was exploring an arroyo. I also startled a pronghorn antelope and numerous lizards. No rattlers thank god.
In general, even without hiking, it’s a great place for wildlife. A voracious horde of hummingbirds drained the feeder daily throughout the summer, and my fearless paleontologist housemate set up a bat box to serve as home for a bat that got trapped in a museum bathroom. Coyotes howl outside our windows and apparently bears and cougars come out of the hills, searching for water. I haven't seen or heard evidence of them, but the bears apparently killed the pigs before I arrived.
Anyway, instead of hiking, I started up a night sky tour, along with two of the Museum staff. Many years ago a guest donated a large Meade telescope with many lenses. It had not been used since the gent in charge retired 8 years ago, and pack rats had chewed through some key wires. So JustJ cleaned up the shed and contacted Meade about a manual, we got some training on the mechanics, and Telescope Tuesdays was up and running. I was able to find and photograph Jupiter and its Gallilean moons, Saturn and its rings, and the pretty amber star, Antares. Sadly, around the time that Mars appeared, the focus knob got torqued, the monsoons clouded up the night sky, and the telescope is now off limits while the powers that be come up with a plan for maintaining and sharing the equipment. It was a nice run while it lasted. I'd work until half an hour before sundown and then climb the mesa behind the Library to the pack-rat infested telescope shed. While I fussed with the lens, the wind would come up and blow my skirts around, the sun would set, and the Milky Way would brighten into its pearly path across the sky. Or, the gibbous moon would rise and the mica in the cliffs would shimmer in its light.
4. Wedding crash
Security is not the best here. We are very isolated, but we are also only a mile or so from Hwy 84. One hot June night around 11 pm, JB and I heard a woman screaming, full-throated. It took awhile to realize what the sound was...almost sounded like a rooster or some other creature. Eventually we heard words: "Don't let me go home!" JB was concerned there were drugs involved, so we turned off lights and locked doors and I called 911 at 11:15. They said they'd try to contact Ghost Ranch security. At 11:30 I called back, because the person seemed to be outside our house. 15 minutes after that, JB called and gave them our location and asked them to come by and check on us. They never did, but about 15 minutes later we saw a car approaching down the dirt road from the highway (we can see cars from our living room window.) It stopped for several minutes, near the climbing area I think, and we heard the screaming again. The car then continued on and turned towards the welcome center. We saw several other cars coming and going during this time frame, mostly from the road to the staff house to the welcome center area and back again. By 12:30, all was still, although I saw headlights until I finally got to sleep at 2 am. Not sure when and if JB got to sleep. We found out the next day that the woman was a guest at a Ranch-held wedding. The incident sparked a discussion about night security and security for the many weddings that we have scheduled here, but it never got much better.
5. Tsankawi
I tagged along with a class field trip to Tsankawi. It's an Ancestral Puebloan site at Bandelier National Monument (located on the road to White Rock.) We had it mostly to ourselves, as the majority of tourists visit the the main site; but this one was replete with petroglyphs, pot shards, chert and obsidian flakes, cave dwellings, carved-out foot holds, and breathtaking views of ash-flow. The trail followed paths that cut deeply into the tuff, providing run-off from the reservoirs on top of the mesa to the now sage-filled fields below. It was a very hot day, and we stopped often for water breaks, but most of us suffered some form of heat exhaustion. After 3 hours in the sun, we cooled off at the Los Alamos Bradley Science Museum and thought deeply about radiation and atomic bombs. Then we took a dash to see snakes at the Nature Center before it closed. A long day, but full of wonder.
6. Musical adventures
7. Coffee house
The college staff ran weekly coffee houses on Thursday nights. My friend DH read poems for most of them, and I contributed the following (courtesy of Museum staff comments) for the last one:
So, life continues into the fall. I've started driving the tour bus, I've done some sunset and sunrise kayaking, one of the wranglers has started up campfire parties by his trailer (there was a ban on burning for the summer), and I'll have no excuse to avoid the hiking trails. 4 months down, 5 to go.
1. Settling in
There’s a huge windstorm blowing the dust around. I am unpacking my boxes and it looks like I’ll be able to bring most of what’s in storage because this is a very large three bedroom farmhouse. I’m alone at the moment so I got to pick the best room with the best view (of Pedernal.)
I was lodged in the old farmhouse. It has three bedrooms and living area and a long enclosed portico/conservatory outside the bath and two bedrooms. The only fly in the ointment was the mouse that I saw in the bathroom, and the fact that the clawfoot tub wobbled when I stood in it. It felt like I was going to topple out. The next day I put in a work order, but I ran into an acquaintance from Taos, and he told me to put a quarter under one of the feet to shim things up. Worked like a charm. Later, we discovered ants, camel spiders and the occasional scorpion, but my housemate handled those for most of the summer, as did the lovely whiptail lizards.
2. More housesitting
In late June I house-sat for my boss’s friend, S. She’s a retired nurse practitioner, on a kayak trip off Quadra Island. It's a small world: I have fond memories of a trip to April Point, watching birds drying their wings, fishing (V displaying her catch with a grimace), and eating salmon with a huckleberry compote. Also playing with phosphorescent water off the dock...but that was the place en route. Memory fails me.
So, while S was enjoying the waters of the Pacific Northwest, I was watching smoke from the Sardinas Canyon forest fire, feeding the horse, donkey, and chickens and enjoying a pretty awesome house and garden. It’s a half hour drive to Ghost Ranch, but it’s a beautiful drive so I was fine with that. The $50 she gave me didn't even cover gas, but it’s more than I got on my travels! And I expanded my skill set. I remained cautious around Ruby, the semi-skittish horse, but on a later visit she came up to me and rubbed her head against my shoulder, so I counted that as a personal triumph.
3. The Library and other projects
The Library is open 24/7, so I can justify any schedule I choose to work, which is nice. Because it's always open, the checkout system is manual and depends on an honor system. With the help of intern college staff, I started barcoding most of the library and discovered a bunch of titles that never made it into the online catalog. So I guess I’ll have to be less snarky about the guests who insist on using the old card catalog (which I’m not allowed to move, along with the unused newspaper poles.)
I don’t know why I started this big project...I could have just sat back with the status quo instead of trying to get circulation and inventory into the 20th century (forget about the 21st). And there are plenty of peripheral things that I could have been doing: hikes and tours are actually encouraged for work time, because the more I know about the Ranch offerings, the better I can share them with guests. However, the national forests surrounded the Ranch were closed during June and much of July, because of the severe drought and fire danger. Even before the closures, the heat kept me from even considering much hiking: I wandered down Box Canyon one morning and tried Matrimonial Mesa another morning: both hikes were abandoned before I reached the end. I only planned to take an hour for Matrimonial: it goes along a ridge looking down into the Chinle formation and across to Orphan Mesa, and it gives a nice birds' eye view of the Ranch. My plan was to start at the trailhead near my house and come out by the Staff House and Dining Hall, but I kept getting lost trying to find the proper end of the trail. I retraced my path twice, drank up all the water, and spent 2 hours acquiring a sunburn before I gave up. Still, it was a beautiful hike and I found a piece of petrified wood while I was exploring an arroyo. I also startled a pronghorn antelope and numerous lizards. No rattlers thank god.
In general, even without hiking, it’s a great place for wildlife. A voracious horde of hummingbirds drained the feeder daily throughout the summer, and my fearless paleontologist housemate set up a bat box to serve as home for a bat that got trapped in a museum bathroom. Coyotes howl outside our windows and apparently bears and cougars come out of the hills, searching for water. I haven't seen or heard evidence of them, but the bears apparently killed the pigs before I arrived.
Anyway, instead of hiking, I started up a night sky tour, along with two of the Museum staff. Many years ago a guest donated a large Meade telescope with many lenses. It had not been used since the gent in charge retired 8 years ago, and pack rats had chewed through some key wires. So JustJ cleaned up the shed and contacted Meade about a manual, we got some training on the mechanics, and Telescope Tuesdays was up and running. I was able to find and photograph Jupiter and its Gallilean moons, Saturn and its rings, and the pretty amber star, Antares. Sadly, around the time that Mars appeared, the focus knob got torqued, the monsoons clouded up the night sky, and the telescope is now off limits while the powers that be come up with a plan for maintaining and sharing the equipment. It was a nice run while it lasted. I'd work until half an hour before sundown and then climb the mesa behind the Library to the pack-rat infested telescope shed. While I fussed with the lens, the wind would come up and blow my skirts around, the sun would set, and the Milky Way would brighten into its pearly path across the sky. Or, the gibbous moon would rise and the mica in the cliffs would shimmer in its light.
4. Wedding crash
Security is not the best here. We are very isolated, but we are also only a mile or so from Hwy 84. One hot June night around 11 pm, JB and I heard a woman screaming, full-throated. It took awhile to realize what the sound was...almost sounded like a rooster or some other creature. Eventually we heard words: "Don't let me go home!" JB was concerned there were drugs involved, so we turned off lights and locked doors and I called 911 at 11:15. They said they'd try to contact Ghost Ranch security. At 11:30 I called back, because the person seemed to be outside our house. 15 minutes after that, JB called and gave them our location and asked them to come by and check on us. They never did, but about 15 minutes later we saw a car approaching down the dirt road from the highway (we can see cars from our living room window.) It stopped for several minutes, near the climbing area I think, and we heard the screaming again. The car then continued on and turned towards the welcome center. We saw several other cars coming and going during this time frame, mostly from the road to the staff house to the welcome center area and back again. By 12:30, all was still, although I saw headlights until I finally got to sleep at 2 am. Not sure when and if JB got to sleep. We found out the next day that the woman was a guest at a Ranch-held wedding. The incident sparked a discussion about night security and security for the many weddings that we have scheduled here, but it never got much better.
5. Tsankawi
I tagged along with a class field trip to Tsankawi. It's an Ancestral Puebloan site at Bandelier National Monument (located on the road to White Rock.) We had it mostly to ourselves, as the majority of tourists visit the the main site; but this one was replete with petroglyphs, pot shards, chert and obsidian flakes, cave dwellings, carved-out foot holds, and breathtaking views of ash-flow. The trail followed paths that cut deeply into the tuff, providing run-off from the reservoirs on top of the mesa to the now sage-filled fields below. It was a very hot day, and we stopped often for water breaks, but most of us suffered some form of heat exhaustion. After 3 hours in the sun, we cooled off at the Los Alamos Bradley Science Museum and thought deeply about radiation and atomic bombs. Then we took a dash to see snakes at the Nature Center before it closed. A long day, but full of wonder.
6. Musical adventures
My friend C in Taos hooked me up with some of
her musician friends. (She is the Taos Community Chorus accompanist and
plays violin duets with me. She hurt her wrist and just had surgery,
so she can't play anything for awhile.) They were in the Taos area for the month of
August and wanted to play quartets.
The first jam session was rather a fiasco: I turned the wrong way
out of El Rito (a little town on a scenic route towards Taos) and thought, well, this road is going the right way,
it'll just hook up with 64 eventually. It didn't: it turned into a
dirt road and I had to turn around. Because of the mountain road, I was
unable to call the others until I reached the Rio Grande Bridge, by
which time I was an hour and a half late. I got there at 1 pm, just as
they were finishing up trios, and they graciously stuck around another
45 minutes. We played some Mozart and Mendelssohn and they sent me home
to practise Op 44, #1. We played that the next Thursday and the 2nd
violin has a lovely moving part in the third movement. I'm not a big
fan of Mendelssohn (which is weird because I love Brahms and they are
both emo treacly composers), but I loved this quartet.
We had a final session following week and then the cellist and violinist went
back to their respective homes in Berkeley and Austin. Fortunately, APO
starts up in Sept, so I'll keep my chops up.
7. Coffee house
The college staff ran weekly coffee houses on Thursday nights. My friend DH read poems for most of them, and I contributed the following (courtesy of Museum staff comments) for the last one:
Overheard at lunch:
“I have to go and flip the
Phytosaurus skull.”
Barefoot, she sweeps and
Steps on a beetle. Eyes closed,
She says “Don’t throw up.”
#itsgutsareonmyfoot
The monsoon rains pass,
Pitter Patter on the fringe.
We want a deluge.
One of the college staff interpreted them, physically, while he read.
The coffee houses in general were great fun: instructors, guests (including kids), and staff all participated, and there is some amazing talent coming through. I performed at 3 of them. At one I recited Jabberwalky, at another sang The Mouse and played a violin duet with one of the wranglers. At the last coffee house I played a flute/violin duet with one of the college staff and sang "Cry me a River," accompanied by a VERY sweet and talented college staffer, whose career I plan to watch. I flung a boa over my shoulder, leaned on the piano, and let out my inner torch singer. I wowed them, if the later comments are any indication.
One of the college staff interpreted them, physically, while he read.
The coffee houses in general were great fun: instructors, guests (including kids), and staff all participated, and there is some amazing talent coming through. I performed at 3 of them. At one I recited Jabberwalky, at another sang The Mouse and played a violin duet with one of the wranglers. At the last coffee house I played a flute/violin duet with one of the college staff and sang "Cry me a River," accompanied by a VERY sweet and talented college staffer, whose career I plan to watch. I flung a boa over my shoulder, leaned on the piano, and let out my inner torch singer. I wowed them, if the later comments are any indication.
8. Hemorrhaging staff
Ghost
Ranch got a little depressing after college staff left in early August. Museum volunteers DH and JustJ left too, and JB (my sweet paleontologist housemate) followed soon after. LM (the best boss ever)
gave her 3 week notice and I miss her
terribly. Housekeeping and Dining Hall were understaffed, as they were in
the summer, but with no college students to abuse, guess
who they wanted to fill in? I refused (because I did not contract for
that, and, anyway my asthma kicks in when I dust and vacuum), so I was given extra Welcome desks and museum volunteers became the new janitors.
In addition to the staffing woes, the Ranch was at 20% capacity, and I started worrying about its future. And the
mosquitoes arrived in the wake of the monsoons and I got TOTALLY
covered in bites. The fires from CA and OR affected the views negatively and the
sunsets positively, and other volunteers became friends.
So, I tried to focus on that. But it's difficult, when volunteers leave every 10 weeks, and 8 key staff have left (without replacement) in the 4 months I've been here.
One of those volunteers, PS, is still around, but leaves at 5 am on Sept
14. He is planning to drive for 12 hours, arriving in Kansas City in
time to watch the Minnesota Twins and add that stadium to his list. He
can be such a geek! MC (the remaining Outdoor Adventures staff) borrowed my cheapo bike for a ride to the base of
Orphan Mesa: he and PS climbed it last Thursday, but PS didn't make
the last bit. He sat clinging to a boulder while MC continued on,
chanting "I'll cut off my arm, I'll cut off my arm!" Apparently that is
his mantra for doing what it takes to get back alive from a dangerous activity. I would have found it quite disconcerting, myself, to wait at
the saddle between two gulfs, listening to that.
The
next night the three of us were playing Settlers of Catan when SL appeared at the kitchen door, seeking guidance and support: apparently a
sheep had been bleating frantically for some time, and SL was
worried it was caught on the fence. We gathered up flashlights and
followed her to the pen, where we discovered all the sheep gathered
around a white ewe and a shaky tiny black lamb. They glared at us and
we retreated hastily back to the kitchen, where SC watched the game
for a bit. I won.
So, life continues into the fall. I've started driving the tour bus, I've done some sunset and sunrise kayaking, one of the wranglers has started up campfire parties by his trailer (there was a ban on burning for the summer), and I'll have no excuse to avoid the hiking trails. 4 months down, 5 to go.
Misadventures in July: letter to a friend
As the curse goes, “may you live in interesting times...
I
had a rather bizarre weekend. On Friday I discovered that Forrest (my
new/used 2013 Subaru Forester) wouldn't start. A GR maintenance dude
came by and discovered that pack rats had eaten some wires. The poison I
had put in the engine was gone, so apparently they ate it up and then
returned for the wires. On Sat I had a AAA tow into Hernandez (just
north of Espanola) for Lio to fix the wires over the weekend. My friend
B from GR picked me up there and drove us to Santa Fe, where we
attended the Intl Folk Art Festival and I spent $1400 on 2 old saris, an
embroidered handbag, and a tunic. The tunic was the big ticket item,
at $1250. It was an impulse buy: the artist tossed it over my head and
said "it's YOU!" and I said, yes, I think I need to take it, and then
he took it to the people writing the receipts and told them the price
and my jaw dropped but I just couldn't say, oops, my bad, not taking it
after all. I talked myself into the fact that it's a one of a kind,
that I'm supporting indigenous craftsmen, and that he's an up and coming
STAR!
Then I met some more GR people at Harry's Roadhouse for dinner, and my boss drove me to Tijeras. I slept through Sunday and P dropped me at the ABQ rapid ride stop near Four Corners. I bused down to the RailRunner, arriving at 7:22. The train had left at 7:19and the next wasn't until 9:35. So, I texted M, and she met me at a sweet hippie coffeeshop near by: Zendo.
Combining friendship
And the elixir of life.
Would not want to choose!
I caught the RR at 9:20, and arrived in Santa Fe at 11ish, where I discovered that the Blue bus was leaving at 1:45, arriving in Espanola at 2:50, and then I'd have to wait until 5:55 to
catch a bus north. Lio's was probably going to be closed by then. So I
called a taxi: $88. No. Then I called an Uber. $1 a mile, so I paid
$28. I arrived to discover that they had another hour to go, and there
were more wires damaged. So, I sat and listened to books and texted
folks at the Ranch about my late arrival and then Lio told me that they
had fixed all the broken wires they could find, but the computer was not
talking to the engine.
Why would a manual transmission not have a manual starter, I ask you?!
Long
story short, one of the gents at GR came and got me (an hour drive).
I'm home, and Forrest is still in Hernandez. Sigh. But it looks like
my insurance will cover it all, so life is not bad.
Meanwhile,
I’m enjoying life here. Got to play with micaceous clay last week and
made a mug, a bowl, a pear-shaped rattle, and several beads.
I
also am playing duets with one of the wranglers, and I recited
Jabberwocky at the coffeehouse (a weekly event run by the college staff)
to resounding huzzahs! This week, in honor of Forrest, I plan to sing
“The Mouse” from Britten’s “Rejoice in the Lamb.”
It’s monsoon season.
After the rainstorm
The birds discover puddles,
Which make a great bath.
I leave work and walk
Into a magical hour
Of cloudlit delight.
And that’s my news!
Summary of my first few weeks at Ghost Ranch
This is a letter I sent shortly after I arrived at the ranch:
Sorry about the phone problem: it basically doesn't work on the Ranch. We're in a total dead zone, but fortunately we do have wi-fi, so maybe we can try another Skype session sometime! I'm working a variable shift, depending on what is happening here. For example, next week is the BlueGrass festival: a week of people learning how to play bluegrass banjo, fiddle, guitar, and a few other instruments. They end with a coffee hour on Friday and a concert on Saturday, so I'm going to work Mon-Sat, with Tues off to keep me from going overtime (they don't like overtime) and the following week I'll work Sun-Thu and take a long weekend for my birthday.
All this means that you won't be able to reach me until I leave the Ranch on my days off.Sorry about the phone problem: it basically doesn't work on the Ranch. We're in a total dead zone, but fortunately we do have wi-fi, so maybe we can try another Skype session sometime! I'm working a variable shift, depending on what is happening here. For example, next week is the BlueGrass festival: a week of people learning how to play bluegrass banjo, fiddle, guitar, and a few other instruments. They end with a coffee hour on Friday and a concert on Saturday, so I'm going to work Mon-Sat, with Tues off to keep me from going overtime (they don't like overtime) and the following week I'll work Sun-Thu and take a long weekend for my birthday.
Maybe I was thinking about that, unconsciously? Anyway, I woke up every hour on the hour from 9 pm to 3 am, at which point I threw in the towel and got up. I had planned to get up around 5:30 so I could get to GR by 8 am breakfast, and that's basically what I did. I took a shower, started loading the car, and then chatted with P when she got up: she goes in to work at 5:30 too. Unfortunately the oil light came on 2 minutes into the drive, so I had to stop by a gas station for oil and help. That added some time to the trip. And then I became so drowsy that I was literally weaving into the oncoming lanes. So, after Santa Fe I pulled to the side and napped for half an hour. I got to breakfast about 8:45. The nap helped, as well as another half hour at lunch, but I was sleepy all day. I drank so much coffee that I was THEN unable to sleep again. I took a sleeping pill around 11, but that makes me groggy too, and I totally slept in. Fortunately, I was scheduled for an event in the evening, so I just started my day late, and skipped breakfast.
Right now I'm logged into Tutor.com. I end up making about $400 a month, which is nice, because I am going to be paying for the clutch to the car I was using in Norway. It apparently gave out the day after I left. But, my expenses were minimal while I was there, since the snow kept me from exploring and spending money. So, I guess it evens out.
Mom called while I was in ABQ. It seems she's not well again. It's too bad, she looked so good when I saw her in April.
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