Friday - blue

Yesterday's late afternoon walk was one where I took this picture with my camera phone. This mornings walk was also perfect weather. The lone "blue" flower just alone in the middle of the brown ground cover and thorns and weeds always catch my attention. I also find blue in nature to be somewhat of a surprise. Of course it is a pleasant surprise. The question could be ..................

"What in nature is naturally blue?"

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Water comes to mind, but water is not blue, even though it may look blue, it is just a reflection of the sky. The sky would seem obvious especially if your in New Mexico but it is not actually blue. Apparently it is just a "refraction of light" entering the atmosphere (Or something along those lines) I guess that leaves some plants, flowers, some animals eg. exotic frogs fish and certain stones. Wonder why moods are sometimes called blue?

31

I have been working on a life story for a long time. I have as the first picture this one and the first line is below. It goes through this year and is something I have written a little bit at a time for a long time. Hope it works out ok.

"I am 31 years old and have been married for 11 years. I may seem like an odd time to start a journal since a lot has already happened in our lives but I just don’t want to continue to not make note of them."

Saturday

This picture is not "blog worthy", nor is it worthy of much. Even so it is a somewhat accurate in recording Saturdays walk, this week. Long pants, a coat and a hat for the first time in months were needed. After I got home and by noon it was sunny so it was too bad. The picture was shot with my camera phone. Now the blog was done a week ago and since then I have come back and made the picture look a little better. This of course is something that no one will see or not the difference. If you do a comment would be in order.............................................................

Chile Farms.......................

Wondering what to put on the blog today and for that matter this time of year. This picture is a little late for the blog really. It is a field of Green Chile in Southern New Mexico. Probably near "Hatch" New Mexico. Right now the harvest is over. The last of the harvest came in a couple of weeks ago. It starts out mid summer and goes into October. The later the harvest the more red you see in the Chile. New Mexico's green chile's are unique. I suppose some might think that they are the same as Anaheim Green Peppers but the New Mexico product is just different. It turns into Green or Red Chile and it goes on a lot of things you might not expect. Course it is great on hamburgers. Looking at this field sort of reminds me of a field of potatoes, or corn or even beets. Having both red and green chile on your stuff is having it Christmas style. Some like red and others green. Some say that one is hotter than the other and it sort of depends on how that "lot" was processed. Heat is often added and not just in the chile right out of the ground. I like red better as it is a little smoother or it just tastes better hot. I do like "hot" and find my tolance for a hot product to be pretty high. Spent some time in those fields, once upon a time.

Favorite Picture

One of my favorite pictures. It has three of my favorite people in it all looking at me. The young man that has a nice head of hair, course Jeff's got a nice head of hair compared to me, and standing on my left is my favorite grandson. His birthday was yesterday. He is a very smart guy. He thinks a lot about things and has some good insight into a lot of things. I enjoy being with him. (Riley too).

Happy birthday a day late. Course if you can have birthday dinners and events early it is never too late to post a good picture to add to the event.

Found one

Had it not been for the ward building where the painting "Not Alone" covered the entire front wall and where I attended church from the age of about 6 to about 14 I could have grown up in Pocatello and never heard of Minerva Teichert.

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So why put this on my blog today? Well yesterday I visited the LDS Church office building at the south end of the valley. I went to the room on family search and found a large Minerva Teichert painting on the wall. Not the whole wall but pretty big so it was interesting to see the painting in a larger size.

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Minerva Kohlhepp Teichert was born in Ogden, Utah in 1888. Later her family moved close to Pocatello Idaho where she grew up and graduated from Pocatello High School She did leave home at 14 years old and worked as a nursemaid for a family in San Francisco where for the first time she saw museum art and attended some classes at Mark Hopkins Art School. She later returned and graduated from High School. At age 19 she scraped together enough money to go to Chicago where she studied at the Chicago Art Institute. Later she went to New York to study but eventually came back to marry Herman Teichert a cowboy and strong church member. She painted a "Book of Mormon" series, covers of LDS magazines, lesson manuals, the World Room in the Manti LDS Temple, and has paintings displayed at the Museum of History and Art in Salt Lake City and was exhibited in the Immigrant Receiving Station of Ellis Island. Referred to as a Feminist she made an impact with her art. She died in 1976.

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One of her best known works is the image of Mary Fielding Smith with her son Joseph F. Smith crossing the plains with their ox cart. To the right of the image is the spiritual guardians that protected them on their journey to Zion, hence the title "Not Alone". The painting was dated 1847 to represent the time of migration. This shows Teichert at her best as she portrays the tremendous faith and courage of the pioneer women.

The Pipeline Trail, again, this week

This trail starts at the road as you go up Millcreek Canyon. The trail goes to the North of the Canyon up between where two mountains come together. The canyon itself runs East and West. Going up the trail takes us to the top of the mountains almost. As I go up this first part of the trail often referred to as rattlesnake gulch I climb to the Pipeline trail. The pipeline is really where an old pipeline was laid to run water from way back in the canyon down to the city. Looking back towards the floor of the canyon in pictures here shows how steep this is.

A big rock where the trail turns and loops back up the side of the hill.

Looking back from the trail to the other side, South Side, of the canyon. Down towards the canyon floor. Almost to the top of the South side

Almost to the top of the Gulch Trail and almost to the Pipeline trail which will follow along the top going East and West following into the canyon.

Looking West from the top towards the Salt Lake Valley below.




Looking down just leaving the gulch trail to go on the Pipeline trail and looking down into the gulch seeing how the trail wound from one side of the gulch to the other.

Just about to step out to the canyon wall from the gulch.

Looking back West to the Valley off beyond. Near the top. Now just another 4 miles or so to where the trail comes down closer to the road and where I can then use the road below to run back to the car. The trail would be about 10 miles or more to the top and one could then to over the top of the mountains and down towards Park City which would be about a 28 + mile total run. I have blogged about this trail a few times before. It has always been one of my most favorite runs.

"the" jewerly store

This cat gets a lot of press here in our house. On the other hand the picture of Molinelli Jewelry Store takes me back to the 1950's. I often went down the street to the Chief Theater to see the show on Saturdays and walked home past this store. I a lot of times went alone and I developed a habit of going into the store for Birthdays and Christmas to get my mom a gift. I thought I did a pretty good job of picking out something and was always told I had great taste. I remember a green pin and ear rings and a red one. I wonder how good my taste really was? I know what I picked out was always appreciated and I was made to feel like I had done a good job. Good lesson in a lot of ways I suppose. Don't know why I really decided to blog about this but it is a real memory of some importance to me.

Rhetorical and Elocutionary Embellishments

I was wondering what might be something unique or original to post. This picture is an assortment of original "things".

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The books on their side under the car came out of a one room school house that was next to my grandfather's home in a place called "Cherry Creek" Idaho. The copyright shows the first printing in 1914 and the last one 1937. I took a number of books out of this school in the 1950's when it was just sitting unused and open to the elements. These are 3 volumes of a series called "The New Wonder World". It reminded me of "World Books" or an old "Britancia" talking about a lot of subjects. The book to the left of these volumes is called "Preaching and Public Speaking" and it was written in 1898. On the title page it says that it is "A Manual for the Use of Preachers of the Gospel, and Public Speakers in General" Some of the chapters titles are: The Art of Thinking, characteristics of the Sermon, Kinds of Sermons, Methods of Communicating Thought, Analysis of the Sermon, and then "Rhetorical and Elocutionary Embellishments" Pretty good stuff and actually it is a book worth reading. This book was a gift from Joseph A. Jones to Merlin as written in his handwriting in 1952. I think from a note on the inside cover that it was purchased by my Grandfather for $2.00 in 1903. The favorite part of this book may still be ahead of me. I noticed that the last thing in the book is listed on page 435 and is "A sermon by President Wilford Woodruff" I have read several books on his life recently an really found him to be a most fascinating individual. I had forgotten this chapter in a book I have had on my self a long time. I am very anxious to read it so I think I will later today....................

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The model of the old Ford is "cool". Wish I had had one.

Becuase we can.................

We probably went about 3 miles or so. today and the objective, photo wise, probably, was the sunflower. Of course the walk, and the time to do go out together, and the nice temperature, and the overall experience, and "because we could", were good reasons too. Near the end of the walk we found more sunflower shots and pictures were taken. Now on the other hand I had this one photo in my picture file from a couple of years back taken in our "might be a garden someday" place and it is pretty good.

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Pigeons are unpleasant birds in so many ways. They are messy and not very interesting. Today's pigeons were worth enjoying because they were a couple of blocks away from home in a park.

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Looking back over the week I recall a thought that I pondered a little. "the question was:

"why do we do this".

It could apply to taking a walk or to anything that is potentially enjoyable. The answer to why we go and do things again and again probably assumes that we enjoy them or that they are good to do or good for us and those assumptions might be the answers but then we do things out of habit that are not good for us. "Why" we do something could be to a large degree because "We can".

Do the good things while we can would be a good motto.

HB Riley

So today this young lady is 14 years old............................................... Her mom and her grandma both posted pictures of her and so I think I need to do the same. I found a photo in my files. Of course it originally was taken by her grandma and it just "somehow" made it to my files but at least in some small way this is something I found today that brings back some memories of this great young lady. Her Uncle is pretty great too. A lot about Riley when she was this age reminded me of Katie. What a great young lady she is...................................................

Happy Birthday Riley

"Our personal parade"

Just a couple of weeks and it will mark the annual celebration of my arrival in the valley. Karl Malone, who was born on the 24th of July, arrived in Salt Lake on the 24th of July once upon a time a long time ago and for years he mentioned how the town had put together a large parade in honor of his coming. Last night we had a party and a couple of new folks in the ward came and I had previously mentioned to them that we had the party in honor of their moving into the ward. Likewise I recall around the first of October in 2003 I arrived late one Saturday evening here in the Albuquerque area. I got up the next morning I looked up and saw at least 700 balloons in the air celebrating my arrival, with me. So there, Karl. think I did about as good as you did. My parade was certainly "higher" in the sky. Course folks come out for these parades and celebration. One picture above is "Katie" watching "Karl's" parade way back when but then it might have been before Karl came. The other picture is Mike a different years.

reflections

Tonight I went out for a walk. I guess I could call part of it a light run. My last post showed a "shadow of myself" so I suppose this one only invites thoughts of what a "shadow of myself" might be? A full head of hair could cast a shadow? Strong legs in motion. Maybe one could see wind against the face in a shadow. Maybe the shadow is running but really is lost in thought about dancing. Dancing with a friend. Moving graceful. All reflected in a memory.

layers

Today's walk with my friend of 44 years + was enjoyable. The air was a little cooler to start. Lots of pictures were taken. I like the idea of layers in this picture. My shadow, her, her camera, and the object of one of the pictures.

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This week went by fast. Thursday was our anniversary and we went to a shop in the morning to exchange what I had picked out the day before. It was nice to get out mid week and not be working.

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pre dinner thoughts

Just to the right of where I sit is a chair that I like. I bought it at UNM a few years ago. It is actually pretty comfortable for a wood chair. I sat in the chair a few minutes ago as we ordered take home and Mike went to get dinner. Guess this little story is hardly blog worthy but what is really when you think about it. The bottom shelf behind the chair is full of binders of "stuff" gathered over a lot of time. Above the screen I am typing on is a lot of favorite books. Figure this is enough for a Friday Night short blog.

2 doors

Thinking back about all the cars I have had over the years is something that probably most guys do on occasion. Mercedes, Lexus, and Jag were some of the ones that I probably should remember first or put first on my list. I saw a list today of top countries in the world for this or that and had some amens and "your nuts" to say about what I read earlier today with Mike regarding those lists but then my own list right now, far more important by the way, would be my list of best cars I ever had and I think I would put the "Cougar" on the top of the list. I got it while in California. I don't know how we afforded to get it because we didn't make much money in California. Even so we did get it and it was with us as we moved back to Utah. Of course that memory is from a long time ago in a state far away. This picture is the "Cougar" being loaded up to leave California, back then. My brother helped us that day. He had just gotten his first job out of school in the very town we were leaving.

another fountain

Today at church we had a talk about journals. So I could just say "another talk about journals" and that would sum it up. They are "a good thing and we ought to keep" them would be another good summary of the message. The speaker added that you didn't have to follow good writing rules and implied that you could make up your own "style" in your own journal. So I came home and went in and corrected the "journal like" entry I made yesterday improving the grammar a little. I didn't want to have my own style be "poor grammar". That said I suspect that I have my share of poor grammar show when I write.

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A few years back I read the book "As I lay Dying" by Faulkner and I really liked how the book sounded when I read it. Just reading the words brings the sound of the words to your mind because they just reflect the culture and the setting of the novel. Some books go on with "he said" and "she said" and others just "say it" with a remarkable accuracy to who would have been doing the "saying".

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So as far as this pictures overall meaning today, which in a way is also a journal entry for the day, it goes back to when I was 14 and my sister was 2. I do remember when I was 14. I thought my little sister was pretty cute and I had a soft spot for her. Being able to like and appreciate little girls is pretty easy. This fountain is on Temple Square. As I recall, and I do recall it, we went from one fountain to another that day and she got a drink from them all. I remember that there were a lot of fountains on Temple Square. Lot's has changed since then.

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Today is her husband, Gary's, birthday. I should be making an entry on his behalf in honor of his birthday but I figured a picture of his wife at 2 years may touch his heart. I love to see pictures of Kathy when she was a little girl.

the park,

I started writing in my journal when I was 31 years old and have regularly written in it for 33 years since then. I didn't start at the beginning of my life and experiences but often remembered various things and wrote them as memories. The journal is focused mostly on the last half of the time.

This picture is the park across the street from "Wyeth Street" where I lived from about 7 years old to about 13 and was a time I appreciate a lot of the memories about it. Living in an old house in an old neighborhood near a river and a park was a blessing and makes for some interesting memories. I remember a fight I had in this park and then too plenty of times with my dog running in the park. Some times playing baseball and climbing trees or at the rivers edge which ran by the park and our house.

Thought of this time today while out for a early walk with my best friend...........................

Saturday Run

Today I went for a walk and took my camera. I decided to just record the journey. Not that today August 7th is particularly unique or that I haven't' been on this course several times this week but I figured I would just record the journey.

So I would say that the day is one of watching, observing and taking note.................



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"You can observe a lot by watching."
Yogi Berra

"The job of the artist is to deepen the mystery."
Francis Bacon

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

here again

Went to lunch with this lady today. It was nice.

I haven't recorded much in this space the last few weeks. I have been spending time working on my journal.