Monthly Archives: April 2017

Katrina Tree

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When my dad died, my sibling insisted I travel to Mississippi for his memorial service.

I was house sitting in Tracy, California when he passed on Monday afternoon. My dad’s wife scheduled the memorial service for the upcoming Friday evening. By Tuesday I’d bought a $600 round-trip airline ticket. By Thursday morning, I was flying out of Oakland, on my way down South.

My sibling and my sibling’s partner met me at the airport in New Orleans. They rented a car, and the partner drove us through the darkness surrounding Interstate 10, all the way to Ocean Springs. The three of us visited awkwardly with my father’s wife (who was holding up exceptionally well), then headed to Bay St. Louis where we would spend the night.

We stayed at the home of my sibling’s partner’s aunt and uncle. The aunt and uncle were out of town, but they graciously offered us the use of their empty home. It was dark when we pulled into the driveway, but my sibling managed to find the hidden spare key. It wasn’t long before we were passed out in the spare bedrooms, exhausted and probably still shocked at the unexpected death of the patriarch.

The next morning we were blessed by being able to sleep until we woke up naturally. My sibling cooked breakfast and we planned our day. I needed to stop at a thrift store before we saw my dad’s wife again so I could buy a new shirt. (I only had one shirt with me, the one I’d worn the night before. I thought my dad’s wife would only see me once before the memorial service, but it turned out she’d see me twice, and I knew she would notice if I had on the same shirt I’d been wearing the night before.) Before we went back to my dad’s house, my sibling wanted to show me the “Katrina Trees.”

My sibling and the partner and their son had visited my dad and his wife the previous summer. During the visit, my dad and his wife had taken them to see several “Katrina Trees.” The “Katrina Trees” were trees that had been killed by Hurrican Katrina in 2005 and later carved into large-scale sculptures. My sibling wanted me to see at least one of these trees that meant so much to my dad and his wife.

The tree-sculptures are located all along scenic Highway 90. There are now approximately 50 sculptures throughout the Mississippi Gulf Coast,

The website for the city of Biloxi says,

The trees were victims of the saltwater storm surge of Hurricane Katrina.

There was no plaque with the tree, no explanation or artist information. I did some internet research and determined this tree was carved by chainsaw artist Dayle Lewis of Indiana. My conclusion was confirmed by “Lewis 2012” carved into the bottom of the sculpture, just under the heron.

Lewis has carved angel sculptures out of six live oaks killed by Hurricane Katrina’s 40-foot saltwater surge. The trees can be found throughout Bay St. Louis.

I read an article on the Florida Times-Union website which shows a photo of the tree I visited with a story of  three Katrina survivors and a dog, but I think they used the wrong image. While both trees were carved by Dayle Lewis, the tree where the three people and the dog spent the night during the hurricane was described in an article on the WGNO web page as “probably the plainest of them all.” The article goes on to say,

The most elaborate of the four angel trees looks out to sea, just like the original one — it has several angels carved into it, along with some herons, ladybugs, turtles and pelicans. One of the angels has white eyes — of all the angels that adorn the four angel trees, it’s the only one with white eyes.

The tree I visited is clearly elaborate, faces the sea, features turtles, herons, and pelicans (sorry, but I don’t remember any ladybugs), and includes an angel with white eyes.

We didn’t stay at the tree very long. I took photos, and my sibling hugged it, then we headed back to my dad’s house to prepare for his memorial service. We didn’t stay long, but it did me good to see the tree. It did me good to see such a wonderful part of the life of my father, a life that I missed for so many years.

Bodhi Manda Zen Center

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I didn’t even want to go.

My friend Tea (who’d lived in New Mexico for upwards of 30 years) had told me about the wonderful hot springs at the Bodhi Manda Zen Center near Jemez Springs. She’d visited the place a couple of times over the course of several years and remembered it fondly. When my sibling came to town to visit me, Tea wanted to share the experience with us. She suggested the three of us take a road trip to the Zen Center to soak. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The problems started immediately.

First I realized my van only had two seats, which meant only two seatbelts, which meant only two people could ride safely. How would the three of us get there? I knew Tea’s wouldn’t want to take her old clunker, and it might not even make the trip. I didn’t want us to get stuck on the side of the road.

No problem, my sibling said. A car could be rented. The cost would be offset by staying with me at the house I would be sitting instead of renting a hotel room.

The day of our trip, the rental car proved to be a problem. We called ahead to make sure the car would be ready at the appointed time. Well, no it wouldn’t, the rental car company employee told us. The car hadn’t been returned yet, and they’d have to clean it when it arrived…We could pick up the car two hours later than it had been promised to us. (Why promise a car to a customer at a certain hour if you don’t know if it will be ready at that time?)

Our entire trip had been planned based on the earlier pickup time. My sibling and I were on vacation, but Tea had all these constraints. She couldn’t meet us too early in the day, but she had to be home to care for her six dogs well before dark. Leaving two hours later would put her back home two hours later, or else cut our time at the Zen Center so short as the render the trip ridiculous. (Why drive 2+ hours to get somewhere and 2+ hours back only to stay at the place for one hour?)

The real problem was that Tea was getting on my last nerve. I love Tea. I really do. She has always been a good, kind, generous friend to me. However, she can also be bossy, nosy, and mothering to the point of smothering. She was really being demanding about this trip too, placing constraints on when we could go and when we had to get back. We were in a phase where I was annoyed by everything she did, and this road trip was beginning to seem like a really bad idea.

That’s it! We can’t go, I said with relief when the rental car company started jerking us around.

My sibling didn’t give up, whether because of really wanting to visit the hot springs or just to be nice, I still don’t know.

We started making phone calls. There was another rental car company at the town’s tiny airport. The company’s national call center said there was an economy car available immediately. We were ready to take it, but them my sibling suggested we call the local office just to make sure they really had what we wanted. The phone rang and rang and rang until finally some guy answered. He didn’t have an economy car available, he said. He had an SUV available and would be glad to rent it to us at a higher price. We told him the company’s national call center said an economy car was available, but he said they were wrong. I asked why the national call center said an economy car was available if it wasn’t, and he said he’d have a manager call me back immediately. To this day, I have not received that call from a manager.

My sibling called the first rental call company again and spoke quietly and firmly to the company representative. When the call ended, I found out a car had just been returned. It would be cleaned immediately. We could pick it up at the time originally promised.  It looked like we’d be going on this trip after all.

When we picked up Tea, I had her sit in the front seat. I told her she would do best up there as she was navigating. Really, I just wanted to sit in the back seat and pout about going on this trip I had decided I didn’t want to take.

The scenery on the way to the Center was FABULOUS! The road we took brought us past the entrance to Bandelier National Monument. We saw lovely rock formations, as well as folks climbing a sheer rock wall. We passed elk viewing areas (but did not see any elk). In some places, the road was VERY narrow and very steep, and it seemed doubtful two cars going in opposite directions would be able to pass each other, but they did.

Once at the Zen Center, Tea and my sibling and I headed directly to the hot spring pools (located behind the Center’s buildings and next to the river.) I was quite disappointed to find there was no shade over the pools. I’m really sensitive to the sun and burn easily, so I was hoping to sit in the shade while I soaked. Nope! All of the pools were in full sun.

The water in the pools was very hot. It would have felt great in the winter or at night, but on a sunny June afternoon, it was too much for me, although I typically enjoy really hot water. I could only sit in the hot water in the hot sun for a few minutes before I had to stand up and cool off.

There was some algae in the pools. Not a terrible lot, but it was kind of slimy and gross looking. What was really gross was the unwrapped, bloated tampon floating in the far pool. Yuck! How did that even get in there? I’m not typically squeamish, but it really grossed me out, even though it didn’t seem to be bloody. I really hope it had gotten there by falling out of someone’s bag.

Between the too hot water, the unrelenting sun, and the floating tampon, I didn’t spend much time in the water. I put on my robe and headed to the front porch where I cooled off, dried off, and read a book. I enjoyed my porch sitting and book reading very much.

When we visited, the use of the hot springs cost $10. For that price a person could stay all day (and possibly into the night…I’m not sure what time they wanted day soakers to leave). Payment was on the honor system. We placed our payment in a wooden box near the door of the room we passed through to get to the restroom/changing room.

While writing this post, I looked at the Bodhi Manda Zen Center’s website and found nothing about the hot springs. There’s no mention of the springs being open to the public, the cost to use them, or when they are available. There’s no mention of the springs at all, although there is one photo of two of the pools. If I wanted to utilize Bodhi Manda’s hot springs I would email (office@bmzc.org) or call (575-829-3854) before showing up.

My sibling and Tea didn’t stay in the water much longer after I got out. Soon we were on the road again, heading to return the rental car.

If I were going to visit the Bodhi Manda Zen Center again, I would go when the weather is much cooler, maybe even in the winter. I would also arrive much earlier in the day, so I could get a lot of soaking time for my $10. However, I don’t feel like the springs were so great that I need to go back. That tampon in the pool really turned me off.

To find out about other places where you can soak in hot mineral water, check out the article “11 Hot Springs in New Mexico You Need to Visit” on the All The Rooms blog.

 

Easy Bake Oven

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It was a couple of weeks before Christmas, and I was in a Wal-Mart in the metro area of a large city in the Southwest. I was in a hurry. I’d grabbed what I needed and was booking it to the check out counter to pay for my purchases and get the hell out of there.

On the outskirts of the toy department, I saw an endcap stacked with boxes of Easy Bake Ovens.

I always wanted one of those and never got one, I thought idly.

Then I saw a young boy pictured on the box.

That’s nice, I thought. Hasbro is showing that boys like to bake too. Inclusivity is a wonderful thing…

Then I thought, WAIT! WHAT? as I realized the boy was dominating the use of the Easy Bake Oven.

Ever hear about those studies of toy advertisements that show boys are depicted as being more active while girls are depicted as passive? Thought that kind of thing went out of fashion in the 70s or maybe the 80s at the latest? Uh, no. We’re living in the second decade of the 21st century, and I’m showing you a real world example of sexism aimed right at kids.

So yeah, the boy is taking the active role in the baking game while the girls look on in admiration and wonder. Wow! the girl in the middle seems to be thinking, He sure can slide in that cookie sheet! (Gag! I hadn’t even thought of the sexual undertones of having the boy slide something long and thin into a small opening until I started ranting here. How could that seem like a good idea to the Hasbro’s marketing people?)

The girl in the purple shirt seems to be adoring his baking prowess.

In an article called “Care Bears vs. Transformers: Gender Stereotypes in Advertisements” (http://www.sociology.org/care-bears-vs-transformers-gender-stereotypes-in-advertisements/), references a study by B.A. Browne published in the Journal of Advertising in 1998 [Browne, B.A. (1998), “Gender stereotypes in advertising on children’s television in the 1990s: a cross-national analysis”.  Journal of Advertising, 27 (1), 83-97.] The study

provides further evidence of the substantial gender stereotyping that is found in advertisements.  According to Browne,

Boys appeared in greater numbers, assumed more dominant roles, and were more active and aggressive than girls. (p. 12)  In commercials containing both boys and girls, boys were significantly more likely to demonstrate and/or explain the product even when the product used was not sex-typed.

So um, yeah, Hasbro, sociologists already know this kind of gender stereotyping is a problem. You too should know it’s a problem and YOU SHOULDN’T DO IT!

While I’m ranting, can I point out just how white that group of kids looks? I know we can’t determine everything there is to know about a person’s ethnic and cultural heritage by the tone of her or his skin (and maybe the girl in the purple shirt is Latinx), but some diversity in skin tone could have gone a long way here.

What can parents do to combat this sexism and racism? Contact Hasbro and call them out on it. Send them links to this blog if you like. More importantly, talk to your kids–your girls AND your boys about this kind of gender stereotyping and racism. Point it out and have a discussion when only white kids are pictured playing with a certain toy. Tell your girls they don’t have to look at a boy with adoration simply because he knows his way around the kitchen, and tell your boys not to expect a girl to think they’re the greatest things since sliced bread just because they can put cookies in an oven.

In my ideal world, all people will take turns baking for each other because baking is fun and a cupcake is a lovely gift.

I took the photo in this post.

 

Charity Pie Night

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I should have shared this post on National Pi Day, but I didn’t get it together in time for that. Maybe next year I will have a pi/pie related story prepared for March 14. In the meantime, enjoy this pie related story today.

NOLAgirl and I starting making plans to attend pie night a month before it happened.

She was in Phoenix, and I was house and cat sitting in Murphys, CA. She must have mentioned pie night to me, and I was all in! Pie. Pie is delicious. I love pie.

Pie night is held at a store called Practical Art, located at 5070 N. Central Avenue in Phoenix, AZ. Here’s what Practical Art’s website has to say for itself:

Practical Art is a friendly retail and gallery space featuring 100% locally-made wares in wood, fiber, ceramic, glass, metal, and up-cycled materials. All of our work is produced by Arizona artisans—we have over 100 of them producing work for you. We carry art that is practical in some way—everything from kitchen tools to home and office items, soap, clothing, furniture, jewelry, and more.

Pie night is more accurately Charity Pie Night. The Charity Pie Night page on the Practical Art website says the monthly event has raised over $34,000 since 2011. Past beneficiaries of charity pie nights include Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix Center for the Arts, Area Agency on Aging, Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, Rising Youth Theatre, and the Animal Defense League of Arizona. The night in December when NOLAgirl and I attended, the beneficiary was the Art Resource Center.

According to their Facebook page,

The Art Resource Center is a non-profit corporation 501(C)(3) whose objectives are to collect reusable discards from individuals and industries and offer them free of charge to schools and other non-profit entities for the purpose of making art.

The Art Resource Center’s website elaborates,

By recycling art worthy materials for creative minds, THE ARC is filling the ever widening funding gap of nonprofits by providing quality materials to continue the passion we call ART.

The Art Resource Center is a wonderful project that I can get behind 100%. However, on that December night, my prime objective was PIE!

NOLAgirl and I arrived right on time, plates in hand. (To make Charity Pie Night more environmentally friendly, Practical Art encourages people to bring plates from home or buy reusable plates in the store. Reusable plates were provided to folks who hadn’t brought their own plate and didn’t want to buy one, but the plates provided were SMALL! I was glad to have brought my own slightly larger plate.)

Here’s how it worked: $5 got a person a slice of pie; $10 got a person unlimited slices. Anyone who knows me (and my love of pie and love of a bargain) will not be surprised to find out I had budgeted $10 for all the pie I could eat.

NOLAgirl and I lined up and waited our turn to step up to the pie table.

The pies were made by Vonceil’s Pies, owned by Karen Olson. The pie company’s Facebook page says,

Vonceil’s Pies is my dream in the making…some day I hope that Vonceil’s will be my own store front bakery in which I can share the wonderful, crazy, beautiful world of homemade pie to the Arizona community.

There must have been a dozen different pies on the table, and they were being served up by friendly young women wearing cute aprons. There were vegan pies made with no animal products. There were traditional pies made with whatever traditional pies are made of. There were berry pies and fruit pies. There were pies containing chocolate and pies containing chocolate and peanut butter and pies containing alcohol. One of the pies had a crust made from crushed nuts, which made it gluten free. How would we ever decide what varieties to choose?

It seemed like bad form to say Give me one of each! and besides, I don’t think I could have fit a dozen slices of pie on my medium-sized plate. NOLAgirl and I each chose four flavors to sample, then went and found a place to sit in the back of the store.

Wow! That pie was good. I wish I had noted which flavors I tried, but alas, I did not. In any case, every type of pie I tried was delicious.

After we finished our first round of slices, NOLAgirl and I walked around the store and looked at all the cool items for sale.

“The Big Robot Show”  by Jordan-Alexander Thomas was in progress at Practical Art during Charity Pie Night. According to the information on the Practical Art website,

In “The Big Robot Show” local mixed-media artist, Jordan-Alexander Thomas exhibits his inventive and sometimes curiously odd robots and sci-fi creations on a grand scale. Using wood and up-cycled found objects, Thomas transforms these findings into whimsical and entertaining creations that are constructed to excite the imagination. Thomas began creating robot sculptures when his passion for indie handmade objects collided with his love of all things science fiction.

The robot and sci-fi creations were wonderful! I loved them but didn’t take any photos. Luckily, you can see some of them on them on Thomas’ website. Really, it’s worth clicking on the link and having a look!

After we looked at everything in the store, NOLAgirl and I shyly asked one another if we wanted more pie. As a matter of fact we did, thank you very much.

We got back in line and patiently waited to get up to the pie table. The pies were dwindling by this point, but we were both able to get slices of four pie varieties we hadn’t tried in the first round. They too were divine.

Once we finished our second helpings of pie, our bellies were full, and we were all sugared up. It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant feeling, but maybe I don’t need to eat eight pieces (even eight small pieces) of pie in one night.

For folks visiting Phoenix, I highly recommend a stop at Practical Art. For folks who like pie, if you can time it right, you really should make your visit there coincide with Charity Pie Night.

 

Another Horse

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Since I wrote about a horse yesterday, I thought I’d stick with the theme and write about a horse of a totally different kind I saw in Truth or Consequences, NM.

I was house and dog sitting in a neighborhood near the hospital. One morning while walking the dog, I went down a street I hadn’t explored before. I looked over and saw a horse…a metal horse.

The sculpture was located in a fenced area between two houses. The fenced area was more of an empty lot than a yard. The fence was of the hurrican variety, so the horse was entirely visible. While the gate was open, I didn’t go into the enclosed area. I thought that might be a little too much like trespassing. Thankfully, I was able to aim my camera up and over the fence so I could get an unobstructed view.

There was no plaque to go with the sculpture, nothing about the artist or the medium or the technique used to create this creature. Maybe it’s a piece of yard art like I sometimes see being sold in tourist towns. Even if it is “just” yard art, I still like it. I like the horse sculpture in general, but especially the mane and tail. I like the jauntily raised hoof and the three-dimensionality of the piece. This is not some flat cutout! This horse has heft.

One of my favorite parts of house and dog sitting is exploring new neighborhoods and discovering their character. I like the spirit this metal horse adds to its block.

I took the photos in this post.

Horse

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It was still early in the morning when we left Indian Bread Rocks Recreation Area. We were on our way to New Mexico, ready to hit the road and experience the next part of our adventure.

I was driving the van, and we hadn’t gotten far from the recreation area when I looked to my left and saw a horse! I brought the van to a stop in the middle of the dirt road and pulled out my camera so I could take some photos of it.

While it’s always exciting (to me at least) to see an animal living its life while I’m driving by, seeing a horse near a highway is not exactly unusual. I’ve seen plenty of horses living their lives within view of a highway. Once on a road trip, my sibling and I saw so many horses over the course of 1,800 miles, we had a big discussion about how many horses have to be standing together to make a herd. We decided four horses are required to make a herd. Ansers.com (http://www.answers.com/Q/How_many_horses_make_a_herd?#slide=2) says it takes six horses to make a herd, but I’m going to stick with four.

The horse I saw on that January morning in Arizona was different from other horses I’d seen over the course of my life. For one thing, it was alone. Where was the rest of its herd? Did it live a solitary life? Was it a lonely horse?

Also? This horse wasn’t standing in a pasture or near a corral, and we were nowhere near a highway. This horse was standing in the middle of a desert next to a dirt road. Was this even a domesticated horse? Was this a wild desert pony?

The horse offered me no answers, shared no secrets. It simply stood there, looked at me, occasionally turned its head.

After taking several photos of the horse, I knew it was time to go, although I was none the wiser about its life.

I took the photos in this post.