Taken 12/26/09 in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Just out of the frame is Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Friday, December 25, 2009
Merry Christmas!
And to get things started, here's a Van Hornian's holiday decorations. Notice the floor lamp?
Purpose
Margaret asked me about purpose in life. It surprised me that such a question could be answered right away.
I used to feel I was born to stitch, to use the hand to reveal in a tiny fashion, a small truth: personal memory, sentiment, political commentary. It was a passion, sitting there for hours and hours often still in pjamas at the end of the day, immersed in a world often as small as a square inch. It was a quest to create something perfect, a struggle, a challenge, and in a life where I felt very little control, my hyperfocus could at least control the space held within an embroidery hoop.
The work of the hand felt a part of a family legacy, of stitchers, knitters, carvers, and cooks, and a legacy that felt right for me to follow. There is a grace to using the hand to create, a nobility. It rails against the virtual world, a defense of the beauty of antiquated ways.
It helped me know myself better, the meditative rhythm of the stitch could work out issues long before I processed them consciously. I'd start a piece thinking it was about one thing, and then much later see it was really about something else. My hand lead me to the truth about my profession, health and relationships.
Stitching brought me life-changing friendships and experiences, enriching my life beyond imagination. I taught at Arrowmont twice, the place I first seriously studied my craft. I got to sit in residency at Anderson Center and at Ragdale, elite refuges for writers and artists. Their cozy studios were the places I struggled on my strongest pieces, feeling a responsibility to the privilege and to the work.
But things change.
I am not a sit-on-my-butt kind of girl anymore. There is no doubt I am healthier and happier running and hiking and cycling, and hopefully, working to make our communities better. The long ago humiliations of the weakest girl in school have been buried by the endorphins of the Senior Games athlete. In the nick of time, before the body is lost to age, I'm learning to listen to myself in a new way, challenging the limits of my determination and courage, and challenging my entire body, not just the delicately beautiful muscles of the hand.
I feel no need to create or control a tiny perfect world. Perhaps stitching gave me the gift of working through that need, to leave me with the faith that the world will be what it is: complex, difficult, beautiful.
Stitching is harder now. I'm restless to move; I want to go, go, go. My old eyes don't see the delicate possibilities of the tiny stitch as easily as they used to.
And so in all the months I have not stitched, I've felt I've ignored a sweetheart, a true love. I've wrestled with whether I should declare I've left it for good, giving us both the dignity of a true breakup. Fortunately, stitching's patience will allow it to sit on a shelf, waiting for me to come back to it someday guilt-free.
Purpose still comes in yearning spirits, but not solely my own.
I see the yearning in the faces of folks in Dallas and Houston, tired of their lives of offices and traffic and not enough blue sky. They are searching for a place where they feel young and free, if not forever, then long enough to go back and face the lives they've built in the city. They may find it in the mountains of Texas, as I did.
I remember finding my grandmother's Hawaii travel journal among her papers when she died. There was a bounce, a youth in her words, though she was well into her 60s when she'd traveled there. Hawaii was--for an unassuming woman with a very quiet life--sunlight.
As a girl, I could see cars pass by on old Route 66 from my seat at the dining room table. They were going somewhere out "there," a place unformed in my imagination, but certainly a place of excitement or adventure or long-sought peace. A place with meaning, or if not a place...then they were finding "meaning" itself.
My solo hike in Scotland, across quaking bogs, over waterfalls, through snow guided only by topo map took more courage than am willing to take at home. It proved me to me.
Our guides, Paul and Pauline, built me a step-up-to-the-plate "Scotland" and my folks a safe and happy "Scotland." Their photos, where they seem so young, show faces lit with joy. We got the time of our lives in one trip. There is no nobler work than that.
And so, it is with this purpose I wake every morning, excited for the new day. Travel brought me here, and without a doubt this is a harder place than I've ever lived, but a place possessing the power and beauty to strengthen and transform. Travel not only made me young again, it has given me the time of my life. If the thousands of hours I spent, head bowed over small bits of fabric and thread, helped to bring me to this place that I try to share with others, I am profoundly grateful.
I used to feel I was born to stitch, to use the hand to reveal in a tiny fashion, a small truth: personal memory, sentiment, political commentary. It was a passion, sitting there for hours and hours often still in pjamas at the end of the day, immersed in a world often as small as a square inch. It was a quest to create something perfect, a struggle, a challenge, and in a life where I felt very little control, my hyperfocus could at least control the space held within an embroidery hoop.
The work of the hand felt a part of a family legacy, of stitchers, knitters, carvers, and cooks, and a legacy that felt right for me to follow. There is a grace to using the hand to create, a nobility. It rails against the virtual world, a defense of the beauty of antiquated ways.
It helped me know myself better, the meditative rhythm of the stitch could work out issues long before I processed them consciously. I'd start a piece thinking it was about one thing, and then much later see it was really about something else. My hand lead me to the truth about my profession, health and relationships.
Stitching brought me life-changing friendships and experiences, enriching my life beyond imagination. I taught at Arrowmont twice, the place I first seriously studied my craft. I got to sit in residency at Anderson Center and at Ragdale, elite refuges for writers and artists. Their cozy studios were the places I struggled on my strongest pieces, feeling a responsibility to the privilege and to the work.
But things change.
I am not a sit-on-my-butt kind of girl anymore. There is no doubt I am healthier and happier running and hiking and cycling, and hopefully, working to make our communities better. The long ago humiliations of the weakest girl in school have been buried by the endorphins of the Senior Games athlete. In the nick of time, before the body is lost to age, I'm learning to listen to myself in a new way, challenging the limits of my determination and courage, and challenging my entire body, not just the delicately beautiful muscles of the hand.
I feel no need to create or control a tiny perfect world. Perhaps stitching gave me the gift of working through that need, to leave me with the faith that the world will be what it is: complex, difficult, beautiful.
Stitching is harder now. I'm restless to move; I want to go, go, go. My old eyes don't see the delicate possibilities of the tiny stitch as easily as they used to.
And so in all the months I have not stitched, I've felt I've ignored a sweetheart, a true love. I've wrestled with whether I should declare I've left it for good, giving us both the dignity of a true breakup. Fortunately, stitching's patience will allow it to sit on a shelf, waiting for me to come back to it someday guilt-free.
Purpose still comes in yearning spirits, but not solely my own.
I see the yearning in the faces of folks in Dallas and Houston, tired of their lives of offices and traffic and not enough blue sky. They are searching for a place where they feel young and free, if not forever, then long enough to go back and face the lives they've built in the city. They may find it in the mountains of Texas, as I did.
I remember finding my grandmother's Hawaii travel journal among her papers when she died. There was a bounce, a youth in her words, though she was well into her 60s when she'd traveled there. Hawaii was--for an unassuming woman with a very quiet life--sunlight.
As a girl, I could see cars pass by on old Route 66 from my seat at the dining room table. They were going somewhere out "there," a place unformed in my imagination, but certainly a place of excitement or adventure or long-sought peace. A place with meaning, or if not a place...then they were finding "meaning" itself.
My solo hike in Scotland, across quaking bogs, over waterfalls, through snow guided only by topo map took more courage than am willing to take at home. It proved me to me.
Our guides, Paul and Pauline, built me a step-up-to-the-plate "Scotland" and my folks a safe and happy "Scotland." Their photos, where they seem so young, show faces lit with joy. We got the time of our lives in one trip. There is no nobler work than that.
And so, it is with this purpose I wake every morning, excited for the new day. Travel brought me here, and without a doubt this is a harder place than I've ever lived, but a place possessing the power and beauty to strengthen and transform. Travel not only made me young again, it has given me the time of my life. If the thousands of hours I spent, head bowed over small bits of fabric and thread, helped to bring me to this place that I try to share with others, I am profoundly grateful.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Detour
I don't do it often enough, but I know I should--detour for historical marker signs. I mean, it is my business, knowing the fun and undiscovered places in my corner of the state.Usually I'm on a mission, just like everyone else on the road, with appointments looming, no time for wandering and a vague sense that getting there is not as much fun as BEING there.
So last week, I devoted a day just to wandering and photographing the rural way into El Paso that is part of a cross-country cycling route, Adventure Cycling's Southern Tier, wanting to document it for a promotional project later on. I traveled really remote backroads; through fields growing chile, pecans, alfalfa. I saw farm laborers working just in front of the new international border fence. I drove through towns that really were no more; and towns just hanging on.
As I approached the city, there was the usual offensive buildup of strip malls, and then large shopping centers and intense traffic. Here on the outskirts of El Paso, the signs were in Spanish, and really, truly, it didn't feel like the U.S. Just off the road, I knew there were Colonias--Spanish neighborhoods--and in this area traditionally lagging behind in public services such as potable water, sewer, paved roads, and sometimes electricity.
So when the historical marker came to view, I turned from the main road. I didn't have to go far to see the marker--actually two of them--one in English, one in Spanish. It stood in front of the building (first photo) with a sort of campus behind. The marker read:
El Paso County's second poor farm, known as the El Paso Poor Farm, was established here in 1915. John O'Shea, a wealthy farmer and businessman whose farm was nearby, assumed operation of the farm. His wife, Agnes O'Shea, was in charge of the residents. John O'Shea died in 1929, and the couple's daughter, Helen O'Shea Keleher, came from her home in San Antonio to operate the farm with her mother.
The farm was scheduled to be closed in 1929, but, with the troubled times of the Depression era, its population grew. Renamed "Rio Vista Farm," the poor farm hosted a variety of public welfare programs beginning in the 1930s. It operated under the Texas Transient Bureau and later the Federal Works Progress Administration. A temporary base for a Civilian Conservation Corps unit in 1936, the farm continued to shelter hundreds of homeless and destitute adults and children.
From 1951 to 1964, the farm was used as a reception and processing center for the Bracero Program, which brought Mexican laborers to work in the lower valley of El Paso and other agricultural areas in the U.S. New federal welfare programs and state law reduced the population of the poor farm to four, and it was closed in 1964. Unlike other Texas county poor farms, Rio Vista followed a familial rather than institutional model, accepting neglected and abandoned children in addition to the adult indigent population. In later life, Helen O'Shea Keleher cited the fifty years she spent with the more than four thousand orphans and neglected children of the Rio Vista Poor Farm as her proudest accomplishment.
It seemed untouched. It was easy to imagine waves of the poor, the CCC and Bracero workers, washing at the outdoor sinks, bunking in the dormitories, relaxing in the shade. A gentleman came out of the first building, saw my camera and encouraged me to wander around. He gave me his card--he was the director of the community center housed at the Farm. They were trying to renovate the buildings so they could establish satellite offices for social service agencies, but it was hard to find money. He invited me inside, where I interrupted a "senior lunch." Tiny old men in cowboy hats lined up for a small meal of sandwich, salad and packaged jello.
As I wandered around, I saw they were holding English classes, and a sign on one door said, "SE CANCELA LA CLASA DE COMPUTER POR EL DIA DE HOY JUNIO 18 2009."
But there was something that didn't seem to fit, a large aging archway in the center of the campus. And it didn't fit. Turns out that arch was built a few years ago, as a set for the filming of the movie, "Traffic," the Stephen Soderbergh movie starring Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Benicio del Torro.
Less than a mile from the frenzy of the road was, well, "Traffic," and a detour worth taking. I should make time more often.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Empanadas from the Barrio
The line on Friday morning was nearly out the door. Bowie Bakery in Segundo Barrio sits on a sunlit corner, its white adobe gleaming. The neighborhood is full of tiny adobe apartments and homes, creamscicle-colored, pink, purple, and white all blazing in sun. This is an old, old neighborhood, and in decades past, a place of disease, violence and poverty. But today it is lovely, and I want to roam. It doesn't feel like the U.S. Two and a half blocks down the road is the narrow Rio Grande and then Mexico. In the opposite direction, the rest of El Paso and the Franklin Mountains.But my time is short as I have an appointment later, and I need to get in line. Spanish is spoken here, but the clerk makes me and my English feel welcome. Amazed by the vast selection of Mexican pastries, I decide to ask for what I know: empanadas.
"What kind do you have?"
"Cream, yam, apple, pineapple."
I'm here to sample, so I say, "one of each," and to avoid the appearance of gluttony, "to go."
The bill is $3.10.
Back in my car, I survey the half moons of pastry...some simple and unadorned with rough dough exteriors. Others are shiny with egg glaze and patterned by the slashes of a knife before baking. I rip open the first. Cream. This is what I like about Mexican pastries: even with a pastry cream filling, they're not too sweet. I lick the little drip oozing from the center and take a bite, then two. I nod. Good.
Then onto the yam. Also good. Then the pretty shiny empanadas--obviously the apple and pineapple. Each get a bite. Satisfied that this is a place I can recommend to travelers, I regretfully roll up the bag, sorry I won't finish off the jumble of half-eaten pastries inside. Next time, I'll try something new, and eat the whole thing.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
A late spring
Sundays are my long run days in the cemetery, but today I was distracted by some wonderful things. Taking it as a sign that I should just take in their glory, I picked up my camera after mile 3 instead of taking in the ten I normally run on Sundays.I was startled in mile two by a pair of mating horny toads. They scattered and I forged on, reveling in the fact that I'd not only seen the Texas state reptile, but a threatened species...mating.
I continued my run, and then happened by something I hadn't seen nor smelled in four years...flowering lilacs. Maybe our nearly daily rain, however light, kicked the flowering mechanism of this most decidedly not a desert plant into full gear. But there they were, full purple blossoms. I stood there for several minutes, just taking in the scent, remembering this was the favorite of my childhood. It reminded me of dabbing lilac toilet water on my wrists, and feeling very feminine as a tiny girl.
And then I wandered to the spot where I'd seen the horny toads and they were still there, back at it. I photographed them for a very long time, knowing I'd seen not one, but two rare sights this morning. One was a sight from my past, the other from my present.
Van Horn's Junior Rodeo
Click here to see a full slideshow of images.The Junior Rodeo is one of my favorite annual events in Van Horn.
The kids are tough, fast and fearless, and marshal power well beyond the size of their small frames. They're serious; this is more about work than play. Yet layered underneath the toughness, there's a tender earnestness that is utterly charming.
The intense heat of the afternoon wore out, and the temperature was comfortable by the time the calf roping began. It was the best of the three annual Junior Rodeo's I've attended in Van Horn, lovely sky, and beautiful evening light.
The kids are tough, fast and fearless, and marshal power well beyond the size of their small frames. They're serious; this is more about work than play. Yet layered underneath the toughness, there's a tender earnestness that is utterly charming.
The intense heat of the afternoon wore out, and the temperature was comfortable by the time the calf roping began. It was the best of the three annual Junior Rodeo's I've attended in Van Horn, lovely sky, and beautiful evening light.
This was a 4H rodeo, and I was struck by the difference between these kids and the ones in Iowa showing animals at the county fair. In Iowa, the kids are open and earnest, their emotions easily read on their faces. The rodeo kids--boys and girls--were more strong than tough. They carried a veneer of determination and power about them, though deep within they were as earnest as the Iowans. Only one kid was able to step aside from his work and engage me with a smile. Another knew I was there shooting, and while he didn't acknowledge me, he was definitely performing for the camera with his lasso.
The girls were feminine and tough, the older ones wearing perfect makeup far more tastefully applied than I've seen, say....in figure skaters. The littlest girls wore a lot of pink, as did their horses. I loved these girls; they were both strong and feminine.
The littlest boy in the photos still had diapers on underneath his jeans. He'll be competing in a few years, I'm sure of it.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
New Video on YouTube
This morning, I uploaded a new video on the Texas Mountain Trail page on YouTube. (Click on the featured video on the right side of this page.) I'm still learning, and there's so much to learn: photography, audio recording and editing, transitions, etc. But for this first effort...as the Farmer said to Babe, "It'll do Pig. It'll do."Wednesday, January 28, 2009
On CNN and Southern Living
Today's CNN.com Travel section offered this article about Marfa, Marathon and Alpine in my region!
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/getaways/01/28/west.texas/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/getaways/01/28/west.texas/index.html
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Passing it on
I received this image from Laura, one of the students in the wonderfully talented class I taught at Arrowmont in October. It is her finished piece from our 'storytelling in embroidery' course, based on a photograph of her husband and young son. All the students did fantastic work, and this piece is simply lovely. (Somehow I neglected to blog about this class, which was a pure joy...everyone was engaged and challenged, positive and happy to share....they were a teacher's dream.)
Laura finished her piece sitting with her mom in the hospital this fall. The nurses watched the progress of this tiny embroidery, and Laura's mom, a painter, contributed color ideas even though she was "super-sick and on painkillers."
Laura's mom is home now and feeling better. I know firsthand about the healing and meditative nature of the work, and know it must have helped the stress of that time seem more manageable for all of them. Laura reports, "Working on this piece gave me something to DO when there was nothing I could do to help my Mom get better. So, now this tiny stitching has that much more of a story for me."
Monday, January 5, 2009
Morning Ritual
"I threw your trash," says Junior, the city custodian every morning. "I didn't know if you needed a new plastic bag."
"No," I tell him, "the one I have is still good."
"When you do, I'll make it real nice."
Junior travels to all his cleaning jobs (four) by bicycle, even on icy days like today. I don't know much about Junior, except that he likes coffee, his real name is Fabian, our conversations are pretty much limited to the state of my trash, and he does a good job cleaning the Convention Center. But I like our morning exchange and the fact that he seems to care quite a bit about keeping my wastebasket under control. In a town that often doesn't seem to care about keeping things nice, Junior's attitude keeps my faith in Van Horn alive.
"No," I tell him, "the one I have is still good."
"When you do, I'll make it real nice."
Junior travels to all his cleaning jobs (four) by bicycle, even on icy days like today. I don't know much about Junior, except that he likes coffee, his real name is Fabian, our conversations are pretty much limited to the state of my trash, and he does a good job cleaning the Convention Center. But I like our morning exchange and the fact that he seems to care quite a bit about keeping my wastebasket under control. In a town that often doesn't seem to care about keeping things nice, Junior's attitude keeps my faith in Van Horn alive.
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