Birds of a feather . . .

"I'll watch the front, you watch the back"

Mysteries of the Night

While on a trip to Jerome recently, I bought this piece of art. Do you think it's . . . too . . . dark?

SWMBO hates it. I love it. But let's put a little more light on it.

Now, what do you think? I want to hear a vote. Do you like it? Or hate it?

For those of you without Spanish, Dia De Los Muertos translates to Day of the Dead. It's a traditional holiday around the end of October and 1st of November.

And if you think the picture is dark . . . you ought to be in Mexico sometime during those days and see all the sugar skulls for sale in the markets. Or better yet, go to a Mexican cemetery during that time to see people gathering at the graves of their departed relatives, picnicking with all kinds of food and tequila. Rather than mourning the loss, it's a celebration. Not of their deaths but of their lives.

Cats!

I glanced out the rear window this afternoon and look what I found! Our visiting cat, Goldie, taking his ease on one of the patio chairs.

He apparently valued his rest more than his safety as I moved closer and closer, snapping pictures. He wouldn't even look up or, most of the time, open his eyes. Even when I reached out and petted him several times. The only sign of recognition was his flexing his toes on one foot.

Meanwhile, Smoke, whose chair Goldie had appropriated, showed utter disdain and boredom with the whole thing.

Art, music, food - what more could you want?

SWMBO and I did something we rarely do anymore, we went out at night. We went to the Raven for an opening of an art show by several artists.

Some of the art can be seen over the head of a singer who entertained the crowd.

On another wall . . art of a different sort. The artist is on the right in the photo below: Bill Cramer.

Also in attendance were the BRD . . .

and her Beau . . .

I must say the noise level was way too high for my old ears. But I took a climb up the stairs to see the newly opened rooftop deck. Very nice. I should have snapped a picture but didn't.

After that we traveled over a couple of blocks for a lavish east Indian dinner at the newly-opened restaurant Taj Mahal. The Taj has recently moved from Frontier Village to a downtown location, which most recently was Zuma's restaurant on north Montezuma street. Again the camera stayed sheathed as we all dove into food.

Rosy poetic snippets

"The first red rose

sent out of season"

--Barry A. Lanier

"Rose

Your looks are so captivating

Rose

You are everything to me"

--Aldo Kraas

"A rose could not

bring us together.

A rose could not

keep us together.

A rose by any other name

is still just a rose."

--Rory Hudson

"A rose is a rose is a rose."

--Gertrude Stein

Funny!

I have to thank Joan at Charleston Daily Photo for this wonderfully funny link.

New Old Church

As I was motoring over to Sedona this past weekend, I discovered a new church in a distinctly Colonial architecture just outside of Cottonwood.

I didn't have time to stop then but I did on the way home to snap a photo. While the style goes back a few centuries, it is a brand new building with construction equipment still sitting alongside.

For the details, here's a photo of a sign out front.

Several more businesses bite the dust

The Little Cafe (very aptly named) has fallen on hard times. Previously it was Apple Pan 2. Before that it was Uncle Sal's sandwich shop. In its latest incarnation, it has been closed for about a month.

No one, it seems, can make a go of it in this tiny location, which is fairly close to where I live in Prescott Valley.

A sign on the front door explained the reason this time.

Meantime, in Prescott, Granny J recently noted the passing of the Stepping Stones thrift store. I dropped a box of dishes off at the store in Prescott Valley this morning and asked an employee what had happened. While acknowledging that the Prescott store had only been open for a few weeks, he said no one knew why it had closed or if a new location would be found. As he put it, "no one tells us anything." So the mystery continues.

And another closing has been reported in downtown Prescott. Sweet Tarts, a restaurant with delicious home-made French pastries, also has closed its doors. No word on why, except for "the economy."

Musical Sunday

I drove over to Sedona today to hear a group I had read about. ZAZU calls itself a gypsy jazz band, modeled after the likes of Django Reinhardt and Stephanie Grappeli and Le Jazz Hot in the good old days in Paris. With only two guitars and an upright bass, they recreate the sound beautifully.

The players are, from left to right, Larry Czarnecki, Steve Douglas and Ken Aurich. A great group.

But my big surprise of the day occurred on the road back to P.V. from Jerome. There's a large overlook down the canyon into the Verde Valley. Usually there are many cars there with tourists oohing and ahhing and taking photos. But today . . . there was something different.

That's right. A very accomplished drummer with his entire kit blasting out rhythm over the canyon. When he finished playing I said "that was great but where's the rest of the band?"

He responded, "Oh, they're always late. I'm always the first one to arrive and the last one to leave."

But then he grinned and said he just didn't have a gig this weekend and needed to get his jollies. As I left, he was beating out more sounds on his drums.

Facebook Follies

Oh, my god.

I have warned friends about this.

But now I have succumbed.

Facebook has taken over my life.

I finally got into it and now I have found multiple former friends, people I used to work with, some of them for a long time, some of them very briefly.

But now.

Thanks to Facebook.

They are my friends.

And I am finding that I am checking the page tens, hundreds, thousands of times a day.

What have I become?

Okay, gotta go.

Got to check Facebook.

Good-bye Mary

The Big C has claimed another one.

Mary Travers, the female singer with Peter, Paul and Mary, has died of cancer at the age of 72 in Danbury Hospital in Connecticut.

Topping it off

A next door neighbor had this Cottonwood tree in his front yard. It was probably 50 feet tall. Until this morning. Going out to the mailbox, I noticed tree cutters hard at work. I asked them if they were going to take it down but they said they had been asked by the owner to reduce its height.

A few hours later, the job was done.

I'm not sure why the owner wanted the tree cut back but probably he was worried about windstorms toppling the top portion onto his duplex.

Calling all nervous nellies!

From the north side of Prescott, looking south, a forest fire appears to be encroaching on the city. (Yavapai Regional Medical Center in lower left of photo.)

But it was a controlled burn, one of two today. The next view is from Juniper Lane, on the south side of the city.

The other burn today was on Mingus Mountain but it was so far away only a dim smudge of gray smoke could be seen in the sky.

These controlled burns are done every year but every time they're done a certain number of people don't get the message and are all but running down the streets, shrieking "the sky is falling, the sky is falling."

There is no danger, folks, everything is being strictly controlled.

We're Number 37!

I want a drink!

I had just filled the fountain and a couple of dishes with water.

But Smoke apparently didn't want to drink from the cat dish.

He wanted a drink from the fountain.

Meanwhile, watching from a distance was the long-missing Goldie. Haven't seen him for several weeks but there he was this morning. But he was keeping a safe distance and would not allow me to approach him.

The worst part of a rainy day

Sedona, Arizona is a small town in northern Arizona . . famous for art galleries, crystals and vortexes, not to mention beautiful scenery in the red rocks.

But yesterday a huge thunderstorm rolled directly over Sedona, dropping lots of rain and causing the normally placid Oak Creek to flood in low-lying areas. One place hard hit was Tlaquepaque, a Mexican themed mall of galleries, shops and restaurants with some huge sycamore trees. To see what happened, check out these photographs by Karl F. Mullings Photography: Sedona Flood

The best part of a rainy day

When you expand this photo (by clicking on it) you can see faintly a double rainbow to the right.

No comment

A great radio station!

As I was perusing the New York Times on the web this morning, I ran across an article about Scott Johnston. He's a Montana man with a dream, which he made come true. Johnston runs a low power radio station playing wonderful music - - from his front porch! The 100 watt wonder has a coverage area of only a few miles north of Creston, Montana. But thanks to streaming audio on the Internet, KXZI can be heard all over the world. I've been listening to it this morning and I'm hooked. Johnston bases the station's playlist on music you may never have heard but wished you had. Just scanning the list now, one finds Precious Bryant, Eric Clapton, Clinton Fearon, Koko Taylor, Duke Robillard and the Eagles.

Johnston's radio station is a 24-hour one-man band. He's the only employee and he's got a great smooth delivery. You don't hear him much. He never announces the songs he plays though you can identify all the performances by scanning the playlist on his website.

That website is http://www.montanaradiocafe.org Check it out. I think you'll become a fan as I have.

A rainy day . . . and a movie!

SWMBO and I finally took in the movie - Julie and Julia - this afternoon. We so seldom go to a theatre that I can't recall the last movie we saw in one but suffice it to say it was a year or two ago. I'd been waiting for Julie and Julia to come out and was anxious to see it when it first appeared in the theatre but, procrastinator that I am, it had been a month or more before we finally attended a showing.

We both enjoyed it immensely. SWMBO said she couldn't imagine Meryl Streep not getting another Oscar for her portrayal of Julia Child. As is usual in her performances, she was spot on.

It was raining when we entered the theatre and still dripping when we came out. Enroute home, I had to stop for a photo of this very low-lying cloud bank hugging the ground.

Lunch+++++

That tuna melt lunch yesterday was pretty good but not nearly as good as lunch today with the BRD and SWMBO at the Asylum in Jerome. This hotel restaurant has marvelous views with a few tables right by the windows overlooking the Verde Valley.
Here's a guy with one of the busiest jobs in the place.

Dark wood. Candlelight. It's enough to make you want to spend the day. And the night. If you didn't have to drive back down the mountain to home. Nice afternoon, though.

Lunch

A few . . oh, that's a lie . . . it was more like 15 years ago, I had my first tuna melt sandwich. I liked it but I don't think I'd ever had another one. Until today. I stopped at a Subway sandwich shop with tuna melt on my mind. They don't have one on the menu but I asked if they could make one and the guy said "sure!"

So I ordered tuna salad on Italian bread topped with pepper cheese. That went into a toaster oven for a minute or so. I had them top it with some chopped black olives, chopped green bell peppers, and chopped red onion. Topped it off with a splash of vinegar and oil dressing. And it was pretty darned good. SWMBO was amazed.

Rain on the horizon

I took a couple of pictures from behind the wheel yesterday.

Yes, I know I shouldn't try to take pictures while I'm driving down the road at 65 miles an hour. But it was only a couple of snaps and I wanted you to see our rain.

You can see it better if you click on the photos to expand them.

Speaking of music . . .

. . . and of old memories. Here's a song that's come to be popular on the Internet. The singer is Tom Rush.

Jazz

This past weekend the Prescott Jazz Summit kept aficionados of the form content for three days. I stopped downtown to visit with an old friend, Joel Goldenthal, who is the executive director of Jazz in Az. He performs as Joel Robin and has played piano behind many newcomers who have become stalwarts. I reminded him that I had seen Margo and Francine Reed perform for probably the first time in Arizona. It was at a big outdoor jazz festival at the Town and Country Shopping Center in Phoenix. The Reeds had just moved to Phoenix from Chicago and came out of the audience in blue jean cutoffs to perform with the Armand Boatman band. They tore the place up! Joel said "that was my first gig in the Valley, too!"

Later he said he met Timothy Johnson, who opened Timothy's Restaurant. Johnson asked Joel what he thought about bringing in some live music. Joel, always looking for gigs, brought in Francine Reed and the place became a reknowned jazz club. Francine, incidentally, is more commonly known these days for performing with Lyle Lovett's band.

I didn't get to hear much of the jazz this weekend but what I heard was spectacular. Mike Vax, who fronted the Stan Kenton bend for years, did a great job in putting it together and bringing in some great artists. Toni Tennille was the headliner but Margo and Blaise Lantana and Joel's wife Delphine Cortez and Dennis Rowland were on hand for the festival, as well as a number of very talented musicians. The BRD and her Beau took in one of the final sessions at the Hassayampa Hotel and she said the jazz was fabulous.

Next year I may have to shell out the money to attend myself.

Building update

It's been awhile so I figured it was time for yet another look at the new Prescott Valley Library building.

The brand new building, which will also hold classrooms for Yavapai College East, is due to have its grand opening on October 10th.

Down the way a bit is this fenced-in construction project going on in the Entertainment District. Looks to be a huge building. What can it be?

Ah! Yet another place to enjoy a burger. Fuddruckers also is due to open in the fall.

And I don't have a photo but the Hobby Lobby opened a large store this week and a new Chase Bank is nearing completion.

Arizona Beach Party!

Now this may seem pretty strange. Scheduling a Beach Party in central Arizona, far from lake or seashore. But never put Prescott Valley down. This one, in the heart of the Entertainment District, is the 4th annual!

So, the first thing you need for a beach party is a beach, in this case created by a number of loads of sand dumped in a parking lot.

From there on, it's whatever you can find. In this day and age, huge inflatable toys seem to be a favorite of the youngsters.

But it's not all for kids. Look what I found.

One thing we do have plenty of for a beach party - heat. More imagination and some water features help cool the mind, at least. This is a miniature golf course.

And there is a radio-controlled boat in a small pool of water.

Of course you could take to the air in one of these RC-control airplanes.

Getting back to the adults, there's also an RV show on site for dreamers.

There were some classic cars on hand too, including this Dodge Hemi.

Seems like that big air scoop would hamper the driver's vision but maybe he just brings it from show to show on a trailer.

At any rate . . . a pretty good beach party.