I’ve been busy this week with copyediting deadlines. Next week I’ll post my review of Dixie Crossroads, my favorite restaurant in Titusville, Florida, but I’m rounding out this week with one of my favorite gull photos from Cocoa Beach.I like the shadows in this one, including mine and Todd’s.

***

On February 20 (Saturday), Denver Restaurant Week begins. It lasts until March 5 (that is, two weeks).

Denver Artopia, sponsored by Westword, is Saturday from 7 pm to 2 am.

Our trip to see the last night launch of the space shuttle (STS-130 Endeavour on February 8, 2010) included a lot of dining out and birding, which I’ll be writing about this week. I’ll start with the worst restaurant, Dogs R Us on Highway 1. (Please note that Highway 1 splits into Washington northbound and Hopkins southbound. The restaurant is on Hopkins.)

We noticed Dogs R Us Friday night, after eating at Dixie Crossroads on Garden Street. It’s located next to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals thrift store, which we thought was pretty twisted.

From the inside, Dogs R Us resembles a large house. Otherwise, it might as well be a Hooters: the waitresses are all pretty and skinny and dressed in black short-shorts and pantyhose and low-cut referee tops. Even so, the place was packed with families and was surprisingly quiet. Georgetown was playing Villanova on one of the big screens. The service was slow but good; when we asked our waitress for something, she calmly said, “Just give me a second; I’ve got to catch up a second.”

Todd didn’t like his dogs much, though. He said the Coney Island dog (mustard, onions, chili) was good, but the other was only “reminiscent of a Chicago dog.” It needed real sports peppers and “nuclear relish.”

I ordered the Fresh Catch meal, which surprisingly for Florida, turned out to be mahi-mahi, a Pacific fish. I took a few bites of the sandwich and then just ate the fish, which had so little Cajun seasoning I could hardly taste it. The fish was cooked properly, though.

If you go to Dogs R Us, go because you like sports bars, not for the food. Steve’s Snappin’ Dogs in Denver has nothing to worry about, that’s for sure.

I had a great time at the shuttle launch Monday night (the second attempt). At one point Todd and I practiced the foxtrot to keep warm, which was harder on Monday than on Sunday, since we were out by the water (on the NASA causeway/parkway/405) for more than 3 hours in 45 degree temps. That’s why everyone here by the shuttle clock is so bundled up.

I had researched what exposure I needed for the launch itself: ISO 400, shuttle speed 1/125 of a second, and aperture of f8. The problem was, to get a picture of the shuttle before it launched, I needed a much longer exposure (5 seconds). And even with a tripod, the image was blurry (this is a tiny detail of the entire photograph, taken from 7 miles away with a 18-55 mm lens).If you squint, you can make out a shuttle shape. The problems began as the rocket boosters started up. If I had bothered to check my exposure then, I could have reset the shutter speed to 1/125 of a second. But at a 5-second exposure, this is what I got: a very bright light and shadows.It was lit, all right. And I just kept clicking away at those 5-second exposures.The clouds of steam are produced by the water involved in the noise suppression system. Eventually the shuttle got far enough away that my camera could record its shape again.Todd was happy afterward. He posted a detailed description of the launch and lots of links about STS-130 Endeavor.And we were both happier after breakfast at IHOP at the Days Inn in Titusville.

And we’re back…to Denver, that is.

Last year I checked out Winterfest on Old South Pearl and saw this guy, among many other people and things. Saturday’s festivities include an open-air market. Restaurants to try include Black Pearl, Sushi Den, and India’s Pearl.

If you’d rather stay in downtown Denver, you can go to the Parade of Lights Friday and Saturday. Just don’t try to drive there—take the bus instead.

After a long, painful drive from Colorado Springs to Denver on Saturday, which involved a man in a Sierra trying to back into me (I took it personally, but Todd later said he was trying to make room for a car in the right-hand lane—wish he would tell me these things at the time), we arrived at the Lowenstein Culture Plex on Colfax. There, between the Tattered Cover and Twist and Shout, the Local Flavor Fest had been set up.

The Mile High Business Alliance, a nonprofit I first encountered last fall, organized the small festival. There were businesses there from all over Denver, from Moss Pink flora and botanicals in Park Hill to Dragonfly Eco Goods in Highlands. I was happy to see that Bixa, located at Colfax and Vine (the purple store), is still in business. All these stores sell unique, locally made products, like these cloth substitutes for sandwich bags (SnackTaxi) from Dragonfly.

I was also happy to see a new Local Flavor Guide, to Lower Highland or LoHi, just northwest of downtown Denver across the South Platte River. Lower Highland, or just plain Highland, signifying a hill overlooking the river, runs into the trendy Highlands neighborhood, which is not to be confused with cookie-cutter suburb Highlands Ranch down south. Got it?

I was even more happy to get free Mexican chocolate ice cream from Little Man Ice Cream, which coincidentally, is located in LoHi.

I’m curious. Do you think LoHi is a stupid name?

Denver is the fifth manliest city in the USA? That’s great for all you guys, but what am I supposed to do with it?

This hilarious article ranking Denver in Westword tells you all about what I could do with all these manly men. Here’s a teaser: “We’re like the state version of Lance Armstrong (if Lance knew how to use a condom).”

Read it and discover what being manly has to do with cheese-filled pretzels. Because you knew the two were intrinsically linked, didn’t you?

I come to a time every year when I realize, “It’s summer.” Bluegrass dries out while the buffalograss is thriving. Penstemons bloom in sequence, blue and yellow and red and purple, and around the end of July, broad-tailed hummingbirds arrive from the mountains and rest before migration.

Wasps on the feeder:

hummingbird at my red shirt.

I hear the sound of their tails before I see them. That moment: The year has turned. Days are shorter, shrinking toward the longest night. The landscape, no longer bright green, has matured.

Seedheads of blue grama curl

when the peaches are ready.

Soon it will be time to plant cool-season crops again.

When I was a child, my mother once said to me, “I just want to get away.”

I was horrified, and when she realized, she explained, “Of course, I don’t mean from you.”

Now I know she wanted to go somewhere with no children, no responsibilities, just peace and a cool mountain summer. Now I live in the mountains, away from humidity, and wonder about going home to Kansas City.

There’s a song…

but those aren’t my reasons.

Her last trip was by train to California, to see her grandchildren.Where will my last trip take me? Will I know it?

Slogging up the ridge to the junction—

no ovenbird singing.

What really matters about festivals and day-long concerts is not so much the music as the spectacle. That’s why I like them, and that’s also why they wear me out.

Westword’s Music Showcase on Saturday, featuring bands from Denver, was spread out over 12 venues, most of which featured a new band every hour from 12 to 6. You could have listened to a band at every venue if you were willing to hoof it from bar to bar every 30 minutes and then visit the outdoor stage, the only one hosting the showcase past six.

Never one to settle on one venue or genre, I dabbled on Saturday, and it was a mixed bag. I missed the Chain Gang of 1974, the first show at the outdoor stage set up in a parking lot at 11th and Acoma, by the Denver Art Museum. But Pirate Signal, the band Westword featured on its cover, was a pleasant hip-hop surprise.

MC Yonnas Abraham started the show by announcing that his pants are always falling down. But the belt below his hips held them in place while he danced and pretended to strip off his shirt and worked the still rather small crowd. He’s a Denver native whose parents were political refugees from Eritrea, and the songs, like “Ho Is the Prototype,” reflect that. DJ A-What pouted behind him and yelled into the microphone. For me, it was all about Abraham; I didn’t even see the third band member listed on their website.

I caught a little bit of the Northern Way before I left for my appointment (more on that Thursday). A little rock, a little pop, a little funk. Although I liked the keyboardist’s looks and singing, he suffered from having to follow Pirate Signal.

Perhaps I would have paid more attention if I hadn’t been so hungry. Festivals always have tons of food booths, right? Wrong. I got a sample of grilled chicken mango salad from Qdoba that, sadly, was small enough to fit in my palm. Other than that, all I could see was beer and Lenny’s Sub Shop, which sounded about as bad as the person puking next to me in the toilet. Seriously, isn’t it a little early for that?

So here I am walking around with 3 pairs of shoes in my backpack, two that I wanted to leave at Cobbler’s Corner, which isn’t open on Saturdays in the summer, and 1 pair of flip-flops for the appointment. At least I got a filling hot chocolate there; otherwise I might have fainted because it was actually warm and dry in Denver for a few hours.

By the time I met Todd at 4 pm near the outdoor stage, it was clouding over and cooling down. I took him to Bar Standard at 1037 Broadway to hear a band called the Knew. The bar held many people as tall and narrow as itself, though I did manage to sidle up to the front to take this picture. Soon enough we found ourselves back at the main stage, where Cursive was playing.

Todd liked them much better, and I felt better after getting a hot dog at Lenny’s Sub Shop, split down the middle, grilled, and set on half a brat bun. It didn’t last long.

We discussed our immediate future. I had researched several bands, but their times had all come and gone. We’d heard of the Fluid, set to play next, but we decided more to-ing and fro-ing was in order and made our way to Dazzle to see the Aakash Mittal Quartet.

As we’d surmised, fewer people wanted to listen to jazz than rock, and we got a table, which was soon covered by cheap drinks (the sangria was sweet and spicy) and calamari. Aakash Mittal, who plays, sax, flute, and clarinet, began with a slow solo, and then the band took off into a discordant wall of noise.

“Strange art-jazz mayhem?” I wrote and passed my notebook to Todd.

“Jazz odyssey!” he wrote back. Or perhaps an Indian odyssey, since the last piece was based on a Hindu saying: “A cumin seed in the mouth of a camel.”

Our day did not come to a sudden stop, like each one of the quartet’s pieces, nor did it kick ass like the guitar player. We left Dazzle to find wet pavement and strolled past several restaurants I haven’t reviewed to eat at Le Central, which I have. As we moseyed back toward the truck, I decided I liked the tunes Meese was playing at the outdoor stage, but we didn’t stop for long.

An entire afternoon of music without one person searching my backpack. Take that, Fillmore!

***

I haven’t included many links in this post because I upgraded to WordPress 2.8, and my dashboard is not working well. If you want to listen to more music from the festival, the schedule is here.

Cinco de Mayo in downtown Denver was the third festival I attended last Saturday, after International Migratory Bird Day in Boulder and the Colorado Chocolate Festival at the Merchandise Mart on 58th. True to my intentions, I had several donuts in Boulder, multiple samples of ganache at the Chocolate Festival, and two tacos midafternoon.

On the 7 from the Merchandise Mart to downtown Denver, we traveled from suburbia-cum-industrial-areas through what I think was northern Curtis Park, with its stately old houses a little run down, to Uptown and ultimately to Colfax. The bus driver detoured around fenced-off Civic Center Park, where Cinco de Mayo took place, and offered to let me off in the middle of Lincoln Avenue, but when I peeked out, a large truck was charging down that lane. I decided I could wait.

The first thing I noticed about Cinco de Mayo was how packed it was within that encircling fence. The second thing I noticed was the large number of families. At times, the crowd came to a complete stop, strollers paused, and there seemed to be nowhere to go but straight up. Then the dam burst and we all pushed on through.

My first order of business was trying to get a crowd shot to add to one of my Squidoo lenses that details Denver’s ethnic demographics. Have you ever tried to get a crowd shot that includes 7 white people, 2–3 Latinos, and 1 African American? Without posing people, that is? In any case, I noticed that the crowd at Cinco de Mayo was much more diverse than the typical crowd on the 16th Street Mall.

Then it was time for some food that didn’t involve sweets. I thought Taqueria Jalisco looked promising and stepped up to order two tacos for $3, which is pretty cheap for festival food. I got to use some of my limited Spanish while asking for 1 barbacoa and 1 adobaba. The green chile and pico de gallo weren’t as hot as I’d feared—in fact, a great deal less—and the tacos lasted me until dinner time.

Vendor booths circled the park, so I started at Colfax and Broadway and ended up back there more than an hour later, having passed belt buckles and several hundred knock-off Coach bags and a girl playing tennis in between booths and mobiles and Mexican flags and more food booths and an entire section of nonprofits until I found this woman with the sombrero traipsing along in front of the Capitol. It was quite a feat to keep up with her; she navigated the crowd as if she were water and it was a streambed.

In the center of the park, festival sponsors had set up house, beyond the garden beds waiting for flowers and in between the cover band Wide Open and the large band in the Greek amphitheater, which I’m going to guess was Los Profetas del Norte or Los Nietos. While watching the latter at a safe distance (for my ears, that is), I saw a trio of boys all dressed up in Mexican cowboy boots and matching belts and cowboy hats. I have to say, Cinco de Mayo gets people into their best shoes.

In fact, more people dress up for Cinco de Mayo than just about any street festival I’ve ever seen. And then there was this woman, the dance instructor, who has a lot more guts than I do in the wardrobe department.

The only thing I regret is that I missed the Mariachi Mass on Mother’s Day. Now that might get me back to church again.

Local celebrity alert: I saw John Ferrugia, an award-winning reporter at News 7, walking down Lincoln. He was about the most impressive thing there. It is not the most beautiful of streets between 12th Avenue and Speer.

I crossed 8th Avenue and gave $2 in dollar coins to the couple begging there on my quest to get to Le Central, one of my favorite restaurants in Denver. Before you fall all over me calling me generous, please recall that I just spent $3 on a hot chocolate so that I could pee.

I saw a side of Le Central that’s new to me—the south side. I think I’ve always gone there at night, and I never knew the outside was so brightly painted, especially on the side away from 8th Avenue. The office building behind it is faced with golden glass.

When I got down to Speer, I saw where Ferrugia might have been coming from: the 7 News building. Three local TV stations sit within a mile of each other in Denver, two on Lincoln in the Golden Triangle and one farther down Speer.

Speer, named after early twentieth-century mayor and crook Robert Speer, is an impressive boulevard. Occasionally it reminds me of Ward Parkway’s graceful sweep through Kansas City, where I grew up, though the latter street is more residential.

Unfortunately, Cherry Creek paid the price for Speer’s grandeur: Speer was built up high above the creek to avoid flooding and in the process hemmed it in. A bike path runs on either side of the creek, and I moseyed down the ramp to stand by the brown water. I always feel sorry for it. I wish it could be a little more like Boulder Creek, with a wider riparian area, but I don’t see any chance of that happening unless the car culture dies out and people start ripping out lanes on Speer.

As I come up the ramp and look at all the peeling mauve paint, I think again how unlovely, thrown together, the Golden Triangle is here. It’s having growing pains, at least on its perimeter. But as I head northwest by Rickenbaugh Cadillac, with its gleaming SUVs and the statue The Bannock, I peer down streets that look enticing. This area, around 8th Avenue and Acoma, makes me want to explore.

I pause at the Rocky Mountain Bank Note building, which houses PS 1 Charter School. Some kids are washing cars one street over, by the school, and across from them rises the Piranesi, whose website rhapsodizes about the “Golden Triangle Lifestyle.” If the building is as functional as the website, then I worry about the Piranesi. It’s graced by a sign advertising 3.875 percent interest rates—a sign of tenuous economy times.

At 12th and Speer, where I make my second turn on my tour of the Golden Triangle, sits THE BELVEDERE. At least, I feel the name of this Craig Nassi building should be capped. He does seem to be fond of building monumental beige structures in which condos rest on chic retail.

I would not call the Golden Triangle a walkable area. Although cyclists and the occasional family and jogger pass me, I can’t see walking it for pleasure. There’s not enough that catches my eye until I get to the Denver Art Museum and its massive cows.

Of all the perimeter streets in the Golden Triangle, 12th Avenue definitely has the best feel, the best buildings—it reminds me of Uptown Denver, on Logan or Grant and 17th Avenue. All in all, though, the Golden Triangle is resoundingly beige.

Beginning next week, instead of walking around like this, always on the outside, pretending that I’m learning something, I’ll be zeroing in on specific shops and restaurants.

***
Todd just came into my office and said his hearing is back! He was listening to the Police and noticed a mistake the guitarist made on one song. He could tell that another song was poorly mastered.

I guess Louisiana was worth it, even if I didn’t see an ivory-bill.

I rate the look of the bayou above the look of an overgrazed plain in winter, but can anything match a field of grass blooming in the wind?

Can anything match a reddening Midwestern oak, several stories tall?

The cypress in Louisiana could observe themselves in their mirror, the bayou, if they had eyes.

After 21 years, I still sometimes prefer the mountains from afar, as I saw them on the plane from New Orleans, a zigzag of white.

The cold follows us:
frost in Louisiana,
corn snow on our deck

]]> http://bethpartin.com/monhaibun-homecoming/feed/ 3 http://bethpartin.com/day-fourteen-of-todds-scds-surgery-part-2-the-%e2%80%9clongleaf-pine-loop%e2%80%9d-hike-of-death-mandeville-la/ http://bethpartin.com/day-fourteen-of-todds-scds-surgery-part-2-the-%e2%80%9clongleaf-pine-loop%e2%80%9d-hike-of-death-mandeville-la/#comments Thu, 22 Jan 2009 08:33:19 +0000 Beth http://bethpartin.com/?p=1025

SCDS is superior canal dehiscence syndrome, a rare condition of the inner ear. Its main symptoms are autophony (hearing your own voice in your head when you speak), dizziness, and balance problems.

We left for the Northlake Nature Center about 10 am because I wanted Todd to see the cypress/tupelo swamp there. I saw a sign for the Eagle Trail and asked Todd if he wanted to take it. He said yes.

It turned out to be a bad decision. The brochure I picked up at the entrance showed the Longleaf Pine Trail doubling back from the beginning of the Eagle Trail. Although it wasn’t marked with numbers the way the other two trails were, it looked shorter. So we kept heading that way, and then we came to the first bridge to nowhere.

I should have been clued in by the narrow, overgrown nature of the short path to the bridge and the fact that trees were growing up through the bridge. We stood there for a while enjoying the bayou and then tried to exit the other side. There were many fallen trees to climb over (second clue), so I went ahead and scouted. I saw an area that seemed to have many interesting birds but no path to speak of. So Todd and I returned over the bridge, and I kept trying to follow the Longleaf Pine Trail.

By the time I decided that the trail was no longer in use, it would have taken us just as long to go back as it took us to go forward. The trail tapered off more and more, and we were saved from getting lost only by the pink streamers on certain trees. We spent a lot of time crossing wobbly two-by-four bridges and climbing over logs. Finally we stumbled out near Pelican Lane and found our location on the map.

We decided to follow the power lines, which took us to a bridge that had been boarded off. (Third clue, anyone? Or perhaps fiftieth, if one counts all the downed trees?) At this point, I was getting scared, so I crossed the bridge first to make sure it could hold our weight. As I reached the other side and motioned Todd to clamber over the barriers, I received a call from Pontchartrain Surgery Center, where Todd had had a spinal tap on Friday. She wanted to know how he was doing. I looked at him walking across the bridge and wondered how much I should tell her. I left it at, “He’s fine.”

I could go into more gory detail, but I think the letter Todd composed as we were walking back says it better than I could.

To whom it may concern:

I am writing to you today as the regional representative of the Shittiest Nature Trails 2009 contest. While your entry “Northlake Nature Center” was a finalist, it lacked a few things that would “push it over the top.” This letter outlines some of our panel’s suggestions so your entry can attain a higher score in 2010.

1. First, though your trail had confusing and mislabeled signs, we feel it could be made even worse with the complete removal of all signage. We’re sure you will agree that hikers stand the best chance of having a shitty experience on your nature trail when completely lost.

2. Second, we felt that your designers did a masterful job mixing well-groomed trails with forgotten tracks. But most of the trails were not nearly challenging enough. We recommend the addition of land mines, scattered throughout your trail system. At the end of this letter is contact information for a GSA-approved anti-personnel mine vendor in your area.

3. Third, we encourage you to create a trail-naming scheme that is more misleading than your current one. Our field testers tried the Eagle Trail and the Longleaf Pine Trail. Though they reported seeing no eagles, the possibility exists of seeing an eagle, and therefore we recommend choosing a worse name. For comparison, the 2009 winner of Shittiest Nature Trail includes a trail segment called Sunrise Trail that circles the inside of a deep gravel pit where the sun never shines. Perhaps you could choose a trail on the east side of your property and name it West Nature Trail. Get creative!

4. Finally, the pocket-size paper map available at the trailhead is only about 50% inaccurate. We encourage you to make it between 80% and 95% inaccurate. Especially important is to mislabel trails, show wildly inaccurate distances (adding or removing decimal points is helpful here), and include trails that don’t actually exist.

In conclusion, thank you for your submission. While you have a truly shitty nature trail, it’s just not quite shitty enough for Shittiest Nature Trails of the Lower 48. We encourage you to reapply in 2010.

Sincerely,
Todd Bradley
Regional Coordinator
Shittiest Nature Trails of the Lower 48

Truly, my lack of planning and inability to quit something once I’ve begun can produce remarkable results. As far as I know, Todd suffered no damage from the hike, but I was supposed to be taking care of him on this trip. Dragging him through the swamp was not on the original agenda.

Anybody else out there have stories about well-meaning excursions gone terribly wrong?

SCDS is superior canal dehiscence syndrome, a condition of the inner ear. Typical symptoms are autophony (hearing your own voice in your head) , dizziness, and balance problems.

After Todd spent Saturday afternoon and night catching up on the sleep he didn’t get in the hospital, he began feeling much better. He was able to sit in the living room for a little while on Sunday, and he’s been eating more.

The big event Sunday was cutting off the turban and letting his incision get a little air. Was I prepared? Of course not. I don’t mean prepared for the sight of the wound; I mean I didn’t have a pair of scissors handy. I considered my options: the kind of pointed nail snippers that manicurists use on your cuticles (too slow) or a paring knife (too dangerous) or scissors from the front desk. I ended up snipping the threads of the turban a few at a time with the scissors from Todd’s sewing kit, which are shorter than my thumb and not very sharp. I was terribly afraid I would hurt him, but I didn’t.

The entire turban was made of gauze, all padded together to ensure that any impact on the ear would be cushioned. I thought there might be some kind of cup in there to keep pressure on the wound site, but no. I’ve never seen anything quite like the incision, with all its staples, but it looks very carefully done and seems to be healing nicely.

Next I helped him shower in the handicapped tub. Even though he’d had a couple of sponge baths, he hadn’t been able to scrub off all the sweat caused by his reaction to the steroids. He felt a lot better once he was cleaned up and dressed in a fresh set of clothes. He was able to put on his own socks, but I have to put on his shoes and tie them for him, because he can’t bend over for a few weeks.

The worst part, for me, was trying to get a T-shirt over that incision. I was so tempted to cut the neckline of the shirt to make it easier, but then I remembered (1) I had no scissors and (2) Todd doesn’t really like V-necks.

My reward for all this was going to the grocery store. That may not sound exciting to most of you, but keep in mind I’ve spent most of the past week in a doctor’s office or a hospital. Plus, the store I discovered was really cool: Rouse’s, a Louisiana-owned grocery store. Not only did it have an extensive selection of wine (and beer and liquor, though I didn’t pay any attention to that), but cases of cheeses, locally made butter, Boulder ice cream, and some organic and natural products.

The King Soopers where I shop probably stocks more natural and organic products, but this store had a much nicer layout, especially of its specialty items like cheeses. The wine aisles blew me away, though. I spent far too long at the store, and when I got to the checkout, I said to the clerk, “This is the first time I’ve ever bought wine at a grocery store in my life.”

When I got back, Todd told me he thought I’d been gone too long. He was fine, though, so I didn’t bother feeling guilty. And once I fed him some of the Mexican chocolate ice cream, he was completely reconciled to the entire affair.

***
On Monday Todd and I ventured into the lobby for breakfast and for dinner. He didn’t have much trouble with the elevator, but every so often he has to stop and lean against the wall because he gets dizzy.

We spent some time talking about how his right ear feels: he can’t hear out of it properly. When a noise does get through, it doesn’t sound right. I asked him if that scared him, and he said it didn’t really. I think he’s glad that he doesn’t hear his pulse in his head so much anymore. I assume Dr. Gianoli will give us more information about his prognosis on Thursday, when Todd has his one-week checkup.

I took a little walk around the hotel and found a flock of 30 chipping sparrows, a couple of killdeer, and a black vulture in the distance. A dirt road off behind the hotel tempted me, but it looked pretty muddy. And I kept wondering: Where exactly do alligators live? Could there be one hiding back in there somewhere? Probably not, but still I’m chicken.

Now that Todd’s waking up and beginning to enjoy life after surgery, he’s also starting to think of all the things he wants to eat, like a huge burger from Applebee’s. He tried to convince me to get him one for lunch. What was he going to do when he had a bite of that burger in his mouth (bread and meat and onions and tomato…), I wanted him to tell me, since he’s not supposed to eat chewy food.

He had to settle for Chef Boyardee. At one point in my life, I really liked that stuff; I think it must have been about 40 years ago.

But he ate it all and thanked me for “making” it. He is a sweet person.

My aunt Pat died early this morning. She was in her mid-eighties. She leaves behind two siblings (my father, my uncle David) and two children.

The last time I saw her was in Dallas, when I was visiting her on my way to High Island to go birding. That was in 2007. She has had a really rough time since the end of 2007, and I am glad I was able to spend time with her when she was in good spirits.

The picture above is from the Dallas Aquarium.

When Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper stood on stage at Civic Center Park yesterday and said that it would have been John Lennon’s 68th birthday, it got to me.

When Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman in December 1980, I was probably studying for finals. It was my first semester in college. I remember that month for personal reasons I won’t go into here, not for events on the world stage.

But as I get older, the people we’ve lost to murder matter more to me: the Kennedys, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, John Lennon, the four little girls, Medgar Evers, Schwerner, Goodman, and Cheney. I wonder what they would be doing in the world today. Would things be any different?

For that reason I was angered by a woman talking on her cell phone about the “hippy-dippy” event that was the Imagine Peace Paint-In on Lennon’s birthday in Denver. (As far as I can tell from the website, it was a Denver event.)

Does she have any idea how stupid she sounded? Probably not.

I don’t understand the continuing contempt for the 1960s. I was just a little girl then, so all the turmoil passed me by; it’s something I read about in history books. But it sounds like an amazing time—I wish I could go back and experience it. I think much of the 1960s was about this:

“There is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is nececessary for growth.”
—Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

I think we’ve lost the art of that.

Below are some pictures from the event. I hope you enjoy them.

Check out this post at Enrevanche. It will make you laugh for a sec before you remember how serious it all is.

It was the longest walk ever, up Carnage Canyon to our worksite. At least an hour of balancing on our heels, or sometimes not. As crew leader, all I could do was ask her after the fall, “Are you all right”? I was too busy placing my own feet to watch others. We trudged past the “No Shooting” signs, over the dragon’s teeth that closed the canyon to 4WD, and up and up and around the lunch site and up to the tool cache. Seed. Erosion matting. Biosol. Shovels. One Pulaski. McClouds. The six of us carried it all in one trip.

Most of my WRV crews disintegrate by the end of the day, leaving early, being poached for other crews, but this one thrived under the climbing, descending, boredom, dirt, and smells. The lone man joked about eating Biosol like chocolate chips. We seeded, raked, staked the matting, spread the straw, and slid down the hills.

Into a glass of beer.

Then we came apart and headed home.

The crews drink in a meadow
where jeeps once roamed:
The band sings “Happy Birthday.”

Go on over to I Will Not Die and check out what he’s trying to do.