Stu Jenks: Fezziwig Photography, Music, and Writing

“The Plastic Light Bulb Santa” © 2007

“The Plastic Light Bulb Santa” © 2007 Stu Jenks

    I know it’s just a Plastic Light Bulb Santa but I really wanted to find one for the studio, but none were out there. Just those hideous inflatables. You know the ones. The six-foot tall snow globes that seem to either be half inflated or the snow looks like bad confetti. Or the inflatable Santas that look like they have some weird glandular disease. Not rotund but rather bubonic. And I won’t even start about those reindeer made of white lights and white wire that don’t look like reindeer at all but rather a bad connect-the-dots or just a pile of random lights. No, I’ve looked all over for the traditional Plastic Santa, made of molded plastic with the 60-watt bulb in its back.
    Even since I moved into Studio BR-549, I’ve seen, in my mind’s eye, a Santa perched on top of the swamp cooler that sits prominently on the roof. Last Sunday I put some multi-function lights around the cooler. They were nice enough but they were no Santa. I tried to tell myself that the lights were fine but I was just fooling myself.
    I needed a Plastic Light Bulb Santa.
    So I gave up. I surrendered. I said, “God, if you want me to find that Santa, you are going to have to put it in front of me.”
    A day later, I was looking on Craig’s List and found a six foot tall Plastic Light Bulb Santa for sale on the Northwest side. Hands to his side, bag of presents limp at his feet, him not smiling but looking like he was saying 'Ho, Ho, Ho.' It gave me the creeps. Again, I tried to talk myself into this Santa. Then I realized why it gave me the Willies. It looked like it was a blow-up sex doll. This Santa was a blowjob Santa, and if I saw that, 1000 other people will see it too. No wonder that guy didn’t want it on his front yard.
    So I let go and accepted the fact that I may not have the Plastic Light Bulb Santa.
    At lunch, I was walking to the downtown post office when what to my wondrous eyes should appear, but a three foot tall Plastic Light Bulb Santa in the front window of the assessors next to Barrio Grill. After checking my P.O. Box, I walked into the business and asked ‘Where did you get your Santa?”
    The three women and the man inside all laughed.
    “I got it at Wal-Mart,” said one of the women.
    “Really? This year?” I said.
    “Yep,” she said.
    Wal-Mart. The one store I never shop at. Wal-Mart, who singularly put Rubbermaid out of business. Wal-Mart, the land of cheap plastic shit. Wal-Mart, who has destroyed small business in small towns all over America. Wal-Mart, the devil’s seed.
    Wal-Mart, where I’ll go tonight.
    I had a number of Wal-Marts to choose from but if I’m going to Wal-Mart, I might as well go to the seediest one in town, that being the one on Wetmore Road, at the edge of Crack Central, a section of Tucson where you can score Cocaine, 24/7/365.
    Rain is coming to Tucson, they say. A bit of drizzle is in the air as I enter Wal-Mart. That Wal-Mart smell hits me first. A combination of nachos, polyester and B.O. It being Christmas time, the store looks like a Tasmanian Devil has hit the place. They don’t even bother now to refold clothes or put the cheap aftershave display back in order. I walk toward the Christmas section, weaving my way through the somnambulistic shoppers, the opium of addictive spending in their eyes, like Conjunctivitis. I slow as I get to the Christmas section. Hmm. This being the Land of Cheap Shit, they do have quite a nice selection of Christmas decorations and lights. But no Plastic Light Bulb Santa. I enter the Garden section, and lo and behold there is a very cute, smiling Plastic Light Bulb Santa.
    “There you are,” I say with a smile on my face. I pick him up by his head and examine him. A good Santa. I then turn and see eight more, all in a row, on a shelf twenty feet away.
    “Wow,” I say softly, walking over to them. So many to choose from. I take a few minutes and find just the right Santa, with the nicest eyes, the sweetest face. Then I look at the tag and notice he is made in America. Not China but in Norfolk, Virginia. How wonderful is that. Again, carrying my Santa his head, I exit the Garden Section and cruise Wal-Mart some more. I look closer at the cheap ornaments and am still impressed but buy nothing. I then head toward the Hardware Department. This being Wal-Mart I figure they won’t mind what I’m about to do.
    I find a loose Philip’s head screwdriver and take apart Santa, pulling out the bulb socket and apparatus out of his back. A 60-watt, regular bulb is what he takes. Santa and I walk over to the light bulb section and I buy two clear bulbs and two pink bulbs. (The pink gave Santa the rosiest light, I found out later) I then return and put the screwdriver back in the pile where I had found it.
    I exit Wal-Mart with my 20 dollar Santa. Walking to my truck, with the cold desert air surrounding Santa and I, I think four words.
    “He shoots! He scores!”

    The Sun is down. I’m on the roof of BR-549. Santa merrily glows atop the swamp cooler. Multifunction lights shift from blue to red to green. The Downtown Tucson skyline looms a half a mile away. Santa is waving at the traffic on 6th street. I’ll come back and take a picture of Santa and the skyline in a couple days. I smile. I take a sip from my Tab soft drink. Life is very good.

    

[Addendum: Crane asked what time the timer goes off for Santa.
    “Midnight?” he asked.
    “No, Crane,” I said, “He comes on at 5:30 and goes out at 7:30 in the morning.”
    “That late?”
    “Absolutely,” I said. “Christmas lights are not for us but for others really. Some night, a guy is going to be walking home at 3 in the morning. He’s just broken up with his girlfriend. He’s bummed but then he sees Santa waving at him, and he’ll smile. A bit of joy for this stranger on a very bad night.”
    Crane nods.
    Later, Crane did the sweetest thing. He bought me a second Santa, just like the one I already had.
    “You can take that one home with you and hug it there,” he said, laughing.
    “Hell no. I’ll leave it here. This is my Parts Santa. It’s like have an old VW in the backyard. I’ll drive the Santa on the roof, but it’s always good to have a parts car, just in case something breaks. If it does, I’ll have a Part Santa in my studio.]

[Images: "Plastic Light Bulb Santa's Back", "Plastic Light Bulb Santa Waving", "Plastic Light Bulb Santa atop Studio BR-549, Tucson, Arizona"]

"Caffeinated Elves: Christmas Haiku #22" (c) 2007

"Caffeinated Elves" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

Christmas Haiku #22

Caffeinated Elves,
Make Magical Desert Gifts,
Of Twigs, Ribs and Light.

 

[Happy Solstice and Merry Christmas to you all. This year I'm not sending out any snail mail cards, but I am sending this email card, with an optional gift for y'all. Email me before December 23rd, and I'll send you a high def TIFF of the above image. Then you can print it on your printer and have a nice image of mine for yourself or as a gift to someone else. By the way, I print on Epson Ultra Premium Matte Presentation Paper and Epson Watercolor Paper on an Epson 2200 Archival Inkjet Printer. Great papers, great printer. Give it a try sometimes, if you have the chance. Anyway, I leave for Christmas in Virginia on the 23rd, and Mom only has dial-up, so if you want this image as a TIFF, let me know before then and I'll send it to you as quickly as I can. Much peace and love to you and your friends and family, during the upcoming Longest Night of The Year and during Christmas Time.]

“The Aspens of Red Ridge, The Love of Wally” © 2007

“The Aspens of Red Ridge, The Love of Wally” © 2007 Stu Jenks

        I didn’t wear the right socks. Got cotton ones on, not my orange funky polar fleece pair. No matter. I’m only going to be up in the snow for a couple hours at most.
        God bless the plowman though, for not clearing the tiny parking area at the trailhead of the Red Ridge. Not a soul has walked this trail since the big snow a few days ago. (Below me on the mountain right now, are hundreds, if not thousands, of desert dwellers who came up for the day, to throw snowballs at each other, fill their pickup beds with snow to continue the fight tonight, and some silly drivers wreaking here and there, who don’t know that even if the road is relatively clear, the bridges are slippery with ice, and a shady road is an icy road.) For sure, there is no virgin snow now below milepost nine, but here on the Ridge Ridge, the trail has only been disturbed by the deer, judging from the prints on the trail. Funny, when I first saw the deer tracks in the foot-deep powder, I wondered what kind of person makes prints like that. Looks like some one walking in high heels. Silly rabbit, that person is a deer-person.
        I had decided to come up to the Red Ridge before I got the call this morning that Wally was sick, and it seems right to come up here no matter what happened today. Much of the Red Ridge was nuked by the Aspen Fire in the Summer of 2003, over four years ago. I don’t come up here often now. Simply too painful, to find this forest that was one of my personal sacred places, charred and sterilized by flame. Most, if not all, of the old growth Ponderosa Pines in this area were killed. The Three Surrender Trees, that I used as models, are now just twenty foot tall stumps, their dead tops having broken off last year. Took two of the three trees a full year to die. If I had a chain saw, I would have chopped them down rather than have them suffer so. Last winter, almost a year ago, I came up to play in the snow but the only apparent groundcover was thorny briars and a few odd plants. Really hard to be happy in the snow when so much was gone. Granted, I can hike down the Red Ridge about a half a mile and get away from the severely burned area, but that is below the northern overlook that I love so well. The view I’ve seen with every girlfriend I’ve had since 1988. A place where I’ve loved and been loved and had love, at night and during the day. I’ve heard it said that many people don’t like change, just for change’s sake. I say, I don’t mind change. I just hate Shitty Change.
        The Aspen Fire and the Burning of the Red Ridge was Shitty Change.
        But today, how can I mind this sight, of snow a foot to a foot and a half deep, beautiful ripples of powder around the bases of the black dead trees, the briars much thinner now, the few still living trees easily seen silhouetted against the bright sparkling snow. The fun but tough effort of even walking in my boots. (Wish I owned some snow shoes today.) And the love in the knowledge I have, of knowing just where the trail is, under all this snow, for I’ve walked it a least a hundred times.
        I imagine the Spirit of Wally running beside me through the snow, but I let that image go. Wally wouldn’t like this snow. I would freak him out. He was a house cat his whole life.
        Wally.
        Just thinking about him now, makes my eyes water. What a morning it was.
        Wally was diagnosed with an intestinal Cancer less than a month ago. The vet told Annie that she should start saying goodbye to him, that at some point, he’ll be so anemic that his breathing will be labored and it’d be time. The steroid shot gave him his appetite back but only for a while. Another shot was given and within days, he had stopped eating again. He was already skin and bones. I’d said my goodbyes to him a week or so ago, but my denial returned, me thinking he’ll hang on for another month or so. He’s always been a tough little guy, even if he was the runt of the litter. So why shouldn’t he hang around longer. Mostly, I know now, I just didn’t want to have to face him dying or use putting him down.
        Annie called on Friday night to say he had stopped eating and that we might need to go to the vets on Monday to put him to sleep. I’d said all the right words but I was thinking, over and over, I don’t want him to die. I love him so much.
        This morning, Annie called again and said we need to take him to the vet, today, Saturday. He is now leaking out of his anus. She asked if I could drive Wally and her to the vet hospital on the Northwest side. I said yes immediately, but underneath I did not want to go, but I knew I must.
        On the half hour drive to the pet hospital, I asked Annie a bunch of questions again about what her personal vet had said about Wally’s health. When she said that the vet had felt the tumor grown substantially in less than a month, I realized that we ain’t going to make it to Monday. I told Annie on the Interstate that we might have put Wally down today. She said she knew and we both cried just thinking about it.
        We didn’t put Wally in a cat carrier. He hates that carrier. Cries all the way if he is in it. Instead, Annie wrapped him in a towel and put him in a cloth bag. He looked very cute, but if he were feeling himself, he would have squirmed a bit. But this morning, he just relaxed in Annie’s arms, as she held him in the bag against her chest in the truck.
        The three of us went up the Interstate. My denial finally slipped away somewhere around Orange Grove Road.
        We got to the hospital and they put us in a room immediately. A nurse took his history for they didn’t have his chart there. That was at the other office. The nurse nodded when she said that we were thinking we might have to put him down today.
        A few minutes later, the vet-on-call came in. She was a young woman in her thirties with a kind face.
        “I’m sorry that you have to see a stranger on a day like today,” she said.
        Annie knew at that point, that it was going to be ok.
        They gave us as much time as we need to say goodbye. We took about twenty minutes.         We had a lot to say to Wally.
        “You are the best cat.”
        “We love you very much.”
        “I love you Wally.”
        “You can soon chase those birds that you see outside your window.”
        “I’m sorry Wally.”
        And then we spent a long time just petting him and loving him.
        Then I went and got the vet. She took Wally away for a minute and put in an IV line.    When they returned Wally wasn’t happy, and he actually growled at the vet when she was taking off the tape that held the port.
        Annie and I said our last good byes. Annie looked into his face, as the doc put in the needle into the port.
        “I love you Wally. It’s going to be ok,” said Annie.
        “I love you Wally,” I said.
        He breathed once, then again, and then one last big breath and he was gone. He was nine years old.
        Annie cried loud and hard, as she saw his eyes go lifeless. Tears ran down my face. The vet put a hand on Annie’s back and I soon did the same. Then the vet kissed Wally on the back, said that she’ll give us a couple more minutes, and left the room. We cried some more, and said goodbyes a few more times. In a couple of minutes, I got the vet, she came back, we said our last goodbyes to Wally and we left the room, before she moved Wally. Annie will get his ashes in a few days. As we walked through the waiting room, everyone there knew what had happened. No dogs barked and all eyes were on Annie and I. We were quietly inconsolable. When we got to my truck, Annie let loose again, with heavy sobs, while I smoked a cigarette outside the vehicle. My tears didn’t stop either. Not then. Not for a long while to come.
        After a while we drove home.
        Wally was a great cat, a superior cat, the best cat I had ever known. I remember when he was a twelve weeks old little ball of fire when Annie first got him. I remember how much he liked people but mostly on his own terms. I liked that about him. He would sometimes come when you called him, but only if he wanted to. However, he was powerless not to chase a Laser Mouse. He would sit on his perch, six feet up his cat pole and survey his domain. He would let you pet him for a few seconds or so, and then he would gently bite you to let you know he had had enough of that. And my very favorite thing to do with Wally was to place the top of my head by him, under his perch and we would rub our heads together. We would do that for as long as I was willing to do it. He would do it forever, if we had the time. He loved it and I loved it. And I loved him and he loved me and he loved Annie. He was great. I miss him so.
        I’m hiking up and out of Red Ridge now. Only an hour of sun left. I drew a ‘W’ in the snow down below. A ‘W’ for Wally. I saw a couple of Spruce trees that had escaped the Aspen Fire, which I hadn’t noticed before. Trees can grow tall in four years you know.
        The trudge up the trail, in sometimes knee-deep snow, is difficult but good. My feet are soaked but I don’t care. It’s all good, as the kids say. I saw a Harris Hawk just a while ago, spooked it out of a tree. The briars are less now than before and seem to have been replaced by some form of young tree. I wonder what tree this is? I look closely at it. There are many around me, ranging from a few feet tall to over ten feet high. Then I see a brown leaf still attached to a branch of one of the tiny trees. The leaf is only an inch and a half in diameter, but I recognized the shape.
        “An Aspen tree,” I say quietly to the baby tree.
        A big smile brakes across my face. I put down my mandolin in its gig bag. I place my camera bag in the snow as well, and pull out the 30D. Before I begin to shoot the leaf, I look around. Dozens of baby Aspens trees surround me. Every Aspen above ground was burned in the fire, but the root colony survived. The Fire may have actually been good for the colony, for Aspens don’t like the shade but thrived in direct sunlight. The Aspens have been reborn. In another ten years or so, there will be a young forest here. In another twenty or so, perhaps a full stand of Aspens will be here. I’ll be 73 in twenty years. I hope I’m still alive to see it.
        Maybe Wally will be reborn somewhere, in real life or in my imagination. Maybe he’ll come visit me in my dreams. Maybe his spirit will rub my leg some night. Maybe I’ll feel his head against mine as I lie in bed.
        Maybe.
        If Aspens can be reborn out of the ashes of a nuclear fire, anything is possible.
        One thing I know for sure: I love Wally and for as long as I live, I’ll always love him. Just like I still love Chester, the dog I had as a child.
        Thank you Wally, for loving me back.

"Wally, the Braveheart" (c) 2007

"Wally, the Braveheart" (c) 2007 Annie Gordon

Wally was put down yesterday. He had cancer. He was only nine. He was a very good cat. We miss him so.

"The God of Love (Confounding)" (c) 2007

"The God of Love (Confounding), Off Wyoming Route 34" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

[For Catalina]

"New York Dolls by the band Feed" (c) 2007

"Feed as New York Dolls, Hotel Congress, Tucson, Arizona" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

[Topic Image: New York Dolls performed by Feed, December 7, 2007 at Club Congress. Charity concert to benefit the Tucson Artists and Musicians Health
Alliance.]

[From Front to Back; Krista Khrome as David Johansen, Geoff Notkin as Arthur Kane, Emerson Lyle as Johnny Thunders, Lance Saxerud as Jerry Nolan &
Sean Smith as Sylvain Sylvain]

[Bottom Two Images: "Geoff as Rock God", "Flying V as Rock God's Bass". All Images (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

"Stu's New Mexican Fun Facts" (c) 2007

"Stu's New Mexican Fun Facts" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

[Images: "Doubting Thomas, St. Francis Cathedral, Santa Fe, New Mexico" & "Plastic Medicine Wheel, Carrizozo, New Mexico"]

1)        Went to Taos. Well, drove through Taos really. Stopped at The Pueblo briefly and paid money for admission and for each of my two cameras that I brought into the village. White people gawking at Red people. Was bizarre to say the least. Took a couple shots of the old graveyard and split. While driving out of Taos, I listened to National Public Radio. They were having their semi-annual fund-raising campaign. (Had actually been listening to the fund-raising on NPR for my whole trip, through Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, and Colorado. Wyoming had the best music. Montana had the most pleasant DJs. Nebraska had the kindest voices. Made sense.) I noticed something different, here in Taos, from the other stations I heard thus far. Lots of dead air. Then giggling afterwards. Then people talking and they didn’t make much sense. Hmmm. I think they need to put down the spleef in Taos, or monitor their medication a bit more closely.

2)        Had a plan to see the Sante Fe Plaza and visit St. Francis Cathedral again. It had been twenty years since I was last in Sante Fe. Back in the day, you could see the Cathedral from a distance and get your bearing quite easily. Not now. Luxury hotels, taller or as tall as the church, surrounded the Plaza. I had to actually ask someone where the Cathedral was. Had a delightful time inside of St. Francis, though. I prayed, I shot, I just look around, I prayed some more. Hadn’t changed much in twenty years and still felt like the sanctuary that it is. I thought of sticking around for dinner in Santa Fe but I didn’t. I wasn’t wearing the right clothes for a nice meal there, nor did I feel like I belonged. Saw a huge smiling bronze pig out front of a fancy gallery. Grinning, from jowl to jowl. The North Carolinian in me just sees that as a silly way to spend money.

3)        Went to a 12 Step meeting in a bad part of Albuquerque, just at sunset. Good people, bad neighborhood. Felt like I’d been to church twice that day.   

4)        Spent the night in an anonymous motel in Socorro. Had good coffee the next morning at a café just off the town square. Every town in America has a café now, that has good coffee, fresh baked goods and a friendly staff. And they ain't Starbucks. Gives me hope for America.

5)        Drove by the Trinity Atomic Bomb Site. Again, didn’t really drive by it for I quickly realized I wasn’t supposed to be on that government road and hastily turned around, but it was just over that hill. Just being close still gave me the willies. The world changed forever over there, on July 16th, 1945 at 5:29 in the morning.            

6)        Midmorning, I went hiking into the Valley of Fire, a place of recent lava flows, only 1000 years old or so. Didn’t hike far. Just a ways in, played the mandolin for a while and took in the sharp blackness that is the Malpais. The wind blew cool and the acoustics were flat in a pleasant way.

7)        Just south of Carrizozo, I saw some amazing clouds that looked like huge jellyfish flying in the sky. I took their picture but it didn’t translate at all. Sometimes you just have to be there. While walking along the road looking at those clouds, I found an old hubcap among the sage. The paint had peeled away from much of it, yet the cheap chrome still adhered to the center of the plastic wheel. I took a picture, then picked up the hubcap. I saw an object I could make with this wheel and with a few bits of colorful cloth. I dusted it off and took it back to the truck. (It now leans against a leg of my small dining room table. All cleaned up and waiting for the time I tie some cotton to it, but right now I just like looking at it on the floor as I leave my kitchen. Maybe after the New Year, I’ll fiddle with it.)

"Blue Man Group In Tucson" (c) 2007

"Blue Man Group In Tucson" (c) 2007 BMG & Stu Jenks

[Images: "Blue Man Begins", "Up To The Roof", & "Floppie The Banjo Clown"]

       The first time I saw Blue Man Group, I cried. Halfway through the Vegas show, it hit me that hundred of people were paying a hundred dollars a head, to see really good Conceptual Art. (I told a joke back in my Art School days, about my weird-ass performance pieces. That Conceptual Art is Stand-Up Comedy that isn’t funny. Not true for BMG.) It moved me to tears, watching the funny and poignant Blue Men, silently comment on Art, Consumerism, Relationships and many other things, in a comic and beautiful way. At $100 a pop.
       A few years ago, I saw them again in Phoenix, when they were touring their Complex Rock tour, a parody of the Rock Concert experience. The drumming was great, the band was hot, the Blue Men were very funny but the crowd sucked. When asked to stand up and participate by the Men, Annie and I were the only ones out of hundreds in the audience to get up and rock out. Fucking Phoenicians. They sat there like they were watching television. Venus Hum and Tracy Bonham performed too, alone and with the Blue Men. Overall, it was a really fun night.

       Last week, out of the blue, I got a free ticket to Blue Man, to see the 'How-to-be-a-Megastar-tour' as it came through town. I saw that they were coming months ago but I couldn't afford the 100 bucks, not with all the credit card debt I was carrying. Except for the addition of Floppie the Banjo Clown and the hiring of studio musicians to replace Venus Hum and Tracy Bonham, it appeared, from looking online, that it was basically the same show I saw three years ago. Noticing that Blue Man had fan-taken photos on their website, I talked myself and my camera into the Tucson Convention Center. (The ticket taker didn’t want to let me in but when I said “They are encouraging people to take pictures on their website" he relented. What I didn't tell him was ‘Every image on the Blue Man website, submitted by fans, was taken with a piece-of-shit cell phone camera, and I have a Canon 30D in my bag.' I left out that little bit of information.) I went to my seat but it was next to a couple in their sixties, who looked very out of place. An American 21st Century phenomenon: The Retired Rich, bored, looking for something, anything to do, go and experience Culture. For them, it's like looking at monkeys in the zoo. We talked a bit, and I was nice enough, but the guy keeps reaching for his Blackberry, checking the score of the Packers’ game. The Arena was only half full so I went up and moved more toward backstage and found a great seat. And since I’d seen the show before, and it was basically the same, I focused as much on the band as I did on the Blue Men. I got to tell you, having professional studio musicians, rocking out, is a beautiful thing. The band consisted of two guitarists, two keyboard players, a bassist, two vocalists and three drummers. Counting the Blue Men, that's six percussionists playing at some points in the show. Personal favorite moments were the song “Up To The Roof” and the banging of the big drum during the opening number. “I Feel Love” wasn’t a bad performance, but it was nothing like the electric singing of Venus Hum a few years back. All in all, I had a good time.
       Then yesterday, a bit of the shine came off of the apple of Blue Man Group, when I dug a little deeper online.
       Long and short of it, Blue Man Group (BMG) has a history of being union busters. They hired non-union labor in Toronto in 2005 when the big permanent show went there. That ain’t great. But the real travesty is when they moved their Vegas show in 2006 from the Luxor to the Venetian, they opted then to go non-union, leaving their crew that came from the Luxor, who were union, without health insurance and pensions. The workers organized and became members of Local 720 of the IATSE, but BMG refused to talk with the workers and they have been fighting in the courts ever since. I’m a Union man myself. I don’t like every Union but I believe in the principle and the need for the worker to be protected from The Man. My Dad once said, “If Management is doing their job, there is no need for Unions.” But as his son now adds, “Management, these days mostly, ain’t doing their job to help and care for their workers. We are back to being cogs again. So Unions are necessary.” And specifically what I have against Blue Man Group is that the three guys who started it, and their investors, have been making money hand over fist, since 1991. Share the wealth, pals. Don’t be a dick. As I've said often of the greedy, "Just how much money do you need? I won't buy you Love or Happiness. Comfort, yes, and a good blowjob, but not Love. Not Happiness!"
       I still love what Blue Man Group produces, but I won’t be giving them anymore of my money, via tickets or CDs or DVDs, until they recognize Local 720 in Vegas. But I'd be dishonest to say I’m unhappy that I got a free ticket to Blue Man Group last week. I had a pretty good time. Now, Floppie and Blue Boys? Do the right thing and pay your crew union wages and give them health care too! You've got the coin.

"Conejons, Colorado" (c) 2007

"Conejons, Colorado" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

      

[On the border of New Mexico and Colorado, the little town of Conejons has two gas stations and a small grocery store. Bought gas at one of the stations. The women-proprietor offered to pump my gas. Very nice of her. We talked for a while and I learned that Conejons is Rabbit in Spanish. Paid for the gas and then drove across the street and took this shot of the twin water tanks. Remember seeing her watching me as I took this picture. A bit of a puzzled look was on her face, wondering, I suppose, why I found them so interesting. I was struck (and still am) by the unintentional irony of the paintings on the tanks. One tank holds a portrait of Indian life, a smiling Native couple, with tranquil buffalo roaming among the teepees. The right side tank displays an Anglo farming family, with a child, and a spade, and a procession of priests trekking across the prairie. The Natives are long gone from this part of Colorado, either killed, starved, diseased, or exiled. No reservations near by. The Cheyenne and others are just a memory now, illustrated in black and white, and a bit of green, on the side of a water tank. In spite of the sad and odd imagery, Conejons seemed to be a nice little town. Glad I bought gas there. Then again, I didn't stay long enough to find out its dark secrets or its quiet kindnesses.]

 

"First Sunday of Advent" (c) 2007

"First Sunday of Advent" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

[Image: "St. Francis Cathedral, Sante Fe, New Mexico" (c) 2007]