Christmas Morning and Pancho Claus

It’s Christmas morning and we’ve been up since dawn. After a wonderful sunrise, it has clouded over and is starting to drizzle. The mountains that I can see from my office window are disappearing into the cloud; they’re just impressions now. When the clouds move on, those mountains will probably be white with snow in the pines and on the meadows. We had rain and snow earlier in the week, and snow lingers at the higher elevations.

We aren’t celebrating Christmas in any big way. Nick is still sick with a very bad cold that’s had him in bed for a week now, and I’m catching it. We were invited to dinner with Skee, her son and his wife and the “motorcycle gang.” Her son’s a retired Phoenix police officer who rides his Harley in a local gang. But it’s a classy gang, made up of a retired Air Force officer, a retired nuclear scientist, a high-school teacher, another retiree who worked at Rocky Flats in Denver, and others – gray-beards all, softened by the presence of wives and middle-aged tummies.

We’ve been here 6 weeks now – 7 this Sunday – and long enough to gain some real impressions of the area. I’ve collected some of my favorites and share them with you here.

• When you walk by someone in the grocery store, they look you square in the face…right in the eye…and smile! Well, many do. Novel and welcome experience. I keep wondering if I know them?!
• Those that don’t are probably from Texas! Texas seems to take the brunt of biases such as “no wonder he drives that way, he’s from Texas” or “she spends money like she’s a Texan.”
• It’s important to master the two-finger wave offered from a moving vehicle. To perform this particular wave, keep your hand at the top of the steering wheel. When a car comes in the opposite direction, lift the pointer and middle fingers briefly, accompanied by a slight nod of the head. Until you are confident in your execution, best to wave with all 4 fingers. No need to lift the hand from the steering wheel to be effective.
• Two finger waves are much more common here than the one-finger salute familiar to those who drive in cities back East.
• Be prepared to receive a two-finger wave when you see a car approaching with a driver whose profile includes a cowboy hat, or the car itself – actually, probably a truck – is older, dirty and likely to have a professional sign of some sort on the side. Do not expect a two-finger wave if you can hear the music before you can see the car, if the driver can’t see over the steering wheel, or the license place is from Texas ;> And, if you have an out-of-state license plate from, say, Maryland, expect the more enthusiastic 4 finger salutation. Maybe they just don’t think we’ll see only two fingers.
• The roads are equally shared by very large 4-wheel drive pick’m-up trucks and American-made cars. Toyota has made inroads here; rarely is a Volvo seen; no Saabs west of Dallas-Fort Worth; one Mercedes; a couple of BMWs, but old ones--dented and rusting. Many elderly 4-wheeled boats with names like Olds 98, Chevrolet Impala, and Cadillac DeVille. I have seen two old Ford pick-ups the age and condition of my grandfather’s when I was little – still tooling down the road with a dog or hay in the bed.
• Our public radio station has a wonderful 2 hour program every weekday evening that broadcasts bi-lingually and plays the most wonderful Mexican, central/south-American or southwestern folk music, some cowboy music (as distinctly different from country-western) and other indigenous music. A treat to listen.
• The same radio station has been playing Christmas music for the last week or so. O Holy Night translates to Oh Santa Noche. “Jesús en pesebre, sin cuna, nació”? That’s “Away in a Manger,” Spanish version. And in case Santa Claus can’t get this far south, there’s Pancho Claus. Really! I’ve linked the poem, Twas the Night before Christmas and all through the casa… Thank heaven no one translated the country seasonal hit, “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer.”
• Here, you have a choice of spiritual practice. In addition to the recognizable Catholic and Protestant churches, there is a Zen Buddhist center, World Harvest Church, Latter-day Saints, Jehovah’s Witness, Living World Church, New Life Fellowship, Unitarian Universalist, and the Church of What’s Happening (honest!).
• Small town angst: can’t get the newspaper delivered. The Silver City Sun-News is a 7-day daily produced locally, but owned out of El Paso. Apparently doesn’t do home delivery outside of city limits; we are about ¼ mi outside of Silver City limits proper. But they took my order and are now billing me for a paper I’m not receiving. This is the big paper in town – consisting of appx 20-40 pages, exclusive of advertising inserts. The other paper, the Daily News, is a 5-day daily, owned and produced locally, that runs to about 8 pages. Also doesn’t do home delivery; gas would cost more than the paper. So we “take” the Washington Post online.
• The best paper around, anyway, is Desert Exposure—it’s free and it’s liberal.
• More small town angst: All gasoline comes from one provider, regardless of the name and affiliation of the gas station (Fina to Exxon). So the one provider fixes the price to the gas stations, and won’t sell to any station that tries to either sell below price, or get gasoline from another middle-agent. Gas prices are, therefore, kept artificially high. We heard that the citizens staged a “citizen stand-up” at a town/county council meeting and forced the provider to lower his prices. He did, marginally. They need to “stand-up” again, because he’s still at $1.79/gal when I hear that the country’s average is down to $1.59.

Well, that’s it for now. We wish you a wonderful day today, spent with family and friends in a safe, cozy and happy place. Keep off the roads, off the ice and out of, as the song goes, “a drifting bank” -- Jingle Bells, 2nd verse, in English! Love, Sonnie

Winter Solstice, Christmas and Hanukkah

• Today is the shortest day of the year. From tomorrow on, we get one more minute or so of light every day. And it’s the second (or third?) night of Hanukkah, another source of light in our life. And there are all the lights of Christmas. Here, I’m learning about luminarias, which are lights in bags (classically, candles set in sand in bags, but now, they’re probably electric candles) that are used to line walkways, porches and the tops of walls in celebration of the season. Most spectacularly and without par, are the sunsets. Two or three nights in the last week, I put on my sweatshirt and went to stand on the deck to watch the sunset in 360degree glory. I can see why southwest décor is often based in blues and peach to mauve to salmon to crimson. The décor of sunset – awe-ful.
  
  Bringing several stories to closure:
  
  Nick got home safely, and no worse for the car accident. He had a sore hand, but no breaks, and a twinge in his back. His sense of fairness was the more injured: the phone number the driver gave him appears to be false. But, the cops ran the license plate and he has the owner’s name and address if he needs it. What he DID bring home was a cold bug, which has blossomed into a very nasty cold that has kept him in bed most of this last week and the weekend.
• I picked him up at our very own Grant Co Airport. There were two different women there than on the occasion of Nick’s departure. Since his flight was late, and I had Nutmeg in the car with me, I asked the obvious question anticipating the obvious and negative response, “Can I bring my dog in?” Of course, they said. “Just let us put our rabbit away!” I had not noticed the rabbit in the cage on the floor by the counter. So I brought Nutmeg in who had a grand time checking everything out, and finding the dog toy left by some other greeter dog. Got into a wonderful and wide-ranging conversation with the women on duty – in this case there were two. We started with the rabbit, which led to falconry as a sport, to birding, to Hawaii (the big island) because one of the women lived there before Silver City and the Hawaiian crow, (the Alala) and Hawaiian hawk (the Io), to conservation and recycling, to the DC Solar Decathalon (some of you will know what that is) and I don’t know what else. T’was a great conversation to fill a spare time, until the pilot called in on the radio and suddenly they were all business.
• Nutmeg’s illness was caused by drinking creek water up at Steph’s the weekend before. Turns out humans can drink the water in New Mexico, but maybe dogs have to be careful to get their water from a sealed bottle? Anyway, she had a flagellate infection (infestation?) from parasites in the water up there. I guess Steph’s dogs are used to the little buggers, but not Nutmeg, to her discomfort and my dismay.

And beginning a new story or two:

• We discovered quite by accident that our house is still actively listed for sale! We have emailed the agent and her broker a couple of times pointing out this unhappy fact. You might remember that the house belongs to the agent and her builder-husband. They keep telling us that it was a misunderstanding and the house is definitely NOT for sale. But we keep finding it on Yahoo Real Estate and the local MLS. I feel very uncomfortable about this. I may ask a good friend out there to pose as an interested buyer and contact her to see whether she really says the house is off the market, and the listing is in error! Entrapment may be illegal, but you can always ask a question, right? We are wondering about her husband’s, the builder’s, financial stability because he’s got several spec houses on the market (not including ours, we hope). Mmmmm. I hope you don’t get an email from us in the next months giving you yet another new address.
• Nick sent in our memberships to WILL, which stands for something having to do with Life-long Learning. They are a membership organization affiliated with the University that offers adult learning classes, taught by professors from the university and other retired teachers and professors that live in the community. For one $50 membership/year, you can take as many classes as you want. We looked at their Spring catalog, and there are about 6 classes that look very interesting, including Pre-Beginners Spanish. I’ve never heard of a Pre-Beginners language class, but that sounds about our speed. Pre-beginners probably teaches you how to pronounce the basic sounds or elements of speech, such as not pronouncing h’s, j’s, and g’s in some cases, and l sounds like l, but ll sounds like y, and so on. I know I can use the classes. I took 2 semesters of Spanish through Mont Co public schools, and that, plus the little bit of Arabic I learned before going to Palestine in the early 90s and brushing up on my high-school French before going to Paris just left me confused. I start to say something in one language and I’m likely to finish the sentence in another language. It can be very embarrassing!

We hope you have a safe, warm, and brilliant celebration of light, whatever you call it, just as we hold you in light and peace at this season. Sonnie and Nick

New Mexico IS part of the United States -- You can even drink the water here!

If I hadn’t read such silliness in New Mexico magazine’s humor section, I wouldn’t have believed it, despite the National Geographic’s abysmal geography survey results. But this really happened to me last week.

The backstory: I had to call a medical laboratory, whose billing department is in Baltimore (funny, no one ever wonders where *Baltimore* is :-D Part of the conversation was to give her our new address so she could send us the final bill.

The conversation:
[me] “…Rd, Silver City, New Mexico”
[her] “Boy, you really DID move!”
[me] “Sure did.”
[her] “Better be careful of the water down there.”
[me] “………”
[me] “No, that’s NEW Mexico…”
[her] “Yeah, I hear the water can be a problem there.”
[me, rather less than gracefully] “We’re in NEW Mexico, the state between Arizona and Texas.”

I don’t remember what she replied because at that point, I had stopped paying attention and was trying to get off the phone before bursting into rude – at least to her – guffaws.

Nutmeg is off-roading now. She has finally figured out that she won’t get pricklies in her feet every time she gets off the pavement. It helped that we went to our friend Steph’s last Sunday, who owns 40 acres on the side of the mountain up toward Pinos Altos. Steph took her two dogs and I took Nutmeg, and let her off-leash to follow Steph’s boys. Nutmeg was in 7th heaven running up and down the hills, sniffing out every critter that had passed that way in the last month—and critters up there include not just rabbit and fox, but very likely bob-cat, mountain lion, bear, coyote and possibly wolf. She slept for a day afterwards. This weekend, however, she’s under the weather; although I won’t go into the gruesome details here, suffice it to say that I’ve been cleaning up after her night and day since 5 am yesterday morning. I think it might be an after-effect of her second in the series-of-two rattlesnake venom vaccines she got earlier in the week. I will probably take her to the vet tomorrow so he can tell me she’s fine.

Further on the subject of off-roading, Nutmeg ventured down onto the undeveloped lot that’s next to our house today, even though she was on-lead. That, of course, meant I had to follow. We got down just below the level of the road and I looked left, while Nutmeg was exploring something to her right. We had startled up a small group of mule deer that had been laying up in the grasses. I started counting, “1…2…4…6…8…10…11...” yep, there were a full dozen deer standing there staring back at me and especially watching Nutmeg. She, amazingly, had not yet seen them, being more interested in a scent to her right than the real thing to her left. So the deer watched her, and the big mamma of the group started to come TOWARD us! I was standing still, and Nutmeg was moving in a controlled way, and she could discern no threat, so she started coming our way, closer and closer. I was dumbfounded. This doesn’t happen with white-tail deer at home. I think it’s because there are so many mule deer in this community on the edge of Silver City, there’s plenty of graze, and no threats other than 4-wheel hunters. They are so acclimated to humans and humans’ pets that they just don’t run! Unless, of course, the dog sees them and makes a barking dash at them. Then they sproing. That’s something else I never saw white-tails do, either – sproing off all 4 legs/feet at once. Mule deer are grayer than white-tail, have distinct black markings and have these amazingly long ears; their ears are often as long as their face, and the ears are black tipped. These deer have the same “white flags” from which white-tail deer get their name, but the tail is tipped in black.

A story of a different kind of wildlife – the Brooklyn NY variety: Nick was walking back to his sister’s from the nursing home where his uncle has been moved from the hospital; this was Friday night. It was getting dark and it was rainy; he was crossing in an intersection and he had the light. Some woman wanted to make a right-on-red, but forgot the one cardinal rule: Stop first and look – pedestrians have the right of way! Nick saw her coming at, he estimated, maybe 10 mph. He thought she’s stop, but she didn’t. Rather than being hit and knocked down, he (as he tells the story) jumped up a little thinking to go up onto her hood. He rolled across her hood and across the windshield and off the other side to the road. Are you getting a chill and a sinking stomach? Imagine how I felt when he called that evening to tell me? He was not hurt, luckily. He sprained his hand, probably landing on it as he fell off the hood, and he had a “twinge” in his back. She stopped and they exchanged information, but he did not let her call the police or go to the emergency. He thought he was probably fine. Between his sensible sister and me, we convinced him to contact the police that night to make a report and go to the doctor the next day for an exam, which led to xrays of his back and hand. As of today, he is still ok, but still with the sore hand and twinge in his back. He flies home tomorrow, and not a minute too soon. It’s not that we don’t have crazy drivers here in Silver City, and maybe even the same percentage of crazy driver per capita as Brooklyn. It’s just that, with only so many people, the chances of getting hit in the crosswalk is much less. Here, we just have to remember to talk loudly and carry pepper spray where we walk.

Let me close with a temptation. Our friend, Ivia, is a New York Times reader. She sent me the following link. It’s a delightful virtual tour of our National Forest, and if you follow the links, of Silver City. If you do find it tempting, your bed was delivered on Wednesday. http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/travel/escapes/12american.html?ref=todayspaper Love, Sonnie

OMG, it snowed!

I got up this morning to find something like 3 inches of snow on the ground and trees. It was still snowing and we were clouded in. It had snow-showered yesterday off and on all morning, but nothing stuck and there was a gorgeous red sunset last night. The expression is: “red sky at morning, sailors take warning; red sky at night, sailor’s delight.” So I did – take delight, that is. Figured that was it for winter weather. But the snow sharks weren’t done with us. However, we should be about 1/3 through with our snow for the winter for a place that gets an average of 10 inches a year! It was beautiful, though, since I could look at it out my office window and didn’t have to navigate I 270 to get to downtown DC to work. Btw, as of sunset (another red sky), the roads were clear, at 200 feet lower in elevation than this house sits, there’s no sign of snow, and we have a mix of white and puddles here.

This is a tough week for us. Nick has gone back to Brooklyn because his Uncle Jerry is moving into his final life stage. So Nick went last Saturday and will return Monday 12/15. I couldn’t go because of the dog, work and the cost, in that order. I am blue and lonely, since I have come to love U Jerry as my own uncle – he’s a central part of my NY family.

At the same time, Nick’s departure leads me to a fun small-town story. There is a commercial airport serving Grant County, of which Silver City is the county seat; it’s appropriately called Grant Co Airport. There is one airline that serves Grant Co Airport – Great Lakes Airline. You can fly Great Lakes Airline from Silver City to Albuquerque and from Albuquerque to Silver City – nowhere else! There wouldn’t be a Grant Co Airport OR any airline connection if there wasn’t some kind of federal regulation having to do with air service to regions or something. Anyway, so we found that he could fly from Silver City to Albuquerque and connect with an American flight to NY and return cheaper than he could go to Tucson or El Paso and fly Southwest. So we booked it. Then Nicky went onto Google Maps to get a map to Grant Co Airport. Don’t evereverevereverever rely on Google maps when it’s really important, to whit:

There are only two main roads into/out of Silver City – (state) Rt 90 and Rt 180. There is Rt 15 but that goes up through Pinos Altos and into the Gila National Forest, so it doesn’t count for this tale. Google told us to go down Rt 90 about 11 miles to Phelps Dodge Rd and then… so we followed Google. I started to get nervous at mile 15 when we had not found Phelps Dodge Rd, and we started making phone calls at mile 20. We tried Grant Co Airport, but got connected to the weather(!) We tried Grant Co Airport again, and got a recording. We tried our friend Steph, who didn’t answer. I tried her mom, who also lives here. Then I even tried her brother, who also lives here. No luck, no answer. By this time, we’d turned around and were headed back to Silver City. Got the bright idea to try to call the airline itself (Great Lakes Airline) counter at the airport. Now, remember, we’ve never seen this airport, but we’re assuming it’s small as befits a town of 12,000/county of 30,000. Try calling an airline’s ticket counter at National. We got right through! Talked with a very nice lady who was telling us how to come back toward Silver City, turn right onto Ridge Rd and come across the open range land, but it’s faster…then we got cut off…signal interrupted by terrain. We got around the hills and within signal range of Silver City, and just as I was about to call again, Nick’s phone rang. It was the desk agent at the airport calling him! We had, of course, put his cell phone as one contact number when we made the reservations. So she finished giving us directions, and the real adventure began.

Ridge Rd is a county-maintained gravel road that crosses 10+ miles of open range land. County-maintained means that the county fills the major holes and paves/clears the ‘washes’ where the formal road was washed out but there is a paved creek crossing. It is, however, wash-board in large sections. Have you ever taken a Volvo at 35 or 40 miles an hour over washboard gravel roads! DON’T unless your black-ice driving skills are up-to-par. Because going that fast on wash-board surface is like driving on slick ice. I faced facts and slowed down to 20. So we were both breathing deeeeep breaths trying not to panic about Nick missing his flight. At about 5 miles (and 15 minutes into the crossing) his cell phone rang again, and it was, again, the desk agent at the airport. “How’re you doing? You’re on Ridge, right? Doing ok?” Yes, we told her, except we had no idea where we were or how far we had left to go. She said not-to-worry, we’d make it in plenty of time. Sure enough, another 5 or so miles in another 10 or so minutes, and we came to paved road again, and there was the airport on the left, just like she said.

Once we pulled into the airport parking lot, greeted the local road runner (bird) hanging around and got Nicky’s luggage out of the trunk, we got a chance to take in the Grant Co Airport in all its singular glory. Singular little building, singular front door, singular back door to the singular taxi-way and, beyond that, singular runway. And, when we got inside we found the single person who runs BOTH the airport and the Great Lakes Airline ticket counter, check in and baggage claim. And when we expressed relief that we’d made it before the plane, she said, and I am honestly quoting, “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t have let them leave you.” Turns out, he was their only departing passenger, although they were bringing home two Silver Citizens. So this one lady checked Nick in, gave him something akin to a yellow sticky as his boarding pass, took his luggage and loaded it onto a golf cart, took the radio call from the incoming pilot, went out and checked the wind sock, came back and relayed the wind direction to the pilot, carried out two bottles of water and the “air mail” (several envelopes) along with the red wands to wave the plane in, waved the plane in, took Nick’s ticket, escorted the two incoming passengers, handed up the water and “air mail” to the pilot through the plane’s window, waved the plane clear and drove the golf cart into the little building with the two passengers’ bags, and handed off their bags. Believe me, I’m not being disrespectful at all when I say – the blessing and character of a small town – would they hold your flight for you at BWI? Or Dulles? I came back to town on Rt 180, which was the way we should have gone in the first place. And it became clear why she brought us over the open range. The airport is 20 miles from Silver City in the opposite direction from which we had driven 20 miles erroneously, based on Google’s directions.

Other things of note – I’m going to see the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra tomorrow night at the university’s Fine Arts center for $15. That’s for the seat, not the parking. The parking is free. In DC, if we had the energy to drive back down to town, or to stay in town after work to see some performance, you wouldn’t park the car for $15. The performance is at 7 pm, and I’ll probably leave here about 6:30. I’ll get there about 6:45 (remember, 15 minutes to anywhere) and get a good seat. We went to a community holiday performance last week that was free in the same venue. Some of the performers were terrific; some were of the grimace, groan, and cringe quality. But the kids’ performances were great fun to watch – it’s always so much fun to watch the kids dance, sing and act. Reminded me of, first, our nephew Dave’s high school performances where many of the kids were very talented and all had fun, and more lately, our neighbor Addie’s performances, ditto.

Finally, these hilly walks are paying off. Both Nutmeg and I are losing weight. She lost between 3 and 4 lbs in the last month; she’ll soon be svelte, not sturdy (sturdy being a euphemism for overweight). I don’t have a scale at home, and refused to get on the scale at the vet’s today, but I am sure my waistband is a little looser.

I’ll close now, and finally. These epistles are getting longer as we get more experiences here. I’ll either have to: a. stop writing these things due to wearing out your reading patience; b. write more often; or c. tell fewer stories more concisely. Vote now! Love to each and I’m thinking about each of you. Sonnie