Pow Wow dancer

The girl in the photo danced at every opportunity and so beautifully. It is good to see the younger people keeping up with their traditions. Every visit to a pow wow I learn more and more about the original inhabitants of the United States. I sit and chat with whomever is open for a little talk. This year I sat next to the lady who decorates the most beautiful walking sticks with peyote stitch and her friend told me about the history of her people. She was in her late 70's and had to go to boarding school and only speak English. The children were not allowed to speak their own tongue. She introduced me to the docent who teaches Quechan to the childeren now. My English is better than my Dutch, but I am very happy that it is good enough to read, write and speak and that I learned the history of my little country. I can't imagine what it would be like if someone said, "you have to disown your heritage". Even as a child, growing up in South Africa, I was still aware that I was Dutch. However, I am not Dutch enough to be really Dutch, neither English enough, nor South African enough nor American enough, to be any of those either. I am just me, I suppose, and quite happy with it.

Here is a picture of the dancing girl's face.

Pow Wow

The weather is improving. Come to think of it, the weather needs no improvement here. It is always lovely in the winter. Still, the mornings are no longer chilly now, which they can be and the birds are singing loudly in chorus. It makes the heart soar. 
I can't believe that I haven't written on my blog for so long. Last year I was very active around this time, painting, drawing and posting. More recently I have returned to Facebook, writing a manuscript and working on my camper. I also discovered Pinterest, which I enjoy and feel that I learn all kinds of things. Some people think it's an enormous 'time-waster', just like Facebook, but you see some amazing photography and art, and if I didn't 'Pin', I would never have known this:

Now I know that it has a name.

I think we skipped spring this year, and went right on into summer, but I don't want to talk about the weather, because that's a subject for when there is nothing left to say.....and when do I have nothing to talk about?

Feather Maiden Shopping

Last night I went shopping again and this is the result.

I started out with this rather botched photo.

 I am still not entirely sure about all this. I suppose this is why I use my pictures that normally would have been sent to the trash.

In this case, I used the actual photo as the background with brushstrokes and made a collage with a detail of another pow wow picture, on the right.

Pow Wow photography

Cropped, not shopped. I mainly used a 55-200mm lens at the pow wow, which eliminates the background nicely. I like using this lens when doing portraits too.

Strong Hearts Pow Wow

I have been going to Pow Wows in the years that I have lived in the SouthWest and find it endlessly fascinating. A few years ago, I was there with a 7 year-old friend. The lady sitting next to me said that she was Havapai, and asked what my young companion was. Without thinking, I said, "He's a cutie-pie". She looked me in the eyes for a moment, and then we both started laughing.

Pow Wow Shopping

Often in photography, a background can make or break an otherwise good picture. It is the same when collaging or painting. Recently, backgrounds have been my focus, whether making them on paper, Yupo or in Photoshop. This photo didn't have a very distracting background, but I worked on it  a little anyway with 'brushes' and then 'smudged' the subject, which brought out the light on his profile.

Pow Wow photography

Children always make good subjects. They can be totally oblivious of their surroundings when playing. 

Stand still and you move backwards.

Oh dear. I know I am in a bad relationship........with my cell phone. We started out amicably enough and it seemed like such a wonderful thing to have him around all the time but over the years, I have become a little unsure. Of course, he comes to my rescue when I have a flat tire, and calls AAA or when I am running late for an appointment. But he demands a lot of attention, by playing that annoying little tune, that I always mean to change and never do. Just when I am totally engrossed in something he will pipe up and then I have to find him. He is usually in his favorite place, at the bottom of my bag. There are days when I suddenly realize that it has been awfully quiet for a long time and then find him in the car, sulking, his little belly flashing an angry red light.

Perhaps it's not so much my cell phone that I am no longer enamored with but his family. Sit down to dinner with company in a nice restaurant and a member of his family is often placed in a prominent position, as if it were another piece of vital cutlery. They then jingle, and even though not answered, there is still that little gap in the conversation as eyes glance down to see who is on the line. "What was that you were saying?". 

Worse still is when the cell phone becomes an accessory, held in the hand at all times, just in case a vital call comes in which they invariably do. "Oh, I am in line at the store, what are you doing?". 

So here I am. I no longer like him or his extended family since they have taken over like little alien beings, infiltrating almost every aspect of our lives. It's unavoidable, we will be sucked into their big black hole whether we like it or not and all end up talking in Tweets.

The photo was taken here in the Southwest, before going digital and still used my Minolta and would develop my own photos in the darkroom. Check the picture for bullet holes.

Lengua.

 

I had been to Mexico, which is only about 15 minutes away, but decided to eat in my favorite downtown Mexican restaurant anyway, where everything is authentic, including the decor. More authentic than the restaurants in the little town over the border that cater to our winter visitors.

For some time I had been thinking of having some tongue.  My grandmother would make marinaded tongue for sandwiches now and again. Lengua (tongue) is on the menu of most good Mexican restaurants and that's what I ordered.

As I waited I remembered that my grandmother would never allow me to peek in the pan while the tongue was boiling, because tongue can look rather unappetizing during preparation.

When my plate was put before me, I blinked a couple of times and  immediately knew that I was in for an adventure. Here was tongue in a very authentic state, with unidentifiable bits and bobs here and there, and some of the skin attached. It looked nothing like the succulent, thin slices of  marinaded meat of my grandmother's table.

I was as brave as I could be, and inwardly scolded myself for being such a big baby as I gingerly nibbled at my food. Perhaps next time, I should order  enchiladas like every self-respecting gringa. 

Left or Right?

My cupboards and closets are usually tidy, my table-tops not so much. I have no concern about driving with my fuel light blinking. I remember faces for years and years, surprising people that I can place whenever I first met them. I don't remember names. My sense of time, it has been proven time and time again, is non-existent. Yet, I am a planner and a list-maker. Visual and verbal are equally present in me. I use my hands a lot when I speak. I am very patient, especially with people, but very spontaneous in many things. Some of my best travel destinations were decided in 30 minutes and the ticket bought the same day.

All in all, I am right brain dominant.

Please don't ask me to do the same thing over and over again, so that I might become proficient in it, because boredom will most certainly set in, and with boredom comes distraction, and once distracted, you have lost me.

My mother, who is neat and structured, tried for many years to teach me how to sew my own clothes. I would have the most wonderful time sketching what I wanted my dress to look like, go out, chose the fabric, but when I started sewing I used that same wild enthusiasm, which would not work out quite as well. It always resulted in me having to undo seams and buttonholes, and eventually  in frustration. My mother would give me her 'little look' and end up making the dress, finishing it in fine, little stitches. How could it be that her daughter couldn't do this?

Left brain versus right brain, but we didn't know that then.

The picture of the Mexican tiled stairs was made in Tucson. Such a neat and structured pattern.

 

Rare birds.

Recently at a concert, where a soprano from New York sang the stars from the heavens, I glanced around as I settled in to listen. Across the aisle sat a baby-boomer Harley guy, with tattoo's up his arms and in his neck; his  chains catching the light. His face tilted upwards, his eyes closed, listening to the music in quiet appreciation. Although he seemed oddly out of place, it was good to see that we don't have to fit into society's little boxes.

The same week, at Petsmart, I approached a store associate, who was standing by an older woman with a mangy looking little dog on a lead.  He had sad eyes and was missing a large part of one of his ears. The elderly woman turned and gave me a snarling smile, telling me that it was not yet my turn because her dog was being trained as an assistance dog. Her expectations were clearly high. I looked at the dog and he looked up at me with tired eyes, and I am sure he was saying, "Do I remotely look like a dog that would be able to do that?". I wanted to pluck some of the woman's tail feathers, but thought better of it.

Later at the dog park (my life seems to revolve a lot around dogs), a man sat down next to me on the bench, while his wife settled on the armrest. He was hesitant to talk, but when he did he mentioned Mark Twain's autobiography, which is on the best-sellers list. I said, quite innocently, "So you are a NPR listener?", because that day it had been mentioned on the radio. I added that I liked listening to BBC news on that station. "I don't like that stupid English accent", he snapped. His wife scoured the sky for any birds flying by to study. Now there is no denying that my accent sounds British to some, but it's not. I realized that he wasn't happy at being found out that he listened to what he might consider a "liberal" station. I felt like feeding him a worm.

My accent sometimes incites reactions that are beyond my understanding. Like the woman in a car, who was in the assumption that I had locked my dog in a car with closed windows. She screamed that she had already called the humane society, so I walked up to her to explain, but she just bellowed, "Go back to Canada, and stay there". "Why would I want to go to Canada?", I asked but of course, I knew what it was about. My accent. I should have tied a knot in her beak. Silly bird.

You meet some rare birds sometimes and I am not talking about the biker at the concert, who didn't fly with the flock.

The birds in the drawing are a Sunday morning practice. I wanted to see if I could do something like this.

Rattler before breakfast.

Such excitement this morning. Athena was barking and when I went outside, out of the corner of my eye I saw a snake attached to the wall. My brain said, "plastic" but as I walked on I heard the rattle. Then I realized it was real.
Why I thought it was plastic was because a neighbor had left some contraption he made with chicken-wire and plastic snakes to scare away the pigeons that seems to plague many of my neighbors, but not me, with me to get rid of. I thought yesterday's wind had blown one, that had missed the garbage can, into the courtyard. But no, this one was real and rattled. It was a little over 2 ft, and the Rural Metro Men came to remove it.

Cactus in the sun.

When I want to go on a little adventure, I go to L&P, whatever it may stand for, our local Asian grocery store. Across the road is a French creperie surrounded by various places selling tacos, burritos and tostadas. L&P offers items that I didn't know existed. I usually come home with some vegetables that require a google before I know what to do with them. They have enormous frozen ducks and fish with eyes that prevent me from buying them. I don't think I can prepare something that has bigger eyes than I do. L&P don't even know what they sell, because at the check-out there was an interesting package with what looked like dried bulbs. I asked what it was. It was something to make rice-wine with but it was from Vietnam, and even Mr. L&P didn't know what to do with that. 
I usually encounter a winter visitor and invariably they say, 'interesting store' or 'I don't know what to buy here' but I do. I come home with cream crackers, which clearly haven't got a foothold in the U.S., and herbs and spices, that I can't find in the regular supermarket. I also bought some cookies, but when I got home decided that they were probably riddled with transfats, and so not really edible. However, there are peanut cookies (no transfat), sesame cookies, large bags of all kinds of rice, nasi kruiden (we Dutch eat a lot of nasi), pickled lemons, and bean sprouts. I made some atjar tjampoer today, a sweet and sour pickle of green cabbage, green beans, bean sprouts, carrot and more, to go with my nasi.

Geen oliebollen maar tamales.

When I first moved out here I knew what burritos were, or at least I thought I did but I had no idea what tamales were. Those little packages of corn leaves, tied carefully at both ends that hold masa (corn meal slaked with lime) and filled with bits of beef, little strips of potato and an olive. There are as many variations as there are mothers and grandmothers, who make tamales in great batches for the holidays. I hand painted 18 plates, like the one you see above, all with different designs inspired by south western petroglyphs, when I first got here. In spite of the tamales, I miss my mother's oliebollen and appelflappen on new year's eve. 

2010, long awaited.

 

Such stillness on this first morning of the new year. In a journal once bought in Florence and never used, I cut "2010 Born on a Blue Moon", because it was the second full moon in a month on new year's eve. Midnight moved on quietly. A few hisses of fireworks far in the distance and the howling and barking of the coyotes in the hills. There had been warnings on the radio that firing guns into the air is against the law. Very comforting. I wonder if people who do this actually know that what goes up, must come down. On the other hand, what goes down, must come up and so we fervently hope for the economy in 2010.

Cactus.

Clearly can't get enough of posting large photos.

This weekend I received so many pictures of the snow in Europe that I thought I would show a Christmas picture from the Southwest. We are still at 21 degrees C during the day and oh my goodness, we are going down to 18 degrees on Wednesday.
I like living in a warm part of the world and then again, I don't. There is something about snow this time of the year providing you don't have to drive or walk in it.
Let me remember. No, this is definitely better.

Tiny the lizard.

The other day, as I was brushing my teeth, I felt something run over my foot. It was a lizard. Extremely tiny and almost translucent. At first I prepared myself for the hunt, but then thought better of it. It not only required that I look for and actually find my glasses but I don't think they do any harm. They even eat insects, so I just let it be. It will find its way out again.

Then today I remembered I had made a picture of one a while back. It was just as small and also had no coloring. Imagine my amazement when I blew up the photo and saw the above. Tiny lizards are very colorful, except I couldn't see that with or without my glasses.

We all look forward to.....

 

I think that most ladies living here look forward to having lunch at the Garden Cafe. They close in the Summer you see, and that makes life here a lot harder. It's not the scorching temperatures that we mind or the lack of a gift store that isn't part of a discount chain store. (Prickly Pear, where are you?). The hardest part of getting through the Summer is that, other than good oriental and Mexican food, there are no restaurants where you can while away an hour of your busy day with a friend, and eat a Strawberry Turkey Salad, a piece of excellent Torture or Killer cake, a Tri-tip salad or a bowl of home made Tortilla soup sitting under a canopy of trees and umbrellas. I mean, having lunch at Applebee's just is not the same experience, and life is really about experiences, isn't it?  So from Mother's Day, when they close, until when the heat dips under 100 again, we live like desert creatures with few niceties in our lives. Dressed in shorts and tank-top, we make a dive for our car where we will burn our buns on the hot seat, dive into the supermarket, where we stand a very good chance of freezing to death in the first 3 minutes that we are there, before we head on home again in our car that has managed to heat up in that short time to oven-like temperatures.

The Garden Cafe is open!

Increase in price.

Expensive as they may be, the last sign was either to deter smokers from coming in the store or the first flap had a mind of its own.