One Nation with Hope

P4130509, originally uploaded by torri_g.

I find myself this morning going over everything that happened yesterday and the bombardment of news that ensued. More than that I find myself wondering how to explain to my daughters just how someone could do what they did yesterday in Tucson in the name of politics.
All three of the girls had the opportunity to meet Gabby Giffords over this past 4th of July while working at the event in the park in Sierra Vista. All three commented on how much they liked her. Her genuine concern, and care about things people talked to her about. A politician that listened to what other had to say instead of just pushing her own words on everyone around her. They were struck by that and they liked that a lot about her. When the news broke about the shooting at a rally in Tucson yesterday at first their attention wasn't really caught by it. Sadly I think that as a nation we are all just a little to used to hearing about shootings, or bombings, or just death in general now a days and sometimes the first thought is "Great it is just yet another one." Then they heard Gabrielle Giffords had been shot. Suddenly all three of them were glued to the coverage, talking about her, talking about their time meeting her, wondering why someone would do such a thing, wondering how someone could do such a thing. They talked with each other, they texted with friends and at the end of the day there still were no good answers to the question going through their minds. Even sadder is that there will be no good answers to their questions and the best answer that I have for them is that it is a nation very divided that we live in now, and there are some who are willing to go to very extreme levels to make a point. Even if no one understands just what that point is.

I've said many prayers since yesterday for those who were shot, for those who lost their lives, and for the families that have to try to piece their broken hearts back together again in the after math of all of this and I will continue for days I'm sure. I hope to be able to give some explanation to my girls that will answer their questions. I hope to be able to understand it myself. I also hope that as a nation we can take a step back and take a look at where we are going without pointing fingers and placing blame.

SNOW!

IMG_0979, originally uploaded by torri_g.

It is snowing here today! It took it most of the morning to get going but the rain finally changed over into snow. I will take more pictures over the course of the day here because I can't wait to see how much is actually going to fall.

Crazy busy

To say that things have been busy is a bit of an understatement at this point in time, so let's go with crazy busy to describe life here in Arizona. I'm just happy to have time to sit down and catch up on some reading of my favorite blogs and heck even e-mails! Binky Sue started back to school this week and her daily schedule is insane right now. Balancing work and 14 credit hours is going to be a fun thing for her this term. Sweetpea and Little Bug are doing fine with the start of the second semester at the high school, and are starting to add lots of extra things to my already full calendar. Speaking of my calendar...as of yesterday I did a bang up job of adding lots more to it myself. We found a place to rent and will be moving in February! For any family thinking about coming out to visit, be ready we are now going to be on one of those wonderfully marked dirt roads that Arizona just loves oh so very much. Of course if you don't want to try and find us we can just meet up at Buddy's bar or they can just give you directions out to us! No joke...everything for dealing with the rental is taken care of out of Buddy's Bar. So family that has already been out here might be able to have an idea of about where we will be living come February. Whetstone area, at least a good mile plus before you hit the lights on the highway for mustang corners. We have been calling it our "country ghetto" home. I think the dealing with having to go to the bar for paperwork and all other things is what got that started. I've laughed so hard and had my girls ask me to stop lying to them about that. No joke here though people. It is bigger than what we are currently in. Older house but not as old as what we are living in. Oh and Oma we are going to have horses in our front yard area! About maybe 40-50 feet away from the front of the house is where their area starts. I'm super excited about all of it except for one thing...of dogs and cats we can only have three. We have 4 and a hard heart breaking choice has had to be made. Unlike others that I have called about though the animals are allowed to live in the house and not outside the house. Angel is the fur baby that we are going to find a new home for because I think of any of them she would deal best with change. We have a house full of hurting hearts right now though because of it. I would have loved to find a place for all of them to go with too, but time has kind of run out and we need to get moving.

So mid February is the time frame that we are looking at being moved from here to new place, which means things for the next month is going to be very busy. There is tons to get done and starting this weekend is the great go through the house and downsize stuff that is no longer being used, no longer fits, or just is no longer needed. Hubby and girls will probably not be real thrilled with this but it is one thing that I have always loved about moving time. A clearing of stuff that has just been stuffed away for a later that never comes. I've already started making some phone calls about Sweetpea and Little Bug for school and I'm happy that they can stay right where they are for the rest of the school year. Tomorrow we will give housing 30 days notice which I honestly can not wait to do! This is it...the final tie and I don't know about anyone else in the family but I'm more than ready for this one. Oh just in case I didn't mention it I will have no neighbors right on top of me!! Country ghetto here I come...well as soon as we get deposits paid, lease signed and all that good stuff at Buddy's bar done next week!!
I hope that everyone is doing well, staying warm and safe. Have a great Thursday and take care.

Snow before Christmas!

Snow, originally uploaded by torri_g.

We have snow here in Arizona! Well not for to much longer though. The storm clouds that brought the snow have cleared off and the sun is shinning very brightly so it is melting and just about gone. However, I did make sure that I woke the girls up so that they could see the snow on the ground and see it for a few minutes while it was still falling. Two of the three said that was nice and went right back to bed, and my Sweetpea stood there watching if for a little bit because she loves snow at Christmas time.

I hope that everyone is having a great week and is ready for the holiday.

Sign of cooler days

IMG_7566, originally uploaded by torri_g.

The Arizona broom bushes started making their change last week and sure enough we have much cooler temperatures. Oh and as of today we have a return of the gusting blowing winds too so sometime in the next couple of days I'm pretty sure that the tree in the back yard will lose all of its leaves and the broom bushes will make it look like it is snowing. I'm hoping to get with the camera and see what fall colors I can find, and if that doesn't work then at least I have the colors of the hot air balloons to look forward to here soon.

I hope that everyone is having a good week so far.

Wednesday Morning Time Travel

100_4821Mexican blue jay, originally uploaded by torri_g.

Different trip and different year for this time travel today. Going back to March 2006, and our trip out to Chiricahua National Monument. This day trip was only about a 110 mile drive east of us. Even if you have never been to Arizona odd are that you have seen a picture of the Chiricahua's. The balancing rock is one of the most popular of the volcanic rock formations to be photographed. Unlike Organ Pipe, there are lots of hiking trails out in the Chiricahua's. Easy to "Oh my! What in the world was I thinking?!" There are also lots of natural rock out cropping look out points. Which if you are traveling with my three girls on a very high wind day here, they will make sure to scare the life out of you by standing on the top of the wall. They have several different picnic area's all over the mountains and once again the wildlife is more than willing to join you and help eat whatever it is that you have packed with you for the day. During our trip that day it was the Mexican Blue Jay that felt the need to hang around and watch for anything that might be dropped.
This was also the trip that I realized that even though the girls were older, if you wore them out enough with hiking the trails, they would sleep the whole ride back in the car.

Of course it wasn't just the trip out to the Chiricahua's that day. We had to stop to see "The Thing". Now I can not tell you what "The Thing" actually is because that is why you have to stop and see it for yourself. There was also a stop made at Council Rock just outside of the Cochise Strong hold area that day. A great day trip if you like nature, lots of rocks (which my family does) and things that just can't be explained.

Alright once again enough of the time travel for today. I hope that everyone is enjoying a good week.

Wildfire confusion

IMG_5131, originally uploaded by torri_g.

The "Canelo" wildfire burning just outside of the west gate area of base. Now other than being able to say that with certainty there isn't much else that can be said with any kind of certainty if you pay attention to the news. One story says 5,000 acres have been burnt, another says 700. Call my silly but there is a huge difference between those two. One story says human started, another says controlled burn gone bad. Now for the real dish from someone that is in the know, well actually second hand from Army Guy who has a friend that works with the Pallomina fire department. It is a human caused fire, and as of sunset last night they were doing a good job of getting this fire contained. The most accurate count of acres burnt is the 5,000 acres. There have been evacuations done out in the area, and so far the count of people hurt due to the fire is one who had to be flown out. The planes were flying non-stop yesterday during the day dumping fire retardant on it, right up until sunset. The small black spot in the sky in the photo is one of the planes. There are lots of different reports about just when this fire got started, but right now there seem to be quite a few wildfires burning so I guess the when really doesn't matter as much. Wildfire season has gotten started very early in Arizona, and since there really hasn't been any kind of real precipitation for months, it is probably going to get worse before the monsoon sets in. Hopefully this big fire will be contained sometime today, and everyone in the area will continue to be safe.

I hope that everyone is having a good week, and pray for safety for everyone working to contain this fire, for the people who have lost their homes due to the fire, and for those waiting to return to their homes.

Mindless Monday

John Slaughter House, originally uploaded by torri_g.

Still using pictures from my trip a couple of weeks ago. If you ever find yourself out in Arizona, or if you live in Arizona already, the trip down to Douglas and the John Slaughter Ranch is worth the time spent on the sixteen mile gravel road. The house and the buildings around are open as museum, and are filled with time period things. There are old fort ruins up the hill from the main house, and views of the mountains in all directions. There is also a beautiful pond to do picnic lunches by, and the best part...real green grass! The soft makes you want to take your shoes off and walk through type. Not the course, risk getting sticky burrs in your feet type that is found just about everywhere in Arizona. The ranch is about as far south in Arizona as you can go and still be on the U.S. side of the border. When you are standing near the visitors center you can look to the right and see the fence that is maybe 600 feet from where you are standing, that is the border. There is a farm with cows just on the other side. If you make the climb up to the old fort ruins you can watch the cars driving along highway 2 in Mexico.
The entire ranch is beautiful and quite a surprising change from the desert look that you see as you travel on the road to get out to it.

I still have more picture of the area to post, and hopefully will be able to that this week. I hope that everyone has a good Monday, and that there is a week of just being busy enough a head of us all.

San Pedro Riparian

IMG_4632, originally uploaded by torri_g.

Another picture from being out exploring this week. The area down by the San Pedro is beautiful and if you like watching birds or trying to photograph birds this is the area to head to. Or at least one of the many areas that I know to head to. Walking through and seeing so many humming birds was wonderful since they are one of my favorite birds to try to photograph. Then again pretty much every area around here right now has large number of humming birds back again.

We are taking a strange weather twist for the Easter weekend yet again this year, and since the winter advisory that we are under is calling for snow level to drop to 6000 feet, I'm hoping that sometime this weekend I will be able to take some snow on the mountain pictures. I hope that everyone has a great Saturday, and if I finally get around to it I will get up a feline, furball or feather's post for the week.

Back to the ghost town

Ghost town Gleeson, originally uploaded by torri_g.

I'm pretty sure that I mentioned in my first posting about the ghost town, that finding out what some of the remains of buildings may have been is difficult at best. So I'm going with what the majority of sites that I found said they possibly were. Which means going with that thought, this may have been the school building, or at least that is what everyone now thinks it was. When you look at what remains of the original structure it really looks like it could have been any number of things. Now it is just lost and collapsing like so many other things in the town. Looking for information and finding pictures that were taken maybe 20 years ago, there once was an arch over the columns. There were pictures that I could compare with my own and see just how much collapse has happened in the last 20 some years. Whole walls that stood in the pictures I found are now just piles on the ground in my own photo's. I've found it interesting to compare all of the pictures that I took to one's that I have found from several years ago. I'll say it again, this tiny town is fading back into the desert quickly.

Fading back into the desert...Gleeson

Gleeson Saloon, originally uploaded by torri_g.

This picture overall is just a huge mistake on my part, but one that I love none the less. Shooting through the glass window trying to get a picture of the mural painted on the wall of the saloon, because the building doors are chained and locked up tight. First I had to fit the camera through the bars on the windows, which meant I had no way of being able to see just what I was going to be focusing on. There was very little in the way of light going into the building so setting the camera to use every drop of it was interesting and I didn't come as close to it as I would have liked to. Remembering the fact that I was shooting through a window and would risk getting pictures of reflection seems to have been forgotten. All that said though I like how the pictures turned out. Always kind of funny to me when I can look at a picture that is a series of mistakes and like it better. The reflection is of what was behind me while standing on the porch of the saloon, but how it blends with the mural on the wall is what I like the most about this picture. It is the fading back into the empty desert look that I like.

Ghost Town Gleeson Arizona

Ghost Town Gleeson Arizona, originally uploaded by torri_g.

Moving on with the day trip last Saturday. If you want to see ghost towns I think Arizona is a great place to head to for them. In doing a search for information about Gleeson and the long abandoned buildings that I photographed, I hit site after site with just lots of ghost towns listed. The sad thing is that a lot of the history of what was there is just some what of a guess anymore. You can find the basic information about when and just why the town started, and the when and why of what lead to them moving into the ghost town category. But then you find a lot of back and forth guessing about just what certain building was. There are a lot of buildings in Gleeson the look like they have been bought up and someone is trying to recreate their original look and maybe give this old mining town a chance at living on in history. Even in their completely broken down state, the buildings in this town are still fascinating to me though. To walk through any area that goes back in history has always been interesting to me. I loved while we were in Augsberg Germany, walking on the old Roman wall, the church where Martin Luther nailed his notice, and the very first Luthran church that sits at the opposite end of the street from The Dom where he nailed it. We all walk where other have before us, and should take some time to learn about them and the places that they called home. Some just happen to be ghost towns now, and in time even that may not be there anymore.

Cool thing about saving the ghost town pictures till today means that this coming week I will be able to alternate between them and pictures of rodeo that we are going to today. Cowboys and ghost towns sounds like a good theme for this next week. I hope that everyone has a great weekend, and if you can get out and enjoy.

Reflection and Shadows

Meditation Garden @ St. David, originally uploaded by torri_g.

The picture is from the meditation garden out at St. David.

I hope that everyone has a good Tuesday.

Monday morning...and time for reflection

Whitewater Draw Wildlife Refuge, originally uploaded by torri_g.

It really was one of those perfect weather weekends here in Arizona. Alright so 80 plus degrees at the end of February beginning of March is a little scary, because the thought of just how hot could it be here come April keeps coming to mind. But it doesn't matter, I'll take these beautiful days. It was a photo taking frenzy for me this weekend. I have lots and lots of stuff to do some mild editing on because my one lens still seems to have issues when I aim it at just the right color of blue sky.(Thought I had the problem fixed but back to the cleaning and trying to get it again.) Already did some editing on some pictures for color because here in Arizona I have noticed you can actually have to much sun and it will fade the colors down. It was fun playing with probably every setting on the camera trying to achieve different looks of the same thing. It also brought to mind the thought that I really want a bigger telephoto lens. Most of the great bird subjects were just close enough that you could see them...but just far enough that I couldn't get a close up picture of them.

I'm thinking for this week's blogging I'm just going to keep it really simple...picture, place, and not a whole lot of anything else. I hope that everyone's Monday is off to a good start and that the whole week is just a simple one.

Inside the mission church

IMG_2485, originally uploaded by torri_g.

Tumacacori

Tumacacori NHP, originally uploaded by torri_g.

I was going to try and go into more detail about the mission church, but for the life of me this morning I can not remember why I picked the pictures that I have numbers written for or what I was going to type about. So I'm just going with a picture that I really like instead. Took me a couple of shots to get to a point where I was just right aiming the camera without the glare of the sun washing out the entire building. This is the only picture from this angle that doesn't have any lens flare spots. I'm also happy that shooting up and towards the sun didn't darken the overall photo. I have several files of photo's were shooting at this angle has darkened them so much that you would think I was shooting at dusk or during a huge dark rain storm.

I hope that everyone is having a good week, and I'll see if I can put together a better entry for tomorrow.

Visiting the mission

Tumacacori NHP, originally uploaded by torri_g.

This is more from our trip last week. After stopping for lunch at a Mexican restaurant that had giant chicken statues out front.(Honestly, that is how you find this place, the huge chicken statues! Which reminds me I have to post some strange decor photo's from that place.) Anyway, we got back on the road and headed to Tumacacori National Historic Park. Now I could type in a lot of information about it here, but instead I'm going to give you one link and if you want to know more about it you can type in for a search. Tumacacori NHP

Churches and missions are one of my favorite things to photograph, and I don't think that there is really any angle that I didn't shot a picture of while out at Tumacacori. So that means for the next couple of days I'll be posting pictures from there. There are lots of pictures with great arched doorways, windows, and ceilings.

I hope that everyone has a good Tuesday, and if you can get out and enjoy some time outside.

In the sculpture garden again

IMG_2390, originally uploaded by torri_g.

Circle of Peace 5 by Gary Lee Price

Just one more visit to the sculpture garden before moving on with other pictures. You can go to the link in yesterdays post to find the artist and his story for his inspiration for this piece. I didn't think to get a picture while standing closer up to the piece and looking down at the ground till after we had left the garden. The reason I should have was in the sandy dirt where this one was placed, there were what looked like scuff marks from their shoes giving it a feeling of real motion. As if they just stopped waiting for you to take their hands and join in the fun with them. Of course looking at the pictures I do have of this one has given me other idea's on how to go about shooting pictures of it next trip out.

I hope that everyone is having a good week, and see you back here tomorrow with a different area of Tubac.

In the sculpture garden

Ascent by Gary Lee Price, originally uploaded by torri_g.

"Grab hold, And take this hand that Reaches out to you. Look up Into my eyes; My spirit Cries out to you: Friendship is my thought. Let us climb The jagged cliffs of life And fight the ascent of Opposition together. If I can lift you today, You will look back And grab the hands of a thousand more. That is the way The Great Spirit would have it" ~~Howard Rainer

The picture is of one of the many sculptures in the garden at the Karin Newby Gallery in Tubac. The artists name is Gary Lee Price, and several pieces of his work are in the gallery garden and after the fact I have realized that I was drawn to take pictures of just about all of his pieces of work. I will be posting more picture them this week and just so everyone knows...the Monet Bench picture that I posted yesterday with Sweetpea sitting on the bench is by the same artist. This one is one of my favorites though. As we entered the sculpture garden the back of this was facing us. As I was walking towards it looking at it I was trying to figure out just what it was. From the back it looks an arrow head. I think all of us were very surprised and taken with this piece as we walked around to the front of it and saw it. I know Sweetpea was going on about all of the detail and how beautiful it was. Reading the artists description of the piece over here this morning...has me enjoying this piece even more. Now I'm not sure that the link will take you directly to his work, but I have given you his name and you can find it on the list of artists, view more and read more about each piece. The quote above is included in his description and honestly I don't think there is a better one to be found to go with it. So click the link and go enjoy more of this artist or any of the several other's over there.

I hope that everyone has a good Tuesday, and see you back here tomorrow for some more art.

How About a Day of Learning from Monet?

Learning from Monet, originally uploaded by torri_g.

Today was a very beautiful day here in Arizona. So why not turn it into a total day of beauty and some sitting with Monet? Alright so it was just a statue of him sitting painting but Sweetpea thought it was the best. Grandpa and Grandma took us all out on a day trip to the town of Tubac, which is filled with all things art. Every where you turn there is a gallery, or a shop, heck just walking up and down the streets in the town there is art all around. To my Sweetpea, there is nothing better in the world than a day surrounded by art. She knows now just what she wants to do for her birthday, and it involves a trip being made back to Tubac for a whole day of wandering, and taking in all of the sights. I'm thrilled with the trip out today because there are a couple hundred new photo's of things that have never been shared.

Late this afternoon was spent with a 34 pound highly irritated Mia at the vet's office for shot's and check up. I'm not real sure just what happened to my sweet puppy and how good she was with going to the vet's office, but I can say this...next time there must be some calming doggy drugs given before I will be willing to head into another vet's office. Oh and I'm really disappointed with the vet's office because I'm sure that the whole problem really got going because there was no talking to her. It was rush, rush, rush...and can we hurry up and get this done. I don't think any animal I would have had in there would have acted any differently.

I hope that everyone had a great start to the week, and that this will be a week filled with good things for all of us.