water, wood, rock, and light

Finally! We are finally home. It is difficult to fully express the thorough satisfaction, the deep comfort, the frission of excitement - the flash of lightning the rumbling of thunder and the smell of distant rain over the desert - that the word home holds for me when coupled with this place, the Mesas and Mountains of Northern New Mexico. And to be home with my Pal and my Dog - to close up the house at night, feeling the cool breeze of this high altitude shivering through the leaves of the elms, hearing the quiet of this sleepy town on the edge of the great meadow, sensing the wilderness opening extravagantly to the west and the wide desert to the east- oh how lovely my dreams have become.

Our emissary of place has revealed itself in the person of the Mourning Cloak Butterfly. This lovely being loves the sap from the Elm trees which surround us. They are one of the longest lived butterflies, close to a year. This one is probably a teenager. She/he has been following Al around the yard, landing on his shoulder and ultimately keeping track of him as he hung the clothes on the line:



We had a similar experience with the Luna Moth in Indiana, and so have come to recognize these beings when they appear.

Our response to this place, this particular place and her welcoming of us so beautifully home, is to create a shelter for the spirits in thanksgiving for our place here with them. Very much like the Thai do in their homeland, we understand that we are the tenants here, borrowing this little patch of ground, playacting at setting up house, pretending we have some endurance - when in fact we are just brief interlopers. Beauty attracts beauty, so we created our first intentional space in this new garden in honor of the real residents here.



Another first response, the other side of the coin so to speak, is our "deflector shield." From our front door one can look up the front path, through the front gate, and all the way directly up the street that "T's" at our front door. Very bothersome energetically. So, we quickly gathered the materials at hand from the garden and invoking the elemental powers of water, wood, rock, and light, created the first of what I am sure will be many manifestations of deflecting guardians for this space. The lost toys from the yard are happy to have a new job to do, and they are doing it very well.








Emma is happy to be home too!





























I'll try to post more regularly now that we are getting a little more settled. Las Vegas has so many stories to tell - like the very fat man with spurs on his boots eating bad Chinese food, or the Chevy and Maria drama that lasted from 1AM until 11AM, or the lady with the white moo moo, the big hair, and giant fuzzy slippers who just walked by.....

Eighth Dolor in Las Vegas

OK, the first thing you need to know is that Dolor means sorrow. Traditionally there are seven sorrows which Mary suffers as the mother of Jesus. Hence her name: Our Lady of the Sorrows, or Dolores, or in Spanish, Nuestra Senora de los Dolores.

Now, when my parents celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary there was a big party out at the Hoban's lake house in Coeur d' Alene Idaho. My parents and two other couples all got married around the same time that year, so the three couples and their children got together for a big shindig at the lake. I must have been around 15 years old. Well, as you might imagine with these large Catholic families, the kids lost no time finding ways to celebrate too. The result being captured on film by my god-father Austin.

Here I am passed out from my first exposure to alcohol. Austin very sympathetically (to my mother) captioned the picture, "Eighth Dolor." And so I am.

That's my mother sitting next to me, not pleased. You had to have a sense of humor to survive raising six kids through adolescence, through the 70's no less. Austin's quip certainly helped this particular episode.

This picture and its tawdry tale drifted into blessed memory for thirty years until my pal and I decided that New Mexico was to be our next home. Specifically, the former parsonage of a church in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Here is a picture of our new home where we should be living come June.

Established by Spanish land grant in 1835, Las Vegas was originally called Nuestra Senora de los Dolores de Las Vegas Grandes (Our Lady of Sorrows of the Great Meadows)

And naturally her church is Nuestra Senora de los Dolores Catholic Church, its foundation was laid in 1862.


You are probably connecting the dots (or should I say "dolors," Dolores) quite effectively on your own. But each story beseeches its narrator to carry it to its own Golgotha, and so I continue the travail.

Of course, the church to which our new home was once parsonage, is indeed dedicated to "Our Lady of the Sorrows," aka Dolores.

You need to know that this move is something of a miracle: that we qualified for the loan to buy this place, that we survived a challenging year in Indiana intact, that we found a place that provides two studios a residence and rental income, that the world hasn't quite made that proverbial hand-basket trip to hell.... would all point to the miraculous.

I can't help thinking that Our Lady enjoyed Austin's joke some thirty years ago, and with laughter amid her Dolors, granted her "Eighth Dolor" a bit of grace, and called him to her beautiful home on the edge of the great meadows in New Mexico.

You can bet I'll be building shrines come summer!

Chantal Cordey Guitar Strap

Chantal Cordey is a gifted artist living in Australia. Currently she is lending her vast talents to the making of custom guitar straps. This is the strap she just finished for my R Taylor and me. I feel very fortunate to have this guitar to play, and doubly fortunate to have this lovely strap to support the playing.









The design took us several months to develop. Mainly because she is so talented and I love her work so much, I couldn't settle on just one idea. With patience, Chantal helped me hone my ideas down to this beautiful and powerful motif. I love how the Apple Blossoms cascade down the strap. The color tones and texture are evocative of the old west, and the Medicine Wheel is substantial yet soft. Just Perfect.



Check out her link in the "links of beauty" section. She has a wonderful web page which shows the breadth and depth of her work. She recently won an award for a design using the deadly "ghost nets" floating off the Gulf of Carpentaria in Arnhem land.


I'm here to tell you this strap helps me play better. And it looks so good too.