The California Files

Flying Solo

Man, the house seems empty! Laura left this morning, gone for a whole week to sample the delights of New York City with her pal Ginger.

New York City, for god's sake! Why! Well, I guess shopping, shows, restaurants, Ellis Island (through which both sets of her grandparents passed) and a bit of time away from the demands of her thriving business.

Just as last summer's fly fishing trip marked the first time in our 32 years together I'd been away for fun without Laura (plenty of on-assignment trips, though), this New York trip marks the first time Laura has been away for fun without me. This is not something we plan to perpetuate.

I've told her that I plan to get hold of a keg of beer, have a taco truck come by, and ask a troupe of dancing girls to stop in. Bring in a band. Maybe Aerosmith. They'd show up for the fish tacos and beer, right? Hey, she knows I'm kidding. I'm adventurous, but not that adventurous.

Instead, my old college pal Paul Aragon (who also is flying solo this week because Ginger, his wife, is going with Laura to sample delights of NYC), is coming so stay here with the cats and me. We'll go look for some car stuff to do. Maybe some museums.

And try out restaurants. Paul says he's in search of the perfect margarita. We'll start with Mijares, a terrific Mexican restaurant next door in Pasadena, and branch out from there. Who knows what kind of trouble we might get into without the girls? Maybe Aerosmith will be playing there. After a couple of margaritas, I'm certain we can "Walk This Way!" (Full screen, please, and please turn up the sound!)

-JFT

I Am Not Ansel

One of our great joys over the years has been to book ourselves into the Awahnee Hotel for a winter weekend in Yosemite. We've done this four times, most recently the first weekend in February. Here's a look at the Awahnee - as always, you can click on this and other photos to see them fullsize.

Yosemite in winter? Madness, right? Maybe, but there is method to our madness. First of all, it's actually possible to secure a (relatively) short-notice hotel reservation during the winter. Second, the park is almost always relatively quiet. Third, there usually is a nice blanket of snow on the ground, even at Yosemite Valley's 4,000-foot elevation, making the place even more stunningly beautiful than it is during summer. Fourth, snow notwithstanding, the weather can be pretty good.

This time, item one was true. No problem with reservations.

Item two, not so much. The park was very busy, so much so that without reservations in the hotel restaurant, meals were problematic. Blame this on item three - there was absolutely no snow anywhere, thanks to this damned drought, and also thanks to a prolonged period of warmer-than-normal temperatures. And item four? The weather was warm, cloudy and stormy. Rain was the weekend's prevailing feature.

Going to Yosemite means that Laura and I bring our cameras. How could you not? This is one of the most beautiful, most scenic and photogenic spots on the planet, perfect for making iconic images. Even an idiot can make them. Well, most idiots can. I couldn't. At least not this trip. See what I mean? Dark and dim, not enough light on Yosemite Falls to make the colors pop.

Photography is all about light and composition. And here, it's about the interplay of light with stone and tree and water. But this weekend, the cloud cover and the rain kept things so dark that trying to grab a decent photo was little more than an exercise in frustration.

I figured, "Hah! I have a digital camera and I have Photoshop and those two elements make everything possible. I am invincible!"

Well, no. I came home from this trip frustrated and discouraged. Yeah, I got some photos and a few of them are - well, adequate. Laura did better. She, with her artist's eye, always does.

So no, no photographs that would make anyone think of Ansel Adams. Unless of course a viewer was to ponder one, or several, of them and think to themselves, "Ansel would not have been so dumb as to try to make photos in these conditions. And if he had, he probably would have succeeded." Here is Laura with a statue of John Muir, the park's patron saint.

But there is far more to Yosemite than photos. We did a good bit of hiking - yes, even in the rain. Anticipating a bit of weather, we took gear along to keep us dry. So we got up close to Yosemite Falls and to Bridalveil Falls. Saw deer (Below is Laura's nice shot of one of the critters) and coyotes. Marveled at how quickly the Merced River, which runs through the valley, rose; and how violent it became, immediately after the most vigorous of the storms blew through.

What we didn't see were bears. We tried. We embarked on the 90-minute "Bear Walk" with ranger Shelton Johnson, a bit of a park celebrity who is known for appearing in several Ken Burns films and for offering up insightful, intelligent comment on Yosemite and on the importance of national parks. 

He's also a very funny guy who kept us entertained with his explanation of the black bears who occupy the park. Didn't matter that it was raining hard through the whole walk. We were captivated. Didn't even matter, really, that we saw no bears. We learned a lot about them, and about why national parks matter.

Monday, as we left the park, naturally the weather broke. The sun came out to illuminate Yosemite in all its glory. Laura shot a few pictures. This one, shot from the tunnel overlook, is one of hers. I left well enough alone.

Yosemite's final bit of glory, at least for those departing south on Highway 41 toward Fresno, is the Mariposa Grove, the park's iconic stand of giant Sequoias. For all the times we've been in the park, we'd never stopped there. But we did this time.

Star of the show was, and is, the Grizzly Giant, a huge and stately tree said to be about 1,700 years old. Amazingly, the grove was packed with people. Never mind that this was a winter Monday. Lots of hikers, young and old, out enjoying the forest. Just as we were. Here's the Grizzly Giant, another of Laura's photos.

Once home, I dumped my photos onto my computer to confirm what I already knew: Most of what I got was dross. Indeed, I am not Ansel.

But there's probably a larger truth lurking here. It is that not anyone is Ansel. Only the great Ansel Adams is Ansel. Only he had his special photographic gift, a combination of intelligence, patience, energy, determination, technique and artistic eye.

As for me, I tend to hurry. I get the photos I get. Mostly, usually, they are - well, at least adequate. Sometimes they're a little better than that. And once in a while I find one good enough to print and put into my collection of prints.

But always, no matter the quality of the take, I learn something from my photo forays. That was the case this past weekend. First, again, not everyone is Ansel. Also, it is destructive to try to be Ansel. Better, I think, to employ your own eye and get what you can get in whatever conditions you encounter. You won't always be successful. But sometimes you will be. And when you are, it makes it all worthwhile.

-JFT

 

 

Sharpness

In photography as in all things, sharpness is good.

No, wait. It's not just good. It's the holy freakin' grail.

That's why I am on a quest for sharpness.

But again, I've proved - as if any proof was needed - that I am an idiot.

I've known since I first took up photography back in college how to test a lens for sharpness: You tack a newspaper page on the wall and make images of that page, an exposure at each of the lens' f-stops.

Until today, I'd never done that.

I'm lucky enough to have some pretty darned good lenses. Three of the four are razor-sharp. But my 100-300 zoom is a bit less so. Odd because it is a quality hunk of glass, a Canon L-series lens that was quiet expensive, even when I bought it more than 25 years ago.

But I've been bugged by that lens' softness in some situations. So today, out of excuses, I finally did that time-honored old test.

What I found is that the lens is reasonably sharp everywhere, starting at f32, its smallest aperture. You'd expect that, according to photo tradition - smaller f-stops are supposed to be sharper than larger ones.

But wait: It was sharp at f32, but sharper still at f16, and even a little sharper still at f10. That busted the hell out of traditional thought. And it remains pretty sharp all the way down to f5.6, its largest aperture, where it is supposed to be at its softest.

Here are a couple of the photos.
You can see that the first one, the f32 example, ain't bad.


But if you study the detail of the type in the second and third shots, f16 and f10, respectively (and I admit, you have to look closely), the detail is a bit cleaner.

I've tried to make these test images about the same size - I hope you can see what I'm yakking about.

Lesson of the day? Continue using the aperture priority on my camera, a Canon 40D. (I know, it's technologically out of date. So what?) And use f10 whenever possible.

Amazing, the stuff you learn when you (finally) take a moment and work the problem.

Also, see, you newspaper haters? Newspapers have utility even beyond use as bird-cage liner.

-JFT

P-day Looks Toward W-day

Today was P-day here in our house, and also in a house in Washington State. Today, Feb. 1, is the first day hikers can apply for a wilderness permit to use the trail to hike to the summit of Mt. Whitney.

This is a trip my son, Matthew, and I have discussed for a while. We got going on this too late last year to score a permit. The demand for them, you see, is intense and because of the possibility of storms in the spring and fall, the window is a small one.

But this year, we both were up bright and early, he in his home (he's a middle-school P.E. teacher up there) and I in mine, to hit the Forest Service's lottery site with our wilderness permit applications. He scored. And I scored when I applied for a campsite at a place called Whitney Portal.

Securing a camp site is really important because the Portal is at an elevation of 8,000 feet. Spending as much time as possible there prior to one's ascent to Whitney's 14,496-foot summit is critical because a bit of acclimatization - or more than a bit, if possible - is the only way to stave off the threat of altitude sickness.

Altitude sickness is an ugly thing. The only cure for it once it hits is to retrace one's steps to a lower altitude. So we plan to spend most of a day and all night in camp at the Portal.

We will arise well before dawn the next morning and set out. I do not, now that I am well into my 70s, plan to do the entire 24-mile round trip - I've been to the top twice and that was quite enough, thank you very much.

Matt's plan is to go up and back all in one day, for sure a bit of a risk. But he's strong, fit and experienced, there will be many people on the trail, and he's got me for support down at the bottom, so he'll be fine.

So I'll go the first few miles with him and when I need to, turn back. Not being quite as dumb as I look, I think I'll drive down to Lone Pine and have a nice breakfast at a local joint I know that serves the biggest, most solidly unhealthy breakfasts I've ever seen. And then I think I'll do a little fishing. Lots of trout reside in the region of the Eastern Sierra and some of them will be waiting for me.

But mostly I'll hang around camp waiting for Matt to arrive back at the Portal from what promises to be a grueling trip. I'll take a book and a banjo to amuse myself while I worry about him.

And when he shows up, we'll load up, have a celebratory meal, and then head home. Should be one hell of an adventure.

-JFT

Notes on Reporting and Writing

Editors note: I wrote/complied this several years ago while working as a newspaper copy editor, my last gig before retiring after almost 43 years in journalism. For one reason or another I never got around to distributing it. I just now stumbled over it in my files. I thought that now might be a good time to post it here in The California Files, where there is very little danger of anyone actually reading it. 

First of all, this, you reporters: You are here to do one of planet Earth's great jobs - proper, serious journalism, something that is needed and valuable. Approach it with enjoyment, enthusiasm and professionalism. If you don’t, you take the risk that nobody will read your work, nobody will read your paper, and that paper will blow away like a dust bunny, taking your job with it.

 Times are tough and space is very tight. Make every word count.

 Be totally, 100 percent, accurate. There is no excuse for anything else. Check, double-check. And spell names correctly, dammit!

 Be clear. Remember the advice of humorist James Thurber, who said, “A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn’t make any sense.”

Keep sentences short. Keep them easy to follow. According to the lore, a reading test once revealed that for a news story, 18 words is the ideal sentence length for good reader understanding. I think that's good advice, but 15 to 25 words is a practical goal.

Learn grammar and spelling. And please, no matter how smart you think you are, use a dictionary. (You do have one handy, right?) Also use spell-check. Please! Use the grammar-checker, too. This is because we all make mistakes. Even I doo, from time to time, though knot veryoften.

Use active, colorful verbs and nouns. 

Shun modifiers. Mark Twain said, “If you catch an adjective, step on it!” Likewise, Stephen King is reputed to have said, “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs.” You’ve heard of those two guys, right? They’re modestly successful authors who might just be onto something. 

Don’t try to be cute, clever or funny if you can’t be or shouldn’t be. 

Context is all. Supply adequate background – but not more than you need to make the story work. 

Let your curiosity go wild – that’s implicit in your job. As a reporter, you possess a license to ask questions, to be curious, to be downright nosy. Always ask why. Always ask how. Then ask again until you completely understand the situation. If you don’t understand, the reader certainly will not. 

Do not give up until you get the quote you need. Do not be satisfied with stupid, boring quotes. Don't ask leading questions or put words in your source's mouth. But keep at it until you get your source to say something interesting – but never, ever, ask questions that will get you yes/no answers. Get your source to explain. And for God’s sake, repeat the quote accurately. 

Work hard on your first sentence and your first graf. It must contain the kernel, the nut, of the story. That’s where you win, or lose, the reader. 

When you’re happy with the lede, build your story methodically from there. 

Be thorough. Does your story include the five W’s and the H? If not, why not? You’d be surprised at the stories that cross my desk that are missing at least one of these essentials. (When this happens, I recommend that the offending reporter be flogged. Sadly, this practice has fallen into disuse.) 

Do not fall into the awful trap of using the jargon used in the beat you cover. Turn police jargon, which is the worst, into real English. Same with schools – it’s not “faculty say,” for instance, it’s “faculty members say….” 

Be critical of your work. Edit. Re-read. Edit again. Does your story say what you mean for it to say? Same with every sentence. Make sure each one says exactly what you mean for it to say. 

Always. Take. Notes. Really good ones. Recorded ones. Make sure your story says what your notes say, precisely and accurately. Keep those notes. Why? Because you may need them later, long after your story is published. Somewhere, someday, somebody is going to sue you and the paper you work for over something in one of your stories. You will need to prove that your story, and your notes, are completely and totally accurate. 

And finally, this is so important that it bears repeating: You are here to do proper, serious journalism, something that is needed and valuable. Approach it with enjoyment, enthusiasm and professionalism. If you don’t, you take the risk that nobody will read your work, nobody will read your paper, and that paper will blow away like a dust bunny, taking your job with it. 

And furthermore:

How to Write Good

The first set of rules was written by Frank L. Visco and originally published in the June 1986 issue of Writers' Digest. The second set of rules is derived from William Safire's Rules for Writers.

---

My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules:

Avoid Alliteration Always. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They’re old hat.) Employ the vernacular. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive. Contractions aren’t necessary. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos. One should never generalize. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”

Comparisons are as bad as clichés. Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous. Profanity sucks. Be more or less specific. Understatement is always best. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement. One word sentences? Eliminate. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake. The passive voice is to be avoided. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed. Who needs rhetorical questions?

 

Parenthetical words however must be enclosed in commas. It behooves you to avoid archaic expressions. Avoid archaeic spellings too. Don't repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before. Don't use commas, that, are not, necessary. Do not use hyperbole; not one in a million can do it effectively. Never use a big word when a diminutive alternative would suffice. Subject and verb always has to agree. Placing a comma between subject and predicate, is not correct. Use youre spell chekker to avoid mispeling and to catch typograhpical errers. Don't repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed. Don't never use no double negatives. Poofread carefully to see if you any words out. Hopefully, you will use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.

Eschew obfuscation. No sentence fragments. Don't indulge in sesquipedalian lexicological constructions. A writer must not shift your point of view. Don't overuse exclamation marks!! Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing. Always pick on the correct idiom. The adverb always follows the verb. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be by rereading and editing. And always be sure to finish what

 -JFT

The Drought: No End in Sight

Editor's note: I was invited by our neighbor and pal Jim Thomas to attend a Rotary Club meeting this morning. The featured speaker was Bill Patzert, the Jet Propulsion Lab's climatologist, who knows a thing or three about the drought. This is a topic that interests me so I went along. Patzert's comments didn't contain anything I hadn't already heard - at least until he delved into water politics by proposing that the state's agriculture interests should get less water so urban and manufacturing customers can get more. I don't see that happening anytime soon, for sure. But the talk was interesting, in any case. I ginned up a news story based upon what I heard. Here it is:

California's crushing water shortage probably won't end any time soon and likely will be solved only by redistributing some of the water now used by agricultural interests to residential and manufacturing customers.

That was the message from JPL/NASA climatologist Dr. William Patzert, who made this foray into state water politics during a presentation titled "The Drought: Are We In or Out?" Friday, Jan. 23, at a meeting of the Glendale, Calif. Sunrise Rotary Club.

He noted that the state's water distribution is based on legislation from the 19th century - essentially the days of the California Gold Rush - and said the state's water laws "are built for the 19th century, not the 21st."

Those water laws grant water usage based on the concept of "first in, first out." Many of the water districts that supply agricultural interests in the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys are organized around senior water rights that date back to the middle of the 19th century. Because of their seniority, those districts are granted first priority on water usage.

Patzert said that California agriculture uses 80 percent of the state's water but accounts for just 2 percent of the state's economy, which he said is the seventh-largest in the world. He said the state's industry and its urban areas get from 10 to 15 percent of the available water.

He urged his audience to keep these points in mind when they vote for state representatives.

Audience members eager to know when the current drought might end heard Patzert assert that the chances that the current water shortage might end anytime soon are not good.

He said that the current drought now has stretched for more than 16 years of below-normal rainfall and said that January is shaping up to be the driest January in the state's history, just as the last three years have been the driest years in the state's history.

Characteristics of drought, Patzert said, are that they are large, regional, gradual and slow to change. He said that since the 1880s, six of every 10 years in the western U.S. have seen rainfall levels below normal.

And he said that rather than reflecting a severe shortage of water, the west enters drought conditions when annual rainfall totals fall just 15 percent below normal.

A striking feature of the current drought, which covers about a third of the U.S., is a persistent ridge of high pressure off the west coast that forces the Pacific Jet Stream to move northward so that it flows over Canada, rather than over the west coast of the U.S. This is important because the jet stream is what carries storms to the continent. Where it goes, rainfall goes.

This high pressure ridge is caused by something called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which slowly shifts water temperatures between warmer and cooler. The warmer those temperatures, the more likely a wet El Niño season. The PDO has been tending toward the cool, bringing a strong area of high pressure that pundits have named the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge.

When will that change? "That's the big unknown," Patzert said.

He said that unless February and March are extremely wet, California will see its fourth straight year of extreme drought in 2015.

The impact of the current drought is felt more strongly than that of previous droughts because during the last prolonged dry spell, which took place between 1945 and 1978, there were far fewer people in California and thus a far smaller demand for water. He said in 1900, the state had 10 million occupants and now it has a population of 40 million.

"We need better water storage and management," he said.

-JFT

 

 

 

Photography's Slippery Slope

I have for many years fooled around with photography. Indeed, it was part of my education in journalism school, complete with many happy hours spent in a darkroom.

But lemme tell you, photography today is an incredibly slippery slope, more now than ever before. Here's how far I have slid down that slope:

We all know that darkrooms are anachronistic, right? That's because darkrooms exist today in our computers in the form of Photoshop, a program that will do everything anyone could ever do in even the most sophisticated darkroom (well, except allow you to make out with your sweetie in a secure, dark room), plus much more. (Right, no more Dektol and fixer, no more developing tanks trays, timers, enlargers, etc. This is a good thing.)

So my workflow goes something like this: Shoot the photo, transfer it to my computer, fettle it using Photoshop, print it. And that's where the trouble starts.

Not everybody prints, but I do. I print 8 x 10 glossy prints of my very best images. I keep these in plastic display sleeves in big loose-leaf binders I can look at whenever I want to.

So having a printer, a good one, is an imperative. For years I've relied on an HP Photosmart all-in-one unit, the one you see here. Regular size. Inexpensive. Excellent results. But now it does goofy things when I print photos. Nobody can figure out why - and yes, I've completely worn out my welcome on the HP help line and wasted gallons of ink and pounds of paper.

Clearly a nuclear response - a new/another printer - was in order. Laura is partly responsible for this - she urged me to go whole-hog and obtain a dedicated photo printer. In criminal-justice circles, this is known as aiding and abetting.

So I drove over to Samy's Camera, our local paradise photo superstore and bought a real photo printer. The unit I choose is a long way from the high end, as these devices go. But it will print photos of up to 13 x 19 inches, which is bigger than I need, and the job it does is terrific. And I got a great price that is augmented by a nice rebate, which means the thing will cost me about what a new HP Photosmart would have cost.

But the thing is, as you can see, huge. I might as well have a golden retriever sleeping on my desk. Oh, wait - the cats never would stand for that, because sleeping on my desk is their private gig. But it's big. It's also very complex, with eight ink cartridges and a new set of controls and possibilities that I will have to learn. But I will indeed learn them.

So I'm set. I've got a supply of premium photo paper, including a few examples of really fancy canvas, bamboo and linen paper and more, and I'm set. Until I run out of ink. Which probably will happen pretty quickly.

Ah, well, I'll just have to make another trip to Samy's. Like I said - it's a $lippery $lope.

-JFT 

On the Santa Fe Trail

"Red chilies, green chilies, or Christmas-style?"

When a waiter asks that question, you know you are in Santa Fe. That's because here in New Mexico, the chili is a big deal. (And here on the left is the way they are displayed almost everywhere. As always, click on the picture, and on the ones to follow, to see it fullsize.)
And so is the difference between green chilies and red ones. (Clue: They turn red, and from merely hot to very hot, with age.)

My choice was Christmas-style - on other words, a selection of both. And on this occasion it was at the Plaza Cafe in Santa Fe for breakfast. Huevos rancheros, naturally.

Man, those chilies are hot, whichever style you choose. But that suits me just fine because we're here, at least in part, to chase down some hot New Mexican cooking.

We decided on a road trip this Christmas, since we have no family to keep us around home. So we loaded up the "Magic Carpet," as Laura calls her car, and headed out.

Stayed at the old St. Francis Hotel, just a block from the city's old plaza and the Palace of the Governors, which was built in 1610 and is the oldest continually occupied public building in the U.S. It's also where scores of Indian silver artists
offer their wares, which they spread out on blankets under the portico, so is very much worth a stroll.

It is this sort of history that draws us here. Also the food. And also the art. And also the altitude, which is right at 7,000 feet. And also the light, which because of the altitude and cleanliness of the air, is absolutely crystal-clear, so bright that it reveals what things, and colors, actually are supposed to look like.

We hit a couple of the city's best restaurants - the Santa Cafe and Geronimo, respectively, for dinner Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I preferred the former, I think. The latter was good but incredibly expensive. We wanted badly to get into Tomasita's, down in the old Railyard section of town and renowned for its traditional Mexican food, but the place was just too busy to seat us without a wait of at least an hour. Not-gonna-happen.com.

Canyon Drive, a short walk from the town center, is where you find art. Hey, this ancient street, filled with galleries housed in period buildings, is an art piece all its own. We poked through galleries, for sure, but mostly I enjoyed just walking the street and checking out the buildings.

It was cold here. Mornings saw the thermometer reading 17. Temps never rose above about 25 for the four days we were here. But Laura and I packed for this and so did well in spite of the fact that all four of us - Laura's sister, Marilyn Taylor, and her husband, Bob, were along on this expedition - were struggling with the flu.

For most of our visit we stayed close to town, either prowling the sidewalks for window-shopping opportunities or cruising the neighborhoods checking out the gorgeous homes. Expensive stuff. In fact, everything here is expensive.

Friday morning, after the Taylors headed for show reservations in Las Vegas, we headed for Taos and into the teeth of a storm. We stopped along the way to visit the 200-year-old church in Chamayo, and at first thought about completing our journey to Taos through Truchas, up in the mountains. But the storm got severe, the snow got deep, and the road got treacherous. We opted for caution over adventure so turned around and headed back, choosing the main route to Taos, Highway 84. But even that became treacherous, with very slow going.

Taos, like Santa Fe, seems to be trying to out-do Albuquerque as the King of Sprawl. We last were here some 25 years ago and found the amount of growth since then astounding. The historic plaza - that old Indian-killer Kit Carson walked here - seemed smaller and more down-market than we remembered, and certainly more-so than that of Santa Fe.

The real treat was a visit to the Taos Pueblo. This is a huge, rambling adobe structure - series of structures, really - at least 1,000 years old. It was built and remains occupied by the Red Willow People, named for the Red Willow Creek, which runs through the middle of the place, supplying the pueblo's drinking water.

Some anthropologists now think that perhaps the first inhabitants of New Mexico's pueblos were the remains of the Anasazi, who they think may have settled here after being driven from their cliff dwellings by drought. But nobody knows for sure.

Whatever the origin of these people, stepping into this village is like a step back in time. Modern amenities like plumbing and electricity are illegal here, so when you look at the pueblo, with snow on the ground and the smell of wood smoke in the air, you see it more or less as it was when the Spanish first saw it. In other words, visit here and you step back into the early 17th century.

Indian artists have shops here, so it's possible to enter at least small sections of this ancient structure and look around as you peruse the art on offer.

While doing just that we had a chance to chat with Richard Aspenwind, one of the artists, who told us that the people here are Indians. "I'm a Redskin," he declared. His take was that "Native American" is an appellation preferred by militant younger Indians who live in cities. It's a politically correct name, he felt, and not for him. Fine by me.

Aspenwind also told us a bit about the Catholic Church's influence, or lack of it, on his tribe. He said some tribe members do attend the pueblo's church, but whether they do or don't, they all observe the ancient tribal religion, which is nature-based. Hearing him talk about the sun and moon, and about animals such as the bear, then considering what a mess so-called Western Civilization has made of things, it was hard for me to not find this take on spirituality to be inviting. Well, hey, my mom always insisted that hiding back there somewhere there's a little bit of Indian blood.

We're home now and glad to be here, the Magic Carpet having nailed down a wonderful 34.7 mpg for this trip in spite of being conducted along in a very brisk manner. (We saw some incredibly cheap gas - premium for $1.80/gallon right outside Albuquerque.)

Rio and Vivi, the two cats, are happy to have us back. We think. But we're ready to go again because four days in Santa Fe are not enough. There is just so much to see and do there. We're thinking about how and when we can spend more time there to explore, attend Southwest Cooking schools, spend more time shooting photos, visit the various pueblos that dot the area, and much more. All it takes is time. And money.

-JFT

Merry Christmas!

Christmas, a melancholy time of year? Yes, at least a little, we think.

Thanksgiving bubbles past us, clad in the delicious perfumes of a busy kitchen and the memories of family sharing, and then the awful truth hits us: It is December 1.

Good grief, can that be? Where has this year gone? Have we made the most of the year? Have we made the most of our time? Have we done all we meant to do the way in which we meant to do it?

But the melancholy fades quickly enough as we dig the Christmas supplies from their storage boxes in the garage and string the lights up on the eaves of the house.  Next come the poinsettias and the wreath on the door. Then things get serious: The tree and pondering which set of decorations to use (I'm partial to the little handmade German items I've collected at christkindlemarkts for more than 40 years but Laura has her favorites too), the stockings, the candles, the shopping, the wrapping, the Christmas music and finally, the anticipation.

Sure, the melancholy resurfaces as we ponder lost loved ones, parents and more, who are no longer present to help us enjoy this special season.

That sadness is important, I think, because it helps us realize how vital it is to make the most of the present and take care of those we have with us now, even as we recall the warmth and joy of Christmases past.

For we squander that important opportunity if we fail to feel the season's joy, to add to our warehouse of lasting holiday memories with friends and family.

And so it is that Laura and I extend our best wishes to you this holiday season. We wish you all warm kitchens, warm hearths and warm hearts. Merry Christmas!

 - JFT

The Bulge

It was at this time of year in 1944 that elements of the German Army began its last big initiative of WW II. It pushed west through the Ardennes Forest in Belgium and made good gains.

But the push was contained and then stopped. After much fighting and dying on both sides, the weather cleared and U.S. air power took control of the skies.

That was the end of that little adventure. But it really wasn't a little adventure; to refer to it in that way demeans it. It was the stuff of history, the stuff of legend. It was the Battle of the Bulge.

Laura and I visited the area a couple of years back with the idea of peeking into whatever museums we could find and visiting, especially, the forest between Bastogne, on the south, which held the Americans, and the village of Foy, on the north, which held the Germans. That forest was where the 101st Airborne's Easy Company, now memorialized as "The Band of Brothers," fought at the very northern limit of Allied lines and held. This photo, which as always you can click on to enlarge, is a memorial to Easy Company.

The central part of Bastogne is little changed, though on its fringes the town has expanded with modern construction. Foy, on the other hand, a tiny place, showed little sign of post-war development. (And by the way, you can visit this region yourself, and these places, on Google Earth.)

I have no idea what that forest was like then, but today it's a farmed lot, a place where farmers grows trees in neat rows. So it's extremely unlikely, it seems to me, that any of the trees there today are old enough to have witnessed the battle that took place there so long ago. Still, it's interesting, and very evocative, to walk this wood, listening to the pristine silence, pondering depressions in the soil and wondering if those depressions - Laura is sitting in one of them here - were foxholes, or shell holes, or just places where a tree stump was ripped from the soil.
They are perhaps a little bit of all those things, I suspect.

Bastogne is home to several museums that display the usual artifacts of war, including weapons, shell casings, helmets, uniforms, and so on. What makes them interesting is that this stuff, this effluvia of violence, continues to be dug up by farmers tilling their fields.

As you might expect, there are monuments everywhere. And also equipment. We found several nicely restored tanks, including a Sherman, parked in Bastogne's main square, with a thundering shell hole right through it.

And out in the countryside there's an especially poignant cemetery containing the last resting places of hundreds of German soldiers, patriots on the wrong side of an ugly, losing cause.

It's a place of blood, noise, courage, misery and determination. Today the countryside is peaceful, with nothing more falling on one's ear than the lowing of cattle and the racket of farm tractors.

But once upon a time, here at this place, a few good men said no to tyranny and hate. And they backed it up with blood and steel. We all are in their debt.

-JFT