24

Today I have a son who is 24 years old.  He’s many things including a mountain climber and a risk-taker—and he loves Boulder.  I know well that he also has a growing wanderlust and I would predict road trips and other adventures in the not so distant future.  Neil Young really had it right:

Old man, look at my life

Twenty-four and there’s so much more

Live alone in a paradise

That makes me think of two.

Love lost, such a cost.

Give me things that don’t get lost

Like a coin that won’t get tossed

Rolling home to you…

                              Neil Young

When I was 24 it was 1977.  Just a few months before my September birthday, M and I had packed everything we owned (mainly books, a typewriter and two guitars) into a tan square-backed VW and moved ourselves from Bloomington, Indiana (where at the time both cheap housing and jobs were in scarce supply) to Boulder, Colorado, mainly to follow our dream of living near the mountains.  I had graduated two years before.  We left everything behind in Indiana—all our friends, our family, our low-paying jobs, the abundant green of Hoosier woods, the orange-red of the Indiana fall.  I am surprised now that we had the courage to make such a monumental change, but at the time it seemed like exactly the right move.  We did have each other, after all.

It was May.  We were blessed with warm, summery weather and we had no idea how lucky we were about that—we camped in a tent for a week at the Wagon Wheel Campground up Four-Mile Canyon, and then we found rooms in a house on the corner of Arapahoe and Lincoln, right across from the public library.

Our housemate was a very strange ex-Californian named Peter, who was older than he wanted us to think, and who had been writing a screenplay for many years.  He was short, blond and tanned, and looked like a misplaced stubby little surfer.  His mother was wealthy and he seemed to have a limited but steady income from his mother to follow whatever dreams he might have.  He had once been a member of a cult on the West Coast, the subject of the screenplay.

We weren’t in Indiana anymore.

The year we came to Boulder a lot of construction was going on along a street called Pearl; they were building some kind of new-fangled outdoors mall where the street would be closed off for a few blocks and only pedestrians would be allowed. 

We were both writing a lot—M in longhand, I with my trusty little electric typewriter that my grandfather had given me when I started college.  We’d saved up enough money to not have to work for at least a couple of months.  It was a time of shining hope and vast optimism.  Ten years, later, Shannon, you were already one year old.  Happy 24th ! 

May your hands always be busy

May your feet always be swift

May you have a strong foundation

When the winds of changes shift

May your heart always be joyful

And may your song always be sung

May you stay forever young

                              Bob Dylan

Independence Day

As M suspected, it was sunny up in Breckenridge this morning, despite being gloomy in Boulder.  We drove west on 70 across The Great Divide and when we emerged from the Eisenhower Tunnel, as if we had journeyed from Kansas to the Land of Oz, we had blue sky and a 4^th of July parade, which was in full swing down Main Street with Corvettes, flags, kids, dogs and firemen.  The folks of Breckenridge do have the USA spirit. 

After quite a bit of searching we finally located our favored Breckenridge independent coffeehouse, The Crown, and found a great seat in an alcove just inside the front door with a fine view of the red-white-and-blue hubbub continuing on the street below.  The Crown has antique mirrors set into carved dark wooden hutches and four stone cupids mounted in a row on one wall and two crystal chandeliers. It is a fine place any time of the year.

On our way back to the car later we passed firemen in the middle of the still blocked off Main Street letting groups of thrilled children handle fire hoses, each group pointing at the other and just close enough to get everybody a bit wet. 

Parades are different now than they were when I was a kid.  Today parades have lots of shiny red and blue streamers and glitter and decorated high tech baby strollers and Corvettes.  When I was a kid, all the girls and women got together and spent many hours in the days leading up to the parade making flowers out of pastel Kleenex—you stacked together the tissues, tied them in the middle, then fluffed them out to make pale pink, green, blue or white blossoms.  These were painstakingly woven into the chicken wire shapes built over the vehicles used as the bases for the parade “floats.”  Then, on the day of the parade, the prettiest girls in school graced these floats, sitting high atop them in their pastel prom dresses and slowly waving to the crowd with white-gloved hands.  One girl got to wear the crown—having won the honor of being queen for a day.  Was I ever one of these girls?  No, I was on the sidelines wearing denim, peace symbols and a go-to-hell hat.

Also—we always had multiple marching bands in their uniforms playing Sousa and there were always pom-pom girls and baton twirlers and there was always a drum major leading the parade and marking time with his staff.  Humanitarian men called Shriners wearing red fezes drove little motorcycles in little circles along the parade route. 

Today, none of this was in evidence—nary a piccolo player nor a tuba blower nor a drummer nor a Shriner could be found.  But there was still a lot of hooting and cheering and American spirit, all the same.  The parade concluded with a spirited reading by a man dressed in 1776 garb.  When we first heard the voice coming over the loudspeaker I wondered whether we might be hearing a modern-day Tea Party diatribe, but in fact it turned out to be the actual  Declaration of Independence, indeed a radical document if you ever heard one.  Happy 4th of July! 

Random Acts of Beauty and Musings On Escape

We take a journey to Denver for the day, and the city presents some quirky images in our sojourn around Lodo and down by the river.  A random act of beauty presents itself—colorful crocheted flowers woven into the metal grid of a construction fence.  We ask a local guy passing by which group did this and he explains that it happened just a couple of nights ago—an unnamed group of girls showed up, wove the flowers into the fence, stood back admiring their handiwork and smiling, then moved on.  These small moments of loveliness do come along if you keep your eyes open.

We spend awhile writing at the desk with the blue lamps at the Starbucks next to Confluence Park, and then  wander into Union Station, with the sign that says “Travel by Train,” and the big old wooden benches and the high arched windows.  Train stations always give me the urge to travel, and trains are a great way to really see what your passing through on the journey.  There are trains that go west over the divide through Glenwood Springs and all the way to San Francisco--if a person were ever to take a great notion to quietly escape her life and journey incognito for a few days, or weeks, or months.

Are Newspapers Necessary?

Doonesbury has had a string of great strips lately on that antiquity, the newspaper.  To many younger people who are constantly online, newspapers seem old fashioned and ridiculously cumbersome.  I’ve been trying to clarify in my own mind why it’s just the opposite for me, why I’ve been fervently grateful for newspapers most of my life.

On Sunday mornings we get The New York Times, which certainly gives a broader and better perspective for the week than the Sunday Boulder Daily Camera.  Usually, as is the case today, we fold up beloved sections like “Week in Review” and “The New York Times Book Review” and stuff them in our backpacks prior to leaving the house.  Wherever we end up for coffee after our drive or walk, we have them handy and they can be guaranteed to offer up new ideas and happenings--information we do not know we don’t know.   

Today we sit outside Starbucks on Pearl Street in the perfect June air and M points out an article about the appalling idea of implanting e-books into one’s retina.  Presumably newspapers would also be available this way.  For someone like me who is still leery of considering laser surgery to correct my astigmatism, this seems beyond the pale.

Newspapers are more versatile than computers or e-books. You can read a newspaper anywhere and anytime you like, unencumbered by details like unavailability of free wireless Internet, lack of convenient power outlets, failing batteries or electrical equipment.  If you’re on a beach you can get smears of sunscreen sprinkled with sand and seagull droppings on your newspaper and really be none the worse for wear.  After you’ve finished reading the paper you can cut clippings from it to send to children in faraway cities or to be magnetically posted on the refrigerator door.

Long ago on humid summer nights in Indiana, those with the knowhow could shape and twist newspapers into loosely formed balloons and light them on the bottom edges.  The fire balloons would then gently lift and soar aloft, rising with the heat upward and upward into the dark night sky to be transformed into sparkling gold and black lace against the stars, with only the fireflies the wiser. 

If all else fails and you have no parakeets whose cages need lining or puppies who need emergency haven, you can recycle newspapers and they will live to see another day.

You can truly focus when reading a newspaper if you like, and not be lured to other links and obligations like checking your e-mail again or peeking to see if anybody likes you on Facebook. 

I will not go so far as to say newspapers are essential to my sense of wellbeing but with some good coffee in the morning, they do contribute positively.  Is this, then, an irreconcilable generation gap as the youth reads their news on the laptop screen each morning? To my broad blog readership, especially those under 25, I pose this question:  “Are newspapers necessary?

Paper Bird

In my continuing effort to get a life outside work, we ventured down to Pearl Street for this summer’s first Bands on the Bricks event, featuring a homegrown Boulder band called Paper Bird. Paper Bird is an intriguing 7-member musical mixture with three female vocalists doing strong, tight harmonies, a banjo, a bass, a guitar – all spiced up with the occasional Dylanesque harmonica riff and a jazzy trombone. Once in awhile one of the women whips out a trumpet and blows a few bars to punctuate a song. Almost all the tunes they do are original and despite the fact that the sound mix wasn’t quite right and the vocals didn’t come through optimally, I became an instant fan, going so far as to buy both a t-shirt and their first CD, “Anything Nameless and Joybreaking.” They have a new CD coming out in July called “When the River Took Flight” that I’ll probably try out as well.

I’ve been listening to the CD in my car all week – a vintage sound and interesting lyrics (which you know I am a sucker for from my previous blogs). Example:

"If i sewed together all my illusions of youth i could make a coat that would keep me warm in December. if we laid all of our desires side by side we'd be walking on broken glass for miles.

chorus:  if i ask enough questions with no hope for reply would i understand the structure of love? i'd like to understand the structure of love."

                                              Esme Patterson, Paper Bird

It’s a satisfying combination of not-easily-categorized bluegrass, jazz, blues, folk—they were a breath of fresh air. If you haven’t heard them before, give them a whirl.

Rainy BoulderWalk

Before our walk we gaze out at the backyard, where the cold rain continues and the grass appears to have grown a full inch overnight.  As sometimes happens between couples who have been together for a long time, M and I simultaneously remember a Ray Bradbury story about a planet where it has been raining for the last seven years and the children who have never seen the sun:  “All Summer in a Day.”

Colorado natives are not accustomed to multiple days of steady rain, and that’s what we’ve had.  Sunday morning we decide to break out the ponchos and risk our lives to stroll along the Boulder Creek bike patch in the epicenter of the flood plain.  We park our car on one of the upper levels in the nearby parking garage “just in case,”  and ponder whether we would hear the rush of the hundred-year-flood in enough time to climb to safety above the creek path.   

Along the wider than usual creek, the water rushes by.  Two kayakers carry their gear past us on the way up to their usual launching point.  “You’re really going to try it today?” M asks in amazement, and they chuckle nervously.  The water is high, but not as high as we’ve sometimes seen it.  The underpasses are partially dry and still walkable.  The rain lightens after awhile, then pounds down heavily, then lets up again, a pattern that repeats again and again.  The clouds throw a heavy cloak over the Flatirons and the rare deep green of the foothills.  At Eben Fine Park a group of gung ho runners soldiers ahead with their sprints and stretches and then heads up the creek trail, their coach running effortlessly alongside them uttering words of encouragement. 

Chief Niwot sits, stoic as always under the downpour, and the birds seem to thrive; the excess water does flush the worms out of their hidey holes.  It is cold for June, around forty degrees.  Last night the steam rose up from our outdoor hot tub and the rain drops made circular patterns on the surface of the   water encouraging meditation on the present moment. 

Yes, it’s a cold rain for June—but we remember the drought days and watering our thirsty flowers with gray water from the bathtub, and are grateful for life and rainfall, knowing as we do the strong connection between the two.

Inverness at South Padre Island

“If there is anything you need and don’t see, please let us know…and we will show you how to do without it.” - Sign on the bathroom wall in the Inverness condo at South Padre Island

And after a few days at Inverness I see that I have everything I need. Maybe it was the constant sound of the surf, or the sleepy heat of the beach between wind bursts, or the 11th floor balcony looking out toward the infinite ocean horizon, or the large sign under the big-screen TV that said “RELAX.” In any event I feel like I can smile easily again and have had a good rest.

I found time to do things like bend myself backward in repeated attempts to capture pictures of seagulls and pelicans in flight from my bird’s eye perch on the 11th floor. And to just sit by the ocean and listen to the waves and read and read and read and read for hours on end. And to let the heat reflected off the sand soak into me and then to finally swim in the salty cool waters, dodging the clumps of seaweed. And repeat. And also to be rested enough to be willing to get up in the middle of the night to observe the thunderstorm and light show out at sea. And again in the morning to arise and gaze down the shimmering path of light leading to the sunrise over the water.

We call it a “vacation” in the U.S. which sounds so empty and clinical. I prefer the European word for it. Believe me, they know how to take time off, and they call it “going on holiday.”