More Earthships, Taos

We went back today and got to go inside the Visitor's Center. Apparently there are about 60 Earthships on the plains outside Taos, and they are hoping to build more. Those glass circles in the wall are the bottoms of recycled bottles.

Earthships, Taos, NM

There is a whole little settlement of these in Taos. An Earthship is a cool house design based on recycled materials (especially tires) and self-containment. This one is the Visitor's Center; the others are private houses. We got there after it closed for the day, though, so we might go back so we can see the inside. You can also see an Earthship (on an island off, I think, Georgia) in the good-but-really-sad film "The Ballad of Jack and Rose". The tires-and-mud wall is an Earthship-in-progress.

My Violin Is All Fixed!

My friend Brian kindly pointed out to me that I had forgotten to tell everyone the fate of my violin, which as some of you may know, I dropped and damaged after a gig on September 26th. (I tripped over the patch cord, and the violin fell right on the input jack and punched it through to the inside of the violin--this sort of injury being fairly common, apparently.) I had a party the next night and everyone there was very sympathetic and concerned, so thank you all. I ended up taking my violin to Jordan Electric Violins in Concord, and John Jordan fixed it right up for a very reasonable price. (Check them out at http://www.jordanmusic.com/.) It got a new input jack and a fancy new brass jack plate, which is stronger and looks better (all rad and steampunky) than the original wood plate. So big thanks to John Jordan, everyone who was so supportive, and thanks to Noah for driving me home after the gig when I was all stressed out.

Taos, New Mexico

This is Taos, where our cousin and little cousins (her kids) live; we're probably staying here through Friday or so. We had the good luck to be here during the Taos Balloon Rally, which happens every year. Mom and I got up at dawn, threw on some clothes over our jammies, and went out to watch the balloons. (Apparently, these are hot-air, not helium, balloons, and they ascend best when it's cold out.) It turns out that it's sort of hard to photograph hot air balloons so that they look right; it is, as Mom said, like trying to take pictures of the moon. Apparently, after the balloons all go up, they drift across the plateau and go down along the Rio Grande Gorge for the day. I think they are wonderful.

Highway 64, New Mexico

We stopped on Highway 64 on the way to Taos so that Mom could take a short nap after a particularly nerve-wracking nighttime drive where we almost hit two (2) separate groups of elk and one (1) family of mule deer within about two hours. Thanks to Mom's quick reflexes, no animals (or cars) were harmed. It was scary, although it was really cool to see wild animals so close. There was a hard frost that night (it got down to about 12 degrees, we later found out), and when the sun rose, there was frost glittering everywhere. These photos are from a frozen field, at about 8 in the morning. Northern New Mexico is incredibly beautiful, high mountains, flat plains, and golden aspen trees losing their leaves everywhere.

More Grand Canyon

The cool round building is the Watchtower, which was designed by an interesting architect named Mary Colter. She designed a lot of the buildings around the Grand Canyon (based on traditional Native buildings) and is a major influence on Southwestern Style. The Watchtower looks like it's 1000 years old, but it's really from the 30's. When I was at the Canyon I realized that I would have spent about $60 on film so far if I was using a film camera.

Grand Canyon Mules (and a raven)

These are not horses, they are the mules that people ride down into the Canyon (I would like to do this sometime, but it costs about $600 and you need to reserve in advance). The mules were sort of grumpy, but I petted one anyway. Later I found out I probably should not have, as they sometimes bite. But none bit me. A male mule is a "john" and a female mule is a "mollie".