Sycamores in Winter

Ariaona sycamores may well be the most beautiful trees in the state. Their press, though, doesn't compare to, say, cottonwood/willows or aspens or any evergreen. On the other hand, they were well appreciated by earlier Prescott residents and city fathers. Take a look around the Sharlot Hall Museum grounds or Mt. Vernon Street or Park Avenue to see some of the city's wonderful, huge old sycamores. Here's an example, along the street in front of Lincoln School (above.)

Did you notice that the trees still retain some of their rust-colored leaves? That's one distinguishing feature of sycamores in winter. I noticed another on a recent walk -- there were some very white splotches on the trunks, visible roots (above), and limbs (below.)

I suppose that there must have been a lot of peeling bark recently, to produce those white patches. (But I didn't see any bark on the ground -- wonder where it went and when...)

Another distinguishing feature of the winter sycamore: plenty of pom-pom seed balls that resemble Christmas tree ornaments.

Apparently the Lincoln School sycamores have a history. The plaque above is modest in size and easy to miss. However, it suggests a civic battle between the road builders, with visions of widening a major thoroughfare, and neighborhood preservationists, led by one Herschel Linsky. (No, The Google has never heard of Mr. Linsky. I enquired.)

The trees stretch from the south end of the school ground along Park Avenue...

...north to the Beach Street intersection, where the buses load and unload school kids.

This view, looking north, shows how one group of trees was rescued by creating a special lane for what my daughter calls the "Mommy brigade" of cars waiting for children every afternoon. Note the resulting jog in Park Avenue at this point. By the way, I believe that Coronado Street used to go through what is now the middle of the school yard. So: yes, changes are made -- but once in a while, a few handsome trees are saved from the planners' zeal.

Welcome, visitors from the Festival of the Trees. We have some wonderful trees here in the mountains of Arizona; I've written about several of the different kinds at one time and another. For a look, just click on the label "trees" below.

Valentines Yet?

The house of many lights over on Park Avenue is already ready for the next holiday: St. Valentine's. As you may (or may not) recall, the owners celebrate many holidays -- and frankly all this warm red is quite welcome in the midst of the current cold wave. I suspect that the strings of lights that outline the house and fences serve more than one holiday. The red Valentine's lights plus the green St. Pat's lights certainly add up to Christmas colors, for example.

Here are some past displays I've photographed: July 4th Independence Day (plus St. Pat's) ... Halloween. I will try to catch more night pictures as the year's holidays roll across the calendar.

In the past ten or so years, Valentine's Day has caught on in such major non-European cultures as Japan and India. The Japanese celebrate St. Valentine's day in a rather unique fashion. Women give the men gifts of chocolate as well as other gifts. These gifts of chocolate are divided into two types: giri choco (obligatory chocolate) and honmei choco (chocolate for the man the woman is serious about). Giri choco is given by women to their superiors at work as well as to other male co-workers. It is not unusual for a woman to buy 20 to 30 boxes of this type of chocolate for distribution around the office as well as to men that she has regular contact with. But, according to this site, there's a Japanese twist to the celebration -- one month later to the day, Japanese men are expected to give chocolates to the women who previously gifted them.

The Indian version of Valentines Day -- not always pleasant -- is detailed in this article, while thumbnails of other international variations can be found here.

Another Indoor Day: Too Cold for the Cat

But first, a confession. I realize that I am a lousy monkey. A lousy cat. My curiosity gene is crippled. I am an abject acceptor of the status quo. Did I think to go exploring and take a look at the "Applications" list when I first tried out my candy-color loaner Mac? No, indeed. I saw the display of program icons at the bottom of the screen and whined about missing my PhotoShop (among other programs.) Today, I finally did look inside -- and, guess what, yes indeed, there was PhotoShop, along with Word and many other apps. The full drill.

I suppose that if I hadn't been stuck inside because of the cold out there, I wouldn't have bothered to look inside the computer. Yes, it was another cold day in Prescott, hovering around the freezing point though the sun was bright. Even Max Cat thinks twice before he actually goes out the door in this weather. But his memory is very short term. After a period of window watching...

...it's time to plead with me to open the front door. Again. Out he goes. It's cold. He's back at the door, squeaking in his funny little voice to be let back in where it's warm. Sort of.

So the cat is indoors most of the day. When I visit the bathroom, he trots along because any beast with half a brain knows that water fresh from the faucet is better for a cat than stale old water in a dish. Better even than water from my glass.

And he opens the kitchen cabinet doors. Max can't stand closed doors. Once he discovers that a large oblong in a wall is a door that can be opened, he will sit by it, waiting patiently for a people door-opener to do his/her duty for the Cat.

Another excellent indoor activity for a confined cat: leaning on the keyboard while I try to do a little research. Note the papers (left) that he has completely covered with Max.

Did I mention the cat's hang-up on waste baskets? What he really wants to do is curl up inside; in the process of getting there, he spills the dang thing.

Tho I can't blame him for this mess I found on the front porch this afternoon. I had put the black garbage bag outdoors, planning to take it downstairs to the city receptacles. An hour later, I found this. Who? Probably the family of javelinas that's been hanging out in the neighborhood -- two adults and two little guys.

Vehicles That Work for a Living

To a walker, there's something reassuring about vehicles that do something other than move people from here to there -- all too often, a short distance that should be walked! Imagine driving this mechanized cherry-picker from 10-15 feet to the rear of the engine. When I first saw it, the two guys were washing high windows over at an apartment building. I, too, have second story windows that need such easy washing!

And here's a local garbage truck with its robotic pincers in action. I hadn't realized just how complicated the process was til I took a close look at this picture. By the way, I have a lot more pictures in this series -- all on the hard drive of my regular computer which is over at the shop where it should be getting a new power supply or some such replacement to make it whole again. Real Soon Now.

Local Links of the Day: The Alternative Culture Is Alive and Well...

...and occasionally posts something new at a handful of local websites. Let's start with the most interesting: Zenzibar, Internet home of (among many other things) Cosmic Steel. The site includes pages on several years worth of Burning Man adventures, a design for a spiral house in the chaparral, a fire dance group, as well as a collection of radical news links. I knew nothing about Zenzibar when I first came across the Cosmic Steel yard (above) over on Granite Street last summer -- but who with a camera could resist an art car that featured flamingoes? If activisim or progressive causes interest you, go to the web sites of the Catalyst Infoshop or Arizona Indymedia. Neither have been especially active of late, but things can always change!

Never Try to Outguess The Weather Gods!

If you take a close look at the cheerful packages above, you'll see such labels as Red California Poppy or Mexican Hat, Red. Long-time readers may recall that in a fit of optimism about the El Nino bringing Prescott a wet winter, I bought lots of wildflower seeds to scatter up the hill in advance of our anticipated storms.

There the seeds sit, on the kitchen table. It's too cold to go walking. The various weather sites put the temp at 30 or 32 degrees F (roughly 0 C). All that we got from that big storm that's working its icy way across the Rockies and the Great Plains is bright sunshine and a furnace that's working overtime.

Bah! Several major storms have crossed the country, as befits an El Nino year. Not here. Prescott is way under its average precips for Nov/Dec and now Jan. It's all my fault -- I tried to outguess the Weather Gods by buying a one pound bag of red California poppy seed. Mea culpa.

How Many More Trees?

A forbidden thought occurred to me this morning over coffee. I looked at the pile made by a week's worth of newspapers; it was over 10" high. Maybe I should cut back from two to one paper a day. Maybe none. Think of the time I'd have for the Internet. Or taking pictures. Really learning PhotoShop. Reading science fiction and even mysteries. Walking and exploring. Gardening.

The thought made me cringe with guilt. For you see, I began my journalism career as a copyboy on the old Chicago Sun. In my world, news is a duty that has always equaled ink on newsprint. Back when most folk shifted their allegiance to the ubiquitous tube, I stayed with print. Despite my emphasis on graphics on this blog, I remain convinced that the importance of real news and events can't be determined by how exciting the pictures are. Nor by how much talking heads shout at each other. On the other hand, the older I get, the more today's news resembles yesterday's.

But there's that admonition from my 103 year old mother: always do the puzzles -- they'll keep your mind working. Just like this year's crop of researchers have discovered (there's nothing like proving the obvious!) It's actually the puzzles that are taking all the time I spend with the paper. And, of course, those devious feature editors added Sudoku just to further entice me.

So I can't figure out which paper to cut off. The big state daily from Phoenix has the best puzzles; the local Courier offers the local coverage I need as I work on my various blog posts. Maybe I might compromise and settle on weekends only for the Republic. I'm most likely to wimp out and do nothing, as I have done with the cable TV.

Acorns Aplenty

I've written before about the wonderful world of acorn woodpeckers. Pockmarked trees. Gossip groups. But I didn't believe my little Sony was capable of capturing a close-up of their acorns studding the bark of a pine tree. Until Tuesday when I did my first real walk since Christmas. The light on a big, nearby ponderosa looked right and it had a good supply of acorns, so I decided to test the camera's special close-up setting.

Lo and behold. Not only do the acorns show up nicely, but the bark patterns are also very cool.

The only problem: it's difficult to show how deeply the acorns are embedded. I need more shadows for that task. Examining the nuts and the bark, I wonder just how the bark is created and how the layers decide when to peel off. However it happens, the acorns appear to stay in place, merely getting deeper as the bark thickens. At least those which aren't too loose or eaten by a hungry woodpecker (or a clever raven.) Some must remain in the bark for years!

FYI: Firefly Forest, down in Tucson, caught neat pictures of a female acorn woodpecker close-up. Take a look here.

The Loaner Arrived...

...and now I have to learn this new machine's peculiarities! This I definitely didn't need. No PhotoShop. More woes: 1) it is not reading the DVD I burned with most of my pictures on it which means that I have to take new pictures until I get my own, comfy computer back. 2) One more keyboard has accumulated enough cat hair 'neath the space bar that it doesn't deliver more than half the time; I must either slam the space bar the way mid-level executives hit their keyboards -- or go back and insert spaces between most words. But: I'm back on-line and out of the great black hole where I've been stuck!!! Thank you for your patience.

Still no loaner

Granny J is waiting on her Super-Geek's son to bring the Mac by, supposedly this evening. Super-Geek, himself, is at the Consumer Electronics Show (of course). Hopefully she'll be back online this evening or tomorrow.

Computer Woes

Granny J is having computer woes, and hopes to have a loaner Mac in her hot little hands by Tuesday. Hang in there!

A More Muscular Past

I haven't figured out just how to respond to Anonymous who wrote about a growing crime problem in the Prescott area (below, among comments on the Hatemobile.) He/she deserves a thoughtful answer; I'll try but it has never been my intent to produce a political or news blog; the Internet is awash in those (though perhaps we need a blog dedicated to local politics. Any volunteers out there?)

However, the poster's remarks certainly reminded me that the Prescott area wasn't always as comfy and laid back as we now take for granted. The beefy cast iron mining and smelting machines in the Sharlot Hall parking lot date from a time that makes our crime situation look puny.

Hard, dangerous work. Hard living. Hard drinking, gambling and whoring. That's the world represented by this heavy iron.

Chicago: Civilization. Industry. One of the machines was made there by the Gates Iron Works in maybe the late 1870s or early 80s. A long haul west to the mountains.

Where the contrast and struggle between the wild and the civilizing forces was major.

Links of the Day: a Pair of Space Ships

Talk of mystic synchronicity. Or plain, ordinary coincidence! Yesterday, I was touched by rocketships. I like that; I'm one of those romantics who is convinced that exploring -- and living -- beyond the limits of earth will provide food for the soul and give meaning to the future.

So: there was the news that yet another dot.com zillionaire was testing a space machine (above). Namely, Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame and fortune. Wonderful! I'm happy to have profits from my book purchases build spaceships. Go, Jeff, go!

Later in the day, my computer guy showed up to lay hands on the hard drive. And he starts telling me about his rocket that is sitting up on the hillside above the Coke plant over on SR69. His rocket? Well, it's a real collectible from the Space Cadet days of TV-- it apparently began its life as a Promotionmobile for the Luer Quality Meat Company back in 1955 SoCal.

The tale of how the "meat rocket," as it was known, wound up in Prescott's backyard is well spun at Weird US, and there's further background here and here (as well as the originals for the photos above.) Maybe my computer guy will tell his story on his own blog one of these days.

Our Own Hatemobile

Periodically, I see the Hatemobile making its way through traffic downtown. Its signs do not change; my opinion of the driver and what he represents does not change. There's little else to be said.

Mountain Monograms

Bingo! Wish I could take credit for that phrase, but I came across it when consulting with The Google on the subject of just why all those letters on mountainsides near Western towns. Such as Prescott. And Jerome. And Coolidge. And Tempe. Among many others, apparently.

I discovered a fascinating web site called Deuce of Clubs; Doc, who maintains the site was asked "how come?" His answer, "I do not know that answer. I would like to know it. Having grown up in a tiny desert town with a C on the mountain, I'd accepted it as normal behavior to put town initials on mountains. Can someone really smart tell me how this behavior started?" My early experience was pretty much the same -- when the family went on a road trip, I always anticipated the initial on the mountainside at each little Arizona town.

Doc may have been talking about Coolidge (above) or Tempe, where the ASU "A" regularly gets a repaint job (below). Both pictures from the Monogram Mountains site.

However, go visit Doc to see Western mountain monograms from A to Z. And to read the full explanation -- by a professor, yet. It appears that "The 'Big C,' constructed on the Berkeley Hills by students of the University of California in 1905, seems to be the first of all the hillside letters in the West. It still occupies a commanding site overlooking the San Francisco Bay area, but eucalyptus trees now obscure it from all but direct view."

Writing in 1986 in a journal called "Landscape," James J. Parsons also noted:

"Hillside symbols have a surprisingly respectable history dating back some eighty years. To a remarkable extent the letters can be traced to a single decade, 1905-1915. They have almost always been built and maintained by college or high-school student groups. The earliest letter-building projects were devices for defusing increasingly violent inter-class rivalries, which college administrators and faculty found difficult to control. It apparently worked. Making a letter was often a gala community event, an organized "men's workday" declared a formal school holiday, with picnic lunch and supper provided by campus women."

So there you have it. Our own "P" is a legit part of the package, according to the arrangement that might give/lease or sell Badger Mountain to the city or some other conservation group.

What Do You Do With A 2nd Hand Church?

Several weeks ago, the Courier ran a big article about the problem former churches present on the real estate market. "Buyers are often intimidated by the cost of adapting a church for commercial or industrial use. The buildings tend to have high heating and cooling costs because of their towering ceilings and large open spaces," according to the article.

Significantly, the article did not mention two pieces of one-time church property here in town: the old Potter's House at Ruth and Sun Streets and a former Lutheran church on West Gurley.

Above, the handsome Gurley Street church. I don't have a current picture of the Potter's House; while it carried a "for sale" sign a year or so ago, there's none right now and I have seen quite a few cars in the parking lot.
Meaning that the structure might be in use. Not that there's any sort of sign to let us know.

...Meanwhile, back to Gurley Street. Here is the ramp leading to the second upper level parking lot overlooking the traffic.

At one point, it looked as though a small congregation had leased a part of the property, although the group seemed to be limited to the parsonage to the east of the sanctuary. But they left. One day, I noted this sign (above). Not very prepossessing!

Now, a more mainstream firm is in charge. Light industrial? How sad. And next door to a lovely old Victorian house on the corner.

There are paying occupants in portions of the buildings: an aikido dojo (which is actually a more spiritual use than many others might be) plus a drug abuse center, which posts mysterious color messages in its second- level window (below.) Unfortunately, its clients are careless with their fast food packaging.

The Prescott Fine Arts Association is long settled into this former house of worship. Another non-profit appears to have taken over the St. Luke's Marina property. Surely there's a better future for that Gurley Street building. I can't imagine conversion to condos would make units pricier than those in that new creekside building, for instance!

Not Your Jewish Mother's Chicken Soup

By way of explanation: friend Linda G. and I have a small problem. She has asthma; I have a cat. That said, we usually meet on neutral ground! But Linda is also a great cook and she called me today, with word that she had a big cauldron of chicken soup, that her granddaughters were with her and that they would drop off a meal or two's worth of said soup. Sure enough, three stairsteps of girls showed up at the front door with a paper bag. Inside: soup, glorious soup. This was a remarkable soup. Nothing eastern or New York about it. Tomatoes, yet, along with the requisite onions, spices and oodles of chicken. But the most wonderful ingredient of all is something I would never have thought of. Ever. Nice big green chunks of avocado! Plus a wee bit of cheese.

Now that is food. Thank you, Linda. Guaranteed to make one better!

Last Year's Ephemera

What better time to gather a handful of ephemeral pictures from 2006 than to celebrate the New Year! I'm in no shape to mark a ritual that has long outlasted its meaning for me, but I am fascinated by these odds and ends I found in my wandering the past year. For example, somebody had a birthday. #26, apparently. Without the magic of PhotoShop, I wouldn't have been able to bring up the worn chalk marks! I hope the individual in question is enjoying his/her 26th!

Don't know the pre- or post-history of this event which had something to do with 1) California (maybe -- note the cities) and 2) Prescott College, where I found the sign early this summer. Actually, I cropped off the best part -- the castle, which extends several inches below the margin above. Hope everybody got their $5 worth!

This is the sort of ephemera that gives greens the gollywogs -- a tiny oil slick I noticed one day during the monsoon rains over at the Chase bank. So pretty, so short-lived, so like each New Year!

A Happy 2007 to Everybody!