Web Blah Garza

My oldest daughter Raya was born today, her mother and I had a passionate stormy short relationship. I loved her Mother very much. Raya was born in Flagstaff AZ, her mother had come there to give our relationship another try. We settled down and got a modest place, I got a job as a baker and continued my career as a musician. I had been a political activist working on Native American struggles. I stopped that and focused on being in the relationship. I wasn’t ready and and all the baggage I carried was just too much and after losing my cool and temper one too many times I decided it would be best to leave the relationship, that was when Raya’s mother told me she was pregnant. I remember I was in my van loaded with my stuff and about to drive away when she told me. I turned off the van looked at her and asked what do you want and she said stay. I did and after a time Raya was born. I remember her mother had a long and difficult labor, after 36 hours and only five centimeters, we transported. At the hospital we waited in a room and Raya’s mother rested, at one point an older Doctor (male) walked in and suddenly broke Heidi’s water, to induce labor. As always things happen, after a long vigil over Heidi I was tired and hungry so I offered to go out for food for the midwives and myself. Shortly after I left things happened, when I got back the baby had stressed and a C section was done. Back then Doctor’s were far more patronizing and had very little regard for the needs or wants of patients (Doctor knows best). We later decided that when the doctor broke the water Raya laid on her cord and hence the stressing (so much for medical wisdom).

After a time we spent several days in after birth bliss and wondered what to name our baby girl. Let me go back to the birth. During Heidi’s labor there had been an incredible lighting storm and much like our relationship it had been very stormy. As we bantered names about I said how about Raya (lightning bolt in Spanish) Heidi loved it and so it was. Our little lightning bolt was born and named. After a year of up and down we parted after one last very stormy argument, I lost my temper one too many times and I lost my little family.

Heidi decided to leave Flagstaff and nothing I could do would convince here otherwise. One day I watched them drive away and saw the face of my year old baby girl looking back at me as she drove away. After a few communications I respected Heidi’s wishes to stay away from Raya and her.

That was the last time I ever saw her except for pictures, and since Raya and I  have communicated over the years off and on. I became nothing more than a biological father to her and I became less pained over the years. She may never know but I carry that day with me always and will never forget, having only one regret, that I’ve never been there for her on birthdays and special moments when she has discovered something new with wonder in her eye’s, or to wipe away tears from her face when she has been hurt, or to here her call me Daddy. She is now a woman and a very beautiful one like her mother, Happy birthday Raya, may you always be blessed with love.

Well I’m sitting in an intgernet cafe in Crede CO, right now writing this entry. I was contacted by the owner through Myspace about march and was asked if I would play at his very tiney Tavern. It’s just a niche of a place with barely enough room for maybe 30 people or a few more. Creede is quite the small town, reminds of Oak Creek Colorado in the 70’s Oak Creek and Phippsberg are located south of Stemaboat Springs about 30 miles south in the Yampa Valley. The town of Creede Is quite quaint but most obviously a tourist town. Here is a shot from Wiki, I should have my own pics in my next entry.

A little info on Creede,

“Travelers to this area appeared in the early 1800s. Tom Boggs, a brother-in-law of Kit Carson , farmed at Wagon Wheel Gap in the summer of 1840. The first silver discovery was made at the Alpha mine in 1869, but the silver could not be extracted at a profit from the complex ores. Ranchers and homesteaders moved in when stagecoach stations (linking the mining operations over the Divide with the east) were built in the 1870s, but the great “Boom Days” started with the discovery of rich minerals in Willow Creek Canyon in 1889.”

“Creede is located at 37°50′58″N, 106°55′34″W (37.849311, -106.925983)[7] near the headwaters of the Rio Grande River, which flows through the San Juan Mountains and the San Luis Valley on its way to New Mexico, Texas, and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico.”

More Info

I will absolutely do a follow up to this post and let you know how the gig goes.

I am a child of the 50’s/60’s and most people are unaware of the fact that without Bo Diddley the Rolling Stones wouldn’t have their sound. Many famous rockers of the sixties copied Bo and to tell the truth there wasn’t anyone like him before he came around. A cantankarous but humourous man, He will be missed!! His passing marks the end of an era in the Music World.

Last night I drove to Flagstaff from Durango I got to Flag at 3:30 am. I came to pay my respects to my Friends David and Barry Milgram. They lost the youngest of their two sons yesterday. Daniel Milgram was and is one of the most alive young people I have ever known, a perspective and attitude rare in a 17 year old young man. Mostly because of his wonderful parents who have lost one of their most precious gifts. Being a parent I have an Idea what it must be like to be going through what they are going through, but only an Idea. I remember Daniel from his earliest of ages since I have know David and Barry at least that long and watching their two sons become men has been wonderful. Now Joshua is alone with only the memory of his brotgher and I do not envy or know how he must feel. He is a great young man and his brother was a huge part of his life. I spent the morning with my Friends in their grief and remembered good things about Daniel and we laughed and cried. As people began to show up I felt the need to leave as I only came for them and Daniel and not others. I gave them my feelings and shared time with my friends and now I will drive home, back to the land of Hesperus/Dibé Ntsaa the sacred mountain where the Spirits Jump off of this place from. Perhaps Daniel is up there, dancing at the top and preparing to jump off to the next place, perhaps he has already jumped. Regardless he was a jumper, a dancer a soul filled with life and ideas rare for a young person of his age. My Cosmic Little Brother, we shared a rare connection beyond words and with a knowing look we understood together. You will be missed!

Well the Fam is gone to California to pick up Great Grand Ma, I’m all alone here working on the house and taking care of the critters. I’ve been painting today. The last room upstairs to get painted and then wired. I used three different colors one being a sanded paint and made the room look like stone cliff walls. After some time I plan to paint petroglyphs and pictographs on the walls, a true southwest room.

Last night and the night before I was up very late/early working on some older computers I have, rebuilt 2 using componenets from cast offs one 566 mhz just for kicks ands then a 700 mhz. I had this motherboard siting around I thought it was blown, had a processor on it so I stuck it in a box and put a system together, turns out it fired right up, it’s an 800mhz. I’m sticking Mandriva on these systems, I find that 2005LE is superior in function to 2006 (way slugish) and so far 2007 seems commercialized and a Windows wannabe. I like Linux, I get tired of computers telling me what to do, I like telling them instead and linux gives you that control, not for everybody but it’s gaining popularity, I just hate to see it go the way of Windows and become a Jewish Mother like Vista. I go back to the DOS era when there were no operating systems like Windows and a mouse to keep you tethered to the operations. In those days you could give a computer several commands in a row, sit back and drink your coffee while it ran the routines. Now we are imprisoned by the mouse tail (wired or wireless) and the slow user friendly OS.

I have four nanny goats two have given birth and two more are expecting, I put one in with the other mothers and left Butterscotch out because the other three pic on her. So the other morning I go out to feed and I hear this baby, immediatly I wonder who’s it is, because one nanny is in the Mother pen, and the other is out grazing in the field. I worry I have to bottle feed a baby because Butterscotch has abandoned it. I look in the stall and I see this black critter, I think “What kind of goat is that?” then the light goes on and I realize it’s a black Lamb, one of my Ewes (I have 2) had given birth. Funny thing about it all is that my ewes are not sheard and I had no clue they were pregnant. What a surprize it was. The Kidds are getting big already and I know there will be more soon. I hope the little lamb makes it, it’s as cute as a button and seems to be holding it’s own. Mama Ewe seems to be a great mother, she hangs right with her babe. My Ewes are white Black faced and my Ram is also, so a black lamb is quite a pleasant surprize.

I like my life, filled with the dichotomy of two very different ways of thinking, it’s how I keep sane in this mad and out of control world.

Until next time.

The end of an era is upon us once again. Arthur C Clarke changed the way I looked at life early on and lent his imagination to the creation of a world of wonder and contemplation of all things scientific. Along with HG Wells and Jules Verne he gave me much meat for thought and offerd up the wine of perspective. Here is the story from the BBC News:

British science fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke has died in his adopted home of Sri Lanka at the age of 90.
The Somerset-born author came to fame in 1968 when short story The Sentinel was made into the film 2001: A Space Odyssey by director Stanley Kubrick.

His visions of space travel and computing sparked the imagination of readers and scientists alike.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse paid tribute, hailing the writer as a “great visionary”.
Since 1995, the author had been largely confined to a wheelchair by post-polio syndrome.
He died at 0130 local time (2000 GMT) of respiratory complications and heart failure, according to his aide, Rohan De Silva.

Far-seeing scientist

“Sir Arthur has left written instructions that his funeral be strictly secular,” his secretary, Nalaka Gunawardene, was quoted as saying by news agency AFP.
She said the author had requested “absolutely no religious rites of any kind”.
A farmer’s son, Sir Arthur was educated at Huish’s Grammar School in Taunton before joining the civil service.

He served in the Royal Air Force during World War II, and foresaw the concept of communication satellites.
Sir Arthur’s detailed descriptions of space shuttles, super-computers and rapid communications systems inspired millions of readers.

When asked why he never patented his idea for communication satellites, he said: “I did not get a patent because I never thought it will happen in my lifetime.”
In the 1940s, he maintained man would reach the moon by the year 2000, an idea dismissed at the time.

He was the author of more than 100 fiction and non-fiction books, and his writings are credited by many observers with giving science fiction a human and practical face. He collaborated on the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey with Kubrick

‘Great prophet’

British astronomer Sir Patrick Moore had known Sir Arthur since they met as teenagers at the British Interplanetary Society.
Sir Patrick paid tribute to his friend, remembering him as “a very sincere person” with “a strong sense of humour”.

Tributes have also come from George Whitesides, the executive director of the National Space Society, where Sir Arthur served on the board of governors, and fellow science fiction writer Terry Pratchett.

The author married in 1953, and was divorced in 1964. He had no children.
He moved to the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka in 1956 after embarking on a study of the Great Barrier Reef.
There, he pursued his interest in scuba diving, even setting up a diving school at Hikkaduwa, near the capital, Colombo.

“Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered,” he recalled recently.

“I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these, I would like to be remembered as a writer.”
A statement from Sir Arthur’s office said he had recently reviewed the final manuscript of his latest novel.
The Last Theorem, co-written with Frederik Pohl, will be published later this year, it said.

Over the years I have spent a lot of time as a political activist. I worked on many issues as far back as the Viet Nam War, Apartheid, Border Patrol Brutality, Environmental  and Native American struggles. It was during the last part of my carrier as an activist that I worked on Native Issues, I realized we could not affect change anywhere if we couldn’t do it here in our own backyard. During that time I became quite interested in antiquities and ancient cultural history. I was working with BMLDOC (Big Mountain Legal Defense/Offence Committee) when I finally got tired of the "tourists" as my native friends referred to the non-Indian supporters. I realized after a time there was still a Missionary consciousness "save the Red Man" mentality in a lot of the "tourists". I was working as the Office Manager/Book Keeper at the time when I decided it was time to go out to the reservation and spend some time working on "The Land" as many refer’ d to the Rez. It was in March of 1986 when I did this and had forgotten that Haley’s Comet was on it’s return.

Here, I have to go back to my childhood when I was ten, and recall a night when I promised myself I would not forget to see Halley’s Comet, I would be ready and waiting. Needless to say twenty three years later I was very caught up in my life at the time in 1986 and deep in thought of what was going on around me. I had been herding sheep in a snow storm all day and had the worst snow boots you could imagine. I fought all day to keep my feet warm and at one point the sheep decided to stop and graze a small pasture so I stepped under a large Juniper Tree that had a dry area under it and the snow was blocked by a branch. I built a very small fire and took my boots off, one at a time to warm my feet. As the white out progressed, I stood under this tree wondering "what the hell was I doing out here in this situation?"

That night I slept well in the Hogan and was toasted from the wood stove. It was about 4:00 am when I was awakened by the urge to relieve myself, so in  a groggy stupor I arose and stepped out the Hogan door to take a leak. The door of a Hogan always faces east so the People can face the sun in the morning, I believe there is a more deeply spiritual reason for that but I was never privy to it. While I was standing there my attention was drawn to the clear cold night and the brightness of the stars, the like I have never seen again. There above the eastern horizon was the most spectacular site I had ever seen up to that point in my life. Halley’s comet was at first dim then bright and fluctuated back and forth between the two with it’s tail stretching across the horizon also fluctuating from long to short. I stood there for quite a while amazed and awed by this incredible show of the universe.

I had heard that the comet was a disappointment to many and that people were straining in the cities to even see it (no doubt due to the excessive lights), but there on the reservation miles from the nearest lights, on the night of the best viewing the comet had to offer, I saw what many over the centuries had been amazed by.

Then it occurred to me, that the Universe is a mind, and that in it’s great wisdom it never forgets. The ten year old boy was there again and I was reborn (not the last time this would occur) and it came to me "What the Hell I was doing out here in this situation". Perhaps it is best that many no longer live the life of the Traditional Path, but for those of us who seek it and work to understand it, there are great rewards. Even to this day I will always carry the moment and perhaps, that is what the Universe is all about, that persona we call God, a memory beyond any that our minds can fathom. We are mere synapse in the brain of the Universe. Strange how words are, Uni = One and Verse = Song, the celestial song.

From that point on I was determined to learn about the ancient cultures of our continent and home, I knew somewhere in all of this was a purpose. A message in rock writings and silent walls of the ancient ruins, buried waiting to be found and understood.

That’s all for now. This will be an on going topic, there is so much more before it’s end.

This Summer a group of Doves/Pigeons began to hang around the house and feed on the chicken’s feed. I keep bird feeders around so I made sure there was always some food for them as well. As the summer went on the flock grew until there were about 15 or 20. Doves are very interesting birds, one of the few animals that mate for life. Needless to say the Summer faded and Fall came and the Birds stayed. I was concerned about them not  leaving for the Winter and found out that Doves are not migratory, once they settle in to an area they stay. And stay they did, it is now the dead of Winter, the days have been no warmer than the 20’s and the nights have been in the single and below zero temperatures. It has always been hard to get close enough to  them to get some good pictures but, just today a group of the flock were in the pine tree behind my house. I was able to snap a few shots from from the window.

There are eight doves in these photographs, see if you can find them all.

I am so glad that birds like the Doves, Eagles and Hawks have found a sanctuary here on our property, we have many birds here and the fact that we have many cats hasn’t stopped them from coming and staying in our trees. I hope this spring we find more Doves/Pigeons nesting and growing to be a large flock, it will be a peaceful site.

The Eagle is still around, I saw him/her again today in the big tree. I often wonder if people will ever grasp the beauty of their world. I saw a news story yesterday about the amount of rape occurring in the Congo, there, it is not a crime of passion but one of control and war. The women who survive are strong, probably much stronger than American women would be in that situation. If you judge me by that comment then you don’t understand the amount of rape taking place there and the horrible nature of it, it is much worse than anyone could imagine. I say arm them, I say give every one of those women in the Congo, who’s children and families were abused and punished while they were made to watch them be raped. The anger in them would be enough to help them track down and kill these men. I guess I’m not getting the big picture, that would  just be perpetuating the violence. Is there true justice? Is there a God to judge the horrors committed by humanity?

Well, back to the Raptors the eagle has been around for a while and I finally got close enough for some pictures.

Today it was a Redtail that made it’s appearance, they often fly around here and land in the same tree e as the Eagle is sitting on in the picture, but today I saw a very large Redtail sitting on one of our shorter trees. When I walked out to take some pictures the Eagle, flew from another tree ( the tallest of the trees). The simple beauty of the natural hierarchy. No need for rape, no need for war, just a simple respect for each other and the position they have in the scheme of things. I guess we are too civilized and intelligent to have a simple hierarchy, I guess war and pain are our lot and no matter how intelligent we become it seems our cruelty only grows with it.

Her are some pictures of the Redtail

As I got closer the bird flew away and I got one shot of the Hawk in Flight, very silent and swift so I was lucky to get this one photo.

I wonder if we will ever understand what it is we are? I often look around at my fellow human beings and ask myself if they are listening to the voice of truth or the voice of the propaganda machine. Soon it will be clear to people how much we have been  lied to and soon the heavy hand of control will begin to fall within our own country more and more, till freedom will be a memory and safety and control will be our chains. We shall see.

Woke up this morning with frost all over everything. The sun was just rising so it was misty and white, as the sun rose things brightened up until the contrast became unbelievable.

I dragged myself up and took several pictures, It has been a very cold couple of weeks with the temperature dropping to -1 two nights ago. The high yesterday was 28 at about 3 in the afternoon.

The contrast was exceptional by noon. Early in the morning I was able to capture a couple of shots of frost crystals on icicles.

It’s amazing to me that people go on with their lives each day and never once consider the beauty of this kind of thing. Yes it’s true the cold can be uncomfortable and even a pain in the you know what. But mornings like today make me wonder why people go on killing and hurting each other. Perhaps if once in a while we consider the beauty of frost it could change a little.