The Coolest Thing(s) I Saw Today

   Right off I-25 southbound at the Cimarron (Colorado 24 westbound) exit...well, about two blocks up Colorado 24 westbound, on your right.

Buffalo Roaming

 

                                             Lou Wille's sculpture in Grand Junction, Colorado

Sometimes You Just Have To Force Yourself To Do Something, Anything

   If there is one thing my experiences with myriad other creative souls has taught me, it is that there is very little that creative souls agree upon. 

   There is an amazing amount of disagreement about what is and what is not  "creativity", and what is really an art form, or what is truly an artistic endeavour.

   One creative's art is often another creative's unaesthetic garbage.

   However, there's is one little thing that I have found that every single creative I have ever met has agreed upon, and that is:

   When you're not feeling it, you're not feeling it, and the best way out of that miasma is to just work it out.

Subaru Cleared For Take Off

 

   Is there anything worse than driving along a highway doing 75 mph and being anywhere near this guy?

   I mean, sure, it could be a logging truck with a full load of fresh cut trees, but man, that mattress and foundation are either going to fly off the top of that Subaru, or that Subaru is going to take flight.

Lullaby For The Part-Time Neurotic

Staring into space and thinking aloud

Maybe, maybe

Somewhat of a tendency to go on

And on and on and on

About things not worth mentioning

Once

For much, much longer than necessary

Seconds becoming minutes that feel like hours

Repeated, repeatedly

Dull stories that have only grown duller

With no limit to the trivial knowledge

Of anything and everything trivial

Two Ladies At The Park

   The loud argumentative voices were just around the corner. Trees and shrubs on either side of the path blocked my view of who it was that was having the argument, but from the sound and tone ringing out in the otherwise peaceful environment of the park, it was two women having quite the disagreement.

   As I made my way around the bend I could see one of the women involved in the rather heated discussion, and she was holding a dog leash that was taut, and in a few more steps I saw the reason the rope was so as her dog, a mid-sized retriever, was jumping excitedly towards another two dogs, one that was on a leash that was similarly taut, and one that was unleashed.

   Both of those dogs appeared to belong to a second woman, who was holding the leash of the second dog I had seen, a small Australian Shepherd, with her left hand and in her right she held one of those flexible plastic ball flinging sticks that allows people to toss tennis balls twenty yards or so without much effort.

   As I closed the gap between myself and the two quarrelling women I began to make out what was being shouted by both of the shouters.

   The woman with the ball flinging stick was repeatedly yelling at the woman with the mid-sized retriever to leave her alone, to mind her own business and that she wasn't harming anyone.

   The woman with the mid-sized retriever was yelling right back at her that the park had signs posted everywhere that stated all dogs must be leashed at all times while in the park, and that ball flinging stick lady should take her dogs down to a park a few miles down the road that allowed dogs off leash if she wanted to play fetch with them.

   Ball flinging stick lady seemed to increase the aggressiveness with which she repeatedly shouted that what she did in the park with her dogs was her business, and that the other woman should take her dog to another park if she didn't like it.

   At this point I began to slow down my strident pace a little, because one, I didn't know if I should sidestep the arguing women by darting around them through a clearing that I was approaching on my left and two, I was caught up in the action of the argument and had half a mind to pull out my phone and start filming.

   Then the mid-sized retriever lady yelled something that pretty much won the argument for her, at least to me she did.

   She yelled, "Stop telling me it isn't my business that you have your dog off leash and are playing fetch in this park. It is my business. There is a small lake right over there and a lot of migrating birds are in this park. The reason those signs stating that all dogs must be leashed in the park is because unleashed dogs have attacked and killed quite a few of those birds  - if people don't keep their dogs leashed and more birds get killed, they'll ban dogs from the park altogether and I like to walk my dog in this park! If you want me to call an animal control officer to explain that to you and write you a ticket, I'll do that now (the mid-sized retriever lady was pulling out her phone with her left hand as she yelled that) or you could just be a responsible adult dog owner and take your dogs down to the park that allows them off leash - there's no lake or birds there!"

   The ball flinging stick lady then caught sight of me coming up the path and looked at the other woman with an expression of pained embarrassment. The mid-sized retriever lady turned and looked at me approaching as well. Both of the women took steps off the path as I grew closer, and ball flinging stick lady called her other dog, the one off leash, to come to her.

   I walked between them with as casual and disinterested an air as I could muster. I weighed whether or not I should pipe up with "She's right, you need to take those dogs to the off leash park to play fetch." as I passed, but being as how ball flinging stick lady was putting her unleashed dog back on the leash, it clearly would have been unnecessary for me to do so.

   It was another thirty or so steps before I was once again beyond hearing if anything more was said between the two women, no matter how hard I strained my ears.

   

Marvin G. Hurd, April 1954 - January 2026

    Marv Hurd passed away 11 days ago, and for 11 days I have not been able to write about it. 

   I suppose that's primarily due to a little shock and disbelief on my part. One evening I'm enjoying tacos and trivia with the man and the very next day I'm told he has died.

   Pretty difficult to wrap my brain around that.

   I had known Marv for nearly twenty years and I can state unequivocally that there was never a time when I didn't enjoy being around him.

   He possessed the odd ability to be as cranky as all get out and as generous as Saint Nicholas, sometimes at the same exact moment, which caught a lot of people off guard but kept me both amazed and puzzled. I mean, he could never suffer fools, not for a minute, but he was never one to excise a person from his life, no matter how much he didn't like an aspect or two of their demeanor or behavior.

   And being part of Marvs circle of friends was a fun, adventurous thing. Years ago, when I first met him, he and his wife Deb and daughters E & B hosted an annual end of summer crawfish/seafood boil that was attended by close to a 100 friends, if not more - it was an exceptionally good time.

   He and his wife also welcomed friends to stay at their Condo down in PV for up to a week at a time, and they were gracious hosts there, taking people for tours of the city and the bay, and introducing their guests to great restaurants and nightspots that were virtually unknown to the average tourists.

   Marv was also one of the few self-made men I've known over the years who was truly self-made. He dropped out of school before finishing the 10th grade and went to work in the gruelling construction field, working his way up from general laborer to owner and operator of his own successful concrete business.

   Along the way he married Deb, a union that lasted from the day of their wedding until his untimely passing. They built and enjoyed an adventurous life together, bringing two daughters into the world and making hundreds of friends and very few enemies, if any.

   I miss Marv, and I imagine a part of me always will.