Leafy Testaments

Thanks everyone, for all the 500th Postiversary wishes and for brother Steve's birthday greetings. Both of us have been delighted and honored by everyone's response. We've still a couple of days to go before Deep is bestowed on a random comment-leaver, so jump on in at the previous post.

The journey of the next 500 posts begins with a single entry, so to accommodate my need for a blog topic I took down one show on Thursday and immediately installed another yesterday. Thankfully I have patient and competent friends willing to help with such an expedition, since the Darling Man I usually boss around work with during such adventures was off having fun of his own. (Can you say "flat tire on the way to a gig"?)

Were it not for J. and R. I think I'd still be at the Salida Café trying to decide what piece to hang where. I arrived early in an attempt to have all the decisions made before the muscle arrived but for some reason was completely stymied. The support team brought energy, good eyes, and good humor to the afternoon and turned a challenging installation into plain old fun. (Although I still think that one needs to go a half inch to the right. Don't you agree? Snort.)

We were almost finished when I decided I needed to put one more large piece on the last wall, so I ran home and got Cottonwood to add to the collection.

Cottonwood is one of several images of iconic Chaffee County trees that I have created in the last few years. For many decades, perhaps a century or more, this stately cottonwood served as a graceful landmark along CR 301 near Buena Vista. It wasn't until we were about to hang the piece that I learned the tree was cut down earlier this year to accommodate the pipeline for a new Nestle water bottling plant. It was crushing news-- one more turn of the screw for the many members of this community who fought hard against the establishment of the facility at all.

Inside my sadness over the loss of this tree, though, I am finding a whispered reminder of why I do the work I do. I try to pay attention. I try to be a witness. Drawings, paintings, and linocuts are my testimony. It's good to get it down on paper now. It might not be there the next time I look.

Not to end on a bummer, though... Look what else I discovered yesterday.

Actually, this was the second hummingbird nest of the morning, the other is barely 100 yards away on the underside of the highway bridge. I imagine that one's like an apartment next to the railroad tracks, but this one is a cool refuge in the country. (Yup, I am definitely having fun with the new camera.)

The moral of Post 501? Simple.

Be a witness. Testify. It's good for all of us.