The Dream of being a Showgirl and a Place called Junkee.

For most of my life I thought that Reno, Nevada consisted of Virginia St and the casinos. I had only seen the downtown Casinos under the sign that read "The Biggest Little City in the World" on North Virginia St. My parents took me there when I was very young and I would look though the windows of Harrah's and Harvey's watching my dad play some nickles for me in a slot machine. I thought it was all fascinating. The lights, the people..... It was a place that never slept.
 I even wanted to be a "showgirl" at one point in my life. When I took an aptitude test in high school the results said that  I could either do well as a mechanic or a showgirl. Since I could sing and dance and I was very tall, I didn't think that being a mechanic would fit my image or bring me the excitement that I so desired at 17 years of age. I turned my nose up at what my dad would have called a good, solid profession with good skills and dreamed of being an actress or a singer... or a SHOWGIRL. But, my parents won out and in my first year of college, I met The Prospector and the rest is history. I never became a mechanic or a SHOWGIRL. But it's OK...maybe in my next life.
So last Tuesday my retreat friends and I drove to Reno for the day. We didn't gamble or go to the shows. We didn't even get near the downtown Casinos. There is much more to Reno.

But it still makes me wonder if I should have become a showgirl and had my moment on the "wicked stage".  Oh well, enough of the "What ifs...". It's a little late to think about where I would be if I had become a SHOWGIRL.. but it still sounds exciting.
Reno has 225,000 people in it now and twice as many if you include the Sparks area. Las Vegas is the only town in Nevada that's bigger. Reno is in a high desert valley along the Truckee River. The Discovery of silver in 1859 led to a mining rush in 1863 and when a railroad station was established in 1868 the little town finally came into its own. Charles Crocker, the railroad superintendent, named the town RENO after a Major General Jesse Lee Reno, a Union officer killed in the civil war. Mining remained the political power until 1931 when the state of Nevada legalized open gambling and more liberal divorce laws. "I'm going to Reno." became synonymous with "I'm going to get a quick divorce."
The arch was erected on Virginia St in 1929 to promote the Trancontinental Highway Exposition that year. The mayor asked folks for a slogan and when a $100. prize was offered, a guy from Sacramento won with:

~RENO_ THE BIGGEST LITTLE CITY IN THE WORLD.`

This  photo, above, is probably how it looks when my dad played nickles for me in the 50's, but this is how I always remember it.

Bright, exciting and wild. I still feel this way when I go up there.
Well, this is probably more information about Reno than you ever cared to read about, but it's an interesting town and it has changed a lot in the last 50 or 60 years.

So last Tuesday my friends and I drove to Reno for the day. We didn't gamble or go to the shows. We didn't even get near the downtown Casinos. There is much more to Reno than gambling and showgirls.
We drove on the new freeway from Carson City into Reno.

It makes short work of driving up or down the highway. It's now called I580 and is a monumental piece of highway construction. It's not finished below Carson City but it sure is nice traveling up to Reno.

This is the wonderful metal artwork that is being use on the overpasses and onramps.

This is the Fairview Drive overpass where the freeway ends in Carson City. They will continue the freeway to the south when funds allow.

Isn't this creative? Who has miners, cowboys and wagon trains moving across their overpasses?

 Who has huge mine openings with trains coming out of them under the overpasses?

and steam trains on the off ramps and metal horses on the tops of the hills? Nevada does!  It's a sight to see. Each a different piece of metal art and so much a part of Nevada's history.
We first drove to a place called Junkee on S. Virginia St.

 This is a clothing exchange and antique shop that redefined "thrift shops". It was loaded with "pre-owned" clothing, antiques and amazing old stuff. It looks like a small place until you start moving from one room to another. It goes on forever. We all found stuff that we couldn't live without and came away feeling like we nailed some very good buys. 

I found a wall plaque that just talked to me. I don't usually buy wall plaques but this one was pretty and I knew it would look wonderful on my living room wall. The plaque has a 10 inches diameter and is beautifully made. It's not hydrocal (Hydrocal is a product composed mainly of plaster of Paris and a small amount of Portland cement.) or wood. It's more a ceramic base and it's hand painted and antiqued on the raised flower design. There's no name or info on the back. It has a old metal hanger that is very secure. It was only 4 dollars.

Then I spotted THE HARE. Look at him. Someone had tied the ribbon around his neck and you could tell he was feeling quite spiffy with his green "ascot". 

 Look at that attitude. He's a very proud gentleman.

 He has character.

There is a small problem with the top of his ears, as if he was dropped on them and someone did a bad patch job. I will do a little DYI with my acrylics and he will be as good as new. He was $12.00, reduced to $6.00, so I thought I got a wonderful deal. 

He's happy and I'm happy. He has a new home and told me that he would like to keep the "ascot". I think he might be English.

If you're interested, this is all you need to know about the Hare. He is not a rabbit. There is quite difference.

Again, it's late... so I will continue the day in Reno tomorrow. 

Sweet Dreams.

Living a Mary Oliver sunrise in the desert

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves..."

(Six o'clock a.m. on Tuesday morning... walking into the desert in Dayton, Nevada.)

'Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers."

(Even though I was still in the cold morning darkness, the hills to the west were accepting the suns rays.)


"Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again."

( I saw two geese flying across the landscape, heading north and speaking with their beautiful voices. But the mountain caught fire with sunlight and  my attention turned toward the beauty of the hills and away from the flying geese.)

"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,"

Then the sun rose over the eastern mountains and took my breath away. It was so cold and yet, for a moment, I was overwhelmed by the warmth of the sunrise.)

"...call to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting..."

(The sun lit the landscape with its magical, morning light, as if to say, "I did this especially for you... to let you know that you are part of this world and this is your gift for wanting to see my radiant performance.")

"...over and over..."

( I stood on the cold, desert floor and waiting....listening. I waited for the sounds of birds, then the noise of humanity... the click of my camera.  But mostly, in the early minutes, before anything else... the quiet.)

( No snakes or rabbits yet. Just the beautiful light... and me standing there. )

"...announcing your place
in the family of things.”
~Mary Oliver~

I left the house before anyone was awake. Quietly walking out the back door, through the fence and into the field behind the house. It was quiet and cold. No one was outside. As if, like a movie, where you wake up to find the town's people have all disappeared, I felt alone. For me this was a good feeling.
 Walking onto a land so hostile and dry, I wondered at the ability of this place to survive the onslaught of man. It's probably not surviving very well. But, one on one, man will not win. Man will not outlast this land. The plants that survive the heat and cold of this area. , greasewood, chaparral and sagebrush, are the true survivors in this hostile world.
But on this cold, April morning, with the golden light shinning across the field,

This was were I needed to be and the desert was providing nourishment.
 I was really cold. My fingers could hardly hold the camera and heavy lens. I took one more photo...of the wild horses on the distant hills.

and one more, of my shadow trying to be one with the sagebrush.

If the desert has memories, I hope it remembers that I was there.
I returned to a warm house and friends that were awake... fixing coffee and tea.
The warmth felt good.



 

Retreat in the Sagebrush

I've been in Dayton, Nevada on a three day retreat with friends. We did this last year and we were invited again. I guess we behaved ourselves well enough the first time for our hostess to invite us back this year. So off we drove to Dayton, for food, friendship, being creative and just having fun... and we did have fun!
The four of us met above Pioneer on Carson Pass and actually got everything into one car. Our hostess drove us up over the pass...

It was a lovely spring day in the mountains. I'm always in awe of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I forget that I live so close to such beauty. Driving over the pass into Nevada is a beautiful experience. There wasn't that much snow at the pass and I was surprised at the lack of it elsewhere.. but Caples and Red Lake were still frozen over.
These were my partners in fun at the Carson Pass.

 We took a quick break and then continued on into Nevada, ate lunch at a Basque restaurant, and stopped at a wonderful little art gallery store and theater in Carson City.

 I really wanted this sign. I love old neon signs.

Before I could figure out how to pack it into the car, the lady inside said that it wasn't for sale. Darn! I even had a wall for it in my house. So we walked around looking at some very good art that was for sale.
There were baskets...

and glass art, jewelry, paintings and drawings by local artists. There was a small restaurant and a theater in this old brewing company building.

 This charming creature, made from found metal pieces, looked so cute on the little chair that I just had to take a picture of it...

 Sometimes you have to exercise a little self control when it's the first stop of the trip and "impulse buying" space in the back end of the car was at a premium. So we looked around and moved on.
We stopping at Tuesday Morning in Carson City and Trader Joe's for a few important items like ice cream, cookies and candy.
When we arrived at the house, we  disembarked and choose bedrooms.  Then we began our BASKETS. Making baskets has taken on a whole new respect for me. I will never look at a basket again without knowing how much work goes into making it. I will never say, "Well, it's just a basket." every again. I don't care what kind of basket it is... their is a process and a skill involved with making that basket that is one of the most creative endeavors known to mankind.
This was the beginning of my basket. You are looking at the bottom of the basket.

 Our hostess showed us every step, slowly, with wonderful direction and patience. She had made two of them recently, so we had examples to strive for. All of these pieces of reed and twine have to be soaked before you can weave or bend them. It was a very creative feeling to watch my own hands work on this basket.

I felt as if I was carrying on a tradition that my ancestors started. Some Cherokee woman sitting by a creek weaving strips of reed together... making a basket to carry wood, or food, or a baby. Talking to her friends, laughing and telling stories to each other. It's all the same. Except we are soaking our pieces of reed, that we bought on the Internet, in the laundry room sink and sitting in the comfort of a lovely home. But, the idea came to me as we sat around that table together, doing something so old and necessary, that we may recreate the memories of our ancestors because we subconsciously want to continue the traditions.  Also, because there is something elemental in the process.  Maybe it's an ingredient in the recipe of our past. It was a good feeling.... until I got to the part where we had to fold the "spokes" over the rim of the basket with a 3 in. over lap, cut them and hold them with clothes pins while we wove them into the inside of the basket. I didn't take any photos of this because I never picked up the camera again. I had some cranky moments when my fingers ached from pushing the reed pieces into the already woven basket. We all finally got the baskets sides secured, so we put them aside for the evening.
We ate a nice dinner, talked at the table for a long time and then each of us went to our rooms to get some sleep... each dreaming differently about this moment in our lives. In the middle of the night I woke up to a full moon and an owl hooting. I had opened the window before I fell asleep. I got up and stood at the window listening to the owl and marveling at the brightness of the full moon. The air smelled wonderful. I thought about this place before houses, golf courses and air fields and so many people. How the tumbleweed would have only stopped  at the bottom of the mountains and not piled up against fences and the wild horses would have walked across the whole valley without having to cross a busy highway. It must have been beautiful then. It's beautiful now when you look in the right directions.
 I promised myself to get up early in the morning and walk out beyond the houses to the field filled with wild bushes, birds and rabbits. I went back to bed and dreamt of walking toward wild horses... but I don't remember much more.
Tomorrow I will write about my walk into the fields of sagebrush and watching the sun rise over the Virginia Range...

Squeeky Girl Post

Look at this. 

The Prospector came in from the hen house this morning with two bantam eggs.

Aren't they adorable.

Squeeky is our only bantam hen. She survives in a world of big, bossy, full sized hens.

"She's knockin' herself out these days.", the Prospector said, as he showed me her eggs. 

Three eggs in three days.

 "Go Squeeky!"

Our only bantam hen is eight years old now, but that little girl is still putting out the eggs.

Bless her tiny chicken heart. Her eggs are so perfect. They are beautiful little wonders. 

Guess I need to make a really small batch of cookies.

Seeking Peace

“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul.

 It is daily admission of one's weakness.

 It is better in prayer to have a heart without words

 than words without a heart.”

~Mahatma Gandhi~

Wordless Wednesday: Mama Finch Guarding Her Eggs

Over Zealous Miners from Michigan

Just before you drive down into Rancho Murieta, on highway 16, in the California Foothills, you can see the landscape change. The hills look different.

It is because this whole area has a history. It's where GOLD was discovered on the Cosumnes River in 1849.

Two men from Michigan found some gold along the river and within a very short time there was a town and  people swarming over this area. They wanted to get the gold as fast and as efficiently as possible. So the process of hydraulic mining was used.

Now there is no one here. Mainly a highway going up into the foothills, a clay company, some cows and, in the spring, hills covered with many kinds of wildflowers and yellow lupine.

 The Michigan Bar Mining District covered a large area. Placer gold deposits were mined extensively between 1849 and 1900 primarily by hydraulic and ground sluicing techniques. Dredging was another successful technique and extended the district's mining life into the 1950's. The total gold production in this district has been estimated at over 1,500,000 ounces.
But the miners made a terrible mess of the area because they didn't have good mining practices back then. Because they wanted to get more of the gold out of the ground they turned to larger mining practices, using water to break down the material. They called it hydraulicking. It was a form of mining using high-pressure jets of water to dislodge rock material and move sediment. The water-sediment slurry was then run through sluice boxes to remove the gold. The hydraulic mining left scars on the land that, to this day, are still visible.

But Mother Nature has worked some magic and healed most of her wounds. When Spring comes and the wildflowers bloom, this area is just about as beautiful as it gets around here.

 Above is Michigan Bar Rd looking north toward the Cosumnes River.Those are poppies and blue lupine lining the road. There are a couple of ranches down at the river and some old buildings, but mostly it's just rolling hills and a long gravel road.
If you turn around and look south, you can see the strange shape of hills that were created by huge hydraulic water guns..

If you look closer... you can see how the water pressure cut into the hills as if someone took a bite out of them.

The folks that mined this way thought that hydraulic mining was an efficient way to get the gold out of the ground but the erosion and damage to the land was horrific.
Today the land looks beautiful, with some slightly funny looking  hills and a few red dirt remnants left to tell the tail.

There are some beautiful old valley oaks here and there.

And the wildflowers (including the yellow lupine) have, again, laid their clam to the land.

Nature is always healing man's mistakes.
We need to be more careful. We don't want to damage this beautiful world beyond its ability to repair itself or we will find ourselves without a world at all and my grandchildren need a place to live.

Pigeon Alliance at Joe's Crab Shack

There are always pigeons. They're not the same as seagulls and rats at the water's edge, but they are always around and they interest me. Living a life of scavenging and close calls, here, they seem to find purpose under the feet of man.

As we ate our dinner over the waters of the Sacramento river, we began to notice something scurrying under the tables.

Vague forms... here and then gone. I could see that these little land rovers were not mice or rats but birds... pigeons to be specific, and moving at the speed of light under and through the tables on this open deck.
I grabbed my camera and tried to document the coming and goings of this bird of opportunity.

Moving at a fast pace, grabbing a tidbit and  scampering away quickly.
This reminded me of another group (gang) that use to come into a store that I worked in just before I got married. It was in Berkeley, California in 1964. I was working for Roos Atkins across from the University of California. We sold wonderful, rather expensive clothing  and there were some folks who thought that they should have these clothes and not pay for them. They would come in "gangs" and split up. One would occupy a sales person while the other would take things to the dressing rooms. Eventually, we received photos of these gangs and were able to alert the managers if we saw one of the "gang members" come into the store.
It's a little harder with pigeons.

They tend to move more quickly and seems to disappear into thin air.

This one is vanishing  into nothingness. Do you see this? His head and front foot are almost gone and his shadow is blending into the concrete. He's disappearing. I knew something fishy was going on. I would try to take a picture and all of a sudden... the bird wouldn't be there. 

When I got home I read up on these birds. Here is all the information you will ever want to know about Pigeons.

After all, they have carried messages, stopped wars and filmed secret meetings with foreign countries.

 

Yes, I had to laugh too. 

I guess we shouldn't laugh at all because there are between 17 and 28 million pigeon type birds in this world and, as Gandhi said, "... 100,000 Englishmen simply cannot control 350 million Indians, if those Indians refuse to cooperate." (Substitute mankind for "Englishmen" and Pigeons for "Indians".)

So, I think we need to have a little more respect for these pretty and intelligent birds.

They walk kind of funny

  but then... I can't fly, so who am I to criticize.

We had a great lunch and the pigeons did the rest. That floor was really clean compared to most restaurants.

Did you know that Some Sikhs also feed pigeons because they believe that when they are reincarnated they will never go hungry if they have fed pigeons in their previous life.  Other religious groups in India believe that when a person dies his or her soul assumes the form of a bird (normally a pigeon) and therefore by feeding birds they are caring for the souls of their departed ancestors. Interesting theory. 

If this is true, more respect for these birds is in order.

Hope you're having a peaceful and relaxing Sunday.