What a tragic weekend. Unfortunate families lost 12 of their loved ones in the Batman massacre Friday morning, a friend died from a stroke/heart attack last night, and we woke up to find the old Territorial House on fire.  The only comment I have on the Batman tragedy is that I find it ironic that the only people who noticed there was something wrong with the shooter are the owners of a gun club who rejected  his application to become a member.  The death of our friend was a complete surprise, and especially sad because he was getting ready to publish a book of poems. The book will be published, but he didn’t live to see it happen.  I grew up with the old Territorial House (most recently called Ranchos de Corrales Event Center), and I still drive by it every day. It had gone through various renovations and had many lives from when it was built as a hacienda around 1800 until it burned this morning. I started working for a woodworker who had a shop in a broken down adobe house on Corrales Road the summer of 1974. I was 15 years old, and one of my first projects was routing signs and painting them for the renovation of the Territorial House that summer. Shannon and I also built cabinets and all the interior doors for that renovation. When we came back from Spain during the summer of 1998, I played flamenco guitar at the T-House once a week until we returned to Spain that September. By that time, the T-House had been purchased by the owner of Ranchos de Taos Restaurant and renamed Ranchos de Corrales Restaurant. Mr. Sandoval had done minimal remodeling, so all the doors and signs I worked on in 1974 were still there, as they were the last time I was in the T-House about 10 years ago. As we were walking up to photograph the T-House burning, Laurie said “There goes all your work!”

Just after sunrise this morning, a fresh Two-Tailed Swallow Tail butterfly was making rounds around the blooms on the butterfly bush on the north side of the deck. I included several photos of it as it made its way around the tiny flowers that make up the blooms. The third photo in the series is particularly interesting because I caught it with its upper and lower wings separated. The overlap of the wings can be clearly seen in three of the five photos in the series.