Category: Cottonwoods

Little Drops of Rain

Timothy Price11 Comments

LittleDropsOfRain

I spent most of the day putting together my presentation on Troubadour poetry and music for French 385: Travels in Provence. It rained most of the day, and during a break in the weather I went out and photographed the storm passing over the Sandias. On my way out to the river, I noticed there were still a few drops of rain the wind had not blown off a rose bush — it reminded me of Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You”, which has a verse that begins “Little drops of rain…”  I had been reading medieval poetry all day and started thinking that “Thank You” could be modern Troubadour poetry.

Troubadours originally wrote their poetry in Occitan, the language of Provence, France, also called Provançal. I don’t understand Occitan, so I’ve been reading the poetry translated into English by William and Frances Paden in their book Troubadour Poems from the South of France. Women Troubadours where called trobairitz, and the most famous trobairitz is La Comtessa de Dia. After reading many troubadour poems, La Comtessa de Dia is one of my favorites.  Here is one of her poems named Estat ai en greu cossirier / I have been in heavy grief circa 1169:

I have been in heavy grief
for a knight who once was mine,
And I want it to be forever known
That I loved him too much,
I see now that I’m betrayed
For not giving him my love
Bemused, I lie in bed awake;
Bemused, I dress and pass the day.

If only I could hold him
Naked in my arms one night!
He would feel ecstatic
Were I to be his pillow.
Since I desire him more
Than Floris did Blanchefleur,
I give him my heart and my love,
My wit, my eyes, for as long as I live.

Splendid lover, charming and good,
When shall I hold you in my power?
If only I could lie with you one night
And give you a loving kiss!
Know that I’d like
To hold you as my husband,
As long as you’d promise
To do what I desired.

Here are the lyrics to Robert Plan’s Thank You, 1969:

If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you.
When mountains crumble to the sea, there will still be you and me.

Kind woman, I give you my all, Kind woman, nothing more.

Little drops of rain whisper of the pain, tears of loves lost in the days gone by.
My love is strong, with you there is no wrong,
together we shall go until we die. My, my, my.
An inspiration is what you are to me, inspiration, look… see.

And so today, my world it smiles, your hand in mine, we walk the miles,
Thanks to you it will be done, for you to me are the only one.
Happiness, no more be sad, happiness….I’m glad.
If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you.
When mountains crumble to the sea, there will still be you and me.

SadAmerica

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TheCraneCloud

OrangeCloudsDucks

Moon on the Rise

Timothy Price16 Comments

MoonriseTrees

 

I went out to get the moonrise this afternoon. The clouds covered the moon when it first came over the mountain, but then as it rose behind the clouds it afforded nice photo ops.  The geese and cranes are still hanging around, and the crows were thick at times, which reminded me of the movie “The Birds.”

 

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DuckOverMountains

 

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Comics Connoisseur

Timothy Price3 Comments

ComicsConniseur

 

Apparently Stretch is becoming a comics connoisseur from Laurie reading Tintin while we waterboard him (subcutaneous fluids for renal failure) every night, because when I went back out to the kitchen last night after he thought we had gone to bed, I found him reading the funnies that Laurie had left on her book holder. He was so engrossed that I was able to sneak a photo before he noticed me and slinked off, looking a little embarrassed.

When the Sandias turned pink at sunset, I decided to try a panorama through the bare cottonwoods. While I was photographing the mountains, a great blue heron landed on a cottonwood between the irrigation and clearwater ditches, affording me the opportunity to get a pretty clear photo of it. When I was going back inside, Puck had all his attention fixed on something. I couldn’t see what it was, but he was so concentrated that I snapped the photo of him. The shutter clicking interrupted his concentration, he glanced at me, then started looking around as if he was trying to find the object of his attention, scolded me with a few choice meows when he seemed not to see it again (I assume he was saying “nice going stupid ¡#%&^@$*! photographer”), then he jumped down off the railing and came inside with me. When I went out a little later, I was able to get a detailed shot of the moon in the clear, cold, winter sky.

 

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Truth or Consequences

Timothy Price5 Comments

We met the tour van in Truth or Consequences, NM to take us to the Space Port yesterday. Truth or consequences, or T or C for short, is 150 miles south of Albuquerque, NM just off of I-25. Today it is probably best known for Elephant Butte Lake and State Park, but it also is known for its odorless hot springs, and before 1950 it was named Hot Springs, NM.  In 1950, Ralph Edwards, the host of the popular radio show that eventually became the popular television show Truth or Consequences, announced that he would air the show from any town that would change its name to Truth or Consequences. Hot Springs won the honor, officially changed its name, and Edwards visited the town for a fiesta every May for many years after that. T or C voted to keep the name in 1967, but there is new talk of changing the name back to Hot Springs since many people today do not associate it with the game show that went off the air in the late 1980’s.

Another attraction in T or C is Elephant Butte Dam. Construction started in 1911 and the dam was completed in 1916 (20 years before Hoover Dam). The dam was a high tech engineering marvel of its day at 300 feet high, almost 1700 feet long and 228 feet wide at the base. The project made irrigation available to about 180,000 acres of farmland. There is also a 28,000 kilowatt  generating station at the base of the dam that was installed in the 1940’s; it currently generates enough power for about 20 homes.

Water has gone over the spillway twice in its 100 year history, and I got to pull a “you saw water going over the spillway when you were just 9 months old,” on my daughter yesterday. The 1980’s were a wet decade for NM, with 1986 was the high water mark for Elephant Butte. I raced the first Tour of the Gila bicycle race in Silver City, NM at the end of May 1987, and we stopped to see the water running over the spillway on the way home from the race. Of course Tristan didn’t remember, but I got a certain satisfaction out of telling her she saw it, because my parents did that to me all the time — “Oh yeah you were there with us when you were 2 years old!” they would tell me. Thanks! Like I remember places we visited when I was two. Fortunately for Tristan, we didn’t take her to very many places worth remembering until she was old enough to remember them, however, the historic water going over the spillway at Elephant Butte Dam happened to be an exception.

As you can see from the photos, the lake is very low right now. New Mexico is a high, arid desert and wet decades like the 1980’s are not normal. So what people have been calling a drought for the past 20 years or so, is really more normal for New Mexico; although the past few years have been very dry, so the cycle has probably swung to the opposite extreme from the wet period we had in the 1980s. The peaks between very wet periods and really dry periods for New Mexico seem to run in 50 to 60 year cycles based on the NOAA weather data we got when we had a NOAA weather station on the property.

Looking southwest above the dam. The Rio Grande and distant mountains.
Project buildings along the Rio Grande below the dam
The power station at the base of the dam
Panoramic view of the dam and lake. The large island or “Butte” near the center of the photo is thought to look like an elephant

Thanksgiving

Timothy Price2 Comments

 

We had a slow roasted prime rib with pea and parmigiano soup, roasted root vegetables with meyer lemon, yorkshire pudding and Irish whiskey cake for Thanksgiving dinner.  David and I went out to the river at sunset to get photos — I used my new ultra-wide angle lens, while he used one of my cameras with a super telephoto lens. While I was wandering around downtown last night I took a couple of ultra-wide angle shots of the Kimo Theater, and then stitched the photos together. The result is how I believe the Kimo might have looked if I.M. Pei had designed it.

 

 

 

The Birds

Timothy Price8 Comments

Crows swarming over the Rio Grande and bosque this afternoon reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds.”  A pair of Sandhill Cranes were trying to land on the river, but they were having a hard time making their way through the swarm of crows. They tried flying through the crows two or three times before the crows thinned out enough for them to land. Each attempt they would start down, zig zag a few times, pull back up and circle around before making another attempt. On one of their circles they got close enough for me to get a clear shot of them above the crows. A flotilla of geese were leisurely floating down the Rio Grand to where they spend the night about a quarter mile from where I was standing.  When they saw me on the bank they turned into the current and started treading water, staying in the same spot for some time while they discussed among themselves whether or not is was safe to float on by me.  They finally decided to stay in the water and continued on their way, hugging the far bank as they floated past me. A couple of ducks floated down after the geese, but they decided it wasn’t safe to float on by me and took flight.