Category: Opinions

Hey, now that’s cool!

It’s no secret I’m a bit of a baseball fan. My team’s season ended in a blaze of humiliation, some 18 games out of first place. To make it worse, two teams from our division, the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Colorado Rockies made to the post season.

Oh the pain of watching the competition extend their season.

Been having a hard time deciding who to root for in post-season games. I think I’m loving the under-dog, whooda-thunkit magic season of the Rockies. So in the NL, they are my team (not a tough decision given the lightening in a bottle they have working), especially after rolling over the Diamondbacks in four straight games.

In the AL, it’s harder to decide. I mean, I like the Indians, they are a ne’er do well and know the pain, like my beloved Giants, of going to the World Series and coming home empty handed. I have a good friend who is from Cleveland so out of respect to her, I’ve been mostly cheering on the Indians. However, in previous years, I’ve been a post-season Red Sox fan. So I guess all this is by way of saying I’m waffling…..

In today’s ABQjournal I read an interesting article that I’m now taking into account while sitting on the AL fence.

While the young man mentioned in the article, Jacoby Ellsbury, isn’t a New Mexico native (cuz then I’d be off the fence and on his side in heartbeat), he does have ties to New Mexico.

Plus I just think it’s pretty damn cool that he’s the first Native American of Navajo descent to play in the majors. He was called up to Boston in August when Coco Crisp went out with an injury and so wowed critics and fans that Francona added him to the 40-man roster in September. Now in his first year in the bigs, he’s playing on a post-season team trying to get to the World Series. He’s been praised for both his speed and enthusiasm and is a pretty good hitter.

Damn, that rocks. Gonna have to squint at the screen a little more now to get a look at this up-and-comer. Maybe he can log some playing time in the ALCS and I’ll just have to root for him.

I always did love a story of someone living the dream.

I hope I’m this sprightly at age 70

The Cute Boy™ and I have been talking a lot lately about the subject of aging. Not that either of us are all that old, but both of us are old enough to start pondering our own mortality. Cold weather brings creaky joints that didn’t used to creak. “My back hurts” replaces “I’m so hungover” in my vernacular. I suppose this doesn’t get better as the years pass by. (and, have you noticed, the years are passing more quickly than ever?)

So with aching knees and cold hands wrapped around a coffee mug, I read an article in the Albuquerque Tribune (now with a buyer!) about Merle Haggard. Now, I’m a longtime fan of Merle. You know how some musicians comprise part of the soundtrack of your life? That’s Merle to me. “Silver Wings” brings up a *very* specific memory (and if my best friend in the whole wide world is reading this, she knows exactly which memory I’m talkin’ about). “My Favorite Memory” is another fave…and one of the few songs I learned to play on acoustic guitar. Merle doesn’t play deep or complicated guitar chords. He doesn’t need to. His lyrics can, with an economy of words, cut right to the heart. He is indeed a poet, as the Trib article points out.

So how do I tie all this together? My aching joints and Merle?

Well, at age 70, Merle is making a new album. It’s a bit of a departure for him. He’s doing a disc of bluegrass music, all original songs, which I think is amazing. He’s got a voice made for country, and now hardened by time, I imagine bluegrass will suit him well.

After decades in the business, he’s still got The Muse running in his veins. At an age where he’s made enough music and money to retire, he can’t. The words still flow.

“I guess the reason for writing songs is to make money,” Haggard said, “but then you go back and say, `I’d like to write a song that will be remembered forever.’ That’s more interesting to me than the checks, even.”

It’s a rare bit of integrity in the music market. And memorable songs are what Haggard has done.

This line kills me…it’s so right on, at least to my way of thinking:

“I like to write something that you can photograph. If there’s no picture there, what’s your album cover or your CD cover going to be? In most cases, you’ll find it’s just a picture of the artist, because they don’t have a picture, and it’s kind of sad.”

I may not be a musician, but I’m a writer, a lover of words, and I work real hard at putting words together in such a way that someone who reads them can see a picture. Merle not only creates these pictures, but lasting images that stay in the mind. That, my friends, is pure talent.

“…You can’t have any emotional songs anymore; they won’t play them. Someone might look up from their computer, and they don’t want that. It might disturb somebody. And it all sounds like water to me. . . .”

And at age 70, he’s rasty as ever. Love it. He’s even planning a tour to support this new album…having just come off a tour.

I can only hope/pray/dream/beg that I’m as full of The Muse, the energy and the drive at age 70.

The times, they are a changin’

Just because it’s time, almost over due, doesn’t mean there isn’t some sense of disbelief that an era is over.

According to the ABQjournal, Senator Pete Domenici will announce his retirement later today. He has been Senator for 36 years, just a few years less than my lifetime. Growing up in New Mexico, Domenici’s name was always in the news. He went from a “who is that” to a fairly powerful guy on Capitol Hill. I was always happy for a New Mexico guy to make good, make a name, so people knew we had smart folks from New Mexico over there.

I know lately he’s fallen out of favor for a variety of misdeeds. I’m not much of a political person, honestly. I can’t talk articulately about Domenici’s career, the high points, the low points. I’ll leave more of that to my friends Avelino at his Live From Silver City blog and of course former Mayor of Albuquerque Jim Baca at his Only in New Mexico blog.

My lament today is how much things in my world seem to be changing. Today we have a lunch to see off one of my best and favorite employees. She’s moving on to a great job and we’re all really happy for her. It’s a big blow to our team. But change must happen.

There are a lot of huge changes going on in my personal life too, most changes for the better, but changes nonetheless.

My “woo woo” teachers would say that’s the hallmark of Fall. The days shorten up, the ground goes cold. Circle of life. Death and rebirth. All of that.

Give me time, I’ll be philosophical later. For today I’m just sad. Ok, not that I’m all broke up about Domenici leaving office, just the huge change it brings (just skeered as hell that Wilson might get that seat).

I remember my days working at Sandia where we called him “Saint Pete” because he was always able to finagle funds to keep Sandia rolling, despite all the protests to reduce funding to the nuclear labs. How far he’s fallen…

Anyhow, I guess it’s owing to my sign of Taurus that change is troublesome. I’ll follow my family tradition and worry myself sick about it. Then, I’ll rebound, get perspective, and be fine.

I’m always fine, eventually.

*sigh*

Well…off to the going away lunch…..

Uh oh, she’s back in the wayback machine

My friend and resident of Albuquerque told me that the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is well nigh….

Yup, starts October 6.

Let’s start with this query…how in the utter $#*&!!! did it get to be October already?

So I was telling my mom I’m considering going to ABQ for the fun and staying with my friend as she lives near the right part of town.

Then I said “of course, anymore it’s a complete pain in the ass to go to the fiesta”

That kicked off a step right into the wayback machine.

She said “yeah, remember how it used to just be in a big empty field and we’d go and get right up close, your dad would talk to the balloonists and before you know it, we’d all be holding a corner of cloth, helping them inflate it? That doesn’t happen anymore.”

No, it sure doesn’t.

Remember when the Balloon Fiesta didn’t have sponsors? It was just a bunch of ballooning guys getting together for some fun and competition.

Remember when they flew out of Cutter Field? Yeah, that flight path used to take them over our house in the northeast heights (somewheres around Montgomery and San Pedro). I used to dash out to the backyard and wave and try to talk to the balloonists. They were always nice, good for a wave at least if they were low enough.

I remember drinking scalding hot chocolate out of that battered green Coleman thermos, trying to warm my hands and frozen nose, bundled up against a cold October morning at like, oh-dark-thirty.

We’d help some guy my dad just met (my dad never met a guy he didn’t know) get his balloon off the ground, then we’d leap into our battered blue and white Chevy Blazer and help chase.

Ya can’t do that anymore. Insurance and progress and all that rot, I suppose.

I also remember when I used to work for Honeywell back in 1993. That’s when the balloons had already moved to their new location, the Balloon Fiesta Park, which is catty corner to Honeywell. It was HELL getting to work, but I’d go inside, get a cup of coffee, then go back outside with all my coworkers and watch the morning show. Special shapes day was always the best.

When it gets to be this time of year when the nights and mornings are cold but the days warm up nicely, I still look to the sky hoping to see ornaments hanging there, listening for the whoosh of propane. The conditions aren’t right here in the Bay Area. Sometimes I sure miss a sky hung with colorful balloons. Nothing like it in the world.

Stress

It’s a gas, innit?

I mean, all the magazines tell you that it’s bad, bad, bad. Your doctor will say don’t have it. You know it’s not good. And yet, there it sits, on your chest, choking you in the middle of the night.

And stress brings all its friends to come play, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, achy joints, chronic back pain, illness, pain, suffering, blight, famine, hoards of locusts.

It’s one of those really cool biological things that helped us a ton when being chased by a saber toothed tiger or avoiding trampling from a woolly mammoth. It’s what got us through the rough, less industrial, times and into what we have today.

What do we have today?

Made up stress. Adrenaline pumps through my veins giving me that wild “flight or fight” rush. Really, I’m a flight kind of girl. That seems best for all. But nooooo, I have to stay and fight, which stresses me out more…ain’t that a fun twist?

And what am I fighting? Words on a piece of paper. I am not making this up.

Everything I am doing today, all these things that stress me out, give me heart palpitations, make me aspirate my own stomach acid in the middle of the night, cause me to lose sleep and be a terrible partner to the man I love more than anything is something that matters only in the four walls of this gray cubicled office where I earn my paycheck. Sure, all this agony and no ecstasy means I continue to get paid and am in line for a measly (and I do mean measly) raise this year. I should be thankful, right?

I’m not.

I’m angry. Perhaps being angry is just an acceptable way to mitigate what I’m really feeling. No wait, what I’m really feeling is anger. For a lot of reasons.

Mainly, I’m tired. Real tired. Perhaps a good night’s sleep (which probably won’t come for at least another week) might better my outlook. I don’t know.

Ok, back to it.

Hope you all are having a much less stressful day.

/rant