el paso daily photo blog by chacal la chaise

One of the things I love (and have to be ready for) is sundown after snowfall. From my home, the mountains face southwest and usually after it has snowed, the following evenings sundown will be as pink and rose colored as could ever be imagined. It is as if a carnival came to town and wrapped the mountains in a pink soft blanket confection. It does not look real. But you must be ready to grab your camera and run to the closest available vantage point. I was slow this time, but did capture a few shots from my backyard.

Labels: el paso, franklin mountains, pink, snow day

Snow came and claimed its spot on the radar of all in town and beyond. The schools had to give it its due, even if this is the last week of regular classes. Schools, including UTEP, opened at 10:00 AM. At 10, the mountains were completely shrouded in a misty fog and rain mixed with snow continued until 1:00 or so.

Taking a break around 3:00, I drove up to the foothills to snag a few shots before running back home to work on a paper due tomorrow. (Like I should be writing this now, right?) No matter, I love the mountains and the time away from the screen was good for the soul and eyes.

Labels: clouds, el paso, fog, franklin mountains, snow, snow day, UTEP

It isn't often I get the opportunity or the time to drive-by shoot images these days. Yet this drive-by was too good to pass up. On the way to class, I caught up to this antique Bentley (possibly from the mid- to late- 1930s) near Mesa Street on Shadow Mountain Drive. I photographed two images while we were stopped at the light. We started up again and It turned left, as did I. Although I tried to get another shot of the beast from my rear view door mirror, I soon lost it in traffic.

I've always thought Bentley's were supposed to be too "cool" for a hood ornament. I also heard a Bentley was a Rolls-Royce without the hood ornament. (These are myths because in the case of this beauty, it had the Bentley marque on the rear near the license and a winged "B ornament on the bonnet. In any case, it was a delight to see on such a beautiful day.

Given FB cannot publish "notes" from more than one blog, I thought I would republish this entry originally posted to a new Moleskiners blog. To me, Moleskiners throws too much in its interface of multiple horizontal menus with a heinous orange and green default color scheme. 

That said, it did make me go and collect my thoughts and write about something that occurred recently. And although not specifically about El Paso nor was the image taken in El Paso, it was created by someone from here; it also tacitly covers issues concerned with education and parenting. 

We've been told that The Judge is not the only student from here who currently attends Michigan State, but sometimes it seems she is. However, there are many more students who do leave home every year to attend college away from El Paso. This is something from one parent with one student who has left home for the past four years.


Fall 2009 marked the first year I was unable to go with MJ to take The Judge back to Michigan State University.

The reason was simple. The schedule for MSU differed from that of UTEP as MSU’s fall semester began a week before UTEP; and so, I did not want to miss the first week of graduate school classes and teaching my crucial first week of freshman composition.

The Judge’s freshman year was 2006, a year when both schools had the same schedule outcomes (a week difference when beginning classes.) For that one year, I had been able to pull it off, but this year was a no go. However, with cell phones available for all, it was almost as if I was there with them—almost. Granted, the calls were not as intimate as when I have virtually walked her back from a frat party or accompanied her from the library at 2:00 a.m. EST (midnight here.) I love walking/talking with her this way. The Judge finds herself to be on the phone with one of us a comfort when walking at night. I don’t blame her at all. She believes that if she is on a cell, she is not alone. She feels safe when we talk/walk together like that.

But back to the first move-in chaos of her freshman year. I loved seeing and watching the cars unload the students, their pillows, stuffed animals, their stuff. The frantic, chaotic mess that only occurs when the luggage, t-shirts, jeans, and other priority/ephemeral details of life collides with all other priority/ephemeral details of “the New Roommate.” Not only are the small rooms awash in clothing contained in the luggage bought, there are also boxes, personal items, microwaves, refrigerators, books, iPods, TVs, speakers, and hundreds of tiny girl T-shirts. That year it was all a blurr to me and probably MJ and The Judge; her things seemed to float around and land all over the room and hallway. Now, multiply that by two. And, I know all this sounds terribly bourgeois, and having nothing (at first) to do with studying for a profession, but it is fun and stressful and most of all sad. You are about to leave your kid at school. But this is the fact of it all—least for us each fall in East Lansing, Michigan, those first few days each fall.

Now, I cannot tarry too long with this initial blog post. I must begin posting other things for my classes. However, what I wanted to share was a moleskine page from way back in Fall 2006. It is a list I made of the items we needed to purchase for The Judge before we left her in Michigan and MJ and I returned (as a couple for the first time in decades) to El Paso, Texas. That first year she lived in the high-rise chaos that is Hubbard Hall.

Labels: drawing, fall, freshman year move-in, Michigan State University, moleskine, notes, parenting, Spartans, the judge, university life

This picture is of two Ukrainian Easter eggs I made over 20 years ago. I found them while hunting for some beeswax for the Judge. She wanted to dye a pair of shorts black and wanted a way for a few small areas of the garment to resist the dye. I found the beeswax and with it over 12 hollow hen eggs in a carton and two duck eggs ready for pysanky dying, along with special the dyes needed to color them all.

I became fascinated with this art form when it was featured in a story in the April 1972 National Geographic Magazine. Titled Easter Greetings from the Ukrainians, it told of the Orthodox Easter customs in both Ukraine and here in the Minneapolis area. I still have my copy, but have never scanned the article. However, this web page includes several images from that article and provides all information on how to make them. If memory serves, the article referred to the Ukrainian Gift Shop in Roseville, MN, a Minneapolis suburb that has a large Ukrainian immigrant population. Two women owned the shop, published books about the eggs, and sold all the supplies needed to create them. I was hooked and promised myself that one day, I would learn how to create those eggs. Around 1983, I got my wish when we drove from Santa Fe, NM to Minneapolis, MN one summer to visit my sister-in-law and her sons. We located the shop; I bought an egg made by the owners, their books, dyes, and other supplies. I could not wait to get home and start making Ukrainian Easter eggs in June.

True eggs dyed in the Ukrainian fashion are actually whole to allow for the best coverage of the dyes. Over time, the contents of the whole eggs should eventually dry and turn to dust. However, until that happens, do not crack or break the egg because the house will smell of rotten eggs! Once I tried dying the whole egg. It was red with accent colors of green, orange, yellow, and white. I think I either gave or sold the egg to a woman who was my supervisor. It sat on her desk for several months; it was very similar in design to the egg on the left. However, one day, something slipped and toppled the egg over off its special stand. Consequently, we had to keep the back door open to our work area for a while. The egg had become sufficiently ripe and gooey.

These eggs in this box could have started out wholly died, and been just fine all these years. With no cracks and kept in the dark they are perfect. For years, they remained in a box in the hall closet along with all hollowed chicken and goose eggs and dyes, patterns, and beeswax needed to transform their white surface. Perhaps I will finish those eggs one of these days. In the meantime, the LearnPysanky site also provides more information and offers all the supplies needed to make Ukrainian Easter eggs.

Labels: 1972, Minneapolis, National Geographic, pysanky, Roseville, santa fe, Ukrainian Easter eggs

In the case of this blog, change is always good. However, sometimes it takes a while to move towards that change, whether writing about something, thinking about writing, or having something you think would produce joy in the world by writing about it and presenting a particular picture about your town. In this case, I found a perfect image that sings joy for me. The birds work hard and entertain me greatly.

This poor mockingbird mom (?) and one of her two fledglings hang around our backyard. These two babies can now fly, but cannot yet feed themselves. Instead, they sit on the fence, fly around the yard, and generally run their mother ragged with their constant begging for food. She brings them red ants, which is something I’d never thought of as bird food. Mimus polyglottos, or the Northern Mockingbird, according to both Peterson's Bird Guide of the Western U.S. and the Cornell Bird Lab, note that the state pajaro de Tejas eats insects and berries. We have—ants, scorpions, and all sorts of beetles, as well as, pyracanthea berries, and mulberry fruits. This year, the family has chosen to nest in a forest of orange trumpet vines (very attractive to ants), desert sage, and another bushy desert plant that grows way too fast for me to keep it cropped and suburban presentable. In other words, we have an unkempt forest of greenery to shelter birds, but is fairly choking my roses.

In years past, parent Mockingbirds would pitch royal fits when Pumpkin no Tail was outside and sleeping on a patio chair. I guess the birds didn't know that this domesticated feline eats only dry cat food. When Inky was in her prime, the yard was fairly littered with Mockingbird feathers. However, now that she is 15-6 years old, she rarely goes outside to hunt; instead, she chooses to watch the Mockingbird action from our bedroom window.

The funniest result of all this songbird opera is that when Buddy II is outside on the patio, the birds don't seem to mind. Evidently, they believe he can neither hunt nor hurt them. (Or, they see the scars on his face and know he cannot fight worth a damn.

Labels: birds, cats, Cornell Bird Lab, el paso, mockingbirds

Modern Art Museum by dumpr.net

Labels: dumpr.net, elpaso, fabulist art museum showing, frankie's grocery, ol guadalupe