2-15-08
Tucson Gem Show (Africa Village mostly)
This is Anthony and he is a resident at the Windspirit. He works mainly on building WebPages for companies and he has recently helped get the community hooked up to wifi. It is now possible to pick up the signal all over the community as well as it lets Lowell across the street get on line. The community has a satellite hook up for the web and it is a touch slow for doing serious downloading but works just fine for normal web surfing and email. I have found Anthony to be very interesting to visit with. He as lived in many places and has had some really interesting experiences. He has a very nice website that I have read a little on and I asked and got permission from him to post a link to to. He is a serious worker here at the community and seems to always be doing something constructive.
This is a website that he has made for a German company that is making some
really cool wind/solar electric generators.
http://www.bluenergyusa.com/SWT_Designing.html
Anthony is about to take off for a vacation to Hawaii to ‘talk’ with the whales. You will understand if you read the whale page…….
Here is Anthony again with Evan hauling lumber up to Don’s place where he is building a new bath house.
A couple of days later I found Don up at the ‘tent’ house where he was putting new tin on the roof.
This little cabin is something that the community often rents out for guests as well as there have been some weddings where it is the honey moon cottage. The tent material was getting torn with the winds so the new tin roof was needed. There is a nice big brass bed inside as well as a big mosquito net over the bed.
There have been several little projects and here is a new little garden spot near the kitchen as well as some new rockwork that has been under construction.
I stopped on the way down to Tucson to get Sheila, who was flying in from Michigan, at the road side rest that is in Mammoth. The weather had been really shitty up in Michigan and the day she left she was lucky enough to have one of only a few planes that left that day. It was snowing and most of the planes were either canceled the night before or grounded that day.
When I got down to the airport I found that Sheila’s brother Jeff was there to meet her as well. Jeff was over in Phoenix and made a special run over to greet her. On the way into the airport I noticed an Airstream trailer dealership along the route and when we left and headed to a restaurant to eat lunch I asked that we stop by and check out the new trailers. Yikes, are they pricey!!! This little Bambi is priced at $51,000……………. A 32 footer was $107,000…………….. I am very happy in my little pod but it was nice to see how the other folks live in the ‘real’ world.
When I went down to Windspirit where I had stashed the bike, Lowell asked me to help him burn some photos on a CD. Most of the photos are birds but this is a photo of a ring tail cat that lives in this area. Lowell found this one that had been killed crossing the road a couple of years ago and picked it up and froze it in his freezer. When he went back up home in Utah, he took it to a friend who is a taxidermist and had it mounted.
Lowell has a really nice camera and has some really nice pictures of birds that come visit his yard. He feeds and also has some nice water pools for them. This is a sharp shin hawk comes by and snacks on his little birds every now and then.
Some little moochers that stopped by.
Sheila took a picture of me putting the Bloodhound back together with the parts that Bob sent down to me. OH, it was really good to have it back running again. THANKS BOB!!!!!!!
Sheila took advantage of the warm sunny weather to lay out in the ‘yard’ and read a book while I worked on the Dog.
We left the Bloodhound at Lowells and hooked up the Pod and headed down to Tucson to attend the Gem Show. This is one of the first stands we went by. It has signs all over that call it the Dollar Tent. Almost everything in there is a dollar. It just seems impossible that all those nice bead necklaces could possibly be made, shipped to the USA and on to Tucson, set up in this tent and sold at a profit for a buck. This place wasn’t even a wholesale only place…………
Sheila was having fun in the sun. It is amazing how a little sun and warm weather can lift the spirits….
Sheila asked a guy on one of the shuttle busses where the best place to eat was. The guy said that the best meal he had had so far was out at the African Village so we took a shuttle out there and had a look around. Here are some nice beaded figurines.
A nice variety of earrings. These guys/gals know how to make some fancy colorful jewelry.
This is some sort of costume that is worn during a festival. It seems to be made of a hundred different pieces of very old cloth all hand stitched together.
The guys that ran the booths at the African Village were really nice and seemed to be having more fun than most. While I was in one place a guy was telling me that to make him really happy I needed to buy something from him. Well I told him that I was a Norwegian and didn’t have much use for a mask and if I started wearing one around I would probably get arrested. This aint Africa I told him…. I actually would have really liked to have one but which one???
It would be really hard to pick out a favorite mask. Maybe a favorite dozen? I wonder what they use these for or do they just make them for the tourist trade? Some seemed really old while others were probably newer. I guess I should have bought one just to wear on my motorcycle when I ride through towns in North Dakota.
These are those cool little headstands that are used to support your head when sleeping at night. I saw some that were out on a table in the sun and they appeared to have been dipped in oil of some sort. I was talking with the seller and he said that they were exuding the oil that had been soaked up from years of someone’s head sleeping on them!!! They range from very simple crude to very fancy. It sure seems odd to sleep this way but there must be a good reason.
I had to ask about this little statue. It turns out that this is kept by the shaman and he pounds a nail into it to protect you from aches and pains. The guy said that you could borrow this from the Shaman when you need help in you house for someone that is sick.
This is a chair that has a carved head on it that someone has thrown a coat over it. The African guys were dressed for Montana weather while the white folks walked around in tee shirts.
Way cool drum eh?
More maskes. I just loved them and there seemed to be one for any occasion.
We finally got to the food vendor and had the choice of lamb which Sheila took as well as fish or chicken which I chose, with rice covered with spinach sauce and fried plantain or fried bananas (not sure which) with some really knock out hot sauce. We found a little shade to sit while we ate and I snapped this photo of the gal that was cooking when she went out back of her stand to wash something. Her colors in her dress were fantastic.
Back at one of the major buildings I found this couple that makes jewelry using old coins as a centerpiece. This one I liked very much and asked if I could take a photo of it for my daughter Tova who works with sea turtle recovery. He said that this was the first coin ever to be minted by the Romans. Actually the first coin minted in the world I believe. We looked it up in a catalog
and it was listed at over $2500 and the catalog was several years old. I would have bought it for Tova but you can see that it was a little pricey for a casual gift. Sorry Tova……
I didn’t take many pictures of the Main Event Gem show as I have done those before in other dog logs so I guess I just loaded this one up with mostly the African stuff which I really liked. I liked the guys selling there too. We did go out to the Rio Grande ‘catalog on the move’ show in the Hilton east where I spent most of the day talking and learning about new tools and methods I had not used before. Most of the other days we just looked around and talked with interesting people. Sheila bought a really nice opal (her birthstone) and I picked up a few things that I should be able to use on my workbench. It was really nice to get the hell out of town and back up to camp. Between the noise and confusion and the intense input from all the talking I was sure glad to be back in the desert and some peace and quiet.
