day after sunday

listening to U2's Love Rescue Me...writing tonight with thoughts on a deadline i set for our team...Red Mesa CTE is due Friday...perhaps Monday will be teh due date for some...has quite the month managing & coordinate design efforts..

canyon de chelly

break

sessions 'jam on it'  - Part 1

listening to newcleus's jam on it (1984)...love this beat - reminds me of the guys over at santa monica pier we saw four weeks ago -they were hipping on the deck,battling...pretty cool moves.  it also reminds of the days at chinle bashas where guys use to battle to hip-hop/electro music..haha.  i was always fascinated by the music and the whole movement -quite the seduction.  it was evident, us rez folks tapped into mainstream through various conduits (mine was radio, hit parader magazines, word of mouth).  yay, we are all connected through music.  there i was watching dudes, like preston's crew and my bud, gerald charley battle.  (didn't know large format cardboard was valuable! ha)

i love listening to various styles of music.  being saturated by dad's country 8-tracks (charlie pride, linda ronstandt, waylon, buck owens, eddie rabbit, johnny horton, and the list goes on) - that plus my sister's disco & punk music will always ground me to a genre of music.

green column at newport beach pier...

1985 Ratt Invasion of your privacy

this was a great record...i remember purchasing it from record bar in gallup...we listened to it traveling back to chinle...mom and dad up front - trish and i in the back..i said...here, put this in...(at the time we had a tan colored cadillac) - we traveled through ganado listening to lay it down...i remember this..

carnival of celebrities 2014 at Casablanca

no more sheep or goats...

Last week, I traveled home for quick visit…the place has not change. Dzil Bahlakai Mesa is covered with snow…the cold air is clean!  The roads are muddy…there seems to be a place for everything here – like just the right amount (kinda like what Edward Abbey says).  Quickly, I learned the sheep & goats are gone…my aunt said one of my relatives visited my uncle one day.  Upon reaching the house, he notice the sheep dogs crying outside, as though very sad and lost.  He went inside and found my uncle emotional stating ‘dibe do lizi adin’ (no more sheep or goats). When I heard this, my heart felt heavy.  I could only imagine how my uncle felt with this lost…he has been tending to the sheep for decades – and when I think more about the livestock, I realize this sacred line has ‘ended’.  This is the first time our family has no sheep or goats since I can remember – perhaps since the return from Ft. Sumner.

My dad says my grandmother, at one time, had over 500 sheep grazing atop of Tselani Springs during the 1940s.  There was a summer camp up on the mountain and a simple structure at base of mountain. Dad and his siblings grew up among the scarcity of provisions, rather a time of difficulty - yet it was during this time they found the simple pleasures of living.  Living free, understanding the patterns of hard work, and the compassion of closeness - Closeness to family, the herds, the horse, and the place eloquently shared in ceremony.