Southwestern Run

So where was I? I checked out of the emergency room, none the wiser and checked into my hotel on Cerillos which fulfilled all of my basic needs admirably, clogged sink and rust spots notwithstanding.

Hooked up with Friedman and we went to Piccolino for dinner, the first of three trips to the local's only Italian joint with great food, portions and an extensive menu. I had veal francese the first night. Place is a godsend. And cheap.

Next day I met Joseph at Linda at La Fonda for my annual trout breakfast. The server agreed to give me the blue corn batter rather than the new oatmeal, which I detest. Always great to catch up with them. 

Chris Lusher had a really nice auction at the Santa Fe Woman's Club on Tuesday.

I bought some good stuff including two weavings, a painting, jewelry and this beautiful early Tonto Apache 21" tray.

The painting was too big to store in the van all week and my archaeologist friend Ron Winters let me take it to his house to keep it out of harm's way.

This is he and his wife Lisa's beautiful backyard you see behind me.

I usually only have two must see galleries in Santa Fe and I stopped at both of them, Nat Owings and Zaplin Lampert.

Both have the most exquisite material and have had the best forever.

Show drop off was Thursday and I waited for my allotted time slot and started setting up.

In the new post John Morris reality my booth in Santa Fe is a third of what it once was, even smaller than Albuquerque, but I managed to somehow fit lots of good stuff into my eight x ten postage stamp.

We all tend to hold back our greatest stuff for Whitehawk and I did.

I had a great selection of baskets, beadwork, silver and paintings.

I sold in all categories to a very knowledgable collector base, some of whom I go back with thirty years or more.

Sold a native woman a Bettina Steinke painting that she posed for when she was sixteen, she is eighty three today.

Sold her ex husband one of his paintings back too, they were both delighted.

Made some people happy and I was happy. Cut my prices in half but it didn't matter.

Do you see the pot on the third shelf with the Zuni frogs?

It was thrown by Cochiti potter Teresita Romero in the 1950's. I sold it back to her grandson Mateo through Mark Sublette.

George Lopez and Gloria Lopez Cordova

I sold my saltillo and found another one, later but still beautiful.

Sold that too.

I have been buying up some beautiful baskets. 

Basket prices have been falling of late but they had been ridiculously expensive.

There was a Carrie Bethell at the show that Wayne Thompson had once paid a million dollars for.

Now prices have become more affordable and I am buying the great ones that I can afford. 

They are too beautiful and precious to ignore.

What did Buffet say? 

Be fearful when they are greedy and greedy when they are fearful.

I am buying some great baskets right now, Yokuts, Kawaiisu, Washoe and Pomo. 

Bought a rare Mono Lake Paiute woven by Alice Wilson, Lucy Telles sister.

It was a work trip and I am a one man show and just kept merrily plugging along to the very end. 

I did well as did my longtime cohorts Steve and John.

I was probably low man on the totem but not by much. Booth was always full and humming along.

It was a strange week in the sense that I never made it to the plaza, or the Plaza Cafe, or Pasquales or many of the things I normally do. Stuck with the Pantry, Piccolino and Harry's. 

Here is a pic of the pork loin at Piccolino, they don't mess around.

They also made a great spinach salad with apricots, walnuts and feta.

Went out to Boca Taverna with Winters, Stoops and the Dodges one night, also to Paloma with Ron and Lisa.

Stayed away from the expensive joints and never made it to the Santa Cafe for the first time in memory.

Toward the end of the show a guy who I had photographed years ago came walking by with a weaving to sell.

It was a 19th century Germantown but almost resembled a Pennsylvania quilt. Condition is awful and needs more money than I have to make right but I bought it anyway.

Because I always favor design over condition. Now it helps to have both but give me something imperfect that actually says something over the inverse any day.

Later I met the person who sold it to this guy, Ernesto, he said it came out of Colorado. I love it, it is folk art and would be surprised if I had it forever. Too pretty.

Here are a couple more pictures from the shows.

Terry DeWald

Jamie Compton, a favorite booth

Alston's killer Germantown

The minimalist Mr. Cleary

Voracek

Farr

Traut

Smoot

Gallegos

Of course the people make the show and I go back with some of these traders a long way.

It's hard work and it definitely takes its toll but I love it and have never looked back.

The prednisone definitely kept me in the game but it was a small dose and it ran out quickly. I ended up green and running on fumes.

I had been promised move out help but it never materialized and I was totally beat up at the end, did it myself.

*

Took off back to Gallup early the next day, for a lunch at Don Diegos, only non native there. Had the sheepherder.

Figured out something, get it with green chile, not the red, The red in Gallup is so hot it will kill you.

I made a serious mistake and stayed at the Twin Arrows outside of Flag that night. Wandered too close to the slots and had a serious bloodletting. Fessed up to my wife and said Never Again.

Did have the lamb stew and fry bread which wasn't bad.

*

Took off the next day and stopped in Seligman. GPS said take the 17 to Phoenix but it was 117° there and I wasn't in the mood.

Was almost into my burger and eggs when the power went off. Cook finished it by braille. 

They shut the doors and I had the last flush in the biffy before I was back on the road.

So everything is cool and I'm heading for Barstow when I get the dumb idea of asking SIRI for the fastest way home.

I'm by the inspection station and it says turn here on five mile road. Really? Puts me on the 95 to Blythe and then somewhere near the Chemehuevi reservation and then I am in no mans land, no idea, on the 62, like a peyote trip without the pretty colors or the holy message, just stress at being lost in the absolute unforsaken spot in nowhere.

Takes me about ten hours to finally pull in my driveway.

Probably won't do that again.

Rock & Soul Music

I -25 Blues

I am back from my annual trip to New Mexico, where I exhibited at the 47th annual Whitehawk Ethnographic Show in Santa Fe and the 26th annual Great Southwestern Show in Albuquerque. 

I had excellent shows at both venues but the trip was not without its travails, pain and drama.

I guess I should start at the beginning which means I have to go back a ways. Five or six weeks ago I was in Santa Barbara doing a show when I got a little cold that turned into bronchitis. After a week slugging codeine and hitting the keflex, I went to Toronto for a family thing and then got the word upon my return that my kid brother had died in Pittsburgh. 

I came back, still sick and grieving and knew that making it alive to New Mexico would be a serious chore but I had to marshal on. Bronchitis and high elevation is a dangerous mix.

So I left on the 29th for Flagstaff when about four hours in on the Kingman grade I felt myself losing consciousness and passing out. I managed to right my ship and stay on the road. I called two doctor friends I know, Mike in Portland and Scott who was with his family in Portugal and they both tried to steer me straight.

One or both told me to get an oxygen sensor for my finger. I registered an 88 after a slight exertion, not good.

Mike told me to go to an emergency room, not to do the show. He was concerned that I could be having a pulmonary embolism, congestive heart failure or worse. I called the promoter. She told me that I would either live or die there but get my ass over, I was doing her show. She told me to buy some portable oxygen and suck it up.

I couldn't afford to leave this mortal coil without putting some money in the coffers and drove to the show the next day.

I set up the tiny 10 x 10 booth and gritted through the next four days, high elevation and bronchial crud  zapping all the energy I could muster.

As I said, I did really well, a lot of nice things went away, never to be seen again.

Forward to Sunday night. 

We pack out and I am staying in a very dicey part of town. 

I am worried about my stuff staying in my van all night in Albuquerque. I meet Shirley and Bill at Appleby's (their pick) and two men start hurling epithets at the bar, egged on by their respective wives. I am worried about getting caught in some stray bullet crossfire.

I have a CCW that works in California, Arizona, Texas and twenty six other states but not New Mexico so I left my gun at home.

I called the waitress over and asked her if she was aware of the brewing confrontation and she looked at me and said "Sir, get serious, you are in the ghetto."

The next morning I dropped a weaving off to get cleaned off University and First and got into an even seedier section. Tweakers, fentanyl and hot baking weather is a lethal combination. I managed to make it out alive, thankfully.

Now I had a decision to make. I needed to heed my doctors and hit an emergency room. But I have been there too many times before and know that you dip your toe into the medical system and you can be sucked in and not seen again for weeks.

I could go to UNM or Presbyterian but would I still have a van when I got released?

I decided to go to Santa Fe and take my chances there. 

I called the urgent care on St. Michaels, but they said that with my symptoms and advanced age I needed the E.R.

So I checked into St. Vincents.

I got every test known to man as well as a chest x ray. Covid, Dimex, RSV, the gamut. My oxygen dropped to 77 in the hospital. But I never saw an actual doctor and never got a satisfactory answer as to the nature of my medical condition.

I saw a physician's assistant and a nurse. Capable but I really wanted to see an actual doctor. Never happened. 

They gave me a respiratory treatment, a prednisone script and an albuteral inhaler and after about five hours, sent me on my merry way, really no wiser.

to be continued...

Tales Of Brave Ulysses

Religion of Rob

Yours truly, from Big Dave

I started writing the Blue Heron Blast in March of 2008, I believe that we are now in our eighteenth year. It has operated fairly consistently over that time, with normal ebbs and flows. 2025 is charting to be my least productive yearly literary output ever, for reasons previously discussed.

There have been 13,623 posts to date, not including this one, 16,324 comments and we are now quickly closing in on ten million views, currently charting at 9,190,946. I am pleased to note that my analytic tools show that people are finally starting to read my short stories, which now consistently rank as the most read posts.

My best friend Big Dave decided to do some GPT analysis of my writing, I believe through Chat GPT and then Claude and Anthropic . He asked about my written feelings regarding religion and this is what the AI machine intelligence came up with. I wasn't able to download his file so I took screenshots and the reading will be a bit patchy so please bear with me.

Although I am pretty wary of AI I have to say that the program did a good job scrubbing the blog and accurately encapsulating my thoughts and philosophy regarding religion. I could nitpick one or two things but how do you argue with machine intelligence? My god. People may not understand me so well but this machine has me pegged in a nutshell, at least theologically speaking. And I was pleased to see that the Machine Mind did not view me as a threat, at least not yet anyway.

I told Dave that the AI sort of glossed over my Jewish components and he ran it again with a different engine, delivering this:

The Religion of Rob: A 300-Word Overview

Based on the Blue Heron Blast blog posts, Rob's religious worldview emerges as complex and conflicted, shaped by Jewish cultural identity while maintaining a deeply skeptical stance toward organized religion.

Rob demonstrates clear Jewish cultural connections, attending family bat mitzvahs in Toronto and seeking grief counseling through Jewish Family Services after his brother's death. However, his relationship with faith appears fraught with cynicism. He describes religious tribalism with stark language: "Love the tribe, just hate the bullshit. God loves the conquerors, smites the infidels, like wiping up ants with a wet paper towel at a picnic." This suggests someone culturally Jewish but theologically disillusioned.

His spiritual sensibilities manifest more subtly through an openness to mystical experiences rather than institutional belief. When discussing his brother's death, Rob acknowledges seeing potential signs—like a screech owl appearing near his door the night he learned of the passing—while carefully qualifying his skepticism: "I am not a huge believer in signs, so easy to get caught up in indulgent self deception. But that doesn't mean I am going to stop watching and listening."

This tension between skepticism and spiritual curiosity defines Rob's religious perspective. He maintains cultural and familial Jewish obligations while rejecting what he sees as organized religion's violence and tribalism. His worldview appears shaped by personal loss—having lost three siblings—leading to both grief counseling and a search for meaning beyond traditional religious frameworks.

Rob's "religion" seems to be one of aesthetic appreciation, human connection, and guarded openness to mystery. He finds meaning in art, food, family relationships, and careful observation of the natural world, while maintaining deep suspicion of religious certainty and institutional power. His is a post-traditional spirituality—culturally rooted but intellectually liberated from dogmatic belief systems.

Not bad. 

Dave also ran an AI program analyzing my feelings regarding art, something I will share another day. Too much cutting and pasting for one evening.

Peace be with you, Pilgrims. And I really like the part about the well made sandwich, glad that came through.

Stop That Train

Mose Allison

Food and Wine

I brought back something from Santa Barbara, a slight cold gave way to a bronchial thing. Gave it to my wife, which she didn't really appreciate.

I covid tested just to be sure but never had a high fever and I was clean. Bill and Shirley got sick too up there. 

I leave soon for New Mexico and packing while feeling like this is a bear. Will be interesting to see how I fare, physically if not financially. 

I honestly think I have a bacterial lung infection and am self medicating with antibiotic Keflex as of tonight. Nothing else, including codeine, is touching whatever is in my lungs. I have to wonder if it is the old building I work in at Earl Warren? I get sick there a lot.

Still dealing with other issues, my brother's passing and I lost another close friend yesterday after a long battle. It all adds up.

I think I mentioned that I have had only one drink in nine months, a glass of wine at Joseph and Linda's. No smoke either, I have been very clean and focused. Well the streak came to an end in Santa Barbara.

A friend gave Bill and I a 2002 bottle of Silver Oak cabernet two years ago for selling a Granvile Redmond painting for him. 

Probably my favorite wine.

The bottle was getting long in the tooth and it was now or never in Santa Barbara. 

Still good, had it with a saffron seafood pasta at Teddy's in Carpenteria.

Twenty dollar corkage.

I am not sure if I am such a china doll at this point that one bottle of wine can nail my immune system but I guess it is possible.

*

Got a chance today to hear Nick and his Vulcan Mountain Boys rehearse for an upcoming bluegrass concert.

Such a talented bunch.

*

Both Leslie and I like to cook so at times it gets competitive in our small kitchen.

But when we cooperate, even better meals occur.

My wife is an incredible shopper. She brought home delicious fresh sand dabs yesterday. I dredged them in a seasoned flour and panko and flash cooked them in my enameled cast iron skillet. Forgot to add the beaten egg the recipe called for but it didn't seem to mind too much.

Superb.

She also found an amazing deal on rack of lamb. Regularly $24.99, she found two ten chop racks for $4.99 the other day at Sprouts and sent the butcher back for two more that he had in the back.

Some people don't like lamb. We love lamb but don't eat a lot of it. 

After tonight's dinner I wish that she had bought ten of them. 

She did a six hour garlic rosemary marinade. 

My wife is a master at marinating lamb, from butterflied legs to chops.  

She made the best ever tonight.

I seared them on each side and then popped them in a 450 degree oven for fourteen minutes, then a two minute broil at the end.

My god, were they good. Had them with a lemon artichoke pasta and a caprese salad, which tasted even better when mixed together with the pasta.

Who knew?

Can't wait to cook the next rack when I come back from Santa Fe.

The Flatlanders

Saltillo Sarape

I have bought and sold many important weavings in my life but never thought I would find a classic period saltillo serape. This one was originally found in a thrift store and sold to me at the show in Santa Barbara last week by a very kind gentleman. 

They are beyond rare.

early painting vignette by James Walker

Woven sometime between 1750 and 1820, these extremely fine Mexican weavings were owned by native born Mexican aristocrats of Spanish extraction and found tied behind their saddle when not being worn. They had a center slit for wearing it over your head like a poncho or it could be fashionably draped over a shoulder.

They are associated with the town of Saltillo in the northern Mexico state of Coahuila and woven by the Tlaxcalan indians.

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art website:

The Saltillo serapes of northern Mexico are among the most flamboyant textiles woven in North America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Long associated with use by horsemen—which accounts for their considerable size—they took on nationalist overtones after Mexico's independence from Spain in 1821. Horse culture and its accoutrements, from fine horse to fine serape, became distinctively and visibly Mexican, with Saltillo serapes being the epitome of the male fashion.

Incredibly thin, they were dyed with native indigo and cochineal, the latter found by crushing bugs that lived in the nopal cactus. 

These classics were all colored with natural dies, which included wood, Palo moralete and sacalascal. The cochineal creates the brilliant red, which at one time was worth more than silver! 

The early weavings have a single concentric center diamond and it seems were mostly red and purple, with various shades of cochineal. 

Later you find white and red ones and the center medallions changed but it seems that the early gentlemen favored the red ones. After 1820 multiple center diamonds were introduced and in some cases, commercial dyes. 

They got thicker in many cases with plied warps.

The classic blankets like mine are quite rare and can usually only be found in museum collections like the Met and L. A. County. 

I will be showing this early textile at the Santa Fe Whitehawk Show in two weeks, hope that you can stop by and see it.

My friend Jim Jeter wrote this book on the topic back in the seventies and organized the first Museum exhibition.

My friends Leven Jester and Michael Caden took the pictures in the excellent book, long out of print.

Jim stopped by and told me that I had a wonderful early example.

Every one is different. I have studied all that I could and have yet to see one that is not stunningly beautiful.

It is estimated that they took at least two years to weave. 

My weaving is missing the right border although some of it is tucked under and sewn.

Apparently the only people now capable of repairing the missing inch and a half are in Turkey and the repair would supposedly cost me somewhere between 10 and 15k.

I think that I will be enjoying it as is. Might even keep this one! If I had to hazard a guess I would have to think that it came from an old Santa Barbara land grant family whose scion was perhaps uninterested in family history. Their loss.

What a treasure!

For more information on Saltillos I recommend watching Mark Winter's two saltillo videos on Youtube, art dealer diary. He has spent his life researching them and his love for them and his scholarship is inspiring.

He mentions in the video that the Spanish crown did not trust Spaniards born in the new world. 

Perhaps the feeling was mutual and part of the reason this beautiful garment was associated with independence and was worn by the native born with such pride.

Eva Cassidy

People be gone

I should be packing but I decided to waste a little time this morning and play around with an old photo. We don't get to take vacations much anymore so we are left with old memories. One of the greatest places we ever traveled to was southern Spain, way back in 2012.

Now this was before the Americans had moved in and had reclaimed Spain and Portugal, much to the chagrin of the natives. You always had a bunch of drunken Irishmen and the English debauching on the Costa Brava but you just didn't go there. Andalusia was still good, no anti tourist protests or water pistols although we did witness an anti banker communist protest once while in Madrid.

Anyway, as any photographer knows, one of the difficult things to do is to get a picture of any landmark that is not full of those pesky humans, of whatever nationality. Extremely hard to do. They really ruin your shot.

I took this picture in Granada, at the Alhambra.  Always loved the architectural form, but all those damn humans!

Well, lightroom has a new tool that does away with all that, removes their presence quicker than you can say Godzilla or Mothra. I started messing with it this morning and came up with this.

I was able to pull all the human forms out, in a manner of seconds, thanks to my new but mostly hated friend AI. I started with a larger crop that allowed me to get the cool water feature in the front.

I reduced the highlights on the building and sky and equalized the shadows below. Might brighten them back up a bit later.

But there was still this ugly metal staging on the right to deal with. And its reflection in the water. I brought the image into Photoshop and performed a few removal and cloning tasks, not perfect by any means but good enough for my purposes today.

Voila! I managed to depopulate my photo and come closer to capturing my original vision. Not a person in sight!  

Here is another shot of the Alhambra, teeming with people.

Presto, bye bye!

All gone. As people empty as the morning after. Nothing left but the coyotes and cockroaches. Had to go back and genocide a few pesky shadows in Photoshop. Now don't try this alone at home without supervision, kids. I look forward to messing with some other shots and ridding myself of all human presence.

Otis