Eastward Ho ... Stephen Day is painting in the East

Christmas time in Taos, NM

Last night (Dec 11th, 2010) was the unique Lighting of Ledoux Street, rooted in ancient and modern Taos traditions.  The ancient luminarias, vigil fires of aromatic piñón, and farolitos (little candles in paper bags) that line roads and buildings, as if guiding us home, date back to pre-Christian Spain, as described in Pedro Ribera Ortega’s book, “Christmas in Old Santa Fe.”  Here are two photos of the lighting of LeDoux Street, as well as two photos of the lights on the Taos Plaza. This is the last entry on the blog.  Have a Happy Holiday Season and a Wonderful New Year!

 

 

 

 



 

Back Home in Taos, NM

We’ve had a wonderful trip, and Steve painted over 70 paintings and took over 3,000 photographs.  This is such a beautiful country and there is so much to see and we only saw a fraction of it, but we loved every place we got to visit.  We plan to go back to a few of the locations, and in the next year or two go on another long painting trip.  It was icing on the cake to see all the friends and family we got to see. 

This will be the last blog of this painting trip with the picture of snow in the mountains above Taos, and the view from our front door this morning.   But there may be one or two more blogs with pictures from Taos after the “Lighting of LeDoux Street” on December 11^th, and perhaps of December in Taos which is “magical”. 

We appreciate you following the blog and hope you enjoyed it as much as we did doing it.

 

 

Beautiful and Unique New Mexico

Over the weekend we had a wonderful visit with friends in Lubbock, Norval and Mary Pollard.  Steve has known Norv since high school in Durango.  And Blanco also loved visiting their two labs and the marmalade cat, Louie, who trotted along with us on a walk just like a dog would.  Then on Monday we drove to Roswell, NM, to have lunch with Steve’s friend, Gorton Smith, who he went to McMurray College in Abilene with him as well as Perkins School of Theology.  In fact, Gorton “married” us. 

We drove through the very scenic town, Ruidoso, but due to the snow that was coming down we didn’t get any photos, so here is a website so you can see the beautiful pictures they display here.

Ruidoso, NM

Here are a few other photos of areas we drove through from Ruidoso to Socorro, New Mexico.  The first picture is near Lincoln, New Mexico, and shows a scene you see often in New Mexico in the winter with the snow covered peaks and the juniper and pinion covered grassy hills.  The second shows the “Valley of Fire” black volcanic hillsides which you can see around Grants, NM, as well.  The last picture is the historic marker for the Trinity site since we were so close to White Sands on this road to Socorro but one can only tour White Sands and the Trinity site several times per year with a special ticket.

 

 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving from Oklahoma City, OK

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day.   We definitely did with family and friends here in OKC.  We wanted to include a few pictures showing some of the many things we are thankful for.  This is in order of the pictures:  Good Friends (Blanco the Chihuahua and Roscoe the Bulldog are very good friends), Family (these Bulldog pups are brothers but will soon be split up since one will be traveling to Arizona, the other will stay in OKC), Security in our wonderful country (Roscoe is displaying the sleep pattern we hope we all can have), and wonderful food (these are cookies made by our niece, Monica).

 

 

 

 

American Banjo Museum – Oklahoma City, OK

There is a national treasure in downtown Oklahoma City.  It’s a museum dedicated to the music and heritage of America’s Instrument – the Banjo.  Here is part of what the website link that I will include here says:  “The museum contains more than 300 instruments, the largest collection on public display in the world.  Examples include replicas of primitive banjos developed by African slaves in the Old South, Minstrel Age instruments from 19th century, post WWII instruments used in bluegrass, folk and world music, and museum’s core collection of ornately decorated banjos made in America during the Jazz Age of the 1920’s and 30s.”

American Banjo Museum

And here is Steve in the main exhibit room in front of the vintage Bacon and Day banjos. 

 

Two wonderful Museums in Oklahoma

In Tulsa we went to the Gilcrease Museum which has a wonderful collection of Western Art as well as many other exhibits.  We particularly were interested in the “Faces of the Frontier” Portraits taken of historical people (not always well-known at the time of the photograph) from 1845-1924.  There is a book on sale now of these photographs as well.  Here is the link to the Gilcrease so you can see more about it:

Gilcrease Museum

In Oklahoma City is the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.  It, too, has an amazing permanent collection of “Art of the American West” including many of the Original Taos Artists.  The American Rodeo gallery with all the sound effects of a rodeo, the Museum of the Frontier West, and the Western Performers Gallery with Dale Evans, Roy Rogers, John Wayne and many more performers with fascinating inside stories and beautifully done portraits are all very fun and interesting.  There are many more exhibits that you can see on this link:

National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum

Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, OK

Today we got to visit with another of Steve’s Perkins School of Theology friends, Mark Rickman.  It was a fun lunch laughing at old times and catching up on our lives for the last 30+ years.  Then we visited the beautiful Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa.  Here is the link so you can read the history of it.   You can see Steve on the balcony looking down on the gardens, the gardens and the pool, and a full view of the house.

Philbrook Art Museum

 

 

 

Little Rock, Hot Springs, and Mountain Harbor, Arkansas

Steve and I met in Little Rock, Arkansas, back in 1978 when the population was approximately 120,000, and we thought it was a wonderful small city that was so pretty and easy to get around.  Now the population is 191,933 as of 2009, and it is now a large city with lots more traffic and businesses than when we were there.  Arkansas is a gorgeous state, and we saw some of the most beautiful areas today.

We drove through Hot Springs National Park and the town of Hot Springs while it was foggy this morning.  The first picture here shows some of the old bathhouses and a beautiful old hotel in the distance, and you can see the steam coming off of the hot springs on the sidewalk.

We met one of Steve’s friends for lunch today, Dave Steele (we saw his wife Diane last night in Little Rock) from graduate school at SMU in Dallas.  We hadn’t seen Dave and Diane for 25 years.  Dave serves two churches near Mt Ida, Arkansas.  We had lunch at Mountain Harbor which is a resort for either meetings or just to stay in cabins or condos on Lake Ouachita.   Here is the website which I’m including so you can see how beautiful it is:

Mountain Harbor Resort

The last two pictures are of Steve and Dave, and looking out on Lake Ouachita.

 

 

 

Winter Haven, the Villages, and Pensacola, Florida

It’s wonderful to have friends and family in such nice places in Florida.  Yesterday we were able to visit the Sanders in Winter Haven (Cheri worked with Jim when we all lived in the Denver area for about 20 years at Lockheed Martin).  We had fun catching up at lunch, and you can see Steve with the Sanders outside the restaurant in the first picture. 

Then we drove to the Villages near Ocala, FL.  We have seen advertisements on TV for "The Villages" that showed all the wonderful activities and golf courses offered there….well, it’s “as advertised”.  We visited our friends Sarge and Steph Means and loved getting the grand tour of the Villages in their golf carts and eating dinner on one of the lakes there.  That is the second picture. 

Finally today we got to spend most of the afternoon and evening with Cheri’s brother, Cal, who is working is an Orthopedic Surgeon here at the hospital in Pensacola 3 weeks out of every month, and then goes back to be with his wife Janice in Ft Myers with the week he’s not working.  We visited the Naval Air Station near Pensacola and Cheri and Cal’s picture is the last one here at the Naval Air museum there.  After this museum we walked the 177 steps to the top of the lighthouse on the base which had an amazing view of the area around Pensacola.

 

 

 

Goodland, FL, near Naples and Marco Island

Today we experienced a little of what the cruise ship that had run out of power experienced.  Around 5:00 last night, as they were widening a road in Ft Myers they cut into a natural gas line with the worker being burned over 50% of his body which is very sad, and the flames went up 45 feet into the air.  Since then there is no natural gas to 8,000 people on this Western Coast of Florida from Ft Myers South.  So, there is no hot water here, and many of the restaurants had to close since they had no gas to cook on.  They say it could take a week to get every business and home gas line re-pressurized and the pilot light checked, etc.  Some of the restaurants said they are losing $8,000 a day!  So its cold showers until the gas lines are fixed here in Naples.

Today Steve painted this little cove in Goodland, FL, which is a little less “glitzy” than Marco Island and Naples, but has lots of character.