Pueblo Community College has a state of the art Learning Center.

December 1, 2010 when we were at the Pueblo Community College I sat for hours and watched students go down one hallway and come out another.  I thought maybe there was something to eat down there cause it seemed to be a very popular place.  And then along came Ross and he gave me the grand tour!

This is the door to the inner sanctum at Pueblo Community College.  I had done some embroidery work for Ross who runs the Learning Center, but I had no idea what the place actually entailed.  When we were at the college for World AIDS Day I got a chance to see and I was very impressed.  This program takes up the whole bottom floor of the building we were in and it is always busy.  Let me just shoot through here and point out a few things, then we will talk!

This is Ross's office.  It is very nice and he has lots of little momento's setting and hanging here and there.  He is into Rainbow's which are also a weakness of mine.  He has way more then me though.  I just keep buying rainbow fabric and not using it.  You know me well!  His office is in the center of the commons area.  He has windows on three sides so he can keep an eye on day to day operations.  Guess he never stopped to think, they can keep an eye on him also!

This is the commons area of the Learning Center. There are computers every where and they are there for the students to use. There are also little rooms here and there for different things that the students need.  There are computers in those rooms as well.

A little further down you will see a girl at a computer. She is not just any girl, she is the one who makes the media for special needs, such as braille.

Now, I forgot who this is, but he is a reception area person and I am sure he is very important since every one in the place seems to have a job that is thier job and they do it very well.  Ross is a very good task master!

 Ah!  Here we are entering what is known as the Disability Resources Center.  This is where the special stuff is made that people who need it, get it!

 And here is the girl I told you that does it.  She is a very nice girl and I wish I knew where I wrote her name down.  I am sure when I hit the publish button it will come to me.  She is a very nice girl and we chatted amicably about her role in preparing media for special needs.  This is a very vital part of what goes on in this place!

And here is my little Ross!  He is an amazing creature!  He actually rides his bike to work and drinks lots of water.  I could go on for days about the virtues of this man, but he would just roll his eyes so I am not going there.  Anyone who has ever dealt with Ross Barnhart has nothing but praise for him both as a professional and as a human being.  I am included in his fan club.

I attended a two year college and I am sure there were resources that I could have accessed, but nothing like this operation!  I can attest by sheer virtue of watching how many students accessed this area that it is a vital part of an education at PCC.  And with Ross at the helm this place can do nothing but thrive and grow!

You have met Ross Barnhart, the academia person, but this was my first encounter with that side of Ross.  I have known him for many, many years.  I knew him when he lived in Seattle.  Well, we are not that old so it was not that long ago, it just sounds like it.  Actually, I have known his mother, Nancy Martin, for about 20 years, but they were very short years!  OK, there is a point here!

If you think Ross, the professional is a wonderful man, you should meet Ross the philanthropist and activist.  My kind of man!  This article was to acquaint you with the Learning Center.  I will do an article on Ross Barnhart that will make the world stand up and take notice.  I think he would make a wonderful President!  We could write him on the ballot!

So that was yesterday and now we are on today!

I know you are holding your breathe to see how the "date" worked out last night.  Well, it was not quiet what I feared.  Joan made a very lovely dinner.  Her and Bobby's daughter, son-in-law, and the son from New York were there.  (Bobby is Ray's twin brother.) Course about as soon as I got into town, it started snowing.  Very big flakes!  If one hit me in the head I would have been history. 

So I called Ray and explained that rather than jockey vehicles around, I would just pick him up.  That was mistake #1 on my part.  Mistake #1 on his part was the screaming that went on during the trip across town.  Apparently he has not become accustomed to being at the mercy of a female driver in a blizzard.  Seemed to  be a lot of sniveling and crying going on over there in the passenger seat!

Conversation was great and the son-in-law and nephew gave me some tips on just how long to dip the lady fingers for a perfect Tiramasu.  The first time I made it I held them in the Kahlua until they quit bubbling.  I thought I had maybe not done it correctly since 3 people eating that first one I made, failed breathalizer tests alonside the road.  I now know you grasp the lady finger firmly and dip and raise rather quickly.  No bubbling should occur!  Just to be on the safe side, I had taken a Peanut Butter Pie for dessert!

Bobby gave me a tour of the house which included several stained glass windows that he had made.  They are really great and he seems to go more for the different textures as opposed to bright colors.  Very subtle.  Very nice.  And of course the snow continued to fall!  Time to go and Bobby cleared a path to the car for us.  There was some mention of a cook out in the summer!  That was rather tentative as to exactly when.

By this time those giant flakes had been falling for 3 hours, so I let Ray drive home.  Same sniveling and crying from the passenger seat, only this time it was not him!  I never knew my car could plow through drifts that deep and that fast!  He did trust me to hop in the drivers side when we got to his place and drive the seven miles of country roads to my place alone.  Course he did remind me to call when I got home so he would not have to worry.  I did.  The line was busy.

And there you have it in a nutshell.  One interesting note here,  he lives 3 blocks from the SWM of last summer fame.  Since we drove right past his house I pointed out his Victorian with the 3rd floor turret and the 7 windows that I made curtains for that are  still  not hung.  Small world after all.

So much for the warm and fuzzy, now let me hop up on the soapbox!

I just finished watching a segment on what is happening in Egypt.  In this segment the petite little female reporter was complaining about how those rioters actually punched her photographer!  Hello!  Here we have people who are fighting for a cause that means their very life and this guy has the nerve to stick a camera in their face!  I would have done a lot worse than punch him!

I would like to know at what point freedom of the press ends and infringement on human rights begins?  Have you ever watched the news very carefully?  I realize this all seemed to start about the time we bombed Baghdad and we could set in the comfort of our homes and watch the war unfold.  I realize further that we need to know the conditions our servicemen are laboring under.  What happened to creative writing?  Why must we practice the  "picture is worth a thousand words" philosophy?

In the center of every picture is a human being.  The man with his leg blown off, the woman sobbing with her dead, bloody baby in her arms,  the bomb in the car, on and on and on we go.  This is sensationalism at it's very worst.  Every station tries to go one better than the one before it did.  Whoever shows the most blood on the 6 o'clock news wins the rating war.  I am sorry, I do not look at it anymore.

Reporters have their jobs and some of them I admire very much.  Right now we are in the middle of very frigid temperatures and I just seen a young lady explaining to me how dangerous the weather was.  I could have been a little more convinced had she actually dressed for the conditions and not had to be seen with her lovely hair whipping around her well manicured face.  Just me.

I was taught, and by a very able teacher she was, that I must make the reader see what I see.  I must get my thoughts into the readers head and make them feel what I felt.  The victim must remain faceless.  I am perhaps out of touch with the media reality of today, but out of touch I shall remain.  In all my writing you will find only the essence of pain, tragedy, or grief.  Does that make me a better reporter then the one who motions the cameraman forward to see the dying face of the rebel?  I sure like to think so.

And how do we go back to the old style of reporting?  We probably don't.  Our world has become a world where seeing is believing why bother visualizing when it is right there to look at, up close and personal.  I have found the off button on my set!

Have you ever been in a situation where you let your guard down because there was something more pressing?   Can you describe your pain you felt at the lowest moment of your life?  Or do you need someone to take a picture and show it to you as a bitter reminder?  I don't.  I can still feel the ache and raw grief in every fiber of my being.  Shall I describe it to you?

And tonight will mark a new era!

I have fully recovered from my little dating fiasco of last summer, so I am going to try this one again.  Not real sure of this guy's political affiliations, but I have pointed mine out to him.  I even printed my profile description and gave it to him to study.  He does not have a computer so he has not read my blog.  I do not know if that is good or bad.  I have taken him to Weaver's Guild where he was the only man in a room full of women and he seemed comfortable.  He has attended my church several times and fits in well in that area of my  life.

OK, I met him and his brother and his sister in law at the craft fair last November.  They do woodworking, so I know he is adept at something.  Then I found out he is a weaver, so I sold him a loom.  And some thread.  And loaned him some books.  And some shuttles.  He was out for coffee and pie once.  He has met Tim.  And sister Mary, who thinks he is a very handsome fella'.  But you know me,  "Beauty is skin deep, while ugly goes clear to the bone."

So, he has a tremendous sense of humor which is a definite plus in my world.  He knows where I do volunteer work and why and seems very compassionate in that area.  He even goes to the gym several times a week and works out, so he is into the fitness thing.  He has a dog just like Elvira only his is a full blooded Lahso and Elvira is part Shitzu. 

So, after 8 years of dinging around on my own, I may be on the verge of entering uncharted waters.  After 3 months of casual friendship I am going some where in the dark, so I almost have to call it a date.  I hope nothing changes, cause I been enjoying the friendship part.  I do know Kenny did not want me to spend my life alone, but he may not get his way on this one.  Time will tell.

By the way, just for future reference, his name is Ray.

The end of an era here in my corner of the world.

A moving trailer backed up to the house and with that simple move we end an era here.  Twenty-five years is a lot like a quarter of a century any way you cut it.  I remember when Jacque and Clifford moved in.  There was a ratty old double wide trailer on an acre of ground.  The huge shop building was the only solid thing on the property.  They had no kids at home, but his mom and dad lived over on the corner.  They came with 2 dogs and a parrot.  That soon changed.

Seems the property came with a miniature goat.  Well, that goat was pregnant.  Soon there were 2 goats, and the cat, Blueberry.  Then came 3 turkeys and a few more goats.  Then the turkeys hatched babies, and they bought more goats.  Well, then along came a grand son, born to the son who was in the service and stationed  in Okinawa.  Then the dogs got old and died and they got more dogs, and more cats.  Pretty soon it looked like Green Acres over there! 

Well, then they adopted the grandson.  We adopted our grandson.  They were the same age and learned to get into lots of things together.  I got lots of good pictures before we got them trained to keep their clothes on and only pee in the house.  Some day those pictures are going to come in handy!

They decided to put a new double wide on the property since the other one was falling down.  They bought a camper to live in while that was happening.  I did lots of cooking, the neighborly thing to do!  The new double wide on a foundation was a definite improvement! 

Time passed and things happened.  They buried his Mother and Father.  I buried lots of people, including my mother, sister and husband.  When I needed some thing that I was incapable of doing, I knew Clifford was there for me.  Anything from a mechanical problem to untangling the barbed wire in the high wheeler to wringing the neck of the goose who was having seizures! 

We grew apart, but not really.  They were always there.  They waved and I waved.  Occasionally I baked something and took it over.  It became a more taken for granted thing than an active friendship, but  a friendship none the less.  Then she lost her job and he lost his.  A sign of the times.  Then it seemed that a major move was the only answer.  She scored first in North Dakota, of all places!

And that is why yesterday when I went out to start the car very early and found the Uhaul backed up to the door, it hit me.  And there was Clifford.  We made small talk about the weather and how it might slow down the move, but not much.  Then there was nothing else to say.  So I just hugged him.  Another part of my life is over. 

The Challenger Space Shuttle has exploded.

Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the disaster aboard the Challenger.  What were you doing that day?  I remember very clearly, I was cleaning house.  Now I do not remember because I never clean house and this was special, but there are somethings you remember because something else happened to remind you.  On the day JFK was shot, I made cinnamon rolls and cleaned a goose.  So January 28, 1986, I was cleaning house.

Kenneth had left about 8:00 AM to go out to the Eden yard with his cutting torches intent on cutting a railroad tank car in half lengthwise so he could make it into a rock trailer for hauling.  Daughter Debbie had come from town to help me clean house, more for company than actual work.  We got our coffee and then she remarked that the Challenger with the teacher was being launched and she would like to watch that before we fired up the vacuum.  So we set down to watch.

The astronauts filed by and waved to us and I remember feeling a sort of pride that America could do this and school kids all over our nation were watching the teacher lift off and fly into space.  The rocket raising over the cape was a beautiful sight, but then something did not look right.  There was absolute silence on the television and in my front room.  Then Debbie said, "Is it supposed to do that?" and I replied,  "Nah, I don't think so."  It was a life time before the man (Was it Walter Cronkite?) on the telly noted that something appeared to have gone wrong.

Thirty minutes later Kenneth came in the back door.  Of course we were still watching the reruns over and over, hope against hope that we would catch a glimpse of the Challenger emerging in one piece on the other side of the smoke.  Never happened.  Kenneth never went back and cut that tank that day.  He thought that might have been an omen, so he stayed home.  Deb and I rather lost our zest for cleaning house that day, also.

America took a giant step backwards in the space program that day.  Two years would pass before we tried again.  We had been kicked in the pants by a leaky "o" ring.  Ever see one of those?  The ones we used on the truck was about the size of a dime and just a very thin piece of rubber, open in the middle.  Ours cost about 7 cents.  Probably that was the most inexpensive piece on that whole rocket and for want of that tiny item, seven lives were lost.  Seven bright eyed pioneers of the great beyond that we call "space".

Some where in the back of my tiny mind, I am remembering a quotation.  Help me out here if you remember it correctly.  "For want of a horse, the rider was lost.  For want of a rider the country was lost."  Now, I know that is not right.  It may actually be a poem.  Bet my Sammy can come up with it for momma!

But you get the idea.  Another one Momma used to say was, "A stitch in time saves nine."  It all boils down to the same thing.  Make sure when you do it, you do it well and it will hold up for you.  If you do not mend your clothes at the first sign of a tear, you will end up having to do a real repair job on it later.

So there you have it.  Just some short musings of where I was 25 years ago.  How time flies!

What contitutes friendship?

Isn't this picture pretty?  It was taken at Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  I was there with over 200 acquaintances.  Imagine not being able to say 200 of my friends.  I once told my mother that I had lots of friends.  My mother, a very wise woman,  told me "If you reach the end of your life and you can count your true friends on the fingers of one hand, consider yourself blessed."

Well, here I am with more road behind me than I see in front and those words echo in my mind.  Mother has been gone for too many years now and I find myself more often thinking like she talked.  So, I got to thinking about how many friends I have actually had and are they still around.  For the first eight years of school I had a very best friend.  Her name was Barbara and I spent one night a week at her house.  Never saw her after grade school.

High school is a blur.  Then I married and moved around a lot so friends were hard to come by.  After the divorce I moved back home to Hutch.  There I became best friends with a waitress named Vi.  She had a daughter the same age as my son.  That one stuck through thick and thin and still exists to this very day.  She is a better friend then I am.  She writes, I read.  She calls, I talk.  I moved to Colorado and she moved to Missouri.  We have both buried our husbands.  I got to go see that girl this spring!

The next lasting friend I made was Frank.  We were in business with him and I liked his honesty and all his family.  He is still in business and lives in this town and I have not seen him for several years, but I still count him as friend.  If I called he would be here in a flash and vice versa.

Then came Renate.  Renate listens when I talk and I listen to her.  She is bluntly honest with me when I am wrong.  She and I use each other as sounding boards. We both work with AIDS clients so we have that to commiserate over; that and attending funerals together.

Then along came Kay, who winters in Texas, but we keep in touch and have breakfast every Wednesday when she is here.  We have in depth conversations and do a lot of gossiping.

So you see there is four friends, each perched on a finger.  I only have room for one more!  You know, either my mother was wrong or I am blessed beyond measure because I have a lot of people that I consider very dear friends.  Back home is Evelyn and Kay, Karen, and my sisters.  Shirley in Kansas City.  Amy in Florida. My dear friend Jade.  And all my Internet friends and that is before I start naming the ones here in Pueblo.   I am not even going to go there because someone will get their feelings hurt.

I have friends who have become lovers and lovers who have become friends.  (I like the latter better.)  I am truly blessed in that I can walk into any place in this town and there is someone I know who is very happy to see me, so I am not alone long.  More often than not their name escapes me, but they don't seem to mind.  This impresses me.  Most people want their name remembered, but my friends do not care.  They love me for who I am, not if I remember their name.

I have few rules that my friends must adhere to and failure to do so gets you off my list of friends and you then become a "this is".  So watch out for that one.  If you are still with me here you are my friend, or my dear friend, or my very dear friend. 

The first rule of friendship is to always be honest.  I gave up lying because I could not keep my stories straight.  So honesty is paramount.  The truth is what it is and should never be altered.  I respect the truth.  Lie even once and we are done.  The omission of a relevant fact is also a lie or at least it is in my book.  You are my friend because I judged you by your words and actions from the first day I met you.  If you neglected to mention that you are a serial killer in your spare time, don't you think I would want to know that?

I am loyal to my friends and I expect loyalty in return.  If you have something bad to say to me, say it to me, not someone else.  We can work out our differences if we know what they are and we face them head on.  Love has to come naturally, but a friendship is worth working to save.

You must respect that I am a Bleeding Heart Liberal.  You do not have to like it when I work with the AIDS clients, or the battered women, or the illegal immigrants, or pile my car with recyclable crap, or stop and give that homeless woman the money in my pocket, or stand nose to nose with a homophobe in the middle of the library and we get thrown out.  You don't have to  like it but you do have to accept it and if my actions embarrass you are free to just walk away.  Just do not attempt stop me or try to correct me.  I am on a roll!  You are free to voice your opinions and I will respect them, but they are yours and part of your conservatism.  It is best we not discuss politics.  LOL

For the most part I try to adhere to the 10 Commandments and so do my friends.  It is nothing we think about, just sort of comes naturally.  So once more I have digressed from the point of this blog entry.  I came on here to decide who to put  on that last finger to fill out my friend list and discovered that I am going to need a lot more fingers!  I love every body and they love me.  It is called making the world go round.  I can not limit my friends, nor would my dear mother expect me to.  So I will just hang on to what I have when the road comes to an end, I will just look back and see who all is still there!