CEDARHILL

An unusual visitor

I had an unusual visitor today. Scott Given showed up at my door, armed with old maps of Globe from 1890 - 1908 which showed every building....and outhouse in the town. Seems he is a man in search of outhouses...for the buried treasures they contain. Really. Back in the old days there weren't landfills....just outhouses. So if you're looking for old bottles and things - this is the place to look. He determined there was one in my back yard - and of course i gave him permission to dig. How could I not!
Sure enough within about 3 hours he had a hole about 4ft deep and 5ft round...and had found over a dozen old bottles - from whiskey to apothecary bottles from the late 1800's - not to mention an old shoe (very old), and a porcelain door knob.

I find it facinating what some people do for a living.

He says he owns the 2nd oldest bottle ever discovered in Arizona... And the oldest bottle sold for $5000. He was kind enough to re-fill the hole and put everything back as it was.... Leaving me with a small collection of bottles - very old- but all with a slight crack etc in them.

 

Muleskinners steal the show

This has been a BUSY week with B&B guests, working on an article for the Silver Belt involving the local school district and their problem with teacher/student retention, and hosting/coordinating some things for the HOME TOUR...which brings in about 1000 plus visitors and is a welcome  up-tick in visitor traffic for the community. This year we were joined by a group that goes by "Mojave Muleskinners"Muleskinners  who have 150 members and dress in period clothing 1860-1890. I met 2 of them when they rode the train last month and asked them if they'd come back for Home Tour. They not only came ( with an all-volunteer group- of 15 adults and 5 kids), but put on two GUNFIGHT shows, and robbed our local train! Much to the delight of EVERYONE who caught the show or saw them on the street.

  

I got to ride with them and hang out and shoot pics most of the day, but I certainly wasn't the ONLY one who found them most photogenic! when we pulled in on the 1pm train there were over 300 people with cameras on the ready to catch the action. Lots of gunpowder, blasting, acting, and falling later..... all the bad guys and good guys were dead... leaving just the women and their shotguns- standing.

  

I invited them all back to the house for lasagne and tea before they headed home and we have since hatched our own little plan to have a WESTERN night at CedarHill, complete with Barbecue and campfire and an outdoor movie showing one of their top the Westerns. sometime in May.... 

You can cath all the pics I took that day at Pictage.Pictures

   

A new theatre...coming soon

Construction of a new theater downtown began in earnest at the end of January. Semis loaded with concrete block, big earth moving equipment, concrete trucks and lots of man power decended on the site two weeks ago and the walls are going up with amazing speed. It is good to see work like this happening at a time when it seems America has slowed to a stand still. 

This new theatre, on the site of the old one, but even bigger, will house 4 screens and undoubtedly will bring much more activity to the Downtown than we've had in the last four years since the old theatre burned down along with the Pioneer Hotel.

I'm working the Hollis family to maintain a blog for the theatre during construction - and before they launch a website sometime next year. Check it out  Hollis Cinemas

    

Snow Arrives in Globe

  

In the last 24 hours the Globe area has gone from 70deg highs during the day, to an angry heart-pounding rain last night where the wind actually blew over my 200lb ceramic planter with a jade plant.
I always walk the perimeter of the house when these big storms come in to see that everything is "holding". I was able to pull my jade plant out of the dirt, and it is now sitting in a bucket of dirt in the kitchen, awaiting gentler,kinder weather. I did lose my umbrella which was lifted from its stand and thrown agains the concrete wall on the East side. It appears beyond repair.

It was alittle erie the way the wind blew and the rain pounded against the west side of the house in big sheets coming off the roof. And then.....about 1am, everything got very quiet. The wind stopped and big snow flakes started falling. It snowed for about 6 hours and bent many tree branches to the ground, although I saw no broken branches.  Temperatures are in the 40's, but with the wind - it feels like 20.
good thing I still have my carharts from all those Kansas winters of feeding livestock in -15 degrees.
30 years later, they are still in my closet for days such as this.

Here is the old Red Roan which used to be a local bar of some renown. It is still standing, but quite unsafe and may one day have to be torn down. This would be a shame though. It is just one of the many buildings which make Globe's downtown like none other.

Trash Talk

I have enrolled in a thing called the Leadership Academy which is a 16 week course sponsored by the Economic Development and Chamber of Commerce to educate local residents - who care to learn- about all the things that make their community work. Made up mostly of weekly sessions where community officials, local leaders and organizations come in to talk about what they do, we occassionally have a "field trip" to see things up close and persona. Things like the Landfill operation. Sharon Winters,( in white) heads up the landfill after "outlasting all the men" who had the top-dog position and left after short stints. Sharon stayed on through it all and now she runs the show. She is practical, and ...a good deal passionate... about handling trash, which I found to be thoroughly facinating. Our facility - is slated to take us to 2040, at which time we may have to start hauling our trash "somewhere else."
If Americans took their trash as seriously as the Europeans, we would be fastidious about separating our trash so as little goes to the landfill as possible. As it is, the County has been able to install a paper-recycling system and is working on plastics. (But with the current downturn in the economy, there is little pay-back for plastics recycling.) One of the most exciting things Sharon has been a part of lately has been to establish a 5 county agreement to send their tires to a local company in Queen Creek which "crumbs" rubber and re-sells it for playgrounds, roads etc.
We got to see the operation ; the amount of equipment and the scope of the job up close and it was a clear reminder that we do not come close to paying for the actual cost of dealing with all our trash. The more people - like our group- who get a first hand picture of this issue, the better we can lobby efforts in our community to re-cycle, re-use and think about Landfill. It's not something "out there" It is in our own back yard. And it's growing.

Overlooking Magic

Who is he?

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousand of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.
A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.
A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.
The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars. Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?  (excerpt from a Washington Post editorial)

The post (above) was sent to me by my sister. It resonated with what I learned on Saturday during a walk with my Leadership group to look at the Tree Inventory which Kim Stone is doing for the area. He has catalogued over 700 trees in the area with type,location, height, width and gps coordinates.  The difference is that now the trees ARE somebody. They have a defined place in the planning process for Hwy 60/70. They aren't just nameless faces, so-to-speak. They have an identity now. And with that comes value, alittle more respect for their presence....and perhaps even a recognition of VALUE to the community. An "asset" to the corridor.

It seemed to fit the experience of the musician. A large impressive tree standing alone on the stage is - of course- majestic. But majesty is easy to overlook when it sits along the riverbed among debris.