Round Robin: Without Borders

I tried to think of something uplifting and cheerful for the Round Robin Photo Challenge: Gone, and actually took some pictures to show tonight's sunset fading from the sky. But I didn't catch the sky with the colors of sunset completely gone, so I've reverted to my original concept.

From Round Robin Photo Challenges

Two weeks ago when I went for a drive with some friends on the western edge of Tucson, down Gates Pass and into Avra Valley, I took a few minutes to look for a restaurant I used to eat at when I was in travel agent school in 1987. Right at the end of Anklam where it merges with Speedway to become Gates Pass Boulevard, we came upon this Greek restaurant. This would have been handy had it been open, because we had a hungry vegetarian of Greek ancestry in the car. But alas, the restaurant was gone: derelict, empty. There was even a fallen tree in front of the place. I think this was the site of Daisy Mae's Steakhouse back in the 1980s. A very good restaurant it was, too!



You know about this place. This particular Borders was in Park Place Mall, a very busy and successful shopping mall since it was renovated in 1999. Strangely, however, the area immediately around Park Place, particularly on Wilmot Road just south of Broadway, is a hot spot for gone-away businesses.



This one is particularly notable. Immediately adjacent to Park Place in the days when it was called Park Mall, this was a Silo store. You can still see the remains of the lettering that advertised the electronics that were sold there. Silo has been gone for probably 20 years, but you can still tell what the place used to be. Since then it's been a warehouse for World Care (a charity, I think), the temporary home of Wilmot Library, and, most recently, one of those discount Halloween shops that pop up for a month each year. And yet it still looks like a dead Silo store.



The other weird thing about this building is that at one end you can see the remains of another business that was there in the 1980s: a surf shop. In landlocked, desert Tucson. Is it any wonder that's long gone?



Across the street and a few doors down is this place, which has only been gone since June. Do you recognize it?



I could show you several more closed businesses within a block or two of these others, ranging from a family-owned ice cream parlor to a building that was most recently a charter school. But let's finish up with this former Hometown Buffet, which closed around the same time as the restaurant across the street from it. The nice surprise today was seeing the Opening Soon sign out front for U Like Buffet. Okay, it's a terrible name, but I wish them well. I don't want them to be here today, gone tomorrow.

Karen

Now let's see what else is gone!

Linking List
As of Sunday

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Terri ** Welcome back!** - Posted!
Ways I See the World
http://teelgeephotos.blogspot.com

Sherrie
Food for Thought
http://100sweets.blogspot.com/

Dave ** Welcome, new participant!** - Posted!
Dave's(old short legs) photo blog
http://davesoldshortlegsphotoblog.blogspot.com/

Georgia ** Welcome, new participant!**
Mimi's Place
http://georgiamacdonald.blogspot.com

Tina - Posted!
Tina's PicStory
http://tinaspicstory.blogspot.com/

EMPS: A Harvest of Hangers

Carly's topic this week for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot this week was Happy Harvest, and she allowed for metaphorical harvests. That's good, because my photo of John's box of pomegranates would be really boring! Instead let me show you what I've been up to this weekend.

New clothes, one size down.

At the end of July I went on a low carb diet, part of getting my life and health in order while I still have time. For the first time, I had a diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, which I didn't have when my weight was lower. I've lost 35 pounds since then, and counting. On Friday I decided that I'd earned the right to get a new, smaller pair of pants and get rid of the ones I was wearing. I also bought a few new tops.

Starting to refill the closet after emptying it out.

But what about the clothes I had already? Surely there was something I'd dieted down into. It was time to take a look!

Friday night I started going through my clothes, sorting into too big and/or stained and/or worn out (get rid), too small (box up in boxes labeled Summer 2012) and stuff that fits now or is about to fit (hang up or put in a drawer). Most of the clothes in my closet, it turned out, were in the category "It was too small but now it fits, just about!" But it had been so long since I'd tried them on that they had dust on top of them!

So I pulled them out and started doing lots of laundry. And you know what I ended up with? Piles of clothes, yes...

...but also a harvest of hangers!

It got even more full of hangers later that evening.

Look! A bushel basket of harvested hangers!

Karen

Occupy Tucson and the Ballot Box

I have to say that I'm rather pleased with the results of today's elections. Elsewhere in the country, the bill that gutted union rights was repealed in Ohio, and a proposition that would have outlawed most birth control was defeated in Mississippi. Up in Phoenix, the arch-Republican behind Arizona's SB 1070 lost his recall election, and in Tucson's Sunnyside school district., the intern who saved Gabby Giffods' life was elected to the school board. Democrat Jonathan Rothschild will be the new mayor of Tucson, and it looks like my Ward Four City Council member, Shirley Scott, has been narrowly reelected.

Meanwhile, in downtown Tucson, members of the Occupy Tucson movement have been living in tents in a city park. One of them got nearly 5% of the vote today as the Green Party candidate for mayor.

The election in Tucson today was kind of weird, though. We've had early voting for quite some time, and ID has been required to vote here for years. But this year the whole process changed, and John and I knew nothing about it until the primary at the end of August. Someone had the bright idea of conducting the whole election by mail, and that's what they did. For 35 years I've been voting in person on Election Day, but this year that was a little harder to do. Instead of dropping in at the neighborhood elementary school, we had to find the ballots that had arrived unnoticed in the mail, mark them, put them in the special envelope, sign the envelope, and, because we didn't mail them back ahead of time (not that I wanted to), drive them over to one of only seven polling places in the entire city and drop them in a box there.

Jan exercises her right to vote.

To be honest, that wasn't terribly onerous for us, once John found the ballots after I failed to do so. John stuck mine in my purse, and I marked it and drove it to the Udall Center a few miles away. I was more concerned about my friend Jan, who rode over with me. Jan, who has voted in every single election since she first became eligible, did not receive a ballot in the mail, as far as we can tell. She's registered at her home, but has been living in a rehab facility with multiple health problems. The ballot apparently did not arrive at the house, and she had not re-registered at what was supposed to be a temporary address. The good news is that she was able to give a sworn statement that she did not receive her ballot, and get a replacement one.

So that was good, but I wonder about the homeless. Where do their ballots get mailed?

Outside the 150 foot limit at Udall Center was a Green Party activist, who was giving out free bumper stickers and chatting people up about the Green Party mayoral candidate, Mary DeCamp. DeCamp conducted her campaign from Occupy Tucson, which I briefly visited last week. I don't agree with absolutely everything said by absolutely everyone down there, but DeCamp sounds pretty cool, and I might have considered voting for her if a) I hadn't also heard good things about the Democrat, Jonathan Rothschild, and b) DeCamp were capable of defeating the Republican this time out.

Unlike in New York, Oakland and elsewhere, the Occupy protesters have not faced any tear gas or police brutality. Both sides have been peaceful, with Occupiers lining up to get citations for occupying a city park after 10:30 PM without a permit. I used to think that Occupy should have gone through channels and gotten the permit, but that turns out to cost a reservation fee of $155 a day and a requirement for liability insurance. That's if the permit was granted at all. I suppose they could pass the hat, but it does seem an unreasonable restriction on the right of assembly. "Your right to expressive activities does not stop at 10:30 p.m.," Occupy Tucson's lawyer said in an interview. They've filed a lawsuit in federal court to stop the fines and arrests.

When I stopped by on Friday afternoon, there were lots of tents set up on two small strips of land between Congress St. and Broadway Blvd. downtown, plus an information book, a media tent and a conflict resolution, er, rock.

Although it all looked pretty organized to me, the guy manning the info booth told me that the place was in disarray because the night before, Tucson Police threatened to take people to jail unless they vacated Armory Park, which had been the main Occupy Tucson site. "We finished moving everything at four o'clock this morning," he told me. They not only moved to the other site, peacefully, but cleaned up the park they were leaving on their way out. Now they've filed a lawsuit to step the arrests and fines, and to forestall another incident of the police making them vacate a park or suffer mass arrest. The Thursday night order was purportedly to prepare Armory Park for two scheduled events. Since then the city manager has suggested that they might need to leave& Veinte De Agosto Park to accommodate a veteran's Day parade. However, the parade route doesn't go past that park.

From Occupy Tucson

My favorite shot from my visit is this one, of a woman decorating her Occupy Tucson tent. It quotes Gandhi: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” I'd say the Occupiers are trying very hard to be the change, and we should support them. "It's for all of us, you know. It's for you, it's for me, it's for everyone who doesn't live in the ivory towers," occupier Mike Robbins said in a recent interview. In other words, it's for us, the 99%.

Karen

Round Robin Challenge: The Biggest Scare of All

No guard rail and a long way down: Sentinel Peak (A Mountain).

I initially had nothing in particular in mind for the Round Robin Challenge: Scary, beyond a vague idea of trying to show the real and imagined dangers of what I consider the scariest drive in Tucson: the drive up A Mountain, a.k.a. Sentinel Peak. It wasn't until today that I realized what my experiences on that road have in common with the pretend scares of Halloween and my actual terror on the Tower of Terror attraction at Disney's California Adventure. Ultimately, these scares and others are rooted in the scariest scare of all: the primal fear of death.

A burial today at East Lawn Palms cemetery.

What's interesting to me about the fear of death isn't the evolutionary usefulness of it or the ultimate inescapability of this thing we fear, but the elaborate ways we've developed to deal with that fear. The religious among us, for example, cling to the escape clause provided by our particular faith, such as the promise of resurrection or the cycle of reincarnation on the way to Nirvana. Or do I have that last bit wrong? I'm not criticizing this, by the way. We have our reasons. But beyond that, we speculate on what Heaven is like and exactly when and how we get there, and we develop rituals for how the body is disposed of, and we do afterwards to honor the people we've lost and smooth their way into the next world.

Styrofoam gravestones and a fake ghost. Click the link below for more photos about deathly scares! From Round Robin Photo Challenges

Halloween, beyond the party aspect, the fun of pretending to be someone else and the guilty pleasure of eating too much candy, is all about taming the fear of death. We set up tombstones made of Styrofoam, which unlike the real thing can be removed then the celebration is over. We take away the fear of ghostly spirits by depicting ghosts as nothing more than bedsheets with eye holes. We dress up as vampires and wicked witches and fantasy killers such Freddie or Jason, knowing those characters can be safely put in a box in the closet afterward, and everyone will still be alive.

Tucsonans dine with Dia de los Muertos skeletons at El Charro Restaurant.

Here in Tucson, there is a growing annual celebration of the Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. Taking its inspiration from the centuries-old Day of the Dead observances in Mexico, Tucson's All Souls Procession and related events (art shows, concerts etc.) is described in the Phoenix New Times as "a creative and chaotic cornucopia that's equal parts Burning Man, Halloween, and Mardi Gras all rolled into one." The main event is the All Souls Procession, with people in costumes, often carrying icons of deceased relatives, and sometimes even wearing a mask with the loved one's face. I have never made it down to see this, but I'd like to.

An All Souls altar at St. Michael's, containing traditional Dia de Los Muertos icons.

I read somewhere that one purpose of the original Day of the Dead, besides honoring, remembering and praying for the deceased loved ones, is to mock Death itself, not the actual dead people but the idea of death, which is unable to prevent new life beyond this world. Or something. Sounds about right to me, anyway. Day of the Dead decor is full of colorful and generally humorous-looking skulls and skeletons, which can be similar to Danse Macabre imagery in that the skeletons are depicted as being out and about, participating in human activities rather than lying decently in the ground. Children eat candy skulls, and families laugh about that time that Tia Madeleine, before she died, had that funny incident with the family dog (or whatever). Some celebrations are solemn, but many of them are joyful. It's a chance to take our fear of death and laugh at it, and say, "You don't scare me!"

A scary advertisement is all over town.

Of course some of fears associated with death have nothing to do with skeletons or fantasy monsters or an afterlife, and very little to do with a fear of the unknown. Ads like the one above are at bus stops all over Tucson right now. I assume that what Doug McClure (probably not the 1970s tv star) is selling is life insurance, so that at least if you die your family can pay for the funeral, and maybe be a bit less destitute afterward. When I parked to take this photo, two soon-to-be bus passengers offered their take on the subject of death. "We all have to go sometime," an older man said with a shrug. A guy in his thirties had a very different take. He told me that his friend was "dying very slowly," suffering a series of painful conditions that twist his body and subject him to pain. He's had surgeries, and one recent one almost killed him from the anesthesia. The friend told me that the man's stomach was pushed off to the right side of his abdomen and needed surgery, but now the friend was afraid to get it in case he died. Even in those extreme circumstances, the fear of death was a real factor in the man's decision-making.

And on that downer note, let me end this and pass you on to the scary photos of the other Robins!

Linking List
as of Saturday, November 5th
1:35 AM MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

May - Posted!
May Rodrigo
http://www.mayrodrigo.com

Please note: I am helping out at a conference at church in the morning and early afternoon, so I won't be near a computer to update the linking lists or comment on entries. I'll catch up with all this when I get home later in the day. In the meantime, try to have fun without me!

Karen

EMPS: Happy Halloween Hangover

For Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #148: Sweet Halloween Greetings, Carly wants to see a greeting that depicts Halloween treats. I think it's time we celebrate the days after Halloween, when we have all that leftover candy, and Halloween decorations to clean up. Yes, it's time for Halloween Hangover Days!



We had 22 bags left Halloween night, out of 80. John dug into some of the leftovers for Snickers bars. I had one Starburst fruit chew (not one mini-package, but one chew) on the 30th, one mini-Snickers on the 31st and one mini Almond Joy (10 grams of carbs) on the 1st. That was it for me for candy this year, at least until Christmas. I shouldn't have had that much. The rest went to the work room at the Church office, and I ate a limited quantity of grapes that day instead of more candy.



Either a wind came up overnight or a mischievous ghost went around and knocked down our tombstones, and even my raven, who had been perched on the roof of our old New Yorker. But I got it all packed up tonight, ready for next year.

Karen

A Moment of Syracuse Nostalgia

As I think I've admitted before on this blog, I've become a bit of a Tumblr addict. In case you haven't heard, Tumblr is the latest and greatest in social media/blogging sites. Think of a cross between Blogger, Wordpress and Facebook, only with more pictures, and populated almost entirely by teenage girls. That's pretty much what Tumblr is like. President Obama is on Tumblr now, so you know it's cool.

I've started cross-posting most of my Outpost bits, or at least excerpts thereof, on my Tumblr blog. I have no idea what the Tumblr kids make of these. They probably skip over them, because those posts have no Doctor Who, Harry Potter or Sherlock content, or teen angst about not being in love and flirtations with the idea of suicide. Oh, it's an emotion-fraught world, Tumblr! It's full of extravagent, animated gif-filled posts about One True Pairings of characters whose romances the kids wish to experience vicariously!

But last night, in a Halloween mood, I went looking for postings related to Baron Daemon, the Syracuse horror host of my youth. I wrote about him here at the Outpost back in 2008. Baron Daemon, a corny comedy vampire, was played by  local features reporter Mike Price when I was a kid. I remember the show, but I don't remember his 45 record, The Transylvania Twist, which was a big hit locally, according to what I've read. Last night I found several recordings of this 45 on YouTube, along with clips from the Baron's tv capers of long ago. I thought I'd post them here too, because I can, and because I tend to get more feedback over the years from my Halloween and Syracuse-related posts than from everything else I write about here. So here we go:

Monster Movie Matinee opening credits:



The silly locally-produced stuff at the beginning of the Sunday afternoon creature feature was much more interesting to my child-self than any of the movies were.



More fun with Dr. Witty and Epal.

For Baron Daemon we have:

The Transylvania Twist. This has just a still image of the original 45, but good sound. Not a bad song, either.


The B-side, introduced by the Baron on a local oldies station in the 1980s.


This is my favorite of several Baron Daemon outtakes on YouTube. Search for Baron Daemon and you'll find several more, plus a Syracuse house whose Halloween display lights up in time to the Transylvania Twist.

That's all for now!


Karen

EMPS: Pepper's Earth Tones

When Carly asked to see Earth Tones for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot, I immediately thought of my dog Pepper. Here's why:



Pepper is a digger, especially when she's got a bone or rawhide she can bury, or when she's just been groomed. And there's nothing more earth toned than dirt! Above is John's attempt at a flowerbed. He's added bricks to discourage Pepper's digging and protect the flowers, but that doesn't stop her. At all.



See what I mean? She's incorrigible!



This is the fence between us and one of our neighbors. John added the rattan or whatever it is to help hold back the dust Pepper kicks up when the dogs are running back and forth, barking wildly. This happens pretty much every night and every morning, and who knows how many times during the day when we're not here. There! I just heard Pepper out there howling!



Here's the Trouble Dog herself, considering her options. Notice the cement blocks John has placed next to the rattan. I'm not sure whether that's to hold the rattan up or fill in holes that Pepper dug. Probably both!

We have a few theories. One is that Pepper is trying to keep bones and such away from Cayenne, so she can have them later. She's been known to carry the things around for days on end, and even try to bury them in the couch or the bedclothes. Sometimes she gets so anxious about the buried treasure that he asks to go out in the middle of the night to guard it.

The other theory is that, as a furry dog intended to herd reindeer, she likes to make a nest of cool dirt. Both are true, I think.

Karen