COME SEE A PLAY.

TIS THE SEASON FOR MIRTH AND MISCHEIF AT Murphys Creek Theatre's final show of the 2013 season!

The Santaland Diaries is the outlandish, and true, chronicles of David Sedaris’ experience as a worker in Macy’s SantaLand display. This compact, one-character comedy is a hilarious cult classic, featuring comic encounters during the height of the holiday crunch. NPR humorist and best-selling author of Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris has become one of America’s preeminent humor writers. Call the theatre to book tickets or inquire on how to schedule a staff holiday party.Join us for a glass of wine from a local winery before each show and leave drunk with merriment.Recommended for mature elves only.At The Black Bart Playhouse 580 S. Algiers St. Murphys Ca 209-728-8422


I'm working  a complicated project, readying and sending my medical bills from the accident into my insurance company. Medical billing, the liens from insurance and medicare and double billings...its a mess. So, I'm posting two plays I hope I get to see. Above, is one. The other is It's a Wonderful Life at Sierra Repertory Theatre's  East Sonora location, starting November 15th and playing through Dec. 22. Sierra Rep is noted for its plays and it is well worth traveling to the Mother Lode to see them. Their phone number for reservations is"209-532-3120.  Have a good Tuesday.

CELEBRATING NEW BEGINNINGS

The goldrush town of Jamestown is near enough to Murphys to stroll and spend an hour or two. We walked the town and took some pictures. The light was bright and imposing and warming for a coldish November day. Casting long shadows on flagstones. When I moved to the motherlode, both ends of town still had remnants of their old boardwalk. Gone, now.

The town wasn't exactly proud of its entrepreneur founder, but finally decided to recognize John James for whom the town is named. Something everyone smiles about now. At least he didn't get run out of town with tar and feathers. (Double click the photo)

The town burned down in 1885 so the oldest buildings date from 1887.

This tree, the owner of the building behind it, told me  was in an old picture of when his building was being built in 1887.

It is an evergreen that I don't recognize. He didn't know either.

Don't you just love that there was a time when people found it desirable and worth the time to make utilitarian objects, like door handles, so beautiful?

Jamestown is well known for its antique stores, there are many, and we poked around looking for a small table I would like to place next to my living room window. I found two I liked, but wasn't bright enough to bring accurate measurements. They looked to be the right size?

One store had this line of hanging animal traps with the sign at the bottom unreadable until I loaded my pictures into the computer. Not much of a deterrent to theft if you can't see it.

Economic recovery is slower in the mother lode than the cities. And we all worry about it. The Antiques stores are holding well, but several restaurants were gone. The Willow has been a landmark in Jamestown since before I arrived. I used to like their fondue, but I haven't eaten there in years, and we didn't stop for lunch because neighbor Jan was having a pot luck celebrating new beginnings, thanking her helpful friends.
It was afternoon of a day with a new moon, a new housemate for Jan, new opportunities for Leslie and...by chance, a new heart for a neighbor. The transplant was the day before yesterday.

Jan's friend, Dixie, is a Wiccan believer and she lit a sage smoker and gave voice to a spell for all of us, for new beginnings, prosperity and good health.

I was wearing a necklace that assumes any shape you put it in. Leslie turned it into the ying/yang life sign for me.  Dixie read an invocation and we all said a prayer for our hospitalized neighbor. Heart transplants seem common, but when it happens to someone you know, you suddenly realize how miraculous it is. We also remembered the person who donated a heart that someone else may live. Amen!

GHOSTS AND SPIRITS OF THE DEAD-HERE.

The Mother Lode has an abundance of ghosts and spirits that reside or at least visit local hotels. Why hotels? Well, each has its own story. Columbia's Fallon House, had a paranormal researcher use high tech instruments to see if they were haunted. His conclusion? "Yup, You've got ghosts." Visitors and employees have reported ghosts in the Murphys Hotel, Jamestown's National Hotel and Willow Hotel. Columbia's City Hotel, Dorrington's only hotel, Sonora's Gunn House, and Groveland's Hotel Charlotte. But, the most well known is the Hotel Leger in Mokelumne Hill. The ghost has been continually reported from the early gold mining days and people still get spooked in the old inn. None of the ghosts are dangerous, some hug men, others tuck you into your sheets or move things about. So, if you are looking, come on up and try one of the rooms. The employees know which rooms are most likely to experience a visit.

What gets my attention are stories from children who have no idea what sensationalism is all about. Like the 9 year old boy who told his mother, as they drove by a certain spot, on a street in their new neighborhood. "That's where the car hit me!"   She ignored it the first time. Then, when he described being on his bike, and dying. She objected, but he was so chillingly serious she became intent on debunking and defusing his constant attention to that place. She talked to people in the neighborhood, and discovered newspaper articles about a boy who was killed in that exact manner, at that exact spot, many years earlier.

If I knew the mother? But I don't. Still, I've heard a number of them and they give me pause. I have to ask myself, why would a mother put her reputation and that of her child at risk to ridicule? And what benefit does such a tale serve them? Unless it happens to me, I guess I'll never know.

LEMONS AND LEMON LAW

This lemon is 8" tall to the top of the stem, a marvelous specimen from Danville. Being raised in Upper Michigan, lemons were expensive and rare in our part of the country. When I first moved to Murphys, I planted a Myer lemon tree on the south west corner of my house. It grew and produced lemons for 11 years before a hard freeze backed it off to the ground. It didn't actually kill it, but it never came back with vigor. As a mix for drinks, condiments, flavoring...so many ways to use them. Favorite recipes come to mind. The juice with baking soda makes a good cleaner. Now, my question is, why do they call a failed auto a "lemon". I drive a truck purchased under the lemon law and it runs just fine, thank you.
I don't recommend you plant a lemon tree in the mother lode, but, mine did very well by me.