MURPHYS CHRISTMAS PARADE.

Jim left my place on Monday. The weather here has been pretty cold for a weather wimp.

He waved goodbye and struck out for southern climes.  He reached Palm Desert yesterday and they've had a cold spell with some gusty wind.  You just can't predict the weather. I'm chuckling a bit at his expense.


Every year I head downtown Murphys for their open house held the first Friday in December.  This year I went early because the Mountain Melody was putting on a concert at 4:00. TILT. I had the wrong date, the Black Bart Players Theatre was locked with a sign: Concert 4:00 Saturday. I'll be attending a memorial service and won't make it. With time on my hands, I took some pictures. Somehow,  an outdoor decorated tree doesn't look right during the daytime. Now, with a little snow... My mid-west roots are showing. I miss a white Christmas.


I poked around some of the stores, admiring the tree trimmings for sale. I used to make a point of buying one new ornament each year. I have over 2000 ornaments, so I've quit that. A ridiculous problem for rat packers. Guilty.


I ran into some friends, but did I take a picture of Lynette, Ginger and Roger, Suki, Eleanor, Richard or the Gilmores?  No, I was too busy yaking. But I did take a picture of this cute baby with her daddy bursting with pride. He was just glowing.


I thought I'd have dinner as the restaurants were opening up. They were overwhelmed with long lines or reservations to get anything to eat. Finally, it got dark enough for the Christmas Parade. But, the streets were mobbed, everything is surreal from the camera lens.


Everything goes by in a blur. But, I had to include this picture because my kids attended Bret Harte High. This pick-up load of football players was rocking the truck back and forth so forcefully with their weight, it tested the shocks on the truck. I had never seen anything like it. Such fun. Both my sons played football for Bret Harte.


The lighted floats and entries were really nice. Even with a clear shot through the crowd, by the time your flash can focus, you still get a blur.


The young kids were enjoying the parade and that is what parades are all about. Enjoyment, not photography. It was cold. I left early. And on the way to the parking lot I  got a decent shot of these draft horses.


And this parade entrant getting its fancy gear removed. Aha! Now I know how to photograph a parade. At the beginning, before they get moving. Or, at the end. I returned home and ate cookies and ice cream for dinner.

GETTING BEAUTIFUL.

This little doe comes to visit me each morning. She seems to know when I have the camera aimed at her and hides from me. My yard is Certified Wildlife Habitat, and between Karen and I, we’ve  seen every animal except a possum and a bear come to drink water. Cougars, bobcats, foxes, skunks, raccoons, squirrels, coyotes, dogs, cats, birds. Even bats and lizards. This low water year, the water in my pond, and other vessels,  needs to be replenished every other day, which Karen does.

I’m coming at my subject a bit sideways, here, but Jim brought this beautiful hammock all the way from Central America. It has hung between a couple of trees for the last two summers and a squirrel came down the tree and chewed part of the threads. Sorry, Jim. I was pretty amazed at that. She  chewed some of the support strings as well. I don’t blame the squirrel. I’m sure she is nest-building.  Red tail hawks decimated my squirrel population a while back and this one has moved in to begin a new generation.

I’m always bragging about Murphys being such a nice place to live, with its beautiful park with a creek running through it. But, San Andreas has a beautiful Turner Park too, with multiple entrances and areas to enjoy because it runs along a small creek. I met friends yesterday, with whom I worked at the Calaveras Enterprise in the 1980′s  and was reminded of the wholesome community we share. Dedicated park volunteers were blowing debris and picking up stuff people leave behind when I got there. How cool is that?

This cute elephant bridge leads to a playground for the kids. Part of why this is such a great place to live is the huge body of volunteerism that makes places  like this possible for everyone.

Sue Walker has a new last name since we met at this same spot last year. I was surprised my friends knew about my accident on May 27th.  We spent an hour playing catch-up while we ate our bag lunch.

We manage our visit in an hour since Deborah Mullen comes from work during her lunch time.  I heard that our former editor, Sandy Lema died while I was on the road, and I forgot to ask them if that was correct?

That hour went by way too fast!  I’m going to make an effort to get home earlier next year to attend the main event. We grabbed one of the friendly park volunteers to take our picture before we parted.

This is a group photo of Enterprise staffers from Reunion 2011.
After leaving the park, I had some blood work done and then went to the beauty shop to get my hair cut. I reminded Sue, who was cutting my hair, that the purpose of a beauty salon is make people beautiful.

I thought she did a pretty good job, don’t you?

Then I stopped in Angels Camp to visit my friend Linda Foster. She is painting her house and needs help deciding what color to choose.

The picture doesn’t show all of her possible choices.  But, I think it was more than nine.  Decisions, decisions. And you know?  She didn’t even notice my beautiful new look? The older we get, the harder it is to get beautiful.

KUNMING-HOME OF FLYING TIGERS.

Leaving Stone Drum Village, we take a short sweet flight to the Provincial Capital of Kunming, (Koon-ming) a city of eight million people with another six million in the surrounding territory. On the plane I sat next to a young Chinese man who spoke perfect English. Vicki tells us all Chinese learn English in school since Mau. He and his friend were on vacation in Korea. He claimed it was scary. People on the streets avoid eye contact with you, afraid to look at you and very repressed even in a bar or restaurant. Military guards were in evidence everywhere they went.  They felt like they were being followed. You are not allowed to take pictures of buildings.  He was tempted a few times to take a forbidden picture, but didn’t. Then, when he got to the airport, the guards looked at every photo in his digital camera before letting them go. He was glad he obeyed but, it was an unpleasant vacation.

Our city guide takes us by bus to the center of old town Kunming to see the bird market. We pass by a famous curved building called the Sister Building. He walks so fast, I can’t hear half of what he is telling us because I’m trying to fill my eyes.

I managed to grab a quick shot of this guy selling dog and cat pelts. Argh! I know, we all grimaced. I wanted to stop and buy old Chinese coins from a vendor, but I was getting left behind and had to abandon my purchase and run to catch up with the group.

This area of Kunming has modern ads and minority frescoes on the street wall which is what is left of the old part of the city. The government demolished  most of the older part of town in 1953. It looked like the Hutongs of Beijing,  built on a courtyard with a common well and underground water running back to the river. The old people have to use city water and they hate hand carrying their water home  in big plastic jugs.
At this point, my memory disk is full and my camera bag is back in the bus. The bird market is not to our liking very much anyway because bird flu is in all the news and we see people  wearing masks. We saw birds in cages hanging from just about every business doorway, including restaurants. Stacked tight cages of bunnies and kittens, none of which we were excited to see. Most interesting were very large crickets in beautifully made wooden cricket cages, which they race. Rats, too, which they eat. “White meat”  snails with beautiful striped shells for sale. Vicki tells us this is the poor section of town. We move on to the flower market which is much more to our liking. The rest of the city is quite modern after being rebuilt after the Japanese bombed it.  Kunming  also has the base where the Flying Tigers were cosseted during WWII. And, it was once part of the Golden Triangle, a famous opium growing area.

The City Tour takes us to a beautiful Green Lake  Park, mobbed with people. Huge flocks of seagulls winter here but haven’t come in yet in huge numbers.

We love seeing cute kids. And the Chinese, with a limit of one child, dote on their beautiful children and love showing them off.

It is a lovely place to relax, play cards, dominoes, mah jong. Have tea. Most Chinese have small apartments and houses.  They socialize in their public places.

And  exercise together. It seems such a healthy practice, both, being outside and exercising regularly.

Green Lake Park is beautiful and enjoyable. People watch and feed the birds and koi.

I’m tickled by this Chinese woman dressing her child in a blonde wig cap as they feed and watch the koi.

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We eat at a restaurant that minimizes the heat of asphalt parking by burying cement blocks and growing grass in them.  I  wanted to build my driveway in Murphys that way but the cost at the time, labor intensive, was too high.  We eat an area specialty called fish skin, which is quite spicy and tasty, along with the usual noodles and vegetables. A surprise was watermelon for desert.
Back at our hotel, we nap and read  before getting ready for a very famous evening show called the Peacock Extravaganza that features 200 ethnic peoples. The Peacock Dance is a tradition in this area  from the time of Kublai Khan. Fabulous costuming throughout, but especially this woman peacock dancer with an enormous drum moving in very strenuous  body positions. The dancers have painted bodies, the background is stormy suggesting how early peoples feared  thunder and lightening. They made loud noises to scare off evil spirits and wild animals that also fear storms. The stage settings for all of the dances are rich and dramatic.

In this moon dance, human figures float down from the ceiling appearing to fly,  flapping their iridescent wings like huge butterflies.  They dance a ritual child sacrifice  and a sensual babies birth. They danced the Muslim people bringing Buddhism to China. All done with grace and beauty. This show travels all over the world with its 200 performers.  We paid a $20 bill to see it. Stunning.
Tomorrow-the stone forest.

THE SNOW COVERED MOUNTAIN.

Wu tells us there is speculation that Eskimo culture and Western Canadian natives, all of whom built totems, are descended from Tibetan mountain tribes.

We ride on this very curvy mountain road, with plenty of switchbacks, part paved and part gravel,  steadily climbing.  There is grass, and an occasional meadow,  and a few trees.  No houses or signs of habitation. We pass a couple of kiosks  with people selling trinkets. No sign of where their village is, or how they get there. Then, in the middle of nowhere this beautiful building. It is a restaurant where we are having lunch. We shake our heads. This is China.

In front of the restaurant is this handsome fellow adjusting the feathers on his hat. Without the language we can’t engage him. Vicki is arguing with someone inside and comes out complaining about “government-run restaurants”  but eventually we are seated and enjoyed a marvelous lunch. But for all 14 of us and other wayfarers, there was one western toilet and  several pit toilets outside with very little cover.

We came to a bridge over the river and wranglers were washing and watering their yaks. We wanted to get out and take pictures, but there was no place to park the bus. We begged and Vicki gave us ONE MINUTE.

I climbed down and got a couple more shots, but the place was mobbed and I couldn’t get close. Just the sounds,  the cool water and colorful clothing was enough as four of us  ran back to the bus parked on the bridge.

We arrive in the village of Hanzai at the base of the mountain.  We are greeted by colorful booths with all manner of souvenirs and memorable foods, mostly cooked over open braziers.It was tantalizing.  Exotic foods cooking mixed with a bit of incense burning.

We know instantly why that state-run restaurant is so strategically placed. It is lunch time and the booths are crowded with a mass of hungry humanity. You can’t blame our guide for not wanting us to try these foods because then she has the extra work of caring for someone who gets sick.  A sick person affects the whole group.

One dish was hanarobi cooking in oil. It is a flat dough with rounds of some kind of sausage resembling  salami inside, fried on a 3 foot diameter wok. With boiling hot pots everywhere, spices and chili scenting the air, it was wonderful enough just smelling my way from kiosk to kiosk.

If you can’t afford the high-priced food in the kiosks, you can bring along your own raw duck and cook it on a portable brazier as this family did.

Our goal today is to take a gondola from the village at 7,800 feet to this huge meadow at 10,000 feet to photograph the mountain. It is a couple of miles from where the gondola drops us and we hike the trail  to a boardwalk with a spectacle before us.

Michele Maurer engages an English-speaking, costumed model.

A wooden stage of kiosks sits in the meadow beneath the beautiful mountain.

We have our choice of costumed models  with whom we can have our picture taken in front of the  mountain. It seems a little Disneylandish to us and we decline.

The Chinese tourists seem to love it.

It was a bit hazy, but I got a picture of the much touted mountain peak with an unpronounceable name.

A couple of models taking a break.

If they catch you taking a picture, the hand comes out immediately for money. It is probably unfair and impolite to sneak pictures of them when this is their livelihood. I didn’t get many but it was definitely worth the hike in to enjoy this very unusual experience at the base of this lovely mountain.

The gondola ride down gives a good view how steep it is, and of the surrounding area.  Each car carries two people.

I got paired with this lovely Chinese woman. I smiled. She smiled. I talked, she didn’t understand a word I said. She talked and I didn’t understand a word she said.  I indicated I’d like to take her picture and she assented. Then near the end of the ride, the gondola slows so a photographer can take a Polaroid picture that is instantly developed and waiting for you when you are unhitched from your gondola. I thought I would buy the picture for my companion. She had the same thought  and she held up her hand and said “No pay!” and bought the picture for me. I remembered how to say thank you in Chinese as Vicki taught us. We walked out together smiling and she brought me over to meet her family. Her daughter, Annie, spoke perfect English and was visiting the home country from San Diego. What a small world. We all hugged goodbye.
As I got on the bus, everyone was talking about the Chinese sex “manuals.” Everyone but me had seen them. One of my tour mates pointed to a kiosk near the bus parking. I made the driver wait while I ran over and bought one. Tedd told me that when he boarded our ship, one of the workers approached him surreptitiously and offered him a set. We laughed, he turned them down and I bought one. I was curious and obviously everyone else was too or they wouldn’t have been talking about them.  I passed them around for everyone to see. They are made from two-inch square pieces of bone, nine of them,  joined together in a circle like a bracelet, each carving showing a sexual position.
My partner, Michal is sick as we make a last stop at the end of the parking lot for the pit toilets. These  were the worst ever seen on the trip. God awful, dripping, stinking things really unusable. Thankfully, I’m a camel and didn’t have to deal with it.  Tomorrow, Tiger Leaping Gorge.