It started out simply enough. After work I hopped on my dirt bike and headed up Owl Creek Pass Road. The county has the road closed a little way beyond the vista point shown in the photograph (38°10’49.77″N 107°37’13.75″W), so I retreated back to the Vista Point. Everything was just right—not too hot, not too cold, gorgeous views, no insects. So I lay down on some grass in the midst of the wildflowers and placed my gloves over my eyes to keep out the bright sun.

And decided I should use the time wisely.

With sight blocked out, I concentrated on smell, touch, taste, and sound. And what a rich panoply to (not) see! I used my cell phone voice recorder to track what I noticed. I’ve jotted them down here as an example of how you might do a five senses exercise yourself.

Sound. Here’s the order I heard things. A jet, far overhead on its way to some important city—yes, it was that quiet that I could hear the jet. A multi-engine propeller aircraft (this one made me Read more…

Writing: Style

Well, not quite, but it’s coming up. Set aside June 11th, 2009, to celebrate! English, the most comprehensive language on earth, the great sponge that soaks up ideas from everywhere, that wondrous conglomeration of everything pronounceable (and some things that aren’t), will soon hit the 1 million mark.

That’s 1M words. 1,000,000 words.

At least according to the Language Monitor, a blog that’s in love with the language. Or at least it’s in love with the words. I guess real language has to have lots of words, but there are other things here and there, such as parts of speech, grammar, pronunciation, and all those little details, to get to a real language.

But it is still nice to think that we have about double the number of words of any other language.

According to the Language Monitor (which has a countdown clock to when we hit 1M), we add a new word to the language, such as “greenwashing” or other such trendy things, every Read more…

Writing: Style

Mt. Sneffels Press is pleased to welcome the Ridgway Railroad Museum to its list of authors! Their new book, Narrow Gauge Railroading in the San Juan Triangle, can now be ordered from the Mt. Sneffels Press catalog.
 
In the summer of 2005 the Ridgway Railroad Museum approached David Mullings, the editor and owner of The Ouray Plaindealer and The Ridgway Sun, with a proposal to write semi-monthly columns for these two newspapers on topics relating to the narrow gauge railroading history of Ouray County. David agreed and the first article was published in the Ouray Plaindealer in October of 2005. Over the past three and a half years more than 40 of these articles have now been published.
 
The authors of these articles, who are all active members of the Ridgway Railroad Museum, include Tom Hillhouse (retired corporate attorney and Vice president of the Ouray County Historical Society), Rodney Holloway (Ridgway Railroad Museum volunteer and too young to retire), Bonnie Koch (retired elementary teacher and Ridgway Railroad Museum Educational Coordinator), Keith Koch (retired high school teacher and National Model Railroad Association Master Modeler), Don Paulson (retired college professor and Curator of the Ouray County Museum), Jim Pettengill (retired geologist and freelance writer), and Karl Schaeffer (retired railroad mechanical engineer and President of the Ridgway Railroad Museum).
 
This book is a compilation of most of these newspaper articles, which have been edited from their original versions. Appropriate historic photos, contemporary photos, maps and railroad forms accompany the articles. See the Ridgway Railroad Museum website.

Our Authors, Railroad

Mary Ann Dismant is the author of Growing Up in Denver, 1944-1957: A Memoir. Mary Ann and Carl have lived in Ouray, Colorado, since 1963. She was Director of the Ouray Public Library until 1998, when she became a part-time circulation librarian. Mary Ann and her husband Carl, who also grew up in Denver, celebrated their 48th anniversary in June, 2009. She attributes the longevity of their marriage to the fact that she is still a great speller. Carl needs her badly because he is a not-so-great speller!

Our Authors

My last post sure sounded rosy, didn’t it? Spring, flowers, fun, games, way too many strawberries (a quart or two just for me). Well, Mother Nature had other ideas. You see, I normally get colds on Tuesday. The standard-issue cold virus has about a two-day incubation period. That means I catch my colds at Church.

Oh no. Not this time. I came down with the cold on Friday. That means I caught it Wednesday, which is the day we flew from Montrose to LAX. Thank you, dear traveling public.

Well, we were due to return Sunday. The worst was probably over, but I hacked and coughed through breakfast. We made a command decision. We abandoned our airline reservations (they were free anyway—frequent flyer miles), called Hertz to extend the rental, and started the drive home.

There were two issues. First, TSA is looking for sick travelers. They would’ve Read more…

Writing: Style

Loretta and I are in Southern California to visit my parents. I thought I’d write a few things about seeing “home” through a writer’s eyes. Certainly Ridgway and LA are different!
 

I’ve been away from LA for several years. As the United Airlines Boeing 757 descended into LAX, I watched a familiar/surreal landscape unfold below me. The Tehatchapi Mountains that form the northern border of the LA Basin are just the same—covered with chapparel (low trees, juniper bushes, various other hardy things that don’t need much water) and the usual firebreaks scraped along ridge lines. The weather was partly cloudy with very low clouds (below the tops of the mountains) broken into little cotton balls, none very big. The air underneath the cloud layer was blue rather than brown—not yet smog but more than fog. After awhile I could pick out landmarks. The Harbor Freeway, downtown Los Angeles, the San Diego freeway, and then landing on the south runway.

The airport was built when I was a child. I remember attending its grand opening. The airport authority had picked a spot well away from LA—in farmers’ fields, in fact—there was no little controversy over Read more…

Writing: Style