Dry dry dry…we settled in for a quiet little Christmas eve dinner, thankful for scallops, pasta,

sparkling wine from Australia and all the rest we seem to get away with.  The next day,

Christmas Day, warming and quiet with exploratory forays

up the mountain, warm in houses,

often accompanied by Mary Ann’s Extremely Fast Dog Kiku.

Wednesday a supply run  to Pueblo, where temps were considerably colder than Walsenburg, [below, the Courthouse on whose steps Mother Jones was famously arrested]

was enlivened by the absence of our rather elaborate grocery list but

after plumbing supplies and the inevitable visit to Jorge’s we reconstructed it well enough

and returned home to Improvements

such as filling water while repairing faucets.

After a mere twenty years I realized that it would be better to bring the studio couch out into

the sun and relocate the drawing area away from that raking southern light, so did,

creating New Views inside [not shown] and out.

Meanwhile Dean’s view’s been the same for close to fifty years

and although his recent trip to New York seemed to affect his palette he continues honing his

stories and making paintings as ever.  Down the hill L. pursued her myriad projects and

as the year wound down we marveled

at the way all the fading Anglophonic Empires’ Brilliant Leaders are enthusiastically shepherding

Western Civilization into the nineteenth century on a collision course with those very natural

disasters they pretend are Chinese Plots while the rest of the world happily  concentrates on successfully navigating the twenty-first and possibly beyond, albeit “beyond’ may represent

somewhat irrational exuberance.

The year’s last day was thirty degrees colder than its second-to-last so only late

did we venture out, up the knoll and home to Trig’

[On the road again in 2018?] ?

before settling in for

Duck, Gratitude and hopes for the best of and in 2018.

…and this…

Herstory. History…if you’re familiar with the backstory, start the year with a tear…

a year beginning with the waning of a supermoon…

OK.

All best wishes, despite!

 

M