LATE FALL 2023/EARLY WINTER 2024

The Eiteljorg Museum has an incredible display of Native American and Western art. Many of the paintings seem more real than photos.

Native Americans hunting buffalo fits my view of the Old West, but washing clothes seems completely out of place. Of course, clothes had to be washed.

It’s a shame that we couldn’t have learned to co-exist to a greater extent with native Americans. There’s so much we could have learned.

“He Looked on the Land of His People and He Hated All Vehemently” by Frederic Remington was painted in 1900. It depicts a solitary man whose frown implies spitefullness over his fate. By 1900 the Indian Wars had ended, and many native Americans had been rounded up and forced to live on reservations.

I was completely unaware of Chinese immigrants’ role in settling the West. Chinese immigrants arrived by the hundreds of thousands during the California Gold Rush.

“The Taos Twins” was painted by Ernest Martin Hennings in 1923.

It’s hard to believe how much life has changed in the 100 years since this painting was created. I was born in 1951 and I can remember getting our first TV when I was around 8. The cabinet was huge, but the screen was only 12”. It used vacuum tubes which I doubt anyone under 60 would know about. The few shows that were broadcast were in black and white. Programming started at 8 a.m. and ended at 11:00 p.m. Color TVs showed up in my mid-teens.

I was a cell phone hold-out, but I got one for Barb around 2007. It was a clumsy little thing with an antenna. There was no texting in those days. I finally broke down and got my first Apple I phone around 2013. Mostly we use our phones for texting and emailing, as cameras, and for Google Maps.

Barb is interested in social media. Personally, I’ve never gone on Facebook. It seems like a horrible idea to help a business that makes money selling your personal information. So here we are in 2024 with AI, VR, and bitcoin being all the rage. I’m sure I’ll find a use for them some day.

Jingle Rails is a Christmas time model train exhibit with scale model replicas of several famous places.

This is a reproduction of Monument Circle in downtown Indy as it looked in the late 1800’s.

Aspen got its start during the 1880’s Colorado silver boom. Its success in silver mining was short-lived. After several decades of steep decline, the town was revitalized by the development of recreational ski resorts.

The Old Faithful Inn was built in 1903-1904. Its foundation and enormous fireplaces were constructed from rhyolite, the rock produced by Yellowstone’s volcanic eruptions.

El Tovar Lodge was built in 1905 on the rim of the Grand Canyon. It was characterized as the most expensively constructed and appointed log house in America.

Barb got to sit in the authentic Deadwood stagecoach.

Thanksgiving this year was dinner for 19. Everyone brought a dish, so the amount of food was overwhelming. There were turkey headpieces for everyone to wear.

Our grand nieces, Ellie and Katie, always liven up our group gatherings. They were tearing around putting glitter stickers on everyone and yelling gobble gobble!!! Their noise level and activity were utter chaos, which is what makes it so enjoyable.

Their parents are going to be in serious trouble in about 12 years.

Breaking the wishbone is a long-standing family tradition.

This was Cocoa’s first family gathering so she was more than a little wound up. Her tongue was going non-stop.

The girls after everyone left. It’s hard entertaining so many people.

How Barb looked after working on outside Christmas decorations. It was a little windy. She may never forgive me for using this picture.

Something I’ve enjoyed recently is a company called Pink Picasso. You send them a photo and they convert it into a paint by numbers drawing and send you premixed paint.

This is my first attempt at a painting which is Barb standing on a dock taking a picture of the sundown over Presque Isle Lake. Certainly, I’m no Picasso but this is the next best thing.

Hope everyone survived the holidays without putting on to much weight!