At Everyone's Mercy

Periodically our son comes home from the Philippines, and when he does, it seems I always need help with my computer. He spends 24/7 on the computer and he knows what I need to know. The trouble is, he is always wound up like an eight day clock; he is tired, worn out from a twenty-two hour flight and he needs rest. But he always shows me respect and works on my computer. One time when he left, I found floating across my screen, in big white letters, “It is a dangerous thing when you buy your mother a computer”.

Since I didn’t know how to change it, those words floated across my screen for years until our grandsons stayed with us, then the screen saver was changed to football memorabilia and football links such as Tebow Zone and football scores.

I looked at football heroes on my screen saver for a couple of years until our oldest daughter came from Grass Valley, California. She hooked up my computer to DSL and changed the screen to a nice serene landscape. Another daughter set me up paying bills online. I’ve been taking baby steps for years where the computer is concerned and I am always at the mercy of my children and grandchildren.

When my friends came to Pagosa this last summer, they insisted I categorize my art on the computer and become more visible and develop a reader’s base. Setting on my book shelf are several books I have written. No one knows to read them, and I don’t know what to do with them. Preserving a record of my art and writings was the next step, even if I wanted to kick and scream, I said okay, I’d learn how to do it. Thus my journey began with another first step, the BLOG!

I now have 8 Blogs, I daily enter a piece of my floral art on my Blog with a mini-art lesson and send it to my Face book friends. I also show my landscape art with poetry and have now begun a spiritual journey with teachings from the Song of Solomon. So I am on my way!

Recently I received an e-mail from someone who had read my art profile and was interested in my art and wanted to get to know me. She said she also did art and wanted me to see it. I glossed over the sentence in her e-mail which said, “And I am a nice girl” and signed her name, Candy. I thought the sentence was a little strange and out of the ordinary. It was a good thing she was a nice girl, but I was more excited she was a potential artist. I was anxious to see her art. So I sent an e-mail back encouraging her to stick with it and send me pictures of the things she was doing.

We exchanged a few more e-mails and I continued to give her encouragement in her art. Then I received another e-mail again confirming she was a nice girl and did I want to see her art. She did delicious things.

Lo and behold, knock me over with a feather, I got it!

Things have changed. Didn’t they use to stand on street corners in Go Go boots and hot pants? This computer world is new to me and I have no idea what I am doing. Is it any wonder my son leaves a message on my computer, “It is a dangerous thing when you buy your mother a computer?”

I am finding I am at everyone’s mercy. I use to say, “I wasn’t born yesterday” until I read in Job where Job’s friend, Bildad came to him in the father’s traditions and said, “You were born yesterday, learn from the fathers”.

The things I am learning today, I didn’t learn from our fathers, I am learning from our children. Amazing what we are learning. At two years old, my grandson Creede was showing me how to put a disc in the “Putter” as he called it. He is now fourteen, and like every other child, is a whiz at all of this technology.

I am still asking for mercy when caring souls come along to show me a few more tips on the computer. My children tell me all the time, “Mother, you should take a computer class.” I always tell them, “I am too busy.”

I am now dealing with Youtube and promo tapes for art lessons. I asked another grandson who is doing skate videos to show me how to do overlays with credits and music. He gave me a few tips, but not enough. So I continue to wait for the next kind soul who will show me a little mercy.

As I wait, Candy is still out there waiting for my response. Sorry, Candy, I’m not into your kind of “Art”.


The Final Brushstroke! Yes, we were born yesterday but there is nothing new under the sun, it is just packaged differently.

A Boy and His Dog - A Perfect Christmas Gift

The Gift

This article was prompted by seeing one of Missy’s pups in the back of a pickup. It looked like Missy. Our daughter asked the owner where he got his dog. He proceeded to tell her “the story”. She told him her boys got one of the pups for Christmas. Most of the pups are gone now, but there are still a few around. This story is for you.


In 1998, Al heard that the word was on the streets of Pagosa Springs that twenty-six AKC registered dogs had been living in a shed “in a secluded area”, treated badly, picked up and transferred to the Humane Society. There were several labs in the bunch.

As fate would finally have it Al was in the right place at the right time to own another Lab. Immediately he phoned the animal shelter. It was true. Ownership of the dogs was in litigation.

They promised to call Al, and as promised, the shelter attendant phoned, “The ad is out and the phone is buzzing. Call after call is coming into the shelter. You need to get here as soon as possible.”

He was panting like an excited school boy as he explained to me that I had to see the dogs. He was selling me on having another dog. We had one, I thought one was enough.

“If I don’t get down there, there won’t be any left.” He said nervously as he was getting ready. He didn’t know what to expect, but he anticipated he would finally get another Lab.

I was not as smitten as Al was by the news. “You know if you go there, you won’t be happy until you get another dog.” I told him.

“Another dog? It isn’t just another dog. Apparently you don’t understand, it is a Labrador!”

After much convincing Al and I were in the car and he promised he was just looking and it wouldn’t hurt. Arriving at the shelter, everything was in total mayhem. The phone continued to ring. One by one each caller received the same explanation. Al didn’t help matters. He had already worried them to death. They instructed us to go back and look for ourselves. Names and identification were still in question.

Al walked into Lab Heaven. Nine of them were waiting. He made his way to them, the chocolate, the black and the yellows. They all seemed to turn away from Al. They were still in shock from their previous ordeal. Then he saw her. Her golden hair glistened, her big brown eyes met his. She was stretching the length of her chain. Her deep husky voice called to Al. She began dancing and performing for him. She chased the ball at his command, retrieved it, wagged her tail and rolled over.

“Where are the puppies?” Al asked. “She looks a little saggy, she must have just had them.”

“No one knows. These are all the dogs that came in.”
“She looks like she’s had pups recently,” he questioned again.
“We don’t know.” The attendant said.

It was surely music from the heavenly choir when Al heard me say, “Okay, I guess she belongs to you, she is begging to go home with us.”

They told Al, “You can sign the papers but she must stay here until she has her shots and is spayed.”

Al agreed with the terms. That night he couldn’t eat or sleep. When out-of-town company came over the weekend Al insisted that they see her. He explained to them Missy Lynn looked matronly, but she wasn’t as old as she looked. She was only two and half years old.

Taking our friends to show off his new love, Missy was gone, she was at the vet and a new turn of events had just happened. The doctor began to operate and found she was carrying puppies to be born shortly. The doctor had mixed emotions. He couldn’t abort them. The doctor said, “We are suppose to abort them, but Labs are so gentle and such good dogs for children, so I sewed her up. We have to keep her here until the puppies are born.”

Al continued to worry them. Finally they said, “You can pick up Missy anytime at the doctor’s office. Her papers are ready and she is ready. You can keep her until she has the puppies. Do you want to?”

“Of course,” he said.

When Al arrived, Missy’s excitement took over the room. Her big tail swept the doctor’s coffee table clean and yes, you guessed it, she wet on the doctor’s floor. She knew she was coming home.

Missy Lynn didn’t leave Al’s side. Daily conversation was about “the arrival”. Missy grew and grew, her belly dragged the ground and Al helped her in and out of the pickup.

Then it happened. The morning of October 6, 1998, little yellow labs were everywhere. Under her feet, between her legs, over her shoulder, under her tail, twelve little pink mouths were sucking, and squealing for milk. Three girls and nine boys, mother and puppies were doing fine.

We kept them for six weeks until they were ready to be weaned from their mother. We agreed to take the puppies back to the Shelter and if possible we would like to keep one for our grandsons. Al picked a little girl. Many other families in Pagosa also found a little Lab under their tree that year.

Gene Hill is a writer for the Gun Dog Magazine. He writes, “The Labrador was put on earth to show man what he might aspire to.”

Final Brushstroke! This is our grandson’s poem who received one of Missy’s pups.

A Perfect Christmas
The scent of cinnamon tickles my nose.
The warmth of the covers makes me snuggle down under and curl up my toes.
As my mind travels over the events of the day, I don’t want to do anything but lay.
I’m thinking of the gifts awaiting under the Christmas tree.
I still remember the Christmas when I was three.
The big, brown eyes peeking out at me, peeking out of the Christmas tree.
My favorite present with its wet brown nose wouldn’t stop chewing on my big socked toes.
Back to the present my wiser older friend peeks her soft golden head under my covers, to let me know its Christmas morning once again.
Slade Wylie, grade 7

Traveling with Sweet Al

Hand painted Luggage by Betty Slade

Some of you will be traveling over the holidays. Al and I are staying home and I am relieved. I thought I would send you off with some holiday fun.

You would think if you lived with someone for fifty years, you would have learned how to travel together. Al takes everything in his closet and I am learning how to take just enough. Ten items are enough for a two week stay; one or two pair of shoes which will go with everything, colors which I can interchange with several outfits; dressing up or dressing down. I take a separate suitcase with study books, writings and paint supplies, but it is different, I travel with projects. My mind never goes on vacation.

Al has a fetish for shoes. He takes at least three pairs of tennis shoes, dress shoes and just shoes for incidental reasons. I think it is a throw-back from the years he traveled and lived on the road.

Our daughter, Cricket, won an overnight stay and a breakfast buffet for two at a very exclusive hotel in Reno Nevada. It had a living room with a big screen television, a furnished kitchen with granite counter tops and a king size bed with 600 thread sheets. Cricket couldn’t use it; her schedule just wouldn’t allow it, so she gave it to us to use on the way home from California. She called ahead for our reservations.

When we left California, I told Al, “We will each pack a small carryon with one change of clothes and one piece of reading material.” I had my small Liz Claiborne and he had his. I thought he understood; we were staying over night at a very expensive hotel, and it was important we looked like we belonged even if we were going comp.

The valet attendant looked dubious as I carried my small carryon and Al jumped out of the truck with his huge suitcase. Al was carrying one pair of tennis shoes in one hand, and he had another pair tied together with shoe laces hanging around his neck. He had a sack of snacks which he bought from the Dollar Tree in the other hand and four hunting magazines rolled up and tucked in the waste of his pants. When he opened the door of the truck, a big orange rolled out and he put it in his shirt pocket.

I said to Al, “Absolutely not. We look like backwoods people. You don’t need all that stuff.” Al said, “I don’t care, I don’t mind carrying it, I might need something. You might get hungry in the room.”

In humiliation I stood at the registration desk and the woman took our comp certificate and looked at Al and all of his belongings. I looked straight ahead as if to say, “I don’t belong to him. I don’t know him.” Al was huddling around me making small talk, I was thinking, “Al, go away.”

We entered into this absolutely posh room with mirrors, a fruit basket, a fancy coffee maker and gourmet coffee. Al left the room and returned shortly with our family size ice cooler. I guess he thought we were going to cook a meal in the furnished kitchen.

“Al”, I said, “did anyone see you? Of course, everyone saw you. And I am sure they all know you are with me. Al, in Reno we can get a prime rib dinner for $5.95, what are you doing with that big cooler?”

Al innocently said, “I was thinking of you, honey. You might get hungry.”

“Deliver me, from this kind man who is always thinking of my comfort.”

Al pulled out his shoe shine kit with his multiple colors of shoe polishes, brown, black and maroon and began shining his shoes. (a salesman thing). Al pulled out three bottles of aspirin and offered me an aspirin.

“Al, I need more than an aspirin. I need a strong drink. You could drive me to drink and gamble.” I grabbed the orange out of his pocket and told him, “I am going to the swimming pool. I need some space.”

When I returned Al was beaming with pride. He decided to clean out his suitcase and he filled three trash cans over flowing with stuff.

“Great,” I thought, “even the housekeeper knows how we are.”

After I got over myself, the stay was wonderful.

By the time we were to leave, twenty-four hours later, Al had managed to bring four loads of belongings into the room. Now he began taking them to the valet parking one by one.

I sent Al ahead to deal with the valet attendant So Al was up and down the elevator with load after load and I opt to take the backstairs with my one little overnighter.

Our daughter excitedly called to see how the room was.

“You wouldn’t believe it.” I told her.

“Yes, I would, you are traveling with Daddy,” She said. “I'd be mortified to be seen with him carting his stuff. I've lived it myself when we were in Hawaii trying to pretend we

belonged at a 5-star hotel but not fooling anyone as we refused to let the bellhop help us with our luggage.”

“I know, he doesn’t care about the tip, it’s about your Dad thinking he is able to carry his own things. Maybe it is a man’s thing.”

All in all, Al is a good sport for taking all this ribbing. He doesn’t care what people think of him, and apparently I care too much. Believe me, the next time, I’m packing for Al.

But for now, we are home for the holidays in the comfort of our home. We will be sitting by the fireplace thinking of you. Have a Merry Christmas and if you are traveling, think of us, Al and Betty Slade.

The Final Brushstroke! It’s all in Al’s suitcase and there isn’t room to add another thing else.

Here's to the Girls of Pagosa

Under every pair of steel-toed work boots there is a pair of brightly colored toe nails. The Girls of Pagosa still remain ladies in the midst of a man’s world.

My daughter and I enjoyed a beautiful Saturday afternoon together. We sat in the patio of the restaurant; I looked over at her; she had rolled up her pant legs.

“Oh,” she said, “I thought I would catch a little tan on my legs while I have a chance.”

I laughed and said, “Who’s going to see them?

We stopped by the gas station on the way home, we pulled out three gas cans, and proceeded to fill them. A hunter from Oklahoma was hunting in Pagosa and was at the gas pump filling his gas cans too. He overfilled one of them and he sprayed gasoline all over us. He said, “I’m sorry and kept on talking in his twang.”

We laughed and made a joke out of it. “I hope no one throws a match our way.”

I whispered to my daughter, “Now there’s a Redneck.”

A friend drove up to the gas pump in a hurry. She pulled out an empty five gallon gas can from her truck and said, “The guys are mad at me, they are waiting for this gas for their chain saws. My son is selling candy bars at the Bazaar and I had to stop to take care of him, the guys are waiting to cut wood.”

My daughter said, “There’s another Pagosa Girl with gas cologne.”

I said, “It might have been better if one of the men went after their own gas.”

My daughter quickly said, “Mother, it is better she goes for the gas, or they would have her behind a chainsaw.”

The conversation continued with the man from Oklahoma. He was curious why we were buying gas. My daughter told him, “We are buying gas for the tractor, the guys are filling potholes on our road, and the gas is for the four wheelers, the snowmobiles and the chainsaws.”

“What’s a snowmobile?” He asked.

“A jet ski on snow!” My daughter replied.

“Oh!” He said.

I thought about the gas spray and how much it takes for a woman of Pagosa to be a lady. In the seventies, Al was gone making a living, our son and three girls hauled wood for the wood burning stove for our only heat. In the country the electricity was always going off, I cooked many meals on the woodstove. When the well froze up, we hauled water from the river behind our house. During the week the girls wore blue jeans, but come Sunday, I insisted they wear dresses. I told them, “You are ladies, you can’t forget that.”

My daughter was planning Pasta Night. She served spaghetti from crock pots from the truck’s tailgate as the football boys came off the field from practice. She was the one to rally; the high school commons was not available that week for the football team. She wasn’t going to let the boys down. We have all learned, it’s not work, that’s what we do. Stay flexible is her cry!

Driving the kids from place to place for sports practice, digging out from the mud, cutting our guy’s hair, it’s all part of living in Pagosa.

Winter is coming and we will all wear three layers of clothing and put on an extra ten pounds. The women know how to man-handle large diesel trucks and we get giddy when we hear the chug-a-chug sound as our husbands warm the diesel for the morning. We have put chains on the car and changed a few tires. We have jumpstarted dead batteries and hot wired the ignition.

The neighbor lady down the way overhauled a Volkswagen Motor and my neighbor up the hill, found where the workers had cut the electrical line, leaving her house without electricity and she fixed it.

Come mud season, every woman in town will have caked-on mud on the back of her pant legs. Every time I get in the car, Al says, “Hold up your coat and your pants. Don’t let them touch the running board.”

Al always seems to need an extra hand. “Help me here. I need to move this - Hold the jack, the car might fall on me – Hold the ladder while I get on top of the barn, then hand me up that piece of sheet metal.”

Last year Al had three vehicles stuck in the snow at one time, mine included. “Come steer the truck, I’m going after the tractor.” He said.

Finally, I said, “Al, you don’t have any place to go, just stay out of the vehicles.”

I just looked down at my hands on the keyboard. Salmon color paint is on my left knuckle and forest green on my fingers. I have been painting house doors.

When I go to Albuquerque, I look at the sidewalks and think, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a sidewalk from the house to the car.” We walk through a shopping mall and looked at all the beautiful clothes in the window and think, “I’d never wear that in Pagosa.” The women who move here who insist on being pampered move away as quickly as they come. A for-sale sign goes up in their yard and they move back to the city life.

Life in Pagosa is hard for everyone, but we all say, “It’s no effort.” The Girls of Pagosa would rather have rock on their road than a stone on their finger. Their conversation is about their septic system and the rattles in their car. Our flip flops have gone up in the closet and our plow boots have come down; but we still keep our toenails polished.

The Final Brushstroke! It takes a lot more work and a good sense of humor, but the Girls from Pagosa still remain as ladies in this man’s world.

Completeness

Completeness (Watercolor 16X20)

If I mention the name, Stephen Quiller, you will probably recognize it. He is an artist from Creede, Colorado, who has made it big locally and is in the international art market He has produced a line of art supplies; from palettes to paints and from DVD’s to week workshops. He is also a part of Northlight Books.


I recently received his catalogue. His painting was on the front cover. On the inside cover, there was a black and white photo taken of him in 1970. He was holding a painting with a similar mountain which was on the front cover. He commented, “I remember this painting and a series of similar works that I completed in the ‘70s while I lived in the mountains…Now I realize that it took these early paintings to help develop this new “View from the Air” series. Thus, the painting on the cover was over 35 years in the making!”

Quiller also commented he painted the mountains from the bottom looking up, now he has had the opportunity to view it from a puddle jumper flight from Denver to Alamosa, Colorado and he has seen it from the top.

We are all in the making. I wonder sometimes if I will ever be completed, yet I know I am and will be. I have the end in view. It has taken many mistakes, trials, and ups and downs to see the view from above. I am getting a clearer view.

Recently in a small group, we talked about how important our history is. If we lie about our history, or we can’t accept what happened to us in the past, we will not accept our present and we will not have an end in mind.

That’s a bold statement. It is interesting to me, that our past is so vital to us, to know it is all in our making for today. No matter, the good or bad of it, without accepting our past, we will not be established in who we are today or in our future.

If our history; whether it is our country, based on godly principles; our faith, based on the crucifixion and resurrection, or our individual lives with past drama and misunderstandings, we need our past. If our history is changed we will not know who we are and where we are going.

From above we can see clearly where we have come from and where we are going. It takes faith to embrace what we do not like, and trust it is what we need to become who we are.

Just like a painting, every time I paint, I draw from all the years I have practiced and failed. I have learned from my mistakes. And yes, in the completion of a painting, I sign my name, date it and believe it is the best I can do. I too look back like Stephen Quiller, and know the paintings I paint today have been in the making for 40 years.

Final Brushstroke! We have all been in the making, ourselves and our work and we are all being made complete daily.

This painting is one of my very favorites. It is the incompleteness that makes it complete. The roof line is not parallel, the pond is just there, there is a lot of white. One time someone said to me, "it takes a lot of courage to call it finished when it is isn't." In my book, this painting is the best one I have ever done. Did I say, I love it?