Sunflowers in the Desert

The Colorado River is the lifeblood of the Southwest, and while out in Utah a while back, I was a little surprised to see sunflowers growing on its banks. This was along a route that is part of the Dinosaur Diamond Prehistoric Highway. Apparently, long extinct animals once roamed this area, and now it is full of interesting rock formations, formed over eons perhaps, and carved from ice, heat, and erosion.

Kansas calls itself "The Sunflower State", but it evidentally doesn't have a monopoly on those blooms. Eastern Colorado has a lot of sunflowers, and I remember seeing beautiful fields of them there. The ones I saw in Utah were few and far between, but perhaps their scarcity there added something to the experience of seeing a few here and there.

In Colorado and Utah, we would occasionally catch sight of rafters enjoying the river. In some places, there were also trails with bicyclists, and roads and rails were also represented. I often wish to go back out west, but to even see these places once can form indelible memories.

Too Much of a Good Thing

I am very tired; I've had too much of a good thing. I was up later than usual, enjoying an old tube radio I purchased a while back, and creating compilations of recorded songs. Those compilations of songs could be a soundtrack to these documents.

I was feeling very romantic, but not in the amorous sense. Instead, I was thinking about the etherial desert, and music, and old tube radios. The radio, to which I was listening, is one from c. 1958. It's case is made of hard plastic, and though it uses tubes instead of transistors, it has a circuit board instead of a chassis. Therefore, it is representative of the last generation of tube radios. I have another similar radio, from c. 1966. That one was made by a different manufacturer.

I enjoy the tones a tube radio can produce. For similar reasons, many musicians prefer tube amplifiers. Sometimes, I have a tin ear, but I think I can tell the difference between the sounds emanating from an old tube radio, and ones coming from a solid state model. I'd hate to do a blind test though, and be proven wrong.

I just like keeping old appliances in service, even though I am not adept enough to actually repair or refurbish old appliances. I would still like to keep them out of the landfill. I'm somewhat of a conservationist; I like to provide a home for things like old radios. I also like to buy old vinyl records. Recently, I purchased some old LPs, which were kind of dirty. I cleaned them up, and I bought inner sleeves for the ones which were missing those.

I try to rescue old radios and vinyl records, the same way some people rescue animals. Like some stereotypical cat lady though, I hope I don't start hoarding these things.

I am trying to start over with this blog. For some reason, I couldn't access it for a while, but here it is, in all its un-glory. There is a lot of un-glory in the desert; it goes along nicely, side by side with the more typically beautiful things there. Several places brought me here, not to the real desert, but to the desert between my ears. Oh, I've been to the real desert, and it didn't disappoint, but the etheral one in my imagination is hard to beat. It is borne out of a love and respect for the imagination. That imagination is the one that people once used to picture what was happening in a radio comedy or drama, years before television was in most every home. It is something Einstein once said was more important than knowledge. I'm no Einstein, but I respect the imagination.

An old song, called "The Shifting, Whispering Sands", was one of the major inspirations for this foray of mine into the desert. In the version I first heard, Ken Nordine, the inventor of Word Jazz, did the spoken parts of the song, and Billy Vaughn and His Orchestra played the music. Billy Vaughn was the most successful orchestra leader of all time, in terms of numbers of records sold. He also was an A&R man for Dot Records, back in the day. A song recorded by he and his orchestra, "Swingin' Safari", ended up on the soundtrack to the TV program, "Mad Men".

The desert is full of facts and figures, and trivia. There are abandoned knick knacks, and abandoned memories and ideas. The dunes shift to and fro, revealing what has been buried beneath them. These dunes are somewhat akin to the grey matter inside our heads, I guess. I'm always hedging my bets, and I notice a randomness in everything that is so pervasive; it begins to form patterns that seem almost recognizable. Welcome to my own personal desert. It may not be the stuff of which every dream is made, but I like it.

I'm having quite a time here. I just wrote a short, but inspired post, and then I accidentally deleted it. I'm not sure I can easily get back into that zone, and dredge up inspiration that quickly. It was a post about how the little things can sometimes make us happier than the big, fancy things. I talked about how inexpensive things can sometimes trump the pricier ones. It was a beautiful post, I thought. Now, it's gone. Maybe I'll try again later.