A Beach (Desert) and an Adventure

New Stuff: FYI

2012-01-30T08:12:00.000-08:00

Just FYI for anyone who follows all the crazy antics of trying to open a museum:

This week we started a Facebook site http://www.facebook.com/IVDMuseum

And the blog is now focused on all the stuff that is going on: http://www.ivdesertmuseum.blogspot.com/

First Public Event at IV Desert Museum

2012-01-29T15:23:00.000-08:00

This week marks exactly twelve months that I have been at the Imperial Valley Desert Museum. During most of that time I have been the only employee and have been writing plans to open the museum. On Saturday, we held our first public event, a "Star Gazing in the Desert" event. We had four amateur astronomers come out to the museum to set up telescopes. Saturday was a dark sky night, and it is really dark in the parking lot of the museum. When we planned the event a couple months ago, we set a goal of having 20 people show up.

I started to get nervous on Wednesday when Davis brought a flyer home from school that a friend gave to him. The friend had no association with the museum, and he did not know that Davis was connected to the museum. He just said it looked like a cool event and thought Davis would want to go. A local business who was sponsoring the event put out an email and told me they had 8 people had responded the next day saying their families would be there.

I met with staff and told them we should rethink what we were going to do. We replanned for 50 people. On Friday we set up the building. On Saturday morning I bought more drinks and refreshments.

At 3:45 two students came from the local community college. They said that their environmental science teacher told them to come. If they took a picture at the event they would get extra credit in the class. Then people kept coming, and coming, and coming. At 5:30 we had 78 people in the building. The final attendance count was 135.

There is an anticipation of the museum opening that is peculating just under the radar here. I said a year ago that I thought we had a twelve month window to do something, before the momentum would fade. This week we are going to have to rethink our plan and strategy. Things are going to start moving really fast.

Zero Waste Society

2012-01-23T20:09:00.000-08:00

This weekend I hung out a little bit with Vince and Ivan. I hike with Vince and I just met Ivan at an art gallery opening on Friday. Vince runs a series of community gardens. One is two blocks from the house. He preaches the future of a "zero waste society." This resonates with my "use it twice" philosophy I developed on Grand Turk and still preach both at the museum and at home.

Vince gardens with a regenerative agriculture process. This means that everything he uses comes out of the 12x40 garden bed that sits beside a parking lot - from seed to compost.

I call this type of gardening "post-organic." Now that organic farming has been taken by commercial corporations it has little meaning. But regenerative agriculture does not fit cleanly on a box. I have been taking basil, peppers, and several types of greens out of the garden. Deneen won't eat them. She says they taste like dirt. I tell her its not that they taste like dirt. They just don't taste like chemicals and pesticides.

Oh, sorry, she says the reason is not that they taste like dirt. They taste like grass.

Tecate

2012-01-16T23:10:00.000-08:00

I went across the border to Tecate today. Two museum trustees and myself had meetings with people from institutions in Mexico. We are looking for a partner for a cultural exchange grant we are working on. Tecate was halfway between Ensenada and El Centro so everyone drove and we sat in a cafe for five hours discussing possible programs.

I applied for this grant in 2007 as my first grant with the Turks and Caicos National Museum. We were the alternate - the fifth grant out of four that were awarded.

At the Imperial Valley Desert Museum we are working on a cross border cultural exchange using Ipads. For several years there was an active youth exchange program between the Native American tribes on both sides of the border. The area is much different today. It is very difficult to get groups of youth under-18 across the border and there is a lot of fear. The program we are working on seeks to exchange artists who work in traditional crafts. The youth exchange will happen by giving kids on both sides of the border Ipads and having them participate with each other using Skype.

We had great meetings today and I believe found our partner. This weekend I will write the grant.

I think I found my new international museum project. I wish I would have been learning Spanish this whole last year.

Hiking Around the New Year

2012-01-08T01:34:00.001-08:00

This week is Martin's last week before he goes back to college. We have been trying to hike as much as possible, but through the museum we have been on a couple pretty cool hikes looking for Tenahas, or water tanks. These are areas where water naturally collects during this time of year. The native inhabitants of the desert knew where these were, and the trails through the mountains often placed in areas where water was available.

You can find the water tanks by following the signs. Green plants, birds, animal tracks, fecal matter, and bees. With one hiking group we searched all day and never found the tenaha we were looking for. The next week we went out with Chuck, a museum trustee, and we found six or seven in a small amount of time.

There is also the tale tell sign that you are near a traditional tenaha that has been used historically as a water source in the desert - broken pottery.

On the way home we also stopped by the water holes that are used today. Five Palms is a natural warm spring where 92 degree water comes out of the ground and has created a two foot pool of warm water in the middle of the desert.

We spent about 30 minutes soaking in the evening on New Years Day.

At the BLM Campground called Hot Springs there is a 116 degree mineral spring that is pumped into a concrete pool. You can only soak a few minutes at a time here, but it is a very relaxing few minutes.

New Years Eve

2012-01-02T00:49:00.000-08:00

This year for New Year's Eve we took a journey across the border into Algodones, Mexico. We did a progressive dinner taco cart to taco cart, and ate tacos until we could not eat anything else.

That's not even true, because on the way out Lucas said "I think I could only eat two more tacos."

Our afternoon started out at Manolos Tacos. They have a sign that says "Best Tacos in Town." Everyone thought they were pretty good. Lucas thought they were great.

We walked down the street and a little off the beaten path. We came across a young guy frying fish tacos on a cart in front of a house. We had fish tacos and shrimp tacos.

A couple blocks later we came across a taqueria grilling chicken on the street. We stopped to get one taco, but the proprietor invited us in to sit down. We bought additional tacos, a piece of grilled chicken with four tortilla shells, and several cokes. Our bill was $9.50.

Around the corner we came to another open fronted taqueria with a cart parked inside. They were grilling carne asada quesadillas. We ordered two with a very large bowl of guacamole.

We had thought that New Years Eve would be busy across the border. We wanted to leave before it got too late. Near the border we stopped some guy to ask why no one was around. "The party starts at 8:00 and will go all night," he said.

The border closes at 10:00PM and reopens at 6:00AM.

"There will be people laying all over the street by morning," he continued.

As we left we drove by a two mile long line of cars waiting to cross the border. The party was getting ready to start.

Staff Dinners

2011-12-28T00:28:00.000-08:00

This holiday season, eating has been a constant theme.

The two BLM interns who have been working at the museum left at the end of December, but before they left they wanted to come over to the house and make a traditional Korean dinner. Staff cooking dinner at our house was one of the traditions started on Grand Turk everytime an intern left.

Natalie cooked a dinner of spring rolls, BBQ pork, and stir fried rice. It was delicious, and we had a house full.

Having someone over to the house to cook became a good impetuous to get pots and pans. We still have been cooking with the one 5-quart chili pot that I bought in June. Right before Christmas turned out to be a good time, we found an opened box of Martha Stewart cookware that was missing pieces. It was 50% off and we got another 25% off because of a Friday late night sale. Cooking went off without a hitch, literally.

What was That?

2011-12-27T23:05:00.001-08:00

Deneen was just awoken by a 3.0 earthquake that was 6 mile SE of Ocotillo, where we are staying this week. She came out to the living room to yell at the boys for wrestling. I am not sure what is funnier, that she was awoken by an earthquake, or that she could possibly mistake an earthquake for Martin and Davis wrestling.

Christmas

2011-12-26T23:20:00.000-08:00

On Christmas day it was 70 degrees. That is a good place to start.

Holidays have been interesting for the last couple of years. We have lost all of the family traditions that we once had in Ohio. We are now searching for new ones. Every house along the street where we are renting sets up luminaries along the sidewalk. It is the only street in El Centro to do this, and evidently it is a long-standing tradition.

The luminaries burned Friday night and Christmas Eave. On Friday night we went across the street to a block party. This, evidently is also a long-standing tradition. We have met several people on the street and have been invited to quite a few parties. Now that I think about it, there are a lot of parties on our street.

On Saturday we had a large Christams dinner with roast turkey and baked sweet potatoes. Then Saturday night we walked down the street, through the luminaries, to Willie's Donuts and bought a dozen choclate covered donuts. Everyone thought this would be a good new tradition.

On Christmas Day we celebrated with our new tradition, Monte Christo sandwiches and opened a conservative amoutn of presents. Martin got "toe shoes" for hiking (pictured), Davis got a new knife for hiking (pictured), Lucas got a ping pong table.

One of the benefits of not having furniture is that we now have plenty of room for a ping pong table. Most of our actual Christmas day was spent setting up a ping pong table and playing ping pong.

We received an invitation to eat Christmas Dinner at Pastor Ron's house. Around 3:30 we walked a couple houses down the street and had a wonderful evening of food, stories, and song. After-dinner conversation focused on a theological discussion of the portrayal of Mary Magdelyn in art and popular literature. After that, we played guitar and sang carols. It was quite the party. We walked home around 10:0o.

We are going to spend next week in Ocotillo hiking and working.

Martin's Trip to San Diego

2011-12-13T22:46:00.000-08:00

Martin flew in from Chicago on Sunday. We drove in to San Diego to pick him up and thus began our ending Sunday evening.

After grabbing Martin we went over to Old Town where we walked around and looked at historic buildings and the outdoor markets. The Cosmopolitan Hotel was recently restored in 2010. The interior had a digitally produced reproduction wallpaper. I pioneered this method in 2003 but have not followed restoration work to know if it has come into general practice, but the paper was unmistakably a digital reproduction. I pointed this out at length to my wife and children.

Every time we have been to San Diego in the past we have eaten at Hodad's. This trip we decided we should try some other places. So we checked out Food Network's Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives for some other highly recommended eateries. Old Town sports a Crazee Burger and right inside the door there is a large, signed poster of Guy Fieri just like at Hodad's. You can get a variety of meats including a Kangaroo burger, an Alligator burger, or an Ostrich burger. The hamburgers are said to be "voted best burger in town." We ordered five regular burgers. They weren't.

This weekend was the 61st annual Las Posadas procession in Old Town. We picked up a few candles and walked in the procession. The procession was led by Joseph and Mary, who was riding on a donkey. There were a couple other people, too. I am not sure who they were, but one was wearing a big sombrero.

Next, we went down to the Embarcardero to watch the 40th annual San Diego Bay Parade of Lights. Approximately 40 boats all decorated with Christmas lights paraded across the bay. Lights, music, dancing, it was quite an event and made us miss the maritime culture that was a constant in the Turks and Caicos.

After leaving the Embarcardero we drove over to Ikea and bought a dresser for the bedroom. Up the road from Ikea was a second restaurant visited by Guy Fieri and so we drove up to the Studio Diner and split a couple Monte Cristo sandwiches and a chocolate malt. The Monte Cristo, stacked with ham, turkey, and cheese, was dipped in batter and deep fried. On television it looked absolutely amazing.

My brother Bryan use to make Monte Cristo sandwiches. I can not remember the story where he saw them, but I think he had ordered on at a restaurant and then decided to make them at home. I have been making them ever since. Mine are grilled, light and delicate. Every time we make them we wish we had made more.

The deep fried sandwich at Studio Diner was really heavy. The plate came with four quarters. Between the five of us, we could only eat six of them. And after two you felt like you had a brick in your stomach. We all decided we liked our version of the Monte Cristo much better. The shake was great and the sweet potatoes fries were ten times better than the ones we ordered at Crazee Burger, which were suppose to be their specialty.

Well, there you go, a couple hours back over the grade and Martin is home for Christmas.

Going to the Dentist, Sort of

2011-12-08T14:40:00.001-08:00

I wish I still had the time to write long, expletory posts that were insightful and funny...

This past Monday I went to the dentist...

in Mexico.

I have been talking about it for weeks, ever since I discovered that Algodones is the number one place where older US citizens go to have inexpensive dental work done. When we were there a few weeks ago I told Deneen that I was going to go.

Well, on Monday I built up extra courage and went. Now I have been to a doctor in two foreign countries. On Grand Turk we were covered by the National Insurance plan.

Deneen did not think I would follow through. I did get really nervous. Almost sick to my stomach, standing in the back alley where the dental office was located. But this probably had more to do with going to the dentist than going to the dentist in Mexico.

I was only in for a cleaning, which was advertised on the door for $15.00. While in the waiting room I could hear other patients talking about upcoming work. One was having impressions done and was trying to work out when he could get back across the border to have the rest of his work completed.

My fifteen minute wait turned into a 30 minute wait. But that was not so bad for a walk-in cleaning. The doctor was very nice and she made the experience comfortable. The office was clean and was a lot like going to the dentist 25 years ago. The dental chair had one of those spittoons.

The cleaning went quickly. The dentist wanted to sell me on lasering by gums. But I passed. I think the whole thing lasted 20 minutes. And then it was off to the cafe.

Staff Christmas Party, Sort of

2011-12-05T14:31:00.000-08:00

This past weekend the two BLM interns working at the museum came over and cooked dinner at our house. Natalie is Vietnamese and wanted to make an authentic meal to share with everyone during her last couple of weeks in the Imperial Valley. With Jessica here, it was very reminiscent of the staff parties we had on Grand Turk when staff came over to the house and made traditional Haitian meals.

On Monday I escorted the crew to Algodones, Mexico, where we spent the day and had yet another staff Christmas party dinner, sort of. The BLM interns are finishing up four months of work. We are holding volunteer days at the museum on the first couple of Saturdays in December to make sure everything they started is finished, but that does not solve my bigger issue of what do we do for staff next year...

which I guess is just in a couple of weeks.

In Like a Lion

2011-12-01T17:02:00.000-08:00

December 1 came in like a lion. If you see the news you probably heard something about the Santa Anna winds hitting LA. Bryan told me today that they had sustained winds of 30 miles an hour in Fresno and he was cleaning up limbs.

Please. I think 30 miles an hour has been about the average wind in Ocotillo since I have been here.

We did not get the wind, but we got a huge winter storm. It was 63 degrees when I woke up. I told Deneen that I can't handle this weather and we need to find somewhere warm to move. By evening it had dropped to 55.

Last year I walked around in a t-shirt and flip flops all winter. But this year I may have to have my cold weather gear shipped from Ohio.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

2011-11-27T16:46:00.000-08:00

This year we spent Thanksgiving at the Ocotillo Optimist dinner in Ocotillo. The optimist prepared dinner for 50. Far, far fewer came. So we left with a weeks worth of leftovers.

On Saturday we took the leftovers and hiked to the wind caves with the Imperial Valley Hiking Club. I prefer to call them the "eat and nap" hiking club. And you may remember a couple previous posts.

Today's hike was four miles. Two miles in. Lunch. Two miles out. Sorry, in order to get back before dark the nap had to be left behind. Which is actually kind of a bummer.

The wind caves are very cool. They are a large stretch of mountains where, for the last million years, the wind has been shaping and rounding the rock. This area is on the back side of the Coyote Mountains, where we hike often, but we had never been here. One of the outstanding features is that from the back side of the mountain you could see clear to the Salton Sea, about 60 miles away.

We ate lunch in one of the caves. On the backside we ran into a couple guys who had camped overnight in one of the caves. Now there is a good story...

Thanksgiving is Coming

2011-11-19T16:35:00.000-08:00

For the three years on Grand Turk we spent Thanksgiving with either the Bonnie and John or Bion and Colleen on Grand Turk. Dinner was set with the backdrop of crystal blue waters and spectacular sunsets.

On Sunday, I spent the day with Bonnie and John in Annapolis, after spending the weekend at a conference. I have forgotten how much I liked hanging out with them. We always appreciated the times on Grand Turk. Their vacations there were also sort of vacations for us, especially for Deneen, who always missed her friends from Columbus.

We had a great afternoon watching Shelby play Lacross. But for me the highlight was walking through the historic waterfront of Annapolis. I have also forgotten how much I like early American urban architecture.

By the time I fly back to San Diego and drive back to El Centro it will be time to think about Thanksgiving. But this visit is already making me miss Thanksgiving, well at least the last couple of years.

Hiking is the New Deneen

2011-11-15T17:23:00.000-08:00

It has cooled down in the Valley and I guess much like when I first came, it must be hiking season again. The past two weekends we have been hiking out in the desert.

We went out with the "lunch and nap" hiking club a couple Sundays ago. Then this past weekend we went hiking over on the east side of the county to look at archaeological sites.

I keep telling the boys that their mother is ruining there chance at a happy marriage. Because though she asks where the beach is a lot, and she complains about being hot a lot...by the time they boys have wives and children they are not going to remember any of that. They are just going to say things like: "My mom could hike twice this far," and "My mom climbed mountains twice this high."

Trip to Mexico

2011-11-15T17:05:00.001-08:00

Well, I have a lot of catching up to do. The weekends have been busy, lately. This past weekend we took our first trip into Mexico at the Algodones Port of Entry. We walked around for a minute, but spent most of the time eating.

Rico's Tacos is a taco stand, or really a taco cart, sitting along Avenue A, right around the corner from Calle Segunda, within the first blocks after you cross the border into Algodones, Mexico.

Look closley at the picture. He is a fixture at this location. There is always a line, which includes both day visitors and locals. Now, I will admit, his tacos look good.

“Are they really the best?” I inquired.

A lady standing near the cart turned. “Yes!” she said. “We have eaten tacos all over town, these are the best.”

“I never turn my nose down at authentic Mexican food,” said my traveling companion. I guess we will try them and see.

“How many,” Rico asks.

“Tres,” I said, trying to remember my best Spanish from high school, even though it was not really necessary.

In a few seconds, I was holding a small styrofoam tray of tacos. Along the front of the cart there is a wide array of toppings including grilled hot peppers, guacamole, cucumbers, and salsa lined up from hot to mild. I topped each taco a little differently.

Rico has been selling tacos off of his taco cart in Algodones for 20 years. He grills carne asada over coals right on his cart from 11:00am until the border closes at 10:00pm.

There is another guy who is the “money man.” You pay him. “I never take the money,” says Rico.

I asked the “money man” how much I owed. I don't know what I expected, but I did not expect it to be $3.00. The tacos were big, well worth the value.

A third guy came over and asked if we wanted something to drink, well specifically if we wanted a bottled Coca Cola. In Mexico, Coke is made with real sugar. It tastes like coke used to taste in the US twenty years ago. For another dollar we bought a Coke.

We just stood in front of the stand and ate. Now, I have eaten a lot of tacos. I happen to really like tacos from taco stands. But my experience is with taco stands in Ohio. Rico's tacos were good. Really good.

We finished them quickly, and started to leave. “Excuse me,” said the drink guy. “My bottle.”

I did not understand.

“My bottle,” he said again, handing me a plastic “top go” cup.

“Oh, you keep the deposit,” I said. We guzzled the rest of the Coke and gave him the bottle.

We continued our walk around looking at the stalls and venders each saying, “It's almost free!”

“Those tacos were almost free,” I joked to my companion. “They were really good, too”

We made a circle around the block and found ourselves back at Rico's Tacos.

“How Many?” Rico asked.

“Three more,” I said.

Are Rico's Tacos the best in town. Well, I did not try every taco in town, but I will tell you a secret. The next day, went back across the border just to go to Rico's taco cart for lunch.

A Bunch of Troopers

2011-10-25T13:37:00.000-07:00

This weekend we went camping in the desert for the first time. Campgrounds re-opened on September 1. We went up to the Agua Caliente County Park in the Anzo-Borrego desert, about 25 minutes north of Ocotillo. Not only is this a county campground, it is built on a hot spring and has a historical use as a camp area.

I am writing a piece about hot springs for the Yuma Winter Shopping magazine, so this was sort-a, kind-a work related. But it was also the best viewing night for the Orionid Meteor Shower, so kind-a not work related?

So, I will write this blog in two parts.

Part one: Camping

You have no idea how many times I say, "I know where that is. It is in the hall closet in the house on Grand Turk." or "I have one of those. It is on the second shelf to the left of the door in the garage in the house in Columbus."

Well, we left a lifetime worth of camping

equipment in the attic of the house on Grand Turk. In September 2009, it became more than camping equipment. It became survival equipment. I think that is the last time I have done anything resembling "camping."

This weekend we packed what we had up in the car and left for the desert. I told Deneen and the boys that I want camping to be easy and spontaneous. Lets just get in the car and go. The boys were troopers.

We have the tent here that Martin and Graham used on their drive out. We have one flashlight that I won at one of our Survivor parties 10 years ago. We have two sleeping bags. We have several knives (Davis has been collecting knives). What more do you need.

OK, evidently you need some kind of stove, a better light, a couple chairs, a coffee maker (luckily I bought an Italian espresso maker on clearance at Target right before we left).

But, I loved every minute of it. Deneen, maybe not so much.

Part Two: Orionid Meteor Shower

We became very aware of the stars and the movement of stars on Grand Turk. I don't think we will ever be somewhere where the stars area more prevalent, but the desert should be a pretty good second.

One of my fondest memories was watching a star fall out of the cup of the big dipper while walking down the beach in March 2oo9.

Meteor showers were especially significant on Grand Turk. And we tracked them. There are roughly eight a year. The best one Lucas has ever seen was the Persieds in August 2009. The best one I ever saw was the Leonids in November 2010. I saw the biggest and brightest shooting star I had ever seen.

Well, October 21 was the Orionid Meteor Shower. I had thought that camping in the desert would be remote, quite, and dark. Well, it was remote.

Between the YMCA and two boy scout troops, not to mention all the families from San Diego bringing their kids, dogs, and music to the desert, the campground was a bright and noisy oasis in the middle of nowhere.

Lucas and I took a night hike to try and get away from the light. Up the mountain to our right was a steep climb with unseen obstacles. I have the cuts on my legs to prove it. Distance is distorted in the dark. And it is really hard to get away from light. But, in forty years of camping and running camps, this was by far the best night hike I have ever been on.

From our count, we saw about 25 meteor per hour. Most were faint and fast. You notice them out of the corner of your eye.

"There's one"

"Where?"

Too late.

But two were big enough to make the whole experience worth it.

You know, the Leonid Meteor Shower will be on November 17, and the moon rises at midnight. it should be good. Too bad, I will be at a conference in Baltimore.

Implementation of Plans

2011-10-13T10:53:00.001-07:00

The hardest part of the last eight months has been that it has been nothing but planning, planning, planning. In the last month I have had at least three dreams about visiting the Facilities Planning office at the Ohio Historical Society. Last night I had a dream that I went to visit the office. Fred was there. But everyone else was a little kid. When they weren't looking I snuck into my office to look at old plans of projects that I had completed.

This week we completed the gift shop installation and had our first logo products arrive. I have been talking about the importance of getting a gift shop open since I first arrived.

In a planning document dated April 7 I proposed: "The gift shop is a key component of the visitor information center. The FY 2011 budget includes $6000 in gift shop receipts. Slat wall shelving will need to be purchased and installed. The museum has a supply of desert related books, but museum specific items logo items such as hats, cups, and prints will need to be produced and purchased."

A couple weeks later, I went to Yosemite National park with Bryan and saw the gift shop I envisioned. I began planning and completing construction drawings.

This is the gift shop at Yosemite.

A few we ago we purchased fixtures from the Borders that closed in San Diego. Last week our logo products came in. This past week my new friend Jimmy ran all the electrical work, I screwed the cabinets together, and Marty the Board President cleaned everything with Murphy's Oil Soap.

Voila! We have a gift shop. This is the first hard installation of something that I have planned here as a necessity to getting opened. It only took nine months. I don't know if this is long or short. I had hoped to get a gift shop up during my second 90 days. I first looked at the fixtures at Borders the day Martin left. That was August 15. So I missed my goal by nine days?

At the Turks and Caicos Museum I built and installed the new gift shop after I had been there six months and 15 days (I just checked it on this blog). In March 2010, our gift shop sales for that month were more than the total sales of 2007 and 2008. It took 24 months for the gift shop to become an effective integral part of the museum operation.

OK, I guess I got benchmarks.

Going Back to High School

2011-10-12T09:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, was the first day of the coiled clay art program at Southwest High School. This is the second half of the coiled clay art project grant that we received from the Imperial Valley Community Foundation. For the next eight weeks, the SAVAPA Art Club will be working with clay and investigating the shapes and styles of ollas in the museum's collection.

I took examples of the ollas in our collection to show to the art students. This was the first time in about twenty years that collections were taken out of storage and into into the classroom.

After the eight weeks, we will be mounting a traveling exhibit of the work: developing viability as a cultural institution. This is modeled after a project I developed in the Turks and Caicos where were trying to get a foothold on a larger island where the museum did not have a presence. Here, it is nearly the same issue. The larger town of El Centro is 26 miles from the Imperial Valley Desert Museum, which is in fact in the middle of the desert. Hopefully, the high school art project will result in a dozen or so quality pieces of work that will make stops at three or four places over the next year.

The art project that we displayed in the TCI can be seen here in an old post called Hanging Around Provo.

I think that everyone should just remember that post, but that was two years ago now, crazy.

Today, the Imperial Valley Press covered our program as the front page lead article. You can see the article "Students learn Kumeyaay Way" here. There is also a very good photo gallery where you can see a great picture of Lucas looking at the ollas.

But I have to warn you, if film ads twenty pounds, then pictures must add twenty years. The photo gallery looks an awful lot like my dad teaching a high school class.

Jared and Kara in the House

2011-10-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

Jared and Kara came to visit this weekend.

Lucas said that he thought more family had come to visit us here, in the most remote, inhospitable, and second hottest place to live in the US, than had visited us in the Turks and Caicos Islands, which boasted one of the top ten beaches in the world.

I tried to remind him that 18 members of the family had stopped and visited the house on a cruise, but when he talked about spending the night...

Well, Bryan and Terry, Stephanie, and Jared and Kara have all visited. This is quite a feet in that we have only been here a few months...and we are in the middle of nowhere. We don't have any chairs and had to eat dinner standing up in the kitchen.

The bonus of their visit, not that we don't love seeing family, is that we had to buy a queen-size air mattress for them to sleep on.

So, now we have a bed!

Starting from Scratch, Again?

2011-10-01T13:23:00.000-07:00

On September 9, 2007, I started this blog with a post entitled Starting from Scratch. That blog started like this:

"In the movie Angel Eyes, a Luis Mandoki film starring Jennifer Lopez and James Caviezel, there is scene that is one of my favorites. The main character is living in a dirty apartment with no furniture, just a mattress on the floor. He has a line: "Do you know when some says lets starts from scratch? Well this is what it looks like. This is scratch."

Here it is October 1, 2011. We moved into a new house we are renting today. There is nothing in it. On Thursday I slept on the floor. Yesterday, we packed the the last load from Ocotillo and brought the rest of our "junk" to El Centro.

Deneen said that "we seem to have everything but furniture." It seems we are starting from scratch, again.

So lets recap:

In September 2007 we gave away everything we had accumulated over 20 years, bought a bunch of new stuff on clearance, and moved to the Turks and Caicos Islands. Deneen moved to the TCI on November 29, 2010. For the next nine months we had the best nine months of our lives. Then on September 7, 2008, Hurricane Ike ripped the roof off our house in the TCI and we lost nearly everything we owned. On August 29, 2010, we left the TCI with 25 bags of luggage. We lived for four months in one room of my mother's house. On February 4, 2011, I moved to California with a suitcase and a carry on. For the next five months I lived in a camper. In June 2011, Martin drove to California with two flat screen TVs, a trumpet, a baritone, and our new Jeep Wrangler. On June 10, 2011, Deneen and the boys moved here, each with two suitcases. For the next four months we lived in a double-wide trailer in the middle of the desert.

Yea, that about sums it up.

Now, we have a house. Well, really we have a pool.

We moved to El Centro through a series of events that I can only describe as providential. The second person I met after moving to the Imperial Valley was Pastor Ron. He is the pastor of the United Methodist Church in El Centro. Among other things, Pastor Ron sponsored me into the El Centro Rotary club. Within the first week that Deneen and the boys had arrived, he also invited us to dinner. During that visit they made us walk down the street to look at a house that was available for rent. The current renter, a Rotarian, had bought a house across the street. The owner of the house is also a Rotarian.

After eight months, this was the only house in El Centro that I had looked at that I would even ever consider moving into. But afford it? No Way.

A couple weeks later, after dwelling on the house for two weeks, I gave the owner an offer of what I thought we could pay for rent.

Today, I am having what can only be described as buyers remorse. I just signed a 15 month commitment. This just feels like forever. We have been so temporary here, up till now, that I have been OK with it. At any time we could have loaded up and been gone. The house feels too permanent.

I don't know. I am torn. I never got a California driver's license. I kept saying that I don't have a permanent address. And I don't really live here, I just work here! I don't know if you know this, but they don't even get Ohio State football here. But...did I say the house had a pool.

I don't know. I spent my whole morning watching a CBS original web series called Around the World for Free, and searching internet job sites. Deneen is tired of the "adventure" idea. She wants a nest; she wants a house.

I just watched on episode of Around the World for Free where Pavarti went to Haiti. It made me miss my Haitian friends. I want to see my Haitian friends.

Indulge in the Comforts of Fall: Pumpkin Spice Latte

2011-09-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

Ok, so here's a shout out to Starbucks, sort-a, kind-a

One day last week I sat here from 8:00-3:00, only getting up to get coffee, writing an article. Yesterday, I held two meetings here and then arranged gift shop orders. Today, I have been here from 8:00-11:00. I am on my third refill.

I just saw Aaron, the president of the Chamber of Commerce. Miles is sitting over in the corner, he still has not found a job as a content writer. Frank asked me if the kids had started school. Marcus just came in to work. Eric is not working today, but he came in to get coffee.

We really, really missed two things in the Turks and Caicos: a coffee shop and a bookstore. Well, I guess it's lucky for us there is no bookstore.

The second week of school Lucas had an art project; draw where your family eats together. He drew the outdoor patio at Starbucks while we were sitting here. During the pinup crit, the art teacher was very critical of the drawing saying that the artist did not really listen to the "prompt."

But did he? In the transition of life for Lucas, Starbucks is one of the few constants. When Lucas was in school in Columbus he drove to the Lennox Starbucks during lunch. When I came home from the Turks and Caicos I drove Lucas to school and then sat at the Lennox Starbucks on the internet. After school, Lucas and I would sit there waiting for Deneen and Davis to meet us on their way down 315. In El Centro, we gravitated to the Starbucks because we had no where else to go in town. And we all carry cards with our names in Gold.

Literally, the Starbucks feels like home. And for Lucas, it probably feels more like home than a trailer in Ocotillo.

During the summer, while Martin was here, Davis would run over to Little Cesar's and get a five dollar pizza and the family would eat every week on the patio at Starbucks while I was at Rotary. Last Thursday, before the the boys went to Mock Trial Club we ate pizza out on the patio.

So, what picture would you draw when told to draw where "your" family eats together?

We talked about this last night. To be a better artist you need to look past what is right in front of you in order to see a deeper meaning in your artwork. What was lost on his art teacher was the reality of the social commentary inherent in Lucas' artwork. The drawing has a far deeper meaning than the literal representation of where his family eats together. It is actually almost tragic.

I guess he is lucky for not getting in trouble for drawing a picture of his dad's "office."

De Anza Rescue Unit

2011-09-17T21:29:00.000-07:00

I have two more articles for the IV Press to write this weekend, one about the De Anza Rescue Unit and one about BLM Rangers. Its kind of funny, but the stuff I get called to write about is also stuff I already have information on. I toured the old De Anza Rescue Unit mobile command center during the July 4th festival and picked up a bunch of flyers because I thought it would be cool to join. The handout was about the serious issue of dehydration in the desert. It included several stories of people who thought they were prepared...

I have a soapbox here, just like I did in the Turks and Caicos, as much fun as you think you are having, the desert is very unforgiving. I kept the De Anza flyer and made all the boys read it.

I just finished and submitted the article. I wrote one version in 500 words and another version in 650 words. Did you ever wonder why teachers made you write essays of 300 or 500 words? This is why:

De Anza Rescue Unit

Alone, on an evening ride around Superstition Mountain, a young rider crashed his motorcycle. When he regained consciousness the next day he was able to call the Sheriff's Department on a cell phone to request help, but he was already dehydrated and nearly incoherent. The Sheriff called the De Anza Rescue Unit, and an hour later they were searching the desert.

The rider was found one hour and fifteen minutes later. He was not near his bike and not in the location he gave when he called the Sheriff. Delirious with severe dehydration, he could no longer walk on his own. The rescuers brought him to the De Anza Rescue Unit mobile command center, gave him first aid, and immediately called for transportation to the hospital.

“If the victim had spent another two hours in the desert, he would have died,” was the report of the attending physician.

The De Anza Rescue Unit, Inc. was formed on May 26, 1969. “The unit serves as an auxiliary service organization prepared 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to assist the Sheriff's Department in organized search and rescue,” stated Paul Koon, the organization's current president.

Today, there are 28 members from all around the county, with a variety of occupations. “All members participate in field training exercises once a month,” stated Koon. “We run real-life scenarios, someone gets lost and we go find them.

“Each month our training focuses on different skills, sometimes it is foot tracking, sometimes it is vehicle tracking. Every member is required to maintain First Aid and CPR certificates. We are all disaster service qualified and part of the State Mutual Aid system. The De Anza Rescue Unit can be called to assist in both San Diego and Riverside Counties if needed.”

The organization is all volunteer, and members provide their own equipment and expenses for the 22 to 24 rescues that they are called to assist with annually. Jeff Green, who has been with the organization for ten years, field manages search and rescue operations for the unit. “When we receive a call-out from the Sheriff's Office, we can typically deploy half of our members within 45 minutes,” Green said, “but we can go out with five people and set up an effective search to find someone.”

In the 42 years since the Rescue Unit was founded, not all of the rescue stories have had such happy outcomes. “Even in the worst case scenario, what we do is important,”said Green. “To find someone and relieve the unknown factor for the family is a big part of what we do.”

In October 2010, The Rescue Unit began a fund-raising campaign to raise money to replace their mobile command unit, a 30-year-old school bus that has been very visible at community events, fairs, and festivals in the Valley. Soon the rescue unit will have a new state of the art mobile facility. “We are just waiting on the radios to be installed,”stated Koon. “Most of our operations are either at night in the middle of winter, or in the middle of the day in 120 degree weather. The new 5th-wheel trailer will have heat and AC and will allow people to get in out of the heat or cold. We have been putting in lots of work to get the trailer finished.”

Why put in so much work? Koon has the answer, “A couple years ago we were called out to the desert. A seven-year-old boy had run out of gas and was lost overnight. About 3:00am we found him asleep on top of his quad. When we returned that young man to his mother I knew that every volunteer hour that I had spent with the De Anza Rescue Unit was worth it.”

Yea, and I Just Moved Here

2011-09-16T08:19:00.001-07:00

Dave just sent me an article entitled 10 Housing Markets that Will Collapse This Year.

Guess what number seven was...

El Centro, California, is located five miles from the Mexican border, and is one of the poorest cities in the country. Median income is just $43,300 per family, the tenth-lowest in the U.S. Unemployment is at a staggering 28.6 percent. Between 2006 and 2011, home prices decreased by more than 50 percent. According to a report in the Imperial Valley Press, one home was sold in the El Centro area before the recession for $390,000. In 2009, that home was listed at $200,000. Prices are expected to drop an additional 12.1 percent by the first quarter of 2012. Five miles from the Mexican border? Think about it and forgetaboutit.

Well, uh, too late...

Now, I can't believe the housing market has not already collapsed here. It's going to get worse? Ouch.On the flip side, we are looking at a house today to rent in El Centro. We could never have afforded this house a couple years ago. But we were at a party last month at Pastor Ron's house. He said the house down the street was going to be empty because the renter had bought the house across the street. We went to look at it. It would be nice, but no way. A couple weeks ago I gave the owner a letter and told him what I thought we could pay. He called me yesterday and told me to come pick up the keys.

With school starting four weeks ago and Deneen starting work this past Monday we are already crunched with the drive from Ocotillo to El Centro. We spend an hour every morning in the car. Last weekend we had to drive into town for a church youth group party and a school club party. Yesterday we had to go out to eat after school then sit at Starbucks while the boys were at an evening practice until 7:30 for the Mock Trial Club. Tonight, if Davis has to cover the football game for the school newspaper, we will be in El Centro from 7:00am-10:00pm, and most of that time I will be sitting at Starbucks.

Not that I don't love Starbucks...but I think they are getting tired of me. Lucas came in after school a few days ago and the barista said, "I know your Dad, he's the guy who gets a lot of free refills."

Writing and Blogging, Blogging and Writing

2011-09-14T21:18:00.000-07:00

Have I said be careful what you good at lately? Well, be careful what you get good at.

I started a museum blog to document what it takes to open a museum. You can view the Desert Museum Blog here. I try to maintain those blog postings every couple of days.

This week I wrote three articles for the Imperial Valley Press. These were introductions to Yuma, Arizona, and the Imperial Valley for a shoppers guide to the desert.

But this blog is really about Davis' first published article. During his first week of High School, Davis went down to the school newspaper and signed up, I guess, anyway he got a press pass and made us go to the first football game two weeks ago.

When we looked at the online paper today, Davis' submittal was the front page lead article.

Ouch! Only Two Blogs Since Martin Left?

2011-09-14T20:50:00.000-07:00

Where has the time gone? I did not write about the Border Patrol helicopter landing at the museum, or the four trips to the Borders bookstore closeout in San Diego, or the approval of the museum's strategic plan, Davis' first week of high school, the extreme heat warning, or the rain storm and distant lightening...that last one was actually pretty cool.

I guess I will just start with today.

Today I installed, well started to install, gift shop fixtures in the museum...

The day Martin flew out of San Diego I received a phone call to say I should check out the fixtures that were for sale at the Borders bookstore in San Diego. Since I was already in San Diego I went over to the store, getting there right before closing. This was the same day that the IMLS grant was due.

As it turned out everything in the store was being sold for probably 10 cents on the dollar. And there were nice store fixtures.

We went down and bought 14 units at I think $125 each. Two weeks later we got a call saying all shelving would be $50 on the coming weekend. We went down and bought 10 more units.

Last Saturday we drove down to San Diego and loaded the cabinets (this was actually the second trip) on the last day the store was open. I have been trying to get a gift shop implemented for 8 months. Finally, its here. Though now we have the hard part of filling the shelves.

But that's coming.

Power Outage

2011-09-08T17:28:00.000-07:00

All Southern California is under a blackout. Power went off at the museum at 3:38pm. I am on the last of my computer battery. It was 98 degrees in the museum when I locked up. It is 109 on Jimmy's porch. Deneen and Atty are freaking out. We are drinking all of Jimmy's cold Mountain Dews. Might be sleeping outside tonight. But the worst thing is I am missing the opening of the 2011 NFL season!

Anniversary, Shmanniversary

2011-08-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

Today is Deneen and my 23rd anniversary. This is where I wanted to take her.

Riviera Maya, Mexico, which was the Groupon special today. But we just spent the day sitting in the house in Ocotillo. Boring!

Last year on this day I gave my last tour of the Museum on Grand Turk. A week later we were on a cruise. In 2009, we spent our anniversary at a party at Margarittaville and then my band played at the museum on Grand Turk. In 2008, I spent my anniversary with Dave Horn kayaking with the Governor of the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Maybe next year we can go somewhere cool. I have booked a hotel in San Diego for Labor Day, Christmas, and New Years, just in case. But today was a bust.

IMLS Grant

2011-08-16T21:51:00.000-07:00

I was just reading the blogs from February. It seems kind of crazy how different things are here now. Yesterday, I had a $135,000 grant due to the Institution of Museum and Library Services for their Learning Labs in Museums and Libraries program grant. On Friday I did not think there was anyway I was going to get finished. On Saturday it was too close to not finish. At about 5:30 on Sunday morning I did not care whether it got finished. On Monday I read through grant requirements and realized I was missing two huge things and I had to rewrite the whole budget again.

When I re-read through the grant it was kind of impressive. The grant is based on the Afterschool Homework Program we developed at the Turks and Caicos National Museum. I even used Tuval's and Kenlove's blogs as examples. That program was funded by a grant of $5,000 the first year and $9,600 the second year.

The IMLS grant is for one of 30 Learning Labs to be funded throughout the country. The grant is for 18 months of planning and prototyping. I would love to fully fund this program at $135,000.00. Shoot, I would love to fund it with $9,600. The program in the Turks and Caicos was one of the best things I have ever been a part of. There is lots of support here to do something similar. In fact, the program would be seen as a monumental step forward for both the museum and the youth of Ocotillo.

Here is the grant abstract:

The Imperial Valley Desert Museum is planning the development of a Learning Lab. At a minimum, the Lab would be a place where community youth would have access to internet, computers, and printers, and a staff member who could tutor or assist with homework, research, and academic projects. As envisioned, the Learning Lab will be a space where youth can explore natural science informally through connecting the natural history of the desert surrounding the museum with technological applications such as video editing, video webcasting, photo manipulation, graphic design, website development, and a new concept we are calling “geo-blogging.”

I have been working for the last three months to get all our Ts crossed and our Is dotted so that we can submit grants on Grants.gov. It came down to the last minute. But I just got an email saying that our grant had been transmitted to the reviewing agency. Baby steps for most institutions, but huge monster steps for here.

Manic Mondays

2011-08-16T20:56:00.000-07:00

Martin has left the Building.

That would have been this title. But that seems a little...well lets just say an undersell. After sleeping in for all summer, on Monday we all got up at 6:30am. I made breakfast burritos.

Today was Davis' first day of high school.

Lucas started his junior year in a brand new school. He sat at a table in art class and everyone started speaking Spanish. He said he did not understand a single word of the conversation.

Deneen drove into El Centro and hung out all day waiting on school to finish.

Martin and I drove into San Diego.

I had been up all night on Saturday and worked until about 3:00am on Sunday writing a grant that was due on Monday. Monday morning I was still waiting on resumes from consultants that were itemized in the grant budget.

Martin and I stopped at a Starbucks on the way. I got online and worked for a couple hours. We got into San Diego at 1:00 and I went to a meeting. After that, we went of to Balboa Park. I was hoping to see the Gustav Stickley exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Art, but museums are closed on Mondays. I forgot.

We walked around the park and I lectured Martin on the 1915 Panama Exposition, applied ornament, the effect of industrialization on architecture, and the advent of Modernism. Martin gave me another birthday present.

Around 4:00 we went over to Hodad's and ate our last meal. I lectured Martin on word-of-mouth marketing, commercialization, and food as an aspect of culture. Martin ate a huge hamburger.

I dropped Martin off at the airport.

I think this summer was the most time I have spent with him in the last three years. It is very sad to see him leave.

I drove over to Little Italy to the Starbucks and sat for the next four hours trying to get my grant submitted before midnight ET. Wrong username. Then wrong password. Then systems crash Google Chrome. Then systems crash Explorer. Then systems crash Grants.gov. Then "we close in 21 minutes." Then start the whole thing over. Then email receipt and validation of acceptance at 11:47 ET.

I called Martin who had not left LAX yet. Said goodbye. Told him that I had gotten the grant in.

Then I started home over the grade.

Stephanie's Visit

2011-08-14T18:33:00.000-07:00

I am not sure what is happening to August. I did not write a blog for two weeks and now I am trying to get caught back up. I feel like we have not done anything, but in the last two weeks I had a birthday, Deneen had a birthday, we drove to Pasadena twice, we saw Bryan and Terry twice, been to San Diego twice, the coiled clay summer program came to a close, we held a "Starry Night at the Museum" overnight program, I spoke at Rotary about the Turks and Caicos Hurricanes, which made people cry (seriously), Deneen was offered a job in the El Centro School Disctict, I was hired as a contract architectural historian by a multi-national company in San Diego, school started, Martin flew home, Oh, and Stephanie flew in from Columbus, Ohio, for a visit. During this time I had a massive federal grant due which required so much work you can't believe it.

But, this blog is about Stephanie. She arrived last Thursday and spent the weekend with us. I kind of felt bad. I feel like we did not do very much. For most of the day we try and stay out of the heat. I told her she could at least go back to Columbus and tell people we aren't kidding about the heat. And that we really have tacos every meal.

Thursday night I took her driving in the desert. She screamed the whole time so I don't know if she liked it. Martin took her hiking on Friday night. She came back very pale and said she almost died. On Saturday night she came to the museum overnight. Well, not quite overnight for her. But none-the-less, what she got was a pretty good snapshot of our lives here. We enjoyed seeing her anyway. On Sunday morning we all stumbled in from staying up all night, said goodbye, and she was on her way up to see Bryan.

In all that time, I only got one picture of her. That was at the last coiled clay art session.

Starry Night at the Museum

2011-08-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we had our first museum overnight. This was the night of the Perseid meteor shower. We had 14 kids, all from Ocotillo, come spend the night. We made coiled clay pots, we fired pots in a camp fire, we roasted hotdogs, and we watched two movies. The four girls fell asleep early. The guys stayed up from 2:30 to 7:30 playing video games.

I worked all night on the text for an IMLS Learning Labs in Libraries and Museums program grant.

I was outside several times to see the meteor shower. On Grand Turk we watched all the meteor showers. I saw 20 or 30 last year during the Persied shower. This year it was a very bright full moon. I saw two.

I was also thinking that I know why most people think museums are for adults. It would be way easier.

Gamble House Visit

2011-08-01T18:10:00.000-07:00

This weekend Martin, Deneen, and I stayed over in Pasadena. As the home of the Rose Bowl, we know Pasadena well. Actually, that's not really true. We know OF Pasadena well. And in fact, that's not really true either. We know the Buckeyes have played in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena 14 times. That's not really true either. I did not know that. I just looked that up. I guess what I really know about Pasadena is that as a true Buckeye fan you expect Ohio State to be playing in the Rose Bowl any year they are not playing in the national title game.

Anyway, what was surprising is that we went over to the Rose Bowl and discovered that it is actually called the "Rose Bowl." We were thinking that the actual game was called the Rose Bowl and the stadium was c

alled something else. The stadium was built in 1922. That was the same year the OSU Horseshoe was built. I did know that. For many years the Rose Bowl had the highest seating capacity of any football stadium in the county. This was true until 1998 when the stadium at the University of Michigan was enlarged.

I also know of Pasadena because of the Gamble House. The Gamble House is the winter home of the Gamble family from Proctor and Gamble of Cincinnati. The house was designed by Greene and Greene in 1903 and was an icon of the Arts and Crafts movement. Today, is is a historic house museum.

Though I am very familiar with the house, I had never been. This is why we stayed over. The house was open on Sunday from 12:00 to 3:00 with a limited guided tour every 15 minutes. The house did not dissapoint. I lectured Martin on the Arts an Crafts movement the entire visit.

I think that is what Martin got me for my birthday. I took him to the Gamble House and he did not complain once.

Pasadena Pass Off

2011-07-30T11:13:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we met Bryan and Terry in Pasadena and passed off Lucas and Davis. A week or so before Bryan called and asked if our boys wanted to go to church camp with his boys. I don't think we had really thought at all about doing family kind of stuff here. But a four hour drive later we were having dinner with Bryan and his family.

The drive through the Coachella Valley is long, sort of. El Centro is about an hour and a half from Palm Springs and Palm Desert, which are up above the Salton Sea, the largest lake in California.

Coming home we came down the 5 through Los Angeles. I thought this would be fine on a Sunday at 3:00. But it was not. I don't understand how somewhere can have traffic so bad that cars are stopped on the highway on a Sunday afternoon.

The 5 comes into San Diego. We stopped for dinner at Hodad's in Ocean Beach. The whole area along the coast was in the mid 80s and freezing. I was almost glad to head back over the grade to where the weather is warm.

IV Press Article - Front Page today

2011-07-28T19:51:00.000-07:00

click here for article and video

Children wind clay into pots for cultural learning

By ELIZABETH VARINStaff Writer

12:34 a.m. PDT, July 28, 2011

OCOTILLO — Ocotillo resident Dillon Austin took care to smooth the sides of the project he spent hours creating Wednesday morning.

After winding together a coil for a base, he began building up the sides, one string of reddish-brown clay at a time. When finished, the hour glass-shaped pot was left to dry and be fired. It was Dillon’s first project for a pilot program art class at the Desert Museum.

“I want to come back next week,” he said.

The 12-year-old was one of about a dozen children from here who wound together pieces of clay into pots at the Imperial Valley Desert Museum. Though it was Dillon’s first class, others have been going to the center all summer to play with the clay.

The class is one portion of the pilot program the museum is putting together, said Executive DirectorNeal Hitch. The steps after the summer class finishes will be to bring the art classes to a high school in the fall, and then exhibit what the high schoolers create.

The program allows children and students to see what it takes to make some of the pots that are at the museum, Hitch said. Having the experience of creating a bad pot — and everyone’s first pot is bad — makes the ones that were made long ago by the Kumeyaay Indian Tribe in the area a lot more impressive.

The students could see how hard it is to make some of the two-feet-wide clay pieces when those students are constructing ones that are only a few inches wide, he said.

The pilot project began after the museum received a $2,000 grant from the Imperial Valley Community Foundation, he said. The Howard P. Meyer Foundation in El Centro also contributed funding and ASM Affiliates archeology company gave money for the clay.

The program has been a big success so far as the museum has seen more than double the expected number of kids each day, he said. The real test of how popular it is is the number of kids who return and recommend that others come out, Hitch said.

“This is just something that it’s fun to be here,” he said.

Children at the event agreed that it was worth coming back to.

Brittany Rausa, 12, has been coming for weeks, and said that she really enjoys making the pots. Her first one didn’t turn out well, but they’ve been improving.

Her favorite part is getting to mold clay while talking with friends, she said.

For 16-year-old Lucas Hitch, it’s about a little more competition than that. He wants to make pots that are better than his teacher’s, and his are getting there.

While he would like to make a pot as good as those by the Kumeyaay on display, he doesn’t think that’s going to happen with only a few classes left.

However, he said, he can hope.

Comic Con

2011-07-26T21:12:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was Comic Con in San Diego. We drove into town because Martin and Lucas had tickets to see Childish Gambino, which is the stage name of one of the actors on the television show, Community. Davis, Deneen, and I stumbled into the screening of an Australian independent film called Griff the Invisible, written and directed by Leon Ford, who was there and introduced the film.

The entire soundtrack was written and performed by an Aussie pop band called Kids at Risk. They just happened to be at ComicCon and before the movie they did a five song set. The music is a little light hearted, yet haunting, and intertwined with 1960s-esque spy movie riffs.

The cooler thing to me is the fact that the band was awarded an Arts Council grant of $20,000 to travel to America and perform in a bunch of bars in LA. It appears that ComicCon was their first stop. Here is a bit taken from the blog on their website which posted on the 26th.

"Wandered stunned through the convention until we had to dash over to an online interview blog style thing with YOWIE which was great fun then back over to the theatre to perform a few songs prior to the screening of Griff The Invisible. Great vibe and everyone so lovely, welcoming and supportive. San Diego is a very cool city."

We finished the evening off with onion rings and shakes at our new favorite hamburger stand, Hodad's, and a walk around the Gaslamp District.

The film was not what it appears to be. It is marketed as a Superhero genre film, and the publicity surrounding the screening had the feel of a comic book. The movie, if you ask me, is a character study of individuals living with mental disabilities who are unable to cope with the real world and so they live in a world of their own. It just so happens that in movies, two people with the same disability can find each other so that the character study can become a love story.

The line for the screening of the new movie "30 Minutes or Less" was right next to ours. That line had 200 people in it. Ours had maybe 30. Davis wanted to get into the line for the movie everyone else wanted to see.

Life lesson: Don't do the ordinary. Take the line that few people are in. It may be a bust, but chances are better that great stories are going to come out of that line.

I was right. The Imperial Valley will be a really cool place to live if we can get into San Diego once a month.

Missing the Turks and Caicos

2011-07-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

This weekend I was really missing Grand Turk. I was looking at the blog posts from last year. This week a year ago we were spending our last weekend on Provo at the Grace Bay Club, we then had our last dive on the Bohio Wreck documenting the shipwreck site, and my last issue of the Astrolabe was due. I miss the beach. Actually, I miss the water. Actually, I miss swimming. And really, what I miss is snorkeling and killing lion fish.

So, Sunday evening we packed water and decided to hike to the top of the ridge trail that we have been on four times up in the Coyote Mountains. We decided to hike up to an large square rock outcropping that we call the fort. We have come across this trail on several hikes. We now call it Deneen's Pass, for reasons that I can't write about because Deneen got mad that I use her as an antagonist in my writing. But lets just say that "pass" would be a reference to the 1970s game show Match Word and not a reference to say Donner Pass or Sonora Pass.

In the cool of the evening we began our hike, with the intent of making it a fast hike. In the first thirty-five minutes we had hiked a mile in and a half mile up. Not bad. And not far to go. After a ten minute break we evaluated. Do we really want to go to the top? We had made it this far before. And from here Davis had run up to the fort.

Up to the fort.

This hike was a little harder, and a little longer.

Ok, we made the fort.

"Let's just see what's beyond the next ridge."

After a ten minute break we evaluated. It did not look far to the next landmark. We have hiked this trail four times. We always talk about whether it is a very old Indian trail, or possibly a big horn sheep trail, or according to Martin, "just a hiking trail."

At the top, the trail opened up to a wide, flat mesa of desert pavement that overlooked the valley below. In the center of the mesa there was the remnant of a geoglyph. The end of the trail was a shaman ceremonial site, and in fact, there was a discernible spiritual feeling in the landscape.

On the way back down the mountain we came across our first rattlesnake. Cool huh!

Well, it's no lion fish.

But it will have to do. This was a pretty good day.

Taco Wednesdays

2011-07-13T21:13:00.000-07:00

Last night the news out of Yuma, AZ, showed that our weather is moving from "hot" to "hotter," but today we had a break in the weather and it was a cool 102 degrees. So this evening we packed our packs and headed out for a hike into the Coyote Mountains.

We hiked up into a wash to get our of the wind and learned to use Davis' emergency fire starting kit that he bought before he came out. It took some work to get the hang of it, but a pocket full of dryer lint did the job and wala...fried corn tortilla taco night.

We finished dinner and hiked up the ridge trail in the fading sunlight.

Just a typical mid week evening I guess. Got to get home so we can watch Americas Got Talent.

July 4 - Independence Day

2011-07-04T20:07:00.000-07:00

This July 4th was very different than the last three. Grand Turk, if you remember, was a British Overseas Territory and they did not celebrate July 4th. In fact they did nothing. And last year the blog entry records that we did not do anything either.

Well this year we are in America. Though we are right on the border. Americanism is kind of big. It's just the large majority of the Americans here are bilingual.

There is a celebration called Freedom Fest at the Imperial Valley Community College that is county-wide Chamber of Commerce sponsored event. It is the largest attended event in the valley, well next to the Children's Festival which had 40,000 attendees this year.

Like most things here, the event had a small town feel. But it was tacos and fireworks so how bad could it be. It reminded us a lot of 2002 when we drove to Vencennes, Indiana, for the fourth. Or possibly the 4ths that we spent in Loudonville, Ohio, during music camps at Judson Hills Camp.

It was cool to see fireworks, again.

60 Degreeeeeeeees

2011-07-02T22:10:00.000-07:00

I think the hottest place I have ever been was in Phoenix in the mid 1980s. It was 100 degrees at midnight while we were playing basketball.

I know I have pointed out that the Imperial Valley is the second hottest place in the United States to live. But really? Can you read that? I mean really? Can you read that?

That is the front porch.

This morning the Ocotillo Optimist Club had a bike parade and an ice cream social. It was at 8:30am. It was the coolest part of the day at about 105 degrees.

We went out at 4:00 at the peak heat of the day, just to be Nietzschian. Deneen bet me that we would not see another person. The gas station was full. Every car smelled like radiator fluid. We went over to my new friend Jimmy's house to check what his thermometer read. Both my new friend Jimmy and Steve the neighbor came out to sit on the porch. It was only 117 on Jimmy's porch.

Its about midnight. Its 108 degrees on the porch. I am going to get in the hot tub to cool off.

Well it didn't kill us, so I guess we're stronger.

State Parks Grant

2011-06-30T00:57:00.001-07:00

It is about 2:00 in the morning. I have just finished a 59-page grant in the amount of $2.1 million. The grant is for the creation of "new parks." It just so happens that when the museum property was transferred by Congressional Act 990, it was conveyed to be “reserved, maintained, and utilized for public park (including museum) and recreational purposes.”

The new parks are specifically to be placed in communities with significant poverty. Well, lucky for us, in December 2010 Imperial County, California, had the highest jobless rate of any county in the United States.

You would think that we should have a competitive grant application.

The grant has taken almost the whole month of June. This included five public meetings, estimating the construction of a dozen recreational features, getting a willing seller agreement for the 48 acres behind the museum in the last 24 hours, and finding a consultant to draw a site plan with a two day turn around (for free, knock on wood).

I am sick of writing about the challenges and benefits of a new recreational park. It is interesting though. There are real challenges here. The community has been working on this museum for 24 years. That is a long time to raise funds, secure grants, build buildings, and still not get open.

Museums seem like they cost a lot of money. But do they really? Right now there is a power line being constructed within a mile from the museum. It is costing $1.8 billion dollars. Soon the Ocotillo Wind project will start construction. It is a billion dollar clean energy development that will be built on 15,000 acres around the museum.

So really, a couple million seems like peanuts. But convincing people of that is another story.

The second round of the California State Parks Development and Community Revitalization program will be putting $185 million of bond money into developing new community parks. From what I have been able to piece together, I think there will be about 40 new parks funded. I think just over 10% of applicants.

I really wish I would have gone into energy development. With clean energy projects I could probably still feel good about myself.

I can write a pretty mean grant though.

Deneen's Picture says it All

2011-06-29T20:07:00.001-07:00

Bats and Lasers

2011-06-25T12:14:00.000-07:00

Several years ago I read a story about a bat exhibit that had been installed at a natural history museum. The exhibit was about how bats navigate with sound waves and they used an interactive laser to illustrate the point. When they previewed the exhibit, everyone wanted to play with the laser. No one wanted to read about bats.

What do you do in this case? Clearly the visitor is not getting it. The museum exhibit is about bats.

The museum removed the exhibit about bats and installed an exhibit about lasers.

When working with children in any program, the key is to create an environment where they can be successful and learn on their own. I received a comment a few weeks ago about the museum mind map we created during strategic planning at the Imperial Valley Desert Museum. The mind map included a large discussion of "EDUCATION" which is something the museum does...and said nothing about "LEARNING" which is what the visitor does. Learning is a user directed activity.

Most museums think of themselves as educational institutions, as was evident to one of the readers of the mind map I posted. When in reality, we should think of ourselves as learning institutions.

Making coiled clay pots is hard. But working with clay is fun. On Thursday, there were a bunch of kids here. This was the second day of our coiled clay art pilot program. Most of them had never been inside the building before. They were not very successful in creating pots. But they were very successful in creating small things out of clay.

What do you do in this case? Clearly the visitor is not getting it. The museum program is about pots.

When they were leaving I heard one of the little boys tell his sister, "this place is fun."

I did not have the heart to tell him its not fun

...its a museum.

But its a Dry Heat!

2011-06-22T17:59:00.001-07:00

Last week the wind blew 48mph one day and 52mph the next. Deneen woke up at 2:30am and got mad saying that rocks were flying through the window screens.

This week the wind has died down.

Yesterday it was 112 degrees. Today it was 116.

When I first came everyone wanted to tell me about the heat. Its actually no big deal. I like the heat. And compared to Grand Turk where it was 105 degrees and 90% humidity this is nothing.

Deneen wishes she could go to the beach. I keep reminding her that she spent most of her life in Ohio, where there is no beach. But she will have none of it.

"If its this hot, there should be a beach," is all she will keep saying.

It is 6:00pm, the house will not cool down, everyone is sweating. I think maybe we are just getting seasoned for somewhere really hot!

Oh, we can see one of John McCain's border fires from the museum. The boys and I wanted to hike up and see it. That would be super cool.

Sunday Picnic

2011-06-20T22:25:00.000-07:00

On Sunday we went for an evening drive and hike out to Sin Nombre Canyon in the Anzo-Borrego State Park. The Anzo-Borrego is California's largest state park and is 650,000 acres of desert and mountains. It is also in our backyard.

The drive is very interesting in that the off-road trails wind through the passes of the canyon where the stratification of 9 million years of changes to the landscape is extremely evident. Or I guess a few thousand years of several catastrophic events stacked up on top of one another. Depending on which one of my friends is reading this.

We stopped and hiked into one of the slit canyons. I bet Martin that he could not free climb up the end. Then, while we were waiting for him to come down we had a nice picnic dinner of chilled fruit, roasted chicken, and french bread.

Deneen is starting to complain of a lack of things to do in Ocotillo, but there are few places where on a whim you can drive a dozen miles or so and have dinner in a slit canyon in the region's largest state park. It was very cool.

Hiking is the New Diving

2011-06-13T19:11:00.000-07:00

On Sunday we got up at 7:00 and took off for the Coyote Mountains for another attempt to find Fossil Canyon. Graham wanted to get some good hiking in before he had to leave on Monday. Lucas and Davis are now here, so we have a fairly large hiking party. We hiked for three hours in the morning, and then went again Sunday evening.

The morning hike took us up a small slit canyon to a small crevasse climb up about 12 feet. Once above that, the canyon

opened up into a wash. At the top of the wash we picked up a small trail that cut across the top of the ridge.

This trail was either a big horn sheep trail or perhaps a much older Indian trail. The hike was steep.

We ended the hike at the top of the first ridge line. The sun came out and we beat it back down the mountain to avoid the heat.

What do we like about hiking?

Davis likes the "view from the top." Lucas likes being able to say that he is a "Mountain Climber."

"Once you get to the top you feel like you accomplished something," he said.

Martin said, "I like feeling connected to nature and the environment." Which is a bunch of hooey.

I like the danger of the free climbs. They are crazy and serious adrenaline pumpers. Though they are small right now, all I can think about is the last dive on Grand Turk on the north reefs looking for sharks.

I don't like it so much with Davis. Just like diving, I find that I have a real aversion to Davis doing anything remotely dangerous. It kind of freaks me out, because the apple has not fallen far from the tree.

Which is OK. Just as long as the apple doesn't actually fall from the tree.

Deneen's Arrival

2011-06-11T16:20:00.000-07:00

Ok, the first thing you will notice about this blog, is that it does not mention Deneen's arrival.

Friday morning we tested the car to see if we could get six people and luggage in it. We could not.

What we decided was that I would take Graham to San Diego to meet Deneen's plane. The thought, being that Martin would be able to see San Diego later, but this was Graham's one chance.

We arrived in San Diego around 2:00pm. We spent the afternoon in Balboa Park, specifically visiting the San Diego Museum of Art. I had read an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune about spring events at the museum. They sounded great. I was a little disapointed as the article made the museum seem much cooler.

I did give Graham a lecture tour about the history of nineteenth and twentieth century American art and discussed at length that I think most art museums totally miss the boat on interpreting the context that art is created in. Without this, art is usually misinterpreted and misunderstood by the viewer.

After the art museum we went down to the Gaslamp District and walked around we got a hamburger at Hodad's. Graham thought this was the best hamburger he ever had.

On the way back to the car there were crowds of people walking down to the Petco stadium. So we followed them.

Just in time for the beginning of a Padres game. I don't think that I have been to a professional baseball g

ame in twenty years. But the stadium had cheap seats and we had a good time.

Show all

Coyote Mountains

2011-06-09T20:05:00.001-07:00

It was hot today. Graham even put his pants in the freezer. The boys were awaken today by a 4.4 magnitude earthquake that struck at 8:22am about 13 miles south of Seely. It rattled the house for about 20 seconds.

When it cooled down this evening, we drove out Shell Canyon Road back into the Coyote Mountains. Somewhere up that way there is an ancient oyster shell bed left over from when the whole world was covered with water. And I guess before earthquakes so big they created mountains.

We could not find the shell beds, but we did come across a small slit canyon that looked cool.

The pictures should tell the story. But we hiked and climbed for 2 1/2 hours. Through the canyon. Then up the end of the canyon. This was not the plan, but at least today we were a little more prepared with water, gloves, and hiking boots

Graham said he did not have a problem getting up, but he was not sure the plan to get back down.

There's usually always a way down on the backside.

But then we almost had to come down on our backsides.

End of the Road

2011-06-08T20:08:00.000-07:00

I told Martin and Graham today that I think Ocotillo is a lot like Grand Turk. You sit around doing nothing for hours that are then interrupted by crazy adventure.

This evening, we took BLM Route 091 to the end of the road.

It dead ended at the wilderness area at the base of the Coyote Mountains. This seems crazy when you look at the pictures, but this is what we see from the back yard.

The Jeep handles great in the desert. It is definitely not made for the highway, but it is definitely made for the desert. I want another one. 091 goes from a trail, to a path, to a wash, to..well nothing.

"It's a little tight for the Jeep, don't you think?" says Martin.

"No, its made for the Jeep."

The light was very cool at the end of the day.

We decided to hike to the top of the first ridge.

I will title this last picture: "Not prepared for the life experience."

You would think that the desert is just sand and you could walk around like being on a beach. But the desert is full of razor sharp rocks, cactus, and thorny plants. I got pretty messed up.

And if that's not enough...

Long boarding down S2. Imperial County, California

Have you seen Saturn Lately

2011-06-06T23:33:00.000-07:00

Sunday night we went up the grade to the San Diego Astronomy Associations property in Boulevard. The association has an isolated piece of property where amateur astronomers bring large and expensive telescopes to view stars in a very dark, mountain setting.

We went up at about 6:00. About 10:00 it got dark.

For years I have looked at the night sky seeking a satellite. Some guy came over to where we were standing.

"In about a minute the Hubble Telescope is going to come by," he said.

And there it was. A small, steady light moving west to east at about 15 degrees above the horizon.

"Its going to shimmer and then disappear as it moves into the Earth's shadow."

Then it was gone. A minute later a second satellite moved across the heavens going north to south.

"That is a military satellite. They are the only ones moving north to south," the young man continued.

"It was quite alright when it was high but now its very low. Da, da, da," said I.

A while later the telescopes were set and warmed up.

Saturn has been high in the night sky within ½º of the 3rd magnitude star Gamma Virginis all month. I have never seen anything like this before. It looked fake. It was so clear it looked like a sticker someone had put on the lens.

We also went into the super large, super cool telescope that the association opens occasionally for visitors. We looked at M51, a whirlpool galaxy about 24 million light years away from the Milky Way. About a month ago, a super nova showed up in this galaxy. It was a small dot of light visible in the lower center of the vortex.

With the exception that we were totally dressed inappropriately, because it was freezing, this was very cool stuff.

Mind Mapping

2011-06-06T09:12:00.000-07:00

Over the last few weeks, I have been leading a series of Strategic Planning sessions at the Desert Museum. At the last session, participants and board members worked on creating a mind map of the idea of "Museum." A mind map is a graphical representation of an idea. I had planned on using the technique a few weeks ago, and then while I was at the AAM meetings in Houston I sat through a session that used mind mapping. Ah, it is still a relevant tool.

Two ideas from our mind map of a museum are very interesting. One is that the idea of a museum as a gathering place for social change can be an overarching goal of a museum. In fact, this is an idea at the center of the 21st century museum. I actually sat through a session on that at the AAM conference as well. This session was led by the past director of the National Museum of the American Indian. He talked at length of the importance of social change in the museum.

The second idea is that a museum has a whole area called "Do Things." This is in opposition to what most people think about a museum, which is "See Things."

I think this area of Do Things is where the museum should live. When you look at our mind map, doing things can be understood as creating Experiential Hands-on Connections. This is important, because just like the graphic we created, I believe that Physical Participation (equals) Knowledge. The mind map can be seen as just a fun exercise. As a way of getting people involved. But I love the yellow bar area of this mind map. I think it is the most important part of the museum.

Jeep Guy

2011-06-05T14:35:00.000-07:00

I LOVE the Jeep!

I have had it out today, testing it to make sure it will be OK for Deneen to drive when she gets here. It handles much differently than the big four wheel drive Blazer, which actually is not that big. We had it over near the place Deneen got out of the car (I don't remember if I told that story, but it was pretty funny). Later today I think we are going to take it out to Devil's Canyon.

Cross Country Drive

2011-06-04T12:18:00.000-07:00

This week I had a vision of the day Martin spilled hot chocolate in his lap at the Tim Hortons on Bethel Road. Every morning we stopped and got a donut on the way to school during his first year as a student at Ecole Francais. On this day, we had to leave early and drive over to Kmart so we could buy a new pair of pants. He changed in the car and we went on to school without anyone every knowing.

I was very sad as I sat thinking about this day. And I am tearing up again as I write about it.

That day is gone. I no longer have any little boys to take care of.

Last Tuesday, Martin left Columbus, Ohio, to make the cross country drive between Ohio and California with our car. Before I left to come out here I bought a map, planned his trip, highlighted a route, put it in the car. I have spent hours online searching for the optimum travel distance. I gave him suggestions of where he should stay. I put just enough money on a credit card so he could buy gas, but not so much that if he lost it...

I was sick to my stomach the entire day he left. I sent him a text message every couple hours to see how he was doing.

"OK, make sure you leave St. Louis on I-44 down to Joplin. Watch the weather. Always be on the lookout. Don't stop in big cities."

"We are already on I-70 on our way to Colorado," came the reply, "We are camping tonight next to a river, we already booked a place online."

"That's the wrong way. That's the wrong way. That's the wrong way," I kept thinking.

"Ok, well, I can fix it.

You just have to get to I-25 and come down through Santa Fe."

I couldn't sleep. I could barely work on Wednesday waiting for an update to see if he made it to the right road.

"We have been on the road two hours already. We're going to Utah. I figured if we are camping, we might as well camp somewhere cool," came the text.

On Wednesday I had to let Martin go.

I worked hard to give him the skills so that he can make his own decisions. I have loved him and I have tried to teach him to love others and to love life. This has not been the easiest three years on my family. But what I want my children to learn is that life can be an adventure. It does not have to be a job. And it does not have to conform to what other people tell you it should be.

On Wednesday it became clear that Martin can lead his own adventure. I need to let him.
He just called. He is about four hours away. He will be in Ocotillo by dinner.

AAM Meetings

2011-05-28T12:12:00.000-07:00

In 2009, when I went to the National Preservation Conference, I had a sickening revelation. I did not run into a single person that I knew. During the two years that I had been in the Turks and Caicos, my entire ten previous years of networking efforts were gone.

This week was the first museum conference that I have attended since the Society of American Archivists meeting in August 2009. What I was very pleased to find, is that I ran into a few people that I knew, and who remembered me. I ran into a past employee of the Ohio Historical Society. I was able to speak to the past director of one of the Smithsonian museums that I had met while teaching at Capital University. And two of the design companies that had really, really nice displays were from Ohio. I had worked with both of them on previous museums.

There were several venders selling technological hardware and software for museum exhibits. For my entire budget, for instance, you can buy a wall of LED panels where you can interact with digital images of your collections by touching and moving them. It was like a giant touch screen that has a life span of 7-8 years.

I walked up to one kiosk and was like, "Hey, a giant I-phone."

"People keep saying that," the lady said, "but we really just mounted this display sideways because of space."

All I could think about was how cool it would be to have a giant I-phone in your exhibit where you could use apps on a giant scale. Then, stuff that you liked you could buy for your smart phone right on the exhibit floor to take with you.

I also went to a speed networking session where you sat and talked to some other museum professional for five minutes. You know, just like the speed dating scene in the movie "Hitch," where Will Smith confronts his protagonist. It was just like that, only about my real life, and not the life I talk about when people ask me if that movie is about me.

Anyway this was great. I had not signed up, but I went anyway. The organizers gave me the time sheet for someone who had not shown up. This person must have been foreign. Almost all ten people I met were from international museums; one from Columbia, one from Israel, and several who were there on the Getty Multicultural Undergraduate Intern Program.

By far the greatest contact was the director of archaeology museums from Nepal. We wound up sitting across from each other twice. Like me, he is not an archaeologist, but has now found himself leading a national program for archaeology museums. We had two really great five minute conversations. I told him I would love to come to Nepal...

because Deneen would just love that.

AAM Presentation

2011-05-24T10:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I presented at the American Association of Museum's annual conference. I spoke during a session entitled Planning Tomorrow's Collections Today.

Really, quite by accident, or I guess by natural disaster, after the hurricane on Grand Turk I needed some kind of guideline for the long-term planning of collections. I found an online article on the AAM website called "Collections Planning: Pinning Down a Strategy," by Garland and Merritt. I adapted a brief outline based on what I needed at the time.

In the last three years, I have worked on two Collections Management Plans. I don't consider myself an expert, by any means. In fact, both Plans that I have worked were part of the planning process for a larger master plan. And in both cases it was planning as a way to deal with a crisis. In a way, I have been kind of making it up. But, as I sat there in the presentation, it became clear to me that I had twice as much experience as the other panelists. We have been in a rush to complete the Plan at the Imperial Valley Desert Museum. But it is much easier and better the second time around.

This is the method of writing a Collections Plan as part of a Master Plan that I presented:

1) What is our audience?

2) How do we engage them?

3) What are the strengths and weaknesses of our collection?

4) What is our ideal collection?

5) Is there anything else we need? What would we take if it were donated?

6) Who has “complementary collections” to ours?

7) What are our needed resources for using collections to build exhibits or programs?

8) What action are we going to take?

I Said Sprocket, Not Socket.

2011-05-23T21:01:00.000-07:00

So, I signed up for the AAM conference rather late. Today, I stood in line three different times at the ticket exchange counter trying to see what tickets had been returned for any of the really cool events tonight. To no avail. No plans for the evening.

Way down in the program I saw a small notice for something called Dinner and Dialog. There was a list of several topics that would be discussed by various professionals at dinner. The note said "Sign up at Restaurant Reservation Desk."

It took a while to find the table, but finally tucked up on the third floor was an lady manning a table with a notebook and a pin.

"When you sign up on one of the sheets I will give you the reservation information. When all ten places are filled I remove the sheet. If the sheet is not in the notebook, then that topic is full," she said.

I opened the book. There was one sheet left for Monday night. It was a discussion on "The Challenges of Time Management."

"Do you find it funny that the last thing there is to sing up for is a Time Management discussion?" I said. "When people come up here to sign up you should say something like "Oh, your just in time!"" Or maybe, "I guess you really need this dinner don't you." or "Sorry, you are too late, just kidding."

"I am not here to make jokes," she said.

"Come on, I am giving you gold here, this is really funny."

"My job is not to sit here and be funny," she said. "Are you going to sign up for the reservation."

"I'm not going to sign up to go to dinner with a bunch of losers who waited too long to sign up for anything good and then had to go to a dinner about Time Management!"

About two minutes later I went back.

"I just don't think you appreciate how amusing this is that the last thing available to sign up for is The Challenge of Time Management. I am going to sign up for this and I bet you that this is the best thing I do all day."

So, by total accident, not my fault, I was 25 minutes late to the dinner on The Challenge of Time Management. Five out of the ten people had shown up. And, just as I thought. Not really a discussion about Time Management. Just five people who had forgotten to sign up for anything good. About the time introductions had been made, Deneen called. I excused myself and stepped outside.

When I came back to the table the moderator and the rest of the table were talking about the "monkey article." Betsy was like, "so I thought the monkey article was really important." And Mark was like, "Well at our museum I wished we had the monkey article to talk about."

After a few minutes I jumped in, "Did I just step outside and you'all were like, "When he comes back lets pretend we're talking about a monkey article."

"No, we're talking about a reprint of a classic article in the Harvard Business Review about how to keep your employees from putting monkeys on your back."

"Monkeys on your back, really." I said. "Like Ken Blanchard in the One Minute Manager who discusses the need to manage with a decision making process where you take monkeys off your back and give them to your staff."

"You just won the Monkey Article," said Betsy. At which point she pulled out a copy of Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey? by Oncken and Wass. It was a discussion about Time Management!

That ended the formal discussion. These five people were good humored. Dinner was funny. We sat at the House of Blues for the next three hours talking about museums, the struggle of a job search, and about what people thought about the conference so far.

It was the best thing I did all day.

Collections Management Planning

2011-05-22T09:26:00.000-07:00

So what was the point?

Today, I am flying to Houston to the American Association of Museums' annual conference. On Monday I will be participating in a session on Collections Management Planning for small museums. The session is called Planning Tomorrow's Collections Today.

Now, this should really make my friend and colleague Cheryl laugh. But the reality is that all the time we spent working on development projects at OHS evidently prepared me very well. Collections planning is relatively new to the museum's field. But in the last three years I have been through the process of working on a Collections Management Plan at two different museums.

I kind of have developed a whole program. It started one day when I found an article on the AAM website called Collections Planning: Pinning Down a Strategy. I adapted an outline from this article that I thought would work as a real effective tool for using collections as a development and revenue generation strategy:

1) What is our audience? How do we engage them?

2) What are the strengths and weaknesses of our collection?

3) What is our ideal collection?

4) Is there anything else we need? What would we take if it were donated?

5) Who has “complementary collections” to ours?

6) What are our needed resources for using collections to build exhibits or programs?

7) What action are we going to take?

I was right. It has been one of my most effective planning tools in developing adventure tours and exhibits. What I really need to do is start presenting papers on Adventure Exhibits.

Sorry, I know that this is not the fun stuff.

Collections Management Policy

2011-05-21T14:08:00.000-07:00

Definition: A detailed written statement that explains why a repository/museum is in operation and how it goes about its business. It articulates the repository/museum's professional standards regarding objects left in its care.

One of my favorite motivational career statements is, "Be careful what you get good at."

This is what I used to say to Van all the time when we were painting all summer. A couple weeks ago we the Board of Directors of the Museum voted to approve the Collections Management Policy that I wrote. I am sure my OHS friend and colleague Cheryl would be laughing at what my life has become. Me? Writing a Collections Management Policy?

In my first two weeks at OHS I took a tour of the collections facility. I was in the accessions room and picked up a glass jar to look at it.

Cliff was giving me a tour. He says, "One of the key elements in collections management is that you never touch something without a really good reason. Idol curiosity is not a good reason."

This made me really mad. I can still see the moment in my mind.

I have probably said that statement a dozen time or more since that day. In a house museum when the Foundation director picked up one of the President's books off of the bookshelf. In the lab on Grand Turk talking about the preservation of copper maritime artifacts. The other day giving a long lecture to the two archaeology interns who have been working for the BLM for the last nine months.

We had a volunteer day at the Desert Museum a couple weeks ago. The Chairman of the board sat down at one of the tables with drink.

One of the archaeologists said, "I don't think we are supposed to have drinks at the table."

I said something like, "Dude, didn't we all just read the Collections Management Policy like a dozen times in the last month."

Well, I probably said something like that anyway. And yes we did. And yes its on page 8.

Provenience or Provenance

2011-05-19T20:24:00.000-07:00

Do I only write about the fun stuff? If so, it makes sense that I could write so much on Grand Turk. And why I have not written very much here in the last couple of weeks.

I have had about a year of museum studies in the last eight weeks. I have been reading everyday about Collections Management, Curatorial Procedures, and this week, Labels. I have written a thesis worth of documents.

Provenience or provenance. That is what I am doing this evening. From the French provenant, which is from the Latin prōvenīre; to come from.

I sent documents out today to some other museums. I have "provenience" written all over them. Probably, in museumology, the documents should have said "provenance." Provenience is specific to archaeology. Probably why it was never caught in editing.

I don't know. Strictly speaking, maybe where I am provenience is going to make more sense to who is going to use my documents than provenance, which kind of sounds like a French word used by pretentious art curators. Ok, I'll go with that.

Ugh! I want to write about the fun stuff!

Dethrone SoCal 250

2011-05-14T19:53:00.000-07:00

Today the Dethrone SoCal 250 desert race was held in Plaster City. This will be the biggest desert race held this year.

I got up a 6:00am and went over to painted gorge with John the neighbor. What is a desert race like, you ask? Hot and dusty.

This was a 250 mile race, five complete laps. Every lap caused the course to get chewed up and the sand to become deeper. By the third lap trucks started to get stuck.

A 50-mile lapwas taking the leaders about 45 minutes. Thats about an average of 70 mph. In the flat the trucks were going about 140 mph.

I was in an area of pretty rough terrain. One truck slammed into the ground right in front of me. The guys got out, ripped the front of the truck off and kept going.

Anyway, I am going to reset my goals of how fast I can drive in the desert.

Dreams and Reality

2011-05-05T17:36:00.000-07:00

This week I had a dream that I was directing a fund raising event at a historic house museum. The wallpaper was a repetitive garland pattern in light earth tones with orange highlights. The Brussles carpet had a small circular pattern with a criss-cross grid of a lighter orange matching the wallpaper. One of the people at the party told me, "You are here for a fundraiser, that means "fun raiser," which means "sun raiser," and we better be raising funds until the sun comes up." Then an all night party ensued.

This dream is a sad reality of what the last few months have been. Evidently, I have literally been working night and day.

On Thursday we had a 6 hour and 45 minute board meeting. It lasted until 12:15am. I gave a presentation on "Mission Statements: what they are for, and how do you create one." We also discussed at length and finally approved the Collections Management Policy that I have been working the last three months.

This reality is like a bad dream of what the last few months have been. Evidently, I have literally been working night and day.

Typical Saturday in Ocotillo

2011-04-30T17:15:00.000-07:00

This morning George came over to my new friend Jimmy's house. He asked how it was going.

I told him that after three months, "I can't find anything hot enough to eat or fast enough to drive."

He got out one of his quads for me to run in the desert. I ran out Jimmy's yard and out onto the trail that a couple weeks ago I wrote about. You know, the one where I got in a little over my head. Well, lets just say the learning curve has improved a little (I ran 091 at 50mph two nights ago).

Anyway, quads ROCK! Crazy cool. Like riding a go-cart on a roller coaster. I am beginning to understand why people come out to the desert to run their quads and dirt bikes.

Then at noon, I ran over to the Lazy Lizard to be a guest VIP judge at the Roadkill Stew Cook Off. A fundraiser for the Optimist Club.

There were 11 stews put up for the competition: Calamity Chowder, Freeway Possum, Crushed on 98, Fouled Up, and several that I can't mention. Plus one that was called Gas Station Stew, a venison dish named because the cook got the recipe as a "prize" for filling her tank during a "gas war" before the energy crisis of the 1970s.

My favorite was the Calamity Chowder, a clam chowder potato soup that was very smooth on the pallet but with a hot aftertaste. The winner, however, was Crushed on 98, a tomato-based stew with sweet potatoes, pineapple, bell peppers, and hot Italian sausage meatballs. This stew released a variety of flavors and textures with each bite.

I sent a message to Deneen and she replied that, "You know you're a redneck when you are the VIP judge at a Roadkill Stew Cook Off."

For me, it's just a typical Saturday in Ocotillo.

Never Stops Being Funny...

2011-04-29T11:31:00.000-07:00

I have met a couple really good guys here. My cultural mediators. They have been going out of their way to integrate me into the community and have been introducing me to the contacts that I need to make. Much like my friends in Columbus, they never cease giving me a hard time. And just like me friends in Columbus, it's usually a real hard time. Today, one of them sent me an email to ask if I had seen the paper...

Now the rest of the story.

On Thursday, I was in El Centro for Rotary and a couple meetings. About 3:00 I got a call to ask if I wanted to attend the Young Professionals Organization Award Banquet at 5:30 and sit at the Rotary table. I told him that all I had was the jeans, tennis shoes and t-shirt that I had on. I did have a jacket in the car. He said I would be fine. I went and had a good time. Dinner was good. I met a few new people.

The newspaper article that covered the event included this photo with my jeans and big old tennis shoes right in the center of the picture. My new friends want to know what in the world I was thinking about showing up in jeans. They think I am trying too hard to fit in with the "young" professionals.

They have no idea...

Easter Sunday, 2011

2011-04-24T22:13:00.000-07:00

Today was Easter Sunday. I went to church at Fresno First Baptist where my brother is Pastor of Worship. He was reminding me that he has been here 11 years and I had never seen his house or church. But he has seen everywhere I have lived including Grand Turk and Ocotillo. Two not-so-easy places to get to. I may have been cantankerous about having to drive all the way up here, but I am very happy I came. It has made me feel more connected here than I thought it would. I enjoy Bryan's family. And I like getting to see Mom.

I think we should make plans for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving used to be a big family holiday for us. Then after 9/11 we started traveling every Thanksgiving. Easter used to be a big family holiday. Every year it was Sunrise service, breakfast at church, Easter service, then a big family dinner. I think my Mom started going out to California to visit Bryan for Easter and in Columbus, Easter changed.

We still had Easter Sunday dinner, but it was always something very different. My favorite Easter dinner story was the year when we had a lobster and crab bake. Steve could not stop complaining the entire time. I think he thought we were trying to ruin Easter. All I could think about was how anyone could complain about a lobster and crab bake.

In 1994 I attended the Easter service at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. That was cool. I have a great sketch of that in one of my travel notebooks.

Deneen spent Easter once at St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome. That must have been really cool.

In 2008 we spent our first Easter on Grand Turk. There is a picture on this blog of the family standing outside of the Baptist Church. Everyone looks really young. We spent Easter 2009 in Montreal, Canada, while Lucas was at Lake Placid. Last Easter Dave Horn came to visit in Grand Turk and we attended the Easter service at the Lighthouse church. The Valentine family, missionaries who had become good friends, had just completed re-building the church after the hurricane. I talked to Jessica last night. She spent Easter last year with Dave and me, where I evidently "made" her go to the church service. This year she was in Australia. She was telling me about her Easter the day before my Easter happened. My son Martin spent Easter by himself at Judson University outside of Chicago.

Are holidays changing for everyone? Or are we just at the age when families change? I was just looking through this blog to see what we have done on Easter over the last few years. Its a lot of travel. Maybe that should be the new Easter story. Jesus took a trip down the Via Dolorosa, saw family for three days, then came back. I'm just sayin...

Friday Night Drive to FresNowhere

2011-04-23T16:01:00.000-07:00

This weekend I saw something that I never thought I would ever see...

Fresno.

On Friday my brother Bryan sent me a text saying that I should come up to Fresno and surprise mom, who flew in last week.

"Its far." said I. I was planning on just sitting in Ocotillo alone and working all weekend.

"Come on," he said. "Its no big deal, just like driving to Chicago."

On Friday evening I got in the car and drove the 8 hours north. Eight hours. From Columbus, Ohio, in eight hours you can be in Washington, D.C., Nashville, almost New York City, Charlotte, or Chicago. The problem here is had I driven to Chicago, I would be in Chicago.

I drove eight hours and I am basically in the same place.

But when I got up on Saturday and surprised Mom at breakfast she cried, so i guess Bryan was right. It was worth the drive.

Fries, Flights, and Fights

2011-04-22T15:12:00.000-07:00

Deneen, Lucas, and Davis flew out of San Diego this week.

On Wednesday we drove into Ocean Beach. All Deneen wanted to do was go to the beach. But as sunny as it was in the Imperial Valley, it was as equally dreary and rainy at the beach. Everyone keeps talking about how nice the weather is in California. I have been here for three months and have experiences 2 types of weather: its either 2 cold, 2 windy, 2 hot, or 2 rainy.

We went in to Ocean Beach to eat at a place called Hodads. It is a dive that boasts the "Worlds Best Hamburgers". Several months ago it was featured on the Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. It got a couple of write up in the San Diego paper after this. We went at 2:00pm but there was a line all the way down the block. The newspaper article talked about how much their business has increased since the show was on the Food Network. There is evidently a whole group of people who travel around the country eating at the restaurants featured on the show. One couple interviewed in the paper had flown from New York to San Diego, just to eat at Hodads.

I don't know about that, but we came back at four and got seated quickly. A single hamburger with a basket of fries was $7.95. The burger came with a stack of lettuce, tomato, and onions tucked between the patty and the bottom bun. It was good, but I don't know if it was best burger in the world good.

Lunch on the Rocks

2011-04-17T23:01:00.001-07:00

So, this is my informal hiking club eating lunch.

This about 30 feet up the rock face in Devil's Canyon. It was 102 degrees today. We drove out into the canyon both yesterday and today to free climb. Lucas, Davis, and I had great climbs of 60 to 80 feet.

The pictures do not do justice at all to the reality of the climbs. But on our second climb today we were up and over the first ridge of large boulders at about 80 feet. At the second ridge I looked back over to the first ridge and look who I saw! what a trooper. Maybe she climbed up just to to yell at us that it was too hot in the car and there was not enough shade. But I will give her a shout out for being up to the challenge of our new crazy.

Deneen and the boys are in the House, OK, Trailer

2011-04-15T22:47:00.000-07:00

This week Deneen, Lucas, and Davis came out to visit El Centro. We spent the night at the Crown Plaza in San Diego. I thought it would have been a nice break from the 40 degree, rainy weather that has enveloped Columbus for the last few weeks.

But she looked out the balcony of our pool-side room and stated, "Well, its no Nikki Beach. All those people down there probably think their on some great vacation."

Alas, this week TripAdvisor.com released its top 25 beaches in the United States and its ten best beaches of the world. Though San Diego placed number 11 in the US, the Turks and Caicos Islands has the number one beach in the world. That is a little hard to top. In fact, I guess its impossible to top. So now she's spoiled.

Just wait until she sees the trailer were going to stay in all week in Ocotillo!

Bryan Hitch in the House

2011-04-11T22:36:00.000-07:00

This weekend, Bryan and Terry, my older brother and sister-in-law, visited me in Ocotillo. The first family or friend to visit, as he pointed out.

They were staying up in Palm Desert, a couple hours from here. They came down, toured the museum, met my new friend Jimmy, and went to dinner. The visit was all too short. I did not even get to drive them out into the desert.

It was good to see them, and they have a much better appreciation when they read the blog.

Terry said that we seem to be finding interesting places to live, but she thought Ocotillo looked like the type of place that the bus would have broken down when we were on the road with the Hitches.

Full Court Press

2011-04-07T11:14:00.000-07:00

Today, the front page article of the Imperial Valley Press was about the Desert Museum and its new director.

I am always amazed at how what you say to a reporter is heard, and then quoted. I thought the article was going to be about how the museum has hired a new, dynamic director who is moving the institution forward into the future with community engaging programs. But the media train we want to start pushing down hill has a bunch of baggage on board.

The headline was not flattering. But the pictures I took came out amazingly well.

Eating Al Fresco just South of Ocotillo

2011-04-04T17:50:00.000-07:00

Its funny cause its true. Get it. Eating al fresco implies an upscale, pretentious outside dining establishment. And I am suggesting that there is a new hip place to eat south of the small town of Ocotillo...But really its eating on a blanket in the shade of an actual ocotillo cactus (which by the way was the only shade we found the whole day). See, its funny cause its true.

On Sunday I got an invite to accompany a small informal hiking club on a 3 1/2 hike into the Jucumba Wilderness. This was an interesting small group of mostly professors. They have an organized hike once a month.

As a hiking club they hike into one of the desert recreational areas. They have a have a pleasant lunch. Then they take a nap. Or a siesta as they liked to call it. Still, I am pretty sure it was a nap.

Kind of funny. I did not catch the lunch or nap part of the invite and was totally unprepared. But in the end, I pulled out my ipod, laid back on the floor of the desert, felt the sun on my face, and had quite a nice experience.

I was thinking...I have packed some pretty mean lunches into some extremely interesting places before. Deneen and I had a whole "extreme" picnic set up prior to having children. Next time I get an invite, they are going to be just a little surprised with what I am going to bring.

Ocotillo, Whats in a Name

2011-03-28T15:47:00.000-07:00

I spent yesterday afternoon in the desert driving around. The desert is no joke. It is very unforgiving, just like the ocean. I need to be a little more respectful and not so flippant. I was driving along some real sandy road and all of a sudden the road ended and I was just in the middle of the desert. Not only is it illegal to not be on a clearly marked road, but I found it to be really uncomfortable. I had to get out of the car and see if I could find the road. Eventually I turned the car around and was able to backtrack where I had come from, but this was not as easy as you would think because for a while I was evidently on really hard pack and was not leaving tracks.

One of the interesting things is that there are 55 gallon drums marked AGUA spaced along roads and railroad tracks. Inside there are boxes with gallon containers of drinking water. This is for people who have come across the border and are trying to walk through the desert. But there are lots of stories about people who get their cars stuck as well.

On another note, the ocotillos have started to bloom. The ocotillo is a tall stringy cactus. They are usually all brown and dead looking. Like most of them were a few weeks ago when I got here. But we had a couple days of rain and two weeks of cooler temperatures and everything changed. They are now covered with small green leaves and have red flowers at the top. The desert above Ocotillo, the town, is covered with them.

People keep saying that we will have a desert bloom soon. This evidently is really cool. Well, hopefully we will see.

Creation Myth or Reality

2011-03-26T17:18:00.000-07:00

When I was at The Ohio State University working on my second graduate degree I remember talking about a book that, at the time, was all the rage. I think it was entitled "When Jesus Came the Corn Mothers Went Away." I know I talked about it. But I also know I never read it. I always loved the title, though. The book was about the inability of the Spanish to accept or understand the customs and difference of the indigenous people they encountered in the Southwest. The collision of two very different world views altered and changed both.

Today, I spent all morning in the desert looking at geoglyphs with couple native Americans. The geoplyphs can be interpreted as creation stories. Discussions centered around the fact that Hokam is the oldest language spoken in the US. The people are the oldest. "They were created here, born here, never left here."

"Yea, but where did they originally come from?" said I.

"Across the Bering Strait?"

"Up from South America?" said I.

"They were created here, born here, never left here."

"What, like God came to the desert and created them?" I replied in my Western Civilization perspective of the world.

"Well, something like that."

I have read creation myth stories. I have advocated their voice in museum exhibits. I have gone to the sites at Black Hand Gorge. I have even seen The Whale Rider.

But I still carry the baggage of 6000 years of Western tradition.

03 Chevy Blazer - My New Ride

2011-03-24T21:11:00.000-07:00

This week I finally received the 4-wheel drive that was donated to the Museum. I have been running out into the desert to test it. It feels very good to finally get out. Everyone keeps trying to tell me how to drive in order not to get stuck in the sand. Please...a foot of desert sand is a piece of cake compared to two inches of Ohio snow.

It is different than I thought it would be. The desert is very bumpy. A bigger fear than getting stuck is breaking an axle. The first day I drove with my new friend Jimmy he told me that when he was driving professionally he would drive 100 miles per hour in the desert. I decided that was my new goal. But then last week at 40 I almost bit it, so I have had to reset my goal. Its all about suspension. Now my goal is to get a dune racer.

On Bended Knee

2011-03-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

Eight weeks ago I decided to get younger. I re-bought weights that I had left on Grand Turk. I started walking everyday around the museum grounds. I bought and began to take the regimen of vitamins that I was taking on Grand Turk.

OK, just so you know. My new goal here is to free climb the distances and types of terrain that I dove on in the Turks and Caicos. It is part of my current "opposite" theory of life experience. This is not going so well.

Now the back story...

In September, right after we had returned from the Turks and Caicos Islands, I helped roof Arron's house. My left knee became inflamed from going up and down the ladder caring bundles of shingles. Six months later, it is just getting back to normal. In January, I slipped on the ice and fell directly on my right kneecap. My knee has been sore for two months, but I decided to exercise the pain away.

Exactly five weeks ago I turned my walk at the museum into a run. Then that night I did yoga. I sat down on the couch and my knee was swollen up the size of an orange. I got on the intenet and some sports medicine website said it would take two weeks for the swelling to go down. And, that there were over 5000 yoga related injuries reported in 2009. For a week I wore a knee brace and tried not to move too much.

The next week the swelling went down and I started building shelves at the museum again. Then, on the second day a furniture dolly I was using to move shelves flipped up and hit me directly on the kneecap. My knee swelled up to the size of a grapefruit (OK maybe a small grapefruit).

That was three weeks ago. I was getting concerned, but finally in the last couple of days the swelling is down and I finally have mobility again. But after five weeks of not being mobile, I am having to start all over at getting younger.

I am begining to know what it feels like to get old...

You know you are getting old when someone gives you their arthritis medicine to help your "sports" injury.

Air Show

2011-03-21T11:54:00.000-07:00

Well, this has really been a busy couple of weeks and I will try and catch up. I finally decided that I would just blog about stuff as if it just happened, rather than letting things go or trying to keep stuff in chronological order. Since I am mostly by myself no one will know anyway. But then, if I always say that this happened "today" it will seem like I am never working.

Two weekends ago was the public introduction of the Navy's Blue Angels 2011 demonstration team. Their winter training base is here at the Nav Fac facility in Seely. There was a food and music fest at the base on Friday night and an airshow on Saturday. I went to both.

Saturday's airshow marked the kickoff of the Blue Angles' season. This was their first public performance as a team. The air show went all day. Mostly typical stuff. But I love seeing the WWII vintage aircraft and paid to walk though a Boeing B-17 bomber so it was a good day for me.

Some organization was holding a car show in one of the hangers. One of the cars was an AMC Pacer. Deneen drove a car exactly like this in High School, until her brother totalled it.

I am begining to know what it feels like to get old...

You know you are getting old when you feel nostalgia about something that someone else is preserving as history.

Internet, Finally!

2011-03-15T14:31:00.000-07:00

Alright, a small step forward. We got internet set up at the museum today. Well, kind a, sort of.

The museum purchased a Verizon airnet card so that we have wireless interent throughout the museum with limited usage of 3 gigabytes a month. But it is far better than the drive into town to use the internet at Starbucks.

So one down. Still don't have a car or a place to live. But at least I'll be able to whine about that more often.

Meet and Greet, and Eat

2011-03-03T21:41:00.000-08:00

Tonight was the new director Meet and Greet in El Centro. The event was catered El Rey del Taco. Seriously, a cart with a frame grill cooking asada, pollo, and chillies and making tacos. How cool is that. I wanted to go back and get about a half dozen more tacos but I kept it in check even without Deneen there.

They asked me to get up and say a few words. At which I said, "I really have nothing prepared."

45 minutes later I said, "I hope that wasn't too long, sorry you just learned something very important about me."

A guy on the front row said, "That was just long enough."

So I got that going for me.

Seriously, El Rey del Taco. How cool is that.

The Navy is at Steak

2011-03-02T20:22:00.001-08:00

Last night I was invited to the Navy League monthly steak dinner at the El Centro Nav Fac base. This is a Navy air base a few miles east of the museum. It is the winter home of the Navy's Blue Angels. Met the Master Chief who oversees all maintenance of the flightline of F-18s.

I took a picture of the steak. I should have included a person in the photo for scale. I think that every meal I have had here so far has been wrapped in a tortilla. So steak was welcomed.

This was about as big a steak as I have ever had. I had it removed from the grill less than medium rare, cut it, and gave it a bath of A1. There were only three of us at our table so I went all BDH on the potato with about half of the sour cream in the bowl.

They gave out a bunch of awards and there was a speaker, but I was really into the steak. Eating nothing but beans, I have lost five pounds in three weeks. But not tonight.

Sunday Drive

2011-02-28T19:05:00.000-08:00

All day Sunday my New friend Jimmy drove me aroudn the desert. A couple miles behind the museum, down near the border, there is a historic site called Yuha Wells. This was one of the few sources of fresh water in the Yuha desert and was one of the stops that de Anza documented as the first European to enter California.

The first part of this ride was really boring. I told my new friend Jimmy that I didn't know why you would bother driving out here.

Then we came into the gorge. This is looking back toward Signal Mountain.

We were on a desert road marked "300." It was crazy. As soon as I get a car I am going to come back here a write a whole blog about how fast I can drive it! Maybe 300?

Last Big Desert

2011-02-26T19:05:00.000-08:00

I have been here a full three weeks. Today begins the fourth weekend. Twenty three straight days of work. I still don't have a car, a place to live, or the internet. I do know how many days I can work in a row before I get kind of bummed out about working. It is twenty three!

Today my new friend Jimmy took me off roading in the desert for the first time. We drove way out, up, and into the mountains. I started to think that after three weeks of drinking his coffee, sleeping in his camper, eating his dinner, and watching his TV...maybe twenty three days was enough for him as well. When he had me get out to look at a spring coming out of the rocks I made sure that I stayed closer to the truck than he was.

I spent the rest of the day in El Centro taking care of banking and getting a few groceries, and then doing internet business for four hours at Starbucks. All the way into town I watched the Blue Angels practicing over the desert.

I always try to post pictures with blogs, but I have been posting from my phone. But today the post is from Starbucks.

Not Always My Fault

2011-02-20T17:40:00.000-08:00

It is interesting what becomes normal. I have been in California 18 days and today was the third earthquake. In the last week we have had winds exceeding 40 miles per hour. On Grand Turk I would be blogging about tropical storms. But here my new friend Jimmy just says we have light winds. Well, the earthquakes are cool. But I think I have to write a disaster management plan sooner than later.

Camping

2011-02-13T08:07:00.000-08:00

Deneen asked me to send her some pictures of where I have been living so I thought I would just put them here. I was thinking this week that between between the constant vacations in dad's RVs, being on the road in the bus with the Hitches, and the years of Labor Day Missions Conferences, I have spent a lot of time sleeping in a camper. And this is not including the four months of "camping" in the house on Grand Turk after the hurricane. So, it is not a big deal. I am thankful that my new friend Jimmy has turned out to be a pretty good guy and a gracious host.

I am not sure how long before I wear out my welcome. And my new friend Jimmy has already had to empty the holding tank once. I do know from living at the CCC that no one likes dealing with someone else's crap.

Today is Sunday. The day that I had set aside to begin cleaning out the museum trailers. We will see how this goes. I was hoping to live there immediately, but upon closer inspection they are going to need alot of work.

Getting Ready for the Optimist Club

2011-02-12T16:29:00.001-08:00

The end of my first full week is looking up. I had an encouraging meeting with trustees today about architectural plans I have worked on this week. I was positive that they would like them, and in fact everyone is hopeful about the future.

This week also started the rounds of community organizations that I anticipate visiting. Tonight will be my second Optimist Club meeting. I am sure that tonight's meeting will be great. There is an international themed dinner. It will be Greek to me, but I feel very lucky that I get to try the different pots. It would be unpropitious to drink too much, so I think I will just walk around with my glass half full.

Well, Feels Just Like....

2011-02-07T16:00:00.001-08:00

I drove into El Centro this morning to take care of some business. Into the big city. Got coffee. Went to the Do It Center. Went to the big grocery store.

I thought there was a US Bank here, but I must have seen that in San Diego. Now I have some issues to resolve.

I bought some fruit, a bunch of juice, beans, and tortillas. It is interesting to me the difference in food ways from place to place. There were almost no cans of beans at Walmart, but there was an entire isle of dried beans. They must not use canned beans along the border. Last night I ate dinner with my new friend Jimmy. He had frozen tamales that he buys from someone in Mexico. They were the best tamales I have ever eaten.

Avocados "from Mexico" were .48 cents each. This is as cheap as I have ever seen an avocado. Mangoes were the cheapest thing on Grand Turk. We ate them all the time. I think in Ohio you can get a pickup load of corn for a nickel.

Earthquake 4.0

2011-02-06T20:31:00.000-08:00

Well that was different. Today during the first half of the Superbowl we had a small, 4.0 earthquake. You could hear it coming. A low rumble moving closer like a freight train. Then the house shook for 30 seconds. Then the Packers scored. It was very cool. The earthquake that is.

First 24 Hours

2011-02-04T17:11:00.000-08:00

Is this really just the first 24 hours?
Crazy. Its a good thing I don't need to eat, sleep, or shower.

I did find someplace to stay. I am going to crash for a few days in a camper. I don't have a blanket. I don't have internet.

What I do have is a 10,000 square foot, big, fat, empty museum. Nothing but possibilties. Started to plan laboratories and woodshop today. This week I need to come up with estimates for our first two projects. Then we start raising money. I have a couple big 60 day goals.

I like Ocotillo. It is a lot like Grand Turk in that everyone is a character. It is an interesting, small desert town. Tonight I am going in to El Centro to have dinner with some people. And if I can find time, I need to buy some tennis shoes.

Today, I Woke Up in the Desert

2011-02-03T16:55:00.000-08:00

Well, if life were a contest to see how remote I could live I might be winning. I don't know where I would have to go from here, though. Australia maybe? I would really like to try Alaska. But I'll alaskabout that later.

Last night I caught the flight out of Columbus to San Diego. I was suppose to leave the day before, but through a ticketing hicup, I did not get on the flight and had to rebook for the next day. This as it turned out was fortuitous. US Airways flight 148 CMH to SAN, was the only evening flight that had not been canceled due to the ice storm that hit Columbus. On the 11:00PM news, however, there was a story about this flight. After waiting two hours on the runway, the plane could not be de-iced and the pilot decided it was unsafe to takeoff. I was glad that I did not get on.

The flight on Wednesday evening took off without an incident. I had planned a leisurely trip out so that I could spend the night at the Crown Plaza and see a couple museums in San Diego. When I did not fly out on Tuesday, I had to cancel both my plans and my reservations.

The plane got into San Diego late, about 9:45pm. When I looked at my rental car reservation, it had been made for 10:00am instead of 10:00pm. I called them about ten minutes before they closed. Though they had me listed in the computer as two consecutive no-shows, they stayed open until I got there and gave me a car for the week. I was very happy. The one thing I hate now about traveling is this period before I get a car and place to stay. It is by far the most stressful.

At about 11:00 I started the two-hour drive into the desert. Making the drive between Octotillo and San Diego is locally know as “going over the hill.” This is a drive going from sea level to 4055 feet to sea level. There is nothing except mountain and two casinos along the entire drive. About half way down the hill I passed four highway patrol cars, three dozen flares, and a white SUV that had flipped several times on the highway. Imperial County ranks 52nd out of 58 counties for fatal vehicle accidents.

A little after12:30am I arrived in Octotillo. This was about 3:30am to me. When my hotel plans got canceled I had decided that I would just stay in the trailers at the museum, or in a worst case scenario I would just stay in the car. Well, the trailers were locked.

Ok, I guess I had not thought through the actual worst case scenario. Last night was the coldest January 2nd on record in the Imperial Valley. In 1929 it had dipped to 29 degrees. Last night it was 26 degrees. I got out my luggage, put on three pairs of pants, the only sweatshirt I brought, and both sport coats. Every hour and a half I woke up freezing and ran the car until it warmed up. Then I fell asleep for another hour and a half.

You can see about 100 miles in all directions from the museum. At about 2:00am there were flashing lights and two cars pulled over on the freeway west. At about 4:00am there were flashing lights out in the desert to the south. At about 6:00am, when the sun the came up, I found coffee at a gas station down the road. Outside the gas station the Border Patrol was arresting four illegals who had evidently come across the border in the night. I spent the next two hours walking around museum property and watching the sun rise.

Everything's good. I found coffee.

Rebuilding

2011-02-01T18:00:00.000-08:00

I have never really liked cars. I mean not like guys who "like" cars. I don't read about them. I don't now what new engines are being put in what new cars.

But this week I have found out something about myself. I love Jeeps.

Deneen and I had a Suzuki Samurai for eleven years. She bought it new in 1988 in Chicago. At our 20th high school reunion a friend came in a restored Samurai. I have been looking for one ever since. A new Samurai in 1988 cost $5,900.00. I just looked at a 1988 Suzuki Samurai for sale in Pasadena, California. It is $5,800.

We had to get a new car this week. After searching for what seemed like forever, we bought a new Jeep Wrangler.
I had a 1989 Jeep Wrangler on Provo that I drove for a little more than a year. This Jeep may have been the worst car on the island. The gas gauge did not work so you never knew how much gas you had, and if you drove more than 20 minutes at a time the brakes would overheat and gradually lock up until you had to stop. But I loved driving it.

In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan makes a statement that vitamins may not actually do anything for your health, but people who take vitamins are much healthier than people who don't. So, he says, be the "kind of person who takes vitamins."

Most people who drive a Jeep don't really need a Jeep. I think that we will actually need Jeeps in the Imperial Valley, but none the less, I have always wanted to be the "kind of person" who drives a Jeep.

Imperial Valley

2011-01-28T19:49:00.000-08:00

Imperial Valley is the southern most county in Southern California. The county borders San Diego County, Arizona, and Mexico. The valley is mostly desert, but it is irrigated by diversions from the Colorado River and it is also has a history of agricultural.

The population is roughly 200,000. The county seat is the city of El Centro. The region is a blend of cultures straddling the Mexican-American border. The town of Mexicali lies across the border with a metropolis of a million people.

Agriculture and government are the major economic generators, but tourism is second. The area hosts numerous off road vehicular parks. Including the Heber Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area.

You may think you have never heard of the Imperial Valley or the sand dunes, but you would be wrong.

You see, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...the Jedi Returned here to save Han Solo from Jabba the Hut.

The New Adventure Begins

2011-01-26T18:51:00.000-08:00

Well, after five months the day is here. I have just booked a flight and I will be leaving for a new adventure next Tuesday. I have been hired as the Executive Director of the the Imperial Valley Desert Museum. The museum constructed a new building in 2007 but never opened. I will be developing exhibits, programs, and staff and will be opening the museum in the next year.

Please stay tuned...

FINALLY SOMETHING TO BLOG ABOUT!

CRM Work

2010-12-30T12:19:00.000-08:00

Ah, back in the field this week. My goal after all, is to be outstanding in the field.

Cultural Resource Management is the term given to the practice of managing historic, or potentially historic, sites and structures. Normally this is a term and process associated with government agencies and their management of property and permits. Any federal project or any project receiving federal funds or needing a federal permit must be evaluated for the project's impact to any historic building or archaeological site. There is a very detailed process for this. But...Basically, this means that any building fifty years old or older that is going to be affected by a government project has to be documented and evaluated. The same goes for archaeological sites.

When I talk about this, I say that the process is meant to insure that Lincoln's log cabin is not bulldozed for a new highway.

My first job after graduating with my architecture degree was working for a CRM company. All of the museum work I have done has had lots of components similar to CRM work. So, if you look at the blog, I have been doing CRM all month.

Anyway, this week I have been working on a large project evaluating 61 architectural sites which are mostly nineteenth century farmsteads. I like this work, but after about ten minutes out of the truck my hands get so cold that I can't sketch or write.

I have a goal, or a dream maybe. For the next ten years I want to work in an area that is a vacation destination. Then, everyday is like a vacation. Though there are hunting cabins and hunting stands everywhere we have been looking for historic structures this month, the woods of southern Ohio is not the recreational area that I am thinking about...

Why Oh Why Oh Did I Ever Leave Ohio

2010-12-07T19:13:00.000-08:00

This week I am in Cambridge, Ohio, all week helping a friend of mine, Dr. Keener, with an archaeological survey of about 2500 acres for a coal mining permit. I have probably walked 6 to 8 miles a day. IN THE SNOW!

When I get back to the hotel every evening I have to take off all the cold weather gear and hang it over the room heating so that it will dry. This is just like hanging out a wetsuit to dry, with the exception that it is awful.

I had nothing but sandals when I returned to the US in September. Dave Horn begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting gave me a pair of tennis shoes so that I could do some roofing. I have been wearing these to work in everyday. Dr. Keener stopped on the way out here so I could buy a pair of boots. All this is great. But I think I would rather be somewhere where I only had to own sandals.

Oh, by the way. It is really cold in Ohio.

To Blog or not to Blog,That is the Question

2010-12-04T22:04:00.000-08:00

I want to thank all the people who have read this blog over the last three years. I have been amazed how many friends I have run into that have said they read it regularly. I appreciate that so many of you have enjoyed the adventure. I only ever looked at the numbers during the first year, but was surprised to have had over 58,000 hits to the site. That is just crazy to me.

Since I have been back to Columbus, many people have asked about the blog and the fact that I am not writing anymore.

"Why can't you look for the adventure in everything you do and just keep writing?" asked my brother.

Thanksgiving weekend some friends from out of town came over to see us. They complained about there being no closure. Just a last blog three months ago that was not even that good.

The intention was to continue writing. And yes you can just find adventure in regular life. I have had many things happen in the last few weeks that I wrote blogs about in my mind. Actually, you would probably find some of my stories hard to believe. Every time I sit down at the computer, however, it just does not feel right.

I re-read the first dozen blog entries today. They seem like a lifetime ago. Grand Turk was such a new and different place. But our experience there over the last three years was so extreme that nowhere seems that different now. I had a discussion with Lucas and Stephanie this week about how your idea of normal can change. It is actually a floating bar based on widening your expreiences. I am holding on and would like to move the bar a little more. We will see what the future holds.

Heck, today I stood on the border of Mexico...and that's a whole other story.

Evidence of our Strategic Plan in Action

2010-09-01T11:13:00.000-07:00

At the Turks and Caicos National Museum we had a very specific strategic initiative to use news and information to raise the profile of the institution. We had a specific agenda of maximizing the coverage of even small projects that we completed. I am including a news item here about a project we completed in July. This article ran in the local newspaper. When it appeared online I copied it and put it on our museum blog at:

http://tcmuseumblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/giving-old-pictures-new-life.html

Today, I found the same article on another blog where someone else had posted it.

http://blog.coldwellbankerislands.com/page/2

I am posting it again here. It took a while to get off the ground. But the strategic plan is now working and it is widening our audience and building viability.

Restored Photos Featured at Cockburn Medical Centre Grand Turk

Article below was issued by The Free Press Newspaper, written by FP Staff, in the August 19, 2010 Edition.

Soon an air of nostalgia will fill the empty walls of Cockburn Medical Centre in Grand Turk.

Pioneered by the National Museum through its intern Shalomar Forbes, new life will be added to the hospital as it features restored old photos of the capital’s first formal facilities which date back to the early 1960s.

Shalomar, who will be completing a degree in graphic design this year at Barry University in Miami, spent many hours restoring 14 old black-and-white prints of the Grand Turk medical facility.

She scanned the historic images, which are part of the permanent collection at the National Museum, and cleaned them up using special software.

“The original pictures were so small, about 2 inches square, and enlarging them proved very difficult,” Shalomar said. “They are over 50 years old, and every small scratch or spot became huge once we scanned them in.”

However, her hard work was not in vain, and the photos were enlarged more than five times their original size. Some of the restored images show the Grand Turk hospital, nurse Bailey and images of the probationary nurses’ class which were all photographed by Allan Bishop in the early 1960s.

Brian Hogan, NHIB’s chief executive officer, said it was an appropriate way to pay tribute to medical pioneers that laid the foundation of the modern medical system.

“We felt that incorporating a bit of TCI’s healthcare history was the best way to demonstrate our appreciation to healthcare professionals and remind people how TCI’s healthcare system has evolved.”

National Museum Director Neal Hitch said medicine has come a long way since the first facilities.

“Medical facilities were at a minimum in the Turks and Caicos during 1960s with a 16 bed hospital on Grand Turk, a small operating theatre, an X-ray machine with limited capacity and a rudimentary laboratory,” Hitch said.

“Medical staff included two medical officers, one on Grand Turk and one in South Caicos. The staff at the Grand Turk hospital consisted of a matron, four staff nurses, three probationary nurses and one nurse working as a midwife.”

During 1960, eight women from the Caicos Islands were recruited and trained in Grand Turk to be midwives, he said. They were considered settlement nurses and were provided with a nurse’s bag, dressing, scissors, and a stretcher on which to evacuate very ill patients.

Prior to that, many local settlements were without any trained medical help. By 1967 the Grand Turk hospital was aided by four medical clinics in the islands, in Grand Turk, Salt Cay, South Caicos and Bottle Creek on North Caicos. Much changed by 1970 when medical staff included two doctors, one dentist, one matron, seven staff nurses, nine settlement nurses, nine probationary nurses and two public health inspectors.

Hogan said they showed current staff members the historic prints before they were taken for framing, and one recognized a family member.

“We hope that persons visiting our offices will take time out to look at the amazing prints; who knows, you might see yourself, a family member or a friend,” Hogan said.
Anyone who owns black-and-white prints showcasing the health sector, hospitality or utility sector is encouraged to contact the museum.

Last Day on Grand Turk

2010-08-25T06:57:00.000-07:00

This morning was busy. We had planned on having everything done with nothing left but to get into a truck and get to the cruise center. We were up at 7:00. I thought we were all packed up. But I was not. Still loose ends. A couple things to drop off at the Harrison’s house. A couple more files to get squared away. I still had a closet full of clothes. Final goodbye with Denzel our neighbor. I had one minor meltdown trying to keep Davis on task.

We hoped to get to the cruise center by 9:00 and have breakfast aboard the Destiny. I think we left for the museum to drop off keys and say goodbye to Maya by about 10:00. Saying goodbye has been harder than I thought it would. I gave a quick hug to Joseph. He is already busy working for someone else.

We have been praying that Tropical Storm Danniel would stay far north. My worst fear was that the ship would be cancelled today. No. Even early, while we were still at the house, we saw cruise passengers riding scooters and golf carts down by us. Our ship was injavascript:void(0).

We were able to pull the truck all the way down the pier to the ship. We came with 25 suitcases. We left with 22.

“Is this all for four people,” asked the security guy.

“Well, we have been here for a while,” I said.

It took a while to get unloaded, get on board, get into the room, and get the truck back off the pier. As an extra vote of friendship, the cruise center invited us to ride the Flowrider one last time. We made the 12:30 excursion time. We had a great fun last hour and a half at the cruise center, got on board at 2:00, and sailed away into the sunset.

Lucas, Davis and I all got haircuts. It has been a few months and Deneen said we were starting to look a little “castaway.” We just finished dinner. Davis is running around with an unbelievably cute young lady. We are now far from Grand Turk. And not just by distance.

Last Evenings with Friends, Tuesday

2010-08-24T06:57:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday it took most of the day to load our stuff into the shipping crates and get everything packed into suitcases. With everything in order, we left our “north bound” goods with Tropical Shipping. By late afternoon we had cleaned out the house, got the hurricane shutters out of the attic, and gave a few more things away to friends.

On Tuesday night we had dinner at the Bohio with the management of the Carnival Cruise Center. Another great dinner with people who have become pretty good friends. The visit was nice. I appreciate the help and support the cruise center has given to me and the museum, especially with our Children’s Program. I also appreciate being appreciated, and this dinner was meaningful. We were able to make arrangements for our departure on the Carnival Destiny on Wednesday.

After dinner I had to run over to the museum to complete some last minute filing and get some emails out. Joseph and Kenlove showed up and we had a spontaneous for-old-times-sake hang out party. Though this one became a little tearful and extremely sad. With all of the work to leave and the transition of museum staffing, it has been very hard to say goodbye to some of the people that have been the most important.

Tuesday night we sat in the museum house. It no longer looks like our house. Don’t get me wrong. We have left it fully furnished. But all of the things that made it ours are gone. We hooked the computer up to the TV and watched a downloaded episode of the Bachelor Pad. By the time it was over, everyone had fallen asleep on the floor. Maybe this seems like a boring last night. But it is fitting. We came as a family. We leave as a family. The last two years between have been a little different. But the last night on Grand Turk we spent together. Not happy about going. Not sad about leaving. Just together.

Last Evenings with Friends, Monday

2010-08-23T06:56:00.000-07:00

Well, our last two days on Grand Turk were spent in unbelievable stress, and unbelievable relaxation.

Since Friday, I have been trying to get a shipment of our goods out of Grand Turk and into the states. In one word, paperwork. In another word, packing and building shipping crates. We only shipped two crates back. It is stuff we thought was important, but its probably all junk.

On Monday, I finally connected with a US customs broker and began our US paperwork. Monday late afternoon I actually gave my last tour of the museum. Dan from Blue Water Divers has never been through the museum. On the dive boat Sunday he asked if I would give him a tour before I left. I said it was getting down to it and he better get there quick.

It wound up being pretty cool. Dan and Amber brought a couple people. Joan and Hedley showed up. I made Deneen and the boys do the tour as well. I think there were twelve of us. Joan, who has had the Chinese restaurant, is leaving Grand Turk at the end of the month, this may have been the first time she has been to the museum. I did a tour of the museum and a behind the scenes tour of the lab.

We ran over to the Bohio for sunset. Deneen and the boys have been hanging out there for a lot of the last two months. We had to settle our account. It was crazy. If this is any indication, one evening a couple weeks ago Davis bought five cokes while he was swimming in the pool. The Bohio has been our resort away from home. Not the least of which, it has been an incredible place to shore dive. I think we did shore dives five weekends in a row there in July and August.

On Monday night we ate dinner with Dan and Amber at the beach bar on Mitch’s house. This was a great evening with some great people that I have really liked. Mitch and Audrey were there. We had a few really nice steaks left in the freezer. Dan scored a bunch of lobster. Grand Turk is a crazy place. You can’t get a cup of good coffee, but you can eat lobster until you are sick. A good dinner turned into great stories and a lovely evening.

Last Dive

2010-08-22T19:05:00.000-07:00

Today, Lucas, Davis and I did our last two dives on Grand Turk. We went out on a Blue Water Divers boat with Dan. As these were our last dives, he let Davis choose our two dives sites.

Davis has been talking about diving the Amazing Abyss for weeks. We did this dive first. This dive site is the farthest dive site south of Grand Turk. About half way to Salt Cay. The site is very lush with lots of soft coral. As we came over the wall, we dropped down the wall and could see a large ledge below. Lucas and I dove to about 110 feet and looked at an 19th century anchor stuck in the side of the coral wall. Dan dropped to 135' and killed the largest lionfish that I have seen on Grand Turk. I killed a lion fish at about 90 feet.

We took the fish home and cleaned it. The large one measured 15 1/2 inches. The other two lionfish in this picture are really big lionfish. Thats how big the big lionfish is. Its huge. These are probably the last lionfish that I will clean on Grand Turk.