San Xavier Redux

The San Xavier Mission,just south of Tucson, continues to be one of my favorite places to visit and photograph(see blog entries of 1/22/10 San Xavier del Bac--”The White Dove of the Desert” and 1/7/12, A Perfect Day). A couple of days ago the Old White Haired Guy and I drove to San Xavier for a photo shoot. I had wanted to photograph mostly interior details, and had not wanted crowds. The wind was awful, probably about 40 miles per hour, but that didn't matter since we were going to do interior shots anyway. It was after Easter so I figured all the snow birds and other tourists would have headed back to Iowa, Wisconsin, Canada, etc. Wrong! They all went to San Xavier for one last look on their way to wherever. Including tours. We did get a few shots inside and a few detail shots outside before we gave up. Anyway, here are some more of San Xavier.

The shots below were taken from the same point, a hill to the east of the mission where they hold Easter sunrise services. The camera was on a tripod and not moved. They were taken between about 0700 and 0750. The top left is the first one and the bottom right the last. Time wise they go left to right first row, then left to right second row and finally left to right last row.



I managed to get a few interior shots before the hordes arrived but nowhere near what I wanted. Below is a shot from the front of the church looking towards the altar with the side door open. The front door is behind me, closed and locked because of the wind.



This little angel is on a pillar near the front door.



That ended the inside shots. The milling herd came in and made tripod photography impossible. We went outside only to be greeted by 40 mph wind, limiting what we could shoot. It was virtually impossible to mount a telephoto lens and keep it steady, even on a good tripod. We did get a few nice shots, though, by playing with the sun.

The photo below is of where the crossing is and the dome above the altar seen from the west side near the side door.



The next two photos are of the west bell tower, taken from the west side.





The photo below is of the front door. This door is made of mesquite, and as far as I know, is the original. The next photo is of the door handle; the part of the handle that you grasp is a rattlesnake.





We packed up and guess what? Right! Just in time for lunch at Molina's Midway. Carne seca gorditas and green corn tamales! Mahvelous, simply mahvelous!

First Commercial Photograph

Some time around 1977-78 I acquired a young quarter horse stud named Sassy Bar Doc. He had impeccable blood lines for a cutting horse, being a grandson of one of the greatest sires of cutting horses ever, Doc Bar. He was in training with Mike Mowery, a good cutting horse trainer, at that time located in the Phoenix area. We were going to enter him in two big cutting futurities, the California Futurity and the Pacific Coast Cutting Horse Futurity. Since he was a stud we ran at least one ad in some horse magazine, although I can't remember what magazine it was. The idea of course was to offer him for breeding.

I needed a photo for the ad, so I drove from Sierra Vista to Phoenix(200+ miles) and spent at least one day photographing Sassy in action. I used a Pentax ME probably with a standard 50 or 55mm lens. The camera became roundly disliked by me because it had no manual setting, only aperture priority.That is to say the operator selects the aperture and the camera takes a light reading and selects a shutter speed to give proper exposure. Manual focus. I had a motor drive for it so I could shoot rapid sequences, 1.5 frames per second, very necessary in shooting action where I was trying to capture the horse looking his best while cutting a cow. With 36 exposure rolls of film, if you aren't careful you can burn through a lot of film in short order. I chose Kodak TriX because of its relatively high speed, ASA(ISO) 400, necessary to allow a high enough shutter speed to stop the action.

Since I don't have a copy of the magazine in which the ad appeared I don't know for sure which photo was used. I can guess because I have the negs and contact sheets, found in a store room a little while ago. On the contact sheets are some crop marks for three photos, one of which was the one finally selected. I scanned the negs with my Minolta film scanner. Below are the three, with the most likely one shown first.
Sassy is being ridden by Mike Mowery.







In cutting the objective is to keep the cow from re-entering the herd from which you have just pushed him out. The horse is supposed to do this without help from the rider. As you might imagine it can be pretty wild action. The horse has to be quick starting, stopping and turning as well as have a good burst of speed if needed. In general quarter horses make the best cutting horses. In a contest once the cow has cleared the herd the rider cannot rein or spur in front of the cinch. Usually the rider hangs on for dear life with both hands on the saddle horn.

Below are some shots of a good friend of mine, BJ Johnson and his wife Melissa on a couple of good cutting horses, taken in 2007 at their place. Camera was a Sony a100 digital; lens was the Carl Zeiss 16-80mm zoom.





Cutting started and is still a good cattle ranch activity, used to separate cattle. I was asked to help separate a bunch of cattle once by some guys who didn't know anything about cutting horses. They told me where to meet and that it would take most of the day. When I got there the cattle where all together in a corral. They needed to be separated in different groups and put in adjoining pens. They were going to do this on foot. I saddled up my cutting horse, Dude Magoo, told them to put a man on each gate and open/close them at the appropriate time. 15 minutes later I was unsaddling Dude, cooling him off and getting ready to go home.

Sassy ran with mares until he was about two years old. When he got old enough to start feeling studily the mares beat the crap out of him, which sounds mean but made a well behaved horse out of him. I wonder if there is a lesson here for young teenage boys. The first time I bred him he didn't want any part of it. He seemed to say “Boss, she's gonna kick my head in if I come up behind her!” We put the mare in a breeding chute so she couldn't kick him, then took him to the mare and after a little persuasion got the job done.

Sassy foundered and did not make the futurities. I got one filly out of him, who won a cutting futurity in Wyoming or Colorado. I sold him to a man in Colorado or Wyoming after we moved to Mesa and I gave up cowboying.

Mike Mowery went on to win both a National Cutting Horse Association Open championship and the National Cutting Horse Futurity, one of only a handful of riders to win both, and became President of the National Cutting Horse Association.

BJ "borrowed" Melissa's horse and won all kinds of stuff with it. I haven't heard, but I think BJ may still be sleeping in the barn.

Blast From the Past

My wife was cleaning out the store room in the carport and found some photographs that we didn't realize were not stored inside the house, either in the office or some other storage place. I thought I would share some of them.

The first ones are from Brown Canyon, southeast of Tucson where I ran cattle with my friend Kip Ripley(see blog entry of 7 April 2011). The photo below shows the ranch loading chute and pens. Baboquivari mountain is framed by the chute. My chaps and bridle are hanging on the chute; my saddle is resting on a log. I had wanted to use this photo when I wrote about chaps(see blog of 26 November 2011), but thought it was a slide and couldn't find it or anything like it anywhere. I told you us cowboys aint too bright.



The next one shows the gate into the middle part of the ranch. There were three parts to the ranch --the first was to the east, next to the highway, the second in the middle where the house was, and the third or upper part furthest west and had the top of Baboquivari as the western border.



The next photo shows the wash that runs from up the canyon below Baboquivari down through the middle portion of the ranch. This photo was taken in November, so there is some color present.



This windmill is near the loading chute shown in the first photo. It provided a good supply of water.



This is the house that came with the place. It looks comfy but I never spent any time in it so I don't really know.



This grave is on the place in the middle part as I remember. I have no idea who John was. I assume it is a real grave, because it would be a helluva lot of work for a joke.



These photos were on a single roll of color print film, Kodacolor X. They were shot in 1973; Kodacolor X was discontinued in 1974. Fortunately the negatives were with the small prints that had been made by the processing lab. Those prints were so faded as to be almost unrecognizable. The photos shown here were made by scanning the negatives on a 35mm film scanner, a Konica Minolta Dimage Elite 5400II.
The camera was my first 35mm SLR, a Mamiya Sekor 1000 DTL. I very rarely used color print film, and why I did for this trip I have no clue. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I will share the others we found in another blog entry. Thanks!

The Cost of Higher Education

A few days ago I received a begging letter from my medical school Alma Mater, the University of Utah. The letter really pissed me off on several levels. First it was written by a U of U med school alumnus who spent one paragraph bragging about his wonderful accomplishments, of course attributable to the wonderful medical education he received at said school. The second and more important thing was the current tuition--$29, 663 per year for Utah residents and a whopping $55, 318 per year for non-residents. According to the American Association of Medical Colleges the average tuition for in state students was $25,000 in 2010-2011 at state(public) schools , and for non-residents it was $43,000; the average tuition for private schools was $42,000.

What is the actual cost of educating a physician? This appears to be a very difficult question to answer. Much of the answer depends on accounting methods, etc. but in fact no one who might be in the know(med schools) seems to be willing to answer it. Someone looking for this information on the internet commented it appeared that there was a concerted effort not to let this information be known. The only estimate that I was able to find was testimony before the Texas Legislature in 2009. Clifford Moy, MD testified for the Texas Medical Association that the cost of medical school and residency was approximately $100,000 per year. That means that the cost of making a pediatrician(7 years) is about $700,000. Damn! I never knew I was worth so much!

Another question is how has med school tuition changed over time and is the change due solely to inflation? From 1959 to 1963 I attended the U of U med school. I know this seems like ancient history, but it is my personal experience. A basket of goods that cost $20.00 in 1963 cost $141.00 in 2011(www.usinflationcalculator.com) This is a factor of about 7. My tuition all four years was $480.00 per year. Based solely on inflation tuition now should be $3,360.00 per year. In other words $26,000 of increase cannot be accounted for by inflation.

There are a couple of other things going on here. One is that state legislatures have chosen to decrease funding to medical schools. For example, the Utah legislature decreased med school funding last year by $2.5 million dollars. Another is the belief by some that the student should pay a greater portion of the actual cost. As of now the estimate would be that the student would be paying about 29-30% of the actual cost. Why not jack it up some more? How about 50, 75 or 100%? Hell, get the state out of the business altogether.

I can hear some saying that physicians make a lot of money and student loans are available, so stick it to them. The average U of U med grad now has $158,000 in student loans, and may need to borrow more money to get through a residency(minimum 3 years). Slightly over 50% of medical students are now women. The medical students are thrown together at the ripe marrying age and are marrying each other, so the couple at graduation may well have student loan debt of over $300, 000.( Plus under grad debt—see below.) Great way to start life. These debts are having an effect on specialty choice, with fewer and fewer choosing primary care, such as family practice and pediatrics, due to the lower pay of these specialties. Orthopedics, for example, has a median income of about $400,000 per year, versus $150,000 for pediatrics.

The net result of all this may well be a significant change in who is attracted to medical school. More and more wealthy students and fewer and fewer average Joes and Jills will apply, thus eventually changing the makeup of physicians in the US. It is already changing the makeup of the specialties for the worse. It seems to me that society has an interest in this and needs to get the state legislatures to get their collective heads out of their butts and stop this nonsense.

Now lets take a look at under graduate education costs. The Arizona State Constitution, which incidentally is now 100 years old, states in Article 11, Section 6 “The University and all other State educational institutions shall be open to students of both sexes, and the instruction shall be as nearly free as possible.” As near as I can tell this provision has not been changed. So how are we doing? In 1956, my first semester at the University of Arizona, for a full load of 18 credits I paid a total of $17.00. I still have the canceled check. In 2011 the $20.00 of goods from 1956 would cost $165.40, a factor of 8.2. Based on inflation alone, the semester tuition for a full load would now be $139.40. It is actually about $4600 per semester, or $9200 per year. The same thinking seems to apply to this as applies to Medical education, despite what the Constitution says. A bill has been introduced into the legislature, HB 2675, that stipulates that state university students must pay $2000 of their tuition unless they have a full ride scholarship based on academics or athletics, thus eliminating need-based full ride scholarships and limiting other scholarships of this nature that are affiliated with the university. Undergraduate debt at Arizona universities is now $21,158 per student. The sponsor of the bill says an additional $8000 in student loans isn't much for a college graduate who will be earning so much more than a high school graduate. Sound familiar? The bill came about because at the House Appropriations Committee last year lawmakers were told that 48 per cent of ASU in-state undergraduates do not pay any tuition whatsoever. The bill's sponsor, John Kavanaugh said:” This is not right. Our taxpayers shouldn't be paying toward free tuition in these difficult times. When students are paying nothing many don't take the classes seriously, and we have created a perverse incentive for students who may not be academically prepared for universities.”(Source: East Valley Tribune, January 29, 2012, page 11). Really? What happened to the State Constitution? Wait a minute. If I'm not going into debt for higher education it doesn't mean anything?

Another thing is lost in all this—the ability to work and pay your own way. I lived at home, worked, paid my own way through undergrad and medical school. Believe me I would have loved to have had a free ride in school. I might have gotten better grades and more out of school than I did. Never occurred to me I should have gone into debt. It was both possible and necessary for me to work and pay my own way. It would not be possible with the tuition charges of today. That is very sad.

These issues are societal in nature and need to be discussed by society as a whole. Decisions by legislatures, boards of regents and other leaders need to be made on what is best for society in the long term, not on what is expedient.

A Perfect Day

One of our daughters and her husband have been visiting us for Christmas. She expressed an interest in visiting some of her and our favorite haunts in Southern Arizona, also known as God's Country. So a couple of days ago my wife and I, our daughter, The Old White Haired guy and his wife packed up and took a trip. It was a beautiful day, 70's, bright blue sky. Unfortunately our son in law was not feeling well and didn't go with us. We left about 0830 and drove east on US 60 to Florence Junction where we turned south on a state highway to Florence. We continued south from Florence to Oracle Junction and then to Tucson. This road is a nice two lane paved highway, with a lot of desert scenery—mountains, saguaros, ironwood, palo verde and mesquite trees. On I-10 all you see is trucks and road construction. The Florence highway is much pleasanter, but slightly longer in time. Florence is the home of the State prison; Oracle Junction had a restaurant that reputedly sold horse meat back in the day. Anyway, at Tucson we got on I-19 and drove to Nogales.

There is a restaurant in Nogales, Arizona called Zula's. Zula's was founded in 1950 by a Greek family. I remember going there with my Dad in the early 50's. We got there just in time for lunch—clever planning, eh? They serve American, Greek and Mexican food—all good. But their claim to fame is home made apple pie served with a hot cinnamon sauce and, if you desire, a la mode. Which of course we did. After lunch we waddled out to the car and drove to Tumacacori, which is about 18 miles north of Nogales( see blog entry of April 16, 2011).

There is an arched window, no glass, in the museum just before you walk to the mission. I have used that arch as a frame before and wanted another shot through it, this time with blue sky. Imagine my horror when we opened the door to that room and saw a blue scissors lift and a green golf cart in front of the main door of the mission. Plus two workmen.



We milled around the museum for awhile, me casting aspersions on the workmen's ancestry for many generations, until—miracle of miracles—they packed up and left. I got my photo and we walked in and around the mission and the mission garden.



The photo below was taken with a cloudy sky. Which one do you like best?



Our next stop was Tubac, a few miles north of Tumacacori. Tubac was a Spanish/Mexican presidio at one time and has a state park there at the site of the presidio. In recent years it has become an art colony. There is an import store, La Paloma de Tubac, with wonderful pots, etc. from Mexico and other parts of Central and South America. The OWH bought a couple of nice pots for his newly tiled patio; we bought a small sort of jar and a few other things. Great fun.The photo below is of the jar we bought. It is about six inches high.



We then continued north to San Xavier del Bac, a still working mission just south of Tucson( see blog entry of January 22, 2010). The inside was still decorated for Christmas, the day being 5 January and Epiphany being 6 January. I hadn't brought my tripod with me because I was concerned about room in the car re pots, etc and I expected the church to be too crowded. Oh, well. I cranked up the ISO to 2500 and hand held as best I could. I think my Sony a900 responded pretty well. What do you think?
Below are two photos of the main altar area.





This Nativity was in a side chapel.



Side door.



Nave.



I also took a few exterior shots as the sun was sinking towards the horizon.



We headed for Tucson about 445 PM and found our way to the best Mexican restaurant anywhere. Well, at least in Arizona—Molina's Midway, on Belvedere just north of Speedway. I hate to think how long I've been going there but I used to know some of the family that own it. The ones I knew are all gone now, I think. We had carne seca gorditas, chalupas and green corn tamales. For the uninitiated a gordita is a large thick corn meal tortilla. A carne seca gordita has carne seca, lettuce and cheese piled on top. Chalupas are gorditas folded up taco style with whatever as a filling. Absolutely marvelous! Molina's also make green corn tamales, but only when they can get fresh tender white corn. Usually they put a sign up when they have green corns. This day no sign, but I asked anyway. They had green corns! Another miracle! Molina's are the best green corn tamales ever! I don't even bother with them at any other restaurant. We made them ourselves a couple of times—time consuming, mixed results. Molina's—carne seca gordita and green corn tamales—I thought I'd died and passed on to a far better place than I deserved. When we finished eating we came back to earth and drove back to Mesa. Good food, good weather, good sights, shared with great people. A perfect day!

Christmas 1942

For many years now my family has had a tradition of having a celebration on Boxing Day. We have a dinner complete with crackers and plum pudding. This year's plum pudding is shown in the picture below. After dinner everyone must perform a party piece. You can sing a song, play an instrument, show some of your handiwork or tell a story.


A few years before he died my father wrote out in long hand and told the story I am about to relate on Boxing Day for his party piece. This year while we were preparing for Boxing Day my daughter found the story he had written in a drawer with some other things we often use on Boxing Day. The story follows with a little editing on my part.

In November,1942 my father made the invasion of North Africa as part of an automatic weapons battalion. By Christmas they were still in the Casablanca area, charged with the antiaircraft defense of the harbor and the airfield. What follows is his story:

“After leaving one of our 40mm gun crews at about 10 PM I was traveling to my bivouac area to go to bed. No lights on the Jeep-war time-no-no at night. We did not need the lights. The moon was putting on a bright, bright show. It was Christmas Eve. As we were slowly moving on, we came to a scene out of Biblical times. There in a field on the side of the road was an Arab guiding a plow pulled by a camel and a donkey. We, of course, stopped to look and watch. With the Christmas star so close and the moon so bright, with an Arab, donkey and camel performing the same as in the days before Christ, I felt very close to what the birth of Christ should mean to all people. We sat and watched the three plow the field for a few minutes. About midnight German bombers operating from Seville, Spain sprinkled the harbor and airfield with bombs. One gun crew was mud splattered from an exploding bomb but there were no injuries.

I continue to recall the North Africa scene and believe more than ever the wonderful message and meaning of the birth of our Savior.”

I am so glad to have found this. He was not a person who expressed his religious beliefs vocally very often, so it is doubly good to have this written in his own hand. Thanks Dad.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree......

Some years ago I found myself stationed in Albuquerque, New Mexico courtesy of the US Army. Christmas rolled around and I discovered that the Forest Service was allowing personal Christmas tree cutting in one particular area east of the city. Being a long time desert dweller I had never cut my own tree but had always purchased one pre-cut from a Christmas tree lot. These lots always sprang up like weeds around Thanksgiving. I decided it would be fun to cut my own tree. Accordingly I took axe and saw,jumped in my pick'em up truck and headed for the mountains. The area they were allowing cutting was some 20 or 30 miles east of Albuquerque on what is now I-40, and then off on a side road a few miles.

I got to the area alright and tromped up a hill to where the trees were. I looked at a number of trees before finding the perfect tree—nice shape, no sparse areas, big enough—just right! I cut it down and wrestled it down to the pickup and loaded it in the back. It took up the whole bed and then some. It was a great tree! Got back on the main highway and headed for home. A few miles down the road at 60+ miles an hour I looked in the rear view mirror and horror of horrors! The tree had flown out of the back of the truck and was bouncing along the highway all by itself. Fortunately no one ran into it. I went back, got it back in the truck and managed to get it back to my quarters without further incident.

Then the fun really started. As an officer I had a sort of duplex, plenty large enough, sort of like a small house.I unloaded the tree and tried to get it inside. The bloody thing was huge! There was no way it was going through the door. I tried surgery, top and bottom, to no avail. I then discovered a number of limbs had broken in the fall on the highway. As I remember I scrapped it and visited a local Christmas tree lot.

Several years later Christmas and New Years were over and it was time to take down our Christmas tree lot purchased “fresh” tree. We had a burning pit on our ranch and I took the tree out and placed it in the pit. I then touched one match to a small branch. The tree seemed to explode in flame, top to bottom. I've never seen anything quite like it.The tree had been cut in Oregon sometime in October or November, been on a lot, been in our house and it was now early January. It still gives me a chill to think we had that torch standing in our living room. From that day to this our tree comes in a box, which we assemble and decorate. And lovely it is.