Cherry Blossom Candy Leaf

Ben and I have had a very exciting few weeks. We've celebrated Hanukkah for more than 8 nights and Christmas twice. Santa brought me these beautiful porcelain candle holders shaped like a starfish and sea urchin and an Alphonse Mucha print that has some glittery details. As much as I hate having flecks of glitter on my face and hands from a greeting card, I just love the way glitter looks. I think it's a teacher thing because most of my teacher friends also love glitter and if that's an available art supply, we will most definitely use it, even if we think we may destroy our posters or teaching aids in the process. I used to be obsessed with laminating back in the days when I worked at Rosa Parks Elementary, a school with an endless supply closet and miles and miles of lamination plastic. But that, too, has passed, but my love for glitter remains.

Ben got a stick of salami and some moccasins. He loves that salami. He almost left half of it in our hotel room in Sedona and when he discovered it in the fridge just before we checked out he said, "That would have sucked." My mom bought him a large stick of salami and when she went to wrap it, it was gone. At my parents' house, the culprit is always my dad. He can eat a box of popsicles in 5 minutes and drink 2 liters of orange crush in the time it takes most people to do a shot. So my dad ate Ben's salami (not that kind of salami, you perv) and my mom had to buy a second stick.



The day after Christmas, Ben and I drove up to Sedona, Arizona for some adventure. But of course, a vacation just would not be a vacation if one of us wasn't sick so when we finally arrived after about 9 hours of driving, I wasn't feeling well and went right to sleep. When we woke up the following day, Ben had a terrible cold. We bought generic Airborn, generic throat lozenges, and generic Chloraseptic. I must tell you all to spend the extra dollar or avoid Sunmark products. Drinking that "airborn" solution was like sucking on a car tire and Ben had to use that throat spray every 10 minutes, but we ventured on anyway. Throughout the day, we'd yell, "Sunmark sucks!" Ben wanted to drive with tissue up his nose, but he digressed. So after eating breakfast, Ben, Bula, and I headed to Tuzigoot National Monument, Native American ruins. Meaning "crooked water" in Apache, Tuzigoot was built by the Sinagua Indians in between Cottonwood and Clarkdale Arizona along the Verde River between 1125 and 1400 A.D. At first, it is estimated that 50 people settled there, but eventually the population would double, and then double again after farmers fleeing drought in outlying areas came to settle there. There were very few doors in the Sinagua city. Access to any of the 77 rooms was by way of ladders through openings in the roof. The Sinagua, meaning "without water" in Spanish, would later abandon this site for unknown reasons. Because water still remains via the river, drought was not likely to be the cause of their migration. Some possible explanations for their departure from Tuzigoot and this region are overpopulation, depletion of natural resources, disease, conflicts between groups, changes in weather patterns or even spiritual beliefs. No matter the reason, some of the Southern Sinagua may have moved to pueblo villages in the north or Hohokam villages in the south, while others remained returning to their hunter-gatherer ways.

Tuzigoot is an amazing structure and I love and hate the mysteriousness of the Sinagua. Ben and I couldn't stop saying "Tuzigoot" and we were unsure of the word's pronunciation until our last day in Arizona. Pronounced Too-zee-goot as we had thought, we used the word throughout the day and it has also become Bula's Native American name. After our visit, we headed east to Jerome, an old mining town perched dangerously on Cleopatra's Hill with panoramic views of the Verde Valley. Now known as a booming ghost town, Jerome was once thought to have the richest copper deposits in the world. When mining stopped in Jerome in 1953, a few residents stayed on to keep the town alive.
Jerome was one of my favorite stops because of the views, but also the support of local artists in their many shops and galleries. They even have a large artist cooperative, where art inspired by the gorgeous northern Arizona landscape and the spiritual nature often associated with red rock country is beautiful and relatively inexpensive. I even bought two prints called "The Tortoise and the Hare" and "Palm Reader" by a local artist and writer, Ellen Jo Dahlberg Roberts (www.ellenjo.com). You can visit the coop site at http://www.jeromeartistscoop.com/.

After visiting Jerome, we headed back toward Sedona and stopped to take in the red rock vistas. As we drove through the National Park, we kept saying to one another, "Hey, Tuzigoot, how come people can build their mansions into the red rocks within a national park?" I always thought when an area is designated a national park, people can't build their homes there. But they do here, right into the beautiful rock. I kept thinking that the owners of the house had to have thought at one time, "What a jack ass I am to have to have my house built into this beautiful rock!" But I'm sure the thought has never crossed their minds. They probably think they were just doing as the Sinagua did. But these homes are hardly camouflaged into the landscape. They are like kitsch Paul Bunyans blocking views for themselves.

The next morning, we drove to Oak Creek Canyon which is on the way to Flagstaff. Still sick, we tried to take it easy, but we didn't want to waste any time either. We stopped just as the snow began to fall. It was awesome, like Christmas. We drove further north and stopped at Grasshopper Point. Sasha and I went there to jump off the cliffs and swim in the water that summer in 7th grade. Now it was cold and snowing, and ours was the only car in the parking lot. Bula didn't care for the snow, so we left him in the car, and took a short hike down toward the water. Before long, we were frozen (I know what you're thinking Sasha, "Frozen in Arizona? Come to Alaska to experience the cold.") and returned to the car. We drove further and stopped at some stands set up by local Indian women selling jewelry. They didn't have anything particularly beautiful and many of them were rather pushy encouraging us to, "Pick it up, buy it, and take it home." Ironically, a shop called Gardner's, run by white people dotted in turquoise and silver, had the most beautiful jewelry and Native American artifacts. It was a huge store that was more like a museum. Almost everything was behind glass, including the kachinas. I wanted one of those carved and painted wooden dolls, but they were so expensive that I decided against it.

We decided to turn around, afraid to experience a chains fiasco like the one we had in Lake Tahoe last year. Putting chains on a truck that doesn't have four wheel drive is pointless. Because the bed of the truck is so light, the truck glides on the icy pavement in a frightening and uncontrollable way. To stop this from happening, you can put something heavy in the bed like logs or sand bags, but we didn't want to haul two hundred pounds of wood or dirt when gas is almost $3/gallon. So instead we headed back toward Sedona and stopped at an art school and checked out it's gallery and browsed some souvenir shops. But everything starts to look the same after awhile, unless you find some hidden gems like we did. There was a pawn shop off of the main strip of shops that had a collection of many things from jewelry, to Native American baby carriers, to weapons, to animal skulls and furs, to headdresses. They also had those pretty kachina dolls. We also stopped at an outdoor market that had many Mexican items including pottery, tin with little milagros attached that always remind me of Frida Kahlo, mirrors, dolls and much more that made me say, "Maybe we should take a trip to Mexico some time." Looking at these things was quite refreshing since almost every other shop specializes in Native American items. I thought it was genius for these women to open such a specialty shop up here since Mexicans have a significant role in Arizona's history.
We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant called Maria's that had such items on its menu as rattlesnake bites and deep fried ice cream. I even tried a cheesecake burrito which was absolutely delicious. We headed back to the hotel to spend our last night in Arizona. It's always unfortunate to be sick when you are on vacation, but we tried to make the best of it. We did not get to hike as much as we would have liked, but we had a wonderful time in Sedona. There are so many wonderful places to visit there. Up until that last morning, we still did not know which way we would take to get home. Ben also wanted to stop at the Meteor Crater, I wanted to stop at the Grand Canyon, but in the end, we decided to avoid the route that would lead us on Interstate 15 which has been a disaster to travel in the last few years. Not only is it the Vegas traffic, but snow storms, fires, and Cal Trans repairs have slowed us down in recent years (see "Vegas, Baby" blog entry). So we made a decision to stop at Montezuma's Castle, heading back down to California on the same roads we traveled on our way up.

Montezuma Castle is hardly an Aztec ruin like the name suggests. It too was built by the Southern Sinagua and very impressive. This is a five story structure of 20 rooms built in the 12th century. It stands within the cliff about 100 feet above the valley. Despite deterioration, this one time 6 story, 45 room structure is still an amazing sight. Our photos make it look like some sort of model. The limestone is fairly soft and splits unevenly, but because the Sinagua built this "apartment" into the recess of a cliff, it is protected from the elements and has stood for more than 600 years! There are many more ruins and places of interest in Arizona and the Southwest. Some of them we will never get to see. The ones managed by the National Parks are preserved, repaired, and open to the public, while those owned by the Preservation Society are not disturbed in any way which is what they feel "preservation" is. In fact, near Tuzigoot, there is a similar dwelling that is buried beneath dirt and never been uncovered. God, I would love to go in there with an archaeologist's brush to discover ancient pottery and artifacts. The Preservation Society and the National Parks have opposite philosophies and I respect both even though I would personally love to just dig that place up.

We continued on our journey and returned home after a long day of driving. When I checked my e-mail, I was informed by my cousin, Tom, that he was now engaged to Amy.

How exciting! Love is definitely in the air. Last night, Ben and I attended Lia and Mat's wedding. For those of you who don't know, Lia is my oldest friend. I have known her for at least 25 years. I was just thrilled to be invited. Shortly after 8th grade, Lia moved to Michigan and we had fallen out of touch for a couple of years and come back together when I mysteriously discovered her parents' phone number and decided to call and find out where she was. According to Grandma, Lia's wedding was a traditional Jewish one. Mat came down the aisle with his parents as did Lia with her parents, whom I have not seen in 15 years. They exchanged vows beneath a Jewish altar that was wrapped in some sort of fabric that belonged to both of their great grandparents and grandparents. The rabbi sang Jewish prayers and I teared up when Lia said in Hebrew and then in English, "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine." I'm crying as I write it. It was a wonderful wedding and party. On Tuesday, Mat and Lia will be off to Italy for romance and adventure. They really are a lovely couple. They are both genuinely happy and optimistic people who find humor in everything. They are a perfect match and I'm sure they will have a beautiful life together.

Well, Tuzigoots, that is all for now. Ben is still sick so my wish for all of you is a happy and healthy New Year! Be safe out there tonight.