Listing Through Life

Uncle Wilbur Fountain

Posted on July 22, 2017 by Roger

Every hour on the hour on summer afternoons, Uncle Wilber rises up under his blue dome and plays his tuba. He can be found in downtown Colorado Springs in Acacia Park. We arrived a few minutes late when the show was half over.

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Olympic Training Center

Posted on July 22, 2017 by Roger

Back in the 1980’s, I was very into the Olympics. I’m not sure why I no longer am. Perhaps it has something to do with the decision to allow professional athletes. Or maybe it’s because the media coverage was slanted more and more toward women with endless stories about the backgrounds and struggles of the participants and very little actual televised events. It felt like reality TV before there was such a thing and I just quit watching.

One of the Olympic Training Centers is in Colorado Springs. Trainees from many of the sports practice here because of the high altitudes. Others train at spots all over the states. To get into the program, an athlete has to be recommended by the authority for his or her sport. I knew we’d eventually visit, and that eventually turned out to be today.

It cost us $12 each for the tour. We watched a video, then took a tour of the grounds led by a young woman who “isn’t an Olympic trainee although I’d like to be. I’m a soccer player who just comes here in the summer for a really great job.”

The training areas and dorms are arranged around a center square. We were walked up one side and down the other. There were statues and plaques for the various sports, but we weren’t allowed any time to read any of them. Apparently very few athletes train on Saturday afternoons. We saw one sweaty wrestler hugging a wall mat and a young woman shooting a pistol on the range.

When the tour was over, we wandered through the gift shop and out into the sculpture garden and then we were done — all in little over an hour.

I did find this shirt in the gift shop. I posted this photo on Facebook to announce that I’d found what I was giving everyone for Christmas.

swimming shirt

I guess I expected more Olympics history/artifacts. As it was, I felt like I was taking a tour of my high school. I wasn’t only unimpressed, I was bored. So it surprised me when my sister’s friend, after going to several beautiful places in the mountains, said this was the highlight of her visit. Some people …

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Garden of the Gods Again

Posted on July 22, 2017 by Roger

My sister and her friend drove out for the weekend. On Saturday morning, we went to Garden of the Gods. Over the years, I expect I’ll have every square inch of it photographed.

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Art Hop

Posted on July 20, 2017 by Roger

On the third Thursday of every summer month, many of the stores and galleries in Monument stay open late. Other vendors set up booths in empty store fronts or on the street. A lot of them set out free food. Artist play live music. It’s all very quaint and surprisingly enjoyable.

We hit most of the stores and sampled the free food in several of them. Before the evening was done, we’d had a Polish sausage, fruit, mini hot dogs, meatballs, cheese, popcorn, and several kinds of punch.

In two of the shops, we struck up conversations with the owners/artists and found out they were both from Illinois. My wife bought a trivet, which I’ve always confused with a tuffet. It was painted using alcohol-based paint.

One artist had his art set up in a church lobby. He had one painting of a barnyard that I really liked. It was framed with an old window, and it cost $350. He asked if I wanted to buy it. I told him I didn’t have nearly enough money. He suggested I play the lottery and then come back and buy it. I offered to buy it for $1 and then he could play the lottery, but he turned me down.

I bought two books at the Tattered Cover Bookstore. One was When Books Went to War, by Molly Guptill Manning, is about the Armed Services Editions printed during WWII.

The stores were spread out — Monument is trying hard to develop a cute little downtown without actually having a downtown. In the courtyard of one shop, four older women were playing woodwinds. In another, a band was doing a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows.”

In an hour and a half, we saw everything there was to see, did everything there was to do, and ate almost everything there was to eat. It’s probably not something we’ll do every month, but if we’re ever free and bored and want a free supper …

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Animal #69 — Northern Pocket Gopher

Posted on July 20, 2017 by Roger

thomomys talpoides

Thursday, July 20, 2017 — 5:00 pm

Monument, Colorado

During the seven and a half months that we lived in a basement, the cats discovered a variety of animals in the window wells — three cottontails, a mouse, a frog, and this creature.

I didn’t give it much thought when I took this photo of Lucy staring at it in the morning. I figured it was a mouse or vole.

When I got home from work, it was curled in a ball in the center of the window well, having given up it’s quest for escape. I grabbed a five-gallon bucket from the garage and set forth to rescue it — a process I was well familiar with by this time. As soon as I laid the bucket down on the rocks, the animal scurried inside — which gave me a good idea that it was used to being underground.

I took it out into the yard and put the bucket next to a bush. I sprawled on the grass to get some photos and noticed it’s tiny, flat ears and long toes. Now I knew for sure it was something I hadn’t seen before. It didn’t want to get out of the bucket. It would approach the edge, then run back to the bottom, then slowly walk forward again.

I’m pretty sure it was hunger that finally coaxed it out. As soon as it left the bucket it began eating anything green it could find. It paid no attention to me and my phone inches away from it.

When I’d gotten enough good pictures that I knew I could identify it, I left it to find its way back to its hole.

It was a couple weeks before we finally moved into our house and unpacked our belongings. When I found my field guide, it was easy to identify it as a Northern Pocket Gopher. I learned that its two requirements are soil loose enough to burrow in and low-growing plants to eat. The black spot behind its ear is diagnostic.

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Listing Through Life

Uncle Wilbur Fountain

Olympic Training Center

Garden of the Gods Again

Art Hop

Animal #69 — Northern Pocket Gopher

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