2008
Shutterbug Saturday: Manitou Springs
More shots from wandering around in Colorado. Companion shots to Fort Sumner, Walsenburg & New Mexico. ~Vic

2008
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Snapshots Sunday: New Mexico
This is somewhat of a companion piece to Walsenburg and Fort Sumner. These were shots taken after we left Fort Sumner and were on our way to Walsenburg. We passed by the Raton-Clayton volcanic field, which includes the Capulin Volcano National Monument. The Marine was in a hurry to head north and wasn’t interested in stopping for a volcano. ~Vic

December 2008
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POTD: New Year’s Eve 2022

Buena Vista, CO
Christmastime 2008
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This was my view from the backdoor of our room. The lodge backed up to the Arkansas River. It was a wonderful place to vacation for Christmas and New Year’s. Sadly, the lodge had to close, permanently, due to the Plandemic/Scamdemic. It’s heartbreaking. And, as far as I am concerned, good riddance to 2022. I have hopes that 2023 will be better but…it’s not likely. I will be raising a glass of bubbly to the awakening of humanity. ~Vic
Quick edit…this is a companion piece to Walsenburg.
From October 2014
From May 2015
Wayback Wednesday: Challenger Expedition 1872

University of Washington
Author: William Frederick Mitchell
One hundred and fifty years ago, today…
The Challenger expedition of 1872–1876 was a scientific program that made many discoveries to lay the foundation of oceanography. The expedition was named after the naval vessel that undertook the trip, HMS Challenger.
The expedition, initiated by William Benjamin Carpenter, was placed under the scientific supervision of Sir Charles Wyville Thomson of the University of Edinburgh and Merchiston Castle School, assisted by five other scientists, including Sir John Murray, a secretary-artist and, a photographer. The Royal Society of London obtained the use of Challenger from the Royal Navy and, in 1872, modified the ship for scientific tasks, equipping it with separate laboratories for natural history & chemistry. The expedition, led by Captain Sir George Strong Nares, sailed from Portsmouth, England, on [December 21, 1872]. Other naval officers included Commander John Maclear.
Under the scientific supervision of Thomson himself, the ship traveled approximately 68,890 nautical miles (79,280 miles/127,580 kilometres) surveying and exploring. The result was the Report of the Scientific Results of the Exploring Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873–76 which, among many other discoveries, catalogued over 4,000 previously unknown species. John Murray, who supervised the publication, described the report as “the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.” Challenger sailed close to Antarctica but, not within sight of it. However, it was the first scientific expedition to take pictures of icebergs.
Wikipedia Summary
Additional:
From Deep Sea to Laboratory (The First Explorations of the Deep Sea by H.M.S. Challenger 1872-1876)/ISTE UK Website
Then & Now: The HMS Challenger Expedition & the Mountains in the Sea Expedition/NOAA Ocean Explorer/2003
HMS Challenger Expedition/Natural History Museum UK/2014 (Web Archive)
HMS Challenger/USCD Aquarium/2008 (Web Archive)
Hans 2021 Song Draft: Round Nine-Pick Eight-In Sleep-Lissie (2010)

Hanspostcard has a song draft challenge. This is my Round Nine pick.
This, and my last pick, will feature two women that are a little less known in the music world. I skipped right over the 2000s (only so many choices) and hopped into the next decade. I happened to catch this song while listening to the University of Texas @ Austin’s radio station (a station involved with SXSW). I was hooked and I went looking for it…and her. Elisabeth Corrin Maurus or Lissie is a singer-songwriter out of Rock Island, Illinois.
“I always sang, since I was little and wrote poems in high school. I sort of taught myself to play guitar lines to the poems and stuff. In high school, it seems like everyone has more drama than any other time in their life, [so] that was the time in my life where I really leaned on music as a way to stay sane…”
Interview With Lissie
Scott the Intern
Pop Culture Madness [Web Archive]
February 11, 2008
In her senior year, she was kicked out of high school (she spit in a teacher’s face) and had to get a GED, elsewhere. Then, she hit the road, troubadour-style. She attended Colorado State in Fort Collins and liked to open for other traveling acts. After a short time in Paris, she moved to Los Angeles, met Betsy Hammer and scored an introduction to Brooks Arthur. Hammer & Arthur took her to talent manager Guy Oseary and he got her to producer Glen Ballard. She can be heard singing in the movie Have Dreams, Will Travel (Dream It Out Loud) and performed at the wedding of Demi Moore & Ashton Kutcher in 2005 (Oseary’s referral). In January 2008, she opened for Lenny Kravitz (via a hook-up on MySpace).

The third track from the album Catching A Tiger, In Sleep was released in April of 2010 and the only chart it showed up on was the UK iTunes Single of the Week. The album did manage to make it to #5 on the Billboard Folk Albums & Top Heatseekers charts and, #34 on the Independent Albums chart. The album’s first release was in the UK and hit the US two months later.
“Not to be mistaken for Lissy Trullie, […] Lissie Maurus deals in sun-kissed pop-blues straight from Laurel Canyon.
Her 12-track debut conjures images of highways and horses, with Lissie’s smoky tones echoing Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks.”
CDs of the Week: Eminem and Lissie
Rick Pearson
London Evening Standard [Web Archive]
June 18, 2010
Give her a listen. I think she is fantastic and her two band members are outstanding, as well. They are all over YouTube and, in live recordings, her bassist is sitting down, keeping the drum/cymbal beat. Talk about multitasking. I’ve included the studio version of this that has more drum work on it and a possible synthesizer. I’m also including her version of Go Your Own Way. which actually charted in the UK in 2012. The studio version sounds like it has a cello in it and is part of the soundtrack from the movie Safe Haven. She has been very busy.
Happy Halloween, Y’all! ~Vic
Additional:
Interview: Lissie (Stereofox/06-12-2013)
Lissie (CTN Music Interview/12-22-2008/Web Archive)
Lissie and Her Connections (The Uncarved Blog/Ken Chawkin/05-11-2019)
Lissie Catching A Tiger Review (BBC Review/Mike Diver/2010)
Local Q&A: Lissie (Chicago Tribune Metromix/Matt Pais/11-09-2009/Web Archive)
Rock Island Native Lissie Hits Billboard’s Charts (Quad-City Times/David Burke/05-09-2008/Web Archive)
Live Recording On ARD
Studio Version
From Discovery of Witches
Hans 2021 Song Draft: Round Seven-Pick Ten-Somebody’s Baby-Pat Benatar (1993)

Hanspostcard has a song draft challenge. This is my Round Seven pick.
Pat Benatar exploded on the music scene in the Summer/Fall of 1979 with her debut album In The Heat of the Night. I was in 8th grade and the first song I remember hearing on the radio from the album was Heartbreaker. I went to my hometown’s only mall and headed into a store called Stereo Village. I wanted this song and, when I asked for it, the guy trying to help me automatically thought I was talking about Led Zepplin. When I mentioned Pat Benatar’s song, he didn’t know what I was talking about. He told me to sing some of the music for him…so, my 13 year old self obliged, right there in the middle of the store, “in front of God and everybody” (Southern colloquialism). He still didn’t know the song but, said “Nice voice!” I never did get that 45 and a few months later, rolling into the new decade, We Live For Love was released in February and, I liked it even better than Heartbreaker. Crimes of Passion, her sophomore album, came out the following August and the hits kept coming. You Better Run (The Young Rascals cover) became the second video broadcast on the debut of MTV, behind Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles (a 45 I managed to get my hands on). I was a devoted fan at that point without owning a single song or album. By the time of my 16th birthday, a young man I was dating presented me with the Crimes of Passion album. I was overjoyed.

I nearly got to see her perform during the 1986 Seven the Hard Way tour. It started in January 1986 and stopped, abruptly, in April. She was a mom by then and family pressures caused cancellations. Greensboro Coliseum lost out. I did get to see her for the Can’t Stop Rockin’ tour in 1995 in Raleigh. Prior to those two, my mother considered me too young to see the earlier concerts. 😭
Gravity’s Rainbow was her ninth, and the last studio album to be in the Billboard 200 chart in the top 100s, peaking at #85 on June 19, 1993 and making it to #44 in Canada for one week on July 31, 1993. Named after the Thomas Pynchon novel, it was also the last album released on Chrysalis Records. It was not one of her better albums, statistically speaking but, it yielded three singles, two of which, I love. My favorite album of hers is, of course, the tour that got cancelled in 1986. That being said, after all these years of her music catalog, Somebody’s Baby is my favorite single, released July 5, 1993 (my second favorite single is Le Bel Age). She and Spyder James had already geared down quite a bit, releasing the blues-themed True Love in 1991, to much less fanfare than Wide Awake in Dreamland from 1988. True Love was her first album that did not rate with RIAA.
Somebody’s Baby did not chart on Billboard but, it did chart in the UK on the Singles Chart (#48), in Canada (#41) and in New Zealand (#36).
I am a fan of Benatar like Hans & Max are of the Beatles. I love this one because of the lyrics, the mood, the blend of the music and her stunning voice, though, in this piece, it is not quite as “up there” as when she sings Invincible (she has a four octave range). I am normally indifferent to most lyrics, choosing to immerse myself in musical arrangements and wonderful voices but, the writing speaks to my heart and I confess that, the first time I heard this, it brought me to tears. ~Vic
Additional:
BenatarGiraldo (Official Website)
Gravity’s Rainbow (RockWired/Brian Lush/06-12-2018)
Pat Benatar (Hip Online/01-05-2008)
Pat Benatar: Gravity’s Rainbow (Rolling Stone/Andrea Odintz/2003/Web Archive)
Richmond: Benatar’s Rise to Fame (Richmond Times-Dispatch/Nicole Kappatos/04-11-2017/Web Archive)
Unofficial Video?
Live On Leno
Regis & Kathie Lee Show (Stripped Down Short Version)
Song Sunday: Last Name

“I had no clue what I was getting into. So, I’ll blame it on the Cuervo. Oh, where did my manners go?”
Returning to my Samsung playlist, submitted for your approval on this first Sunday of the new year…I present Last Name by Carrie Underwood. Released in April 2008, it was written by Underwood, Luke Laird and Hillary Lindsey. It is the eighth track from the album Carnival Ride and the third release. It peaked at #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart on June 21, 2008, was #1 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart, made it to #3 on the Canada Country Billboard chart and #19 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
I remember when she wowed the whole world on the fourth season of American Idol in 2005. It’s hard to believe that it has been over 15 years since she stormed the music world. I never watched the show but, she was all over the media. When I heard Before He Cheats on the radio, I knew she was gonna be an incredible star and, as far as I’m concerned, she could sing the phone book to me. I don’t own any of her albums/CDs as, after the 90s, everything went digital.
♦ The music video portrays the song as a prequel to her Before He Cheats song, even going so far as to hire the same actor to play the man in question.
♦ [This song] became Underwood’s fastest single to hit number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart after only 13 weeks of its official release […]. It stayed there for one week.
♦ 2009 Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance.
Other Awards
Carrie Underwood Official (Official Website)
Snapshots Sunday: Walsenburg

As a companion piece to the Fort Sumner post, my ex-Marine and I headed north, still on our way to Liar’s Lodge. We headed into snow and landed in Walsenburg, Colorado, in Huerfano County, a town smaller than the one I am living in and, as of 2019, continues to hemorrhage people from a peak of 5,855 in 1940. We arrived after dark and stopped to eat. There’s not much there, back then or now. ~Vic

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the diner looks like it’s from 1974.
Alpine Rose Cafe
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We had a decent meal.
It’s still there as of 2018.
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It appears to still be there.
It is the only home of Colorado Rockies Baseball
in Southern Colorado.

The lights in the windows are odd.
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while I was attempting another picture.
Additional Reading:
Returning to the Place I’d Never Been (Acts & Tracks/radioronin.wordpress.com)
City of Walsenburg (colorado.gov)
Walsenburg (colorado.com)
Walsenburg (Uncover Colorado)
Shutterbug Saturday: Old Fort Sumner Museum
I lived in Texas for nearly a decade. My ex-Marine and I did some traveling through the west when we had opportunities. I’ve been digging around in some old stuff and found some photos from a visit to the Old Fort Sumner Museum in New Mexico in December of 2008. We were on our way to Liar’s Lodge. The museum closed in 2017. ~Vic

It was so overcast.
It never occurred to me to take pictures inside.

Lucien Maxwell
Fort Sumner
Bosque Redondo

Joe Bowlin
Notice the reference to Texas International Airlines
Jarvis P. Garrett is Pat’s son.
UPI Article on the 1981 Recovery

Charlie Bowdre December 23, 1880
Tom O’Folliard December 19, 1880

AKA William H. Bonney
AKA Billy The Kid
July 14, 1881
“The boy bandit king,
he died as he lived.”
Late Add:
Photo Credit: Erans World
02-11-2014
Click to view full picture.
Additional Reading:
BTKOG (Billy the Kid Outlaw Gang Site)
Whiskey and the Devil: Taiban, New Mexico (City of Dust Blogspot January 10, 2012)
Billy the Kid’s Two Graves (Roadside America August 15, 2020)
Caught With His Pants Down: Billy the Kid vs Pat Garrett (True West Magazine August 1, 2010)
Brushy Bill Roberts (Wikipedia)
Snapshots Sunday: Pooh Bear

Stumpy-tailed Manx
05-14-2008
Pooh was not originally my cat. When the Marine and I moved to Texas, Pooh (the owners called him Oliver) lived three doors away. He was very friendly and walked the sidewalks like a person. The story we got from the owner was, he was purchased as a kitten for her son. Her son developed allergies to the cat so, she put him outside. He could get in and out of the garage and, had a sleeping pad on a bench on the front porch.

01-01-2008
He didn’t visit our house too much because we had Buddy. When we lost Buddy, he got closer and closer to the front door, unsure because he wasn’t allowed in his own home. One day, we opened the door and he walked in. We fed him some tuna and…he stayed. We taught him how to use the cat doors we already had and he returned to us every day. His previous owner, at this point, had re-married, had two more kids (plus the husband’s kid) and three dogs. I’m not sure they ever noticed.

01-24-2011
He didn’t look like an Oliver to us. My Marine made the remark that he looked like a little bear walking up the sidewalk. I immediately went to my childhood days and thought “Pooh!” He got a new name with his new home.

Pooh liked to watch TV.
02-25-2009
Poor Pooh had spine problems related to his stumpy tail. The entire time he was with us, he had spells…twice a day. Something in his spine would move or catch and he would howl in pain. Then, he would chase the pain…until he was dizzy. It was something bizarre to watch and you couldn’t miss the sound. Think Looney Tunes’ Tasmanian Devil. When he regained his faculties, he would begin to groom as if nothing had happened. Unfortunately for me, some of those spells occurred in my lap. I still have scars…bless his heart.

He was our baby for three and a half years. He developed pancreatic cancer and had to be put down February 17, 2011. He was a character. When he wanted your attention and you weren’t fast enough, he made this sound of frustration that always reminded me of Number 5/Johnny Five from Short Circuit.

06-20-2009
Chris Thomas: Earth’s Chronological Chart
A Forum Blog Post From: The Chris Thomas Files

Photo Credit: NASA on Unsplash
[Preface from a client of Chris Thomas: My friend Chris Thomas, who is “hard-wired” to the Akashic, has produced a list of events in Earth’s history that I would like to share with you. Chris Thomas’ books go into much greater detail about the [below] but, this is quite a nice summary.]
14,376.279.386 years ago…..Creation of our Universal envelope.
100 million yrs ago…..Creation of the six non-physical races.
40 million yrs ago…..Completion of our solar system with early life forms on the outer planets.
30 million yrs ago…..Creation of the seven semi-physical races.
25 million yrs ago…..Beginnings of life on Earth (Earth’s choice).
20 million yrs ago…..Creation by earth of the Sidhe’ and the Faerie.
4.5 million yrs ago…..Neanderthal Man developed by Earth from early primate models.
4 million yrs ago…..The arrival of The Merlin on Earth.
3.9 million yrs ago…..Removal of 4 planets from our solar system.
3.8 million yrs ago…..Arrival of Cro-Magnon man’s template from Mars.
3.6 million yrs ago…..Disruptive alien race called the 14th faction burst into our Universe.
94-98,000 yrs ago…..Lemuria established.
85,000 yrs ago…..Atlantis established.
65,000 yrs ago…..Atlantis destroyed and the Sphinx constructed in Egypt.
28,000 yrs ago…..New energy matrix to support human life post Atlantis.
20,000 yrs ago…..Human resettlement of the planet begun.
12,000 yrs ago…..First use of language in the form of Hewbrewa.
10,000 yrs ago…..Construction of energy sites at Silbury Hill, Avebury and Stonehenge.
Aug 14th 1996…..New Earth energy grid activated for whole planet.
Aug 16th 1996…..A bridge between Avalon and Glastonbury Tor is made so that the Sidhe’ could counteract the threat of genetically modified organisms.
Dec 31st 1999…..Earth energies boosted to speed up human evolution.
May 30th 2000…..Earth alters her base frequency from 7.56Hz to 3,500Hz.
Jan 19th 2004…..Energies changed chakra speeds and all colour was lost from the chakras.
Aug 2nd 2004…..Earth charged up all its crystal deposits.
Feb 2005…..Another energy boost and this time, the energy level is maintained. Also, a higher-self census was taken to see who was to remain on the planet.
© Chris Thomas 2008
The Forum (One Vibration Forum/Blog August 6, 2008)
Download The PDF & Share
Shutterbug Saturday: Old Halloween Stuff
It’s finally October, home month of jack-o-lanterns, ghosties, ghoulies, witches (the cartoon type), bats, spiders, skeletons, and the like, for the upcoming Halloween. I love wandering around to get shots of local decorations, much like Christmas. This post, however, covers some of my old stuff…stuff collected over the years (remember email forwards?)…stuff I didn’t take, myself, plus…a really cute video from 2005. I have no idea who took these. ~Vic
Take a look at Halloween Local.

Image file reflects 12-05-2000

Image file reflects 09-30-2001

Image file reflects 10-31-2001

Image file reflects 10-19-2002

Image file reflects 08-26-2007

Image file reflects 10-12-2008
Shutterbug Saturday: Critter Collections
Nature’s wonderful creatures with many legs or, none at all. All photos are my personal collection. ~Vic

Found the little guy in our shed in the backyard (mating season).
I had trouble snapping his picture as he kept moving and I kept jumping.
09-10-2008

We turned him over to a friend who had Tarantulas as pets.

Nature Preserve in Round Rock, TX.
10-25-2008

Nature Preserve.

06-20-2013

He had places to go.
08-30-2013


More to come…