Rivenrock Gardens Cactus Blog

~GARTH BROOKS~
‘Rodeo’

His eyes are cold and restless
His wounds have almost healed
And she’d give half of Texas
Just to change the way he feels
She knows his love’s in Tulsa
And she knows he’s gonna go
Well it ain’t no woman flesh and blood
It’s that damned old rodeo

Well it’s bulls and blood
It’s dust and mud
It’s the roar of a Sunday crowd
It’s the white in his knuckles
The gold in the buckle
He’ll win the next go ’round
It’s boots and chaps
It’s cowboy hats
It’s spurs and latigo
It’s the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing rodeo

She does her best to hold him
When his love comes to call
But his need for it controls him
And her back’s against the wall
And it’s So long girl I’ll see you
When it’s time for him to go
You know the woman wants her cowboy
Like he wants his rodeo

Well it’s bulls and blood
It’s dust and mud
It’s the roar of a Sunday crowd
It’s the white in his knuckles
The gold in the buckle
He’ll win the next go ’round
It’s boots and chaps
It’s cowboy hats
It’s spurs and latigo
It’s the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing rodeo
It’ll drive a cowboy crazy
It’ll drive the man insane
And he’ll sell off everything he owns
Just to pay to play the game
And a broken home and some broken bones
Is all he’ll have to show
For all the years that he spent chasin’
This dream they call rodeo

Well it’s bulls and blood
It’s dust and mud
It’s the roar of a Sunday crowd
It’s the white in his knuckles
The gold in the buckle
He’ll win the next go ’round
It’s boots and chaps
It’s cowboy hats
It’s spurs and latigo
It’s the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing rodeo

It’s the broncs and the blood
It’s the steers and the mud
And they call the thing rodeo

 

 

   I’ve known some rodeo athletes before, and yes, there are a number who can become addicted to the sport… but is it all that different from other sports? And what is it about the addition to performance that can take one by the heart and pulls the body along to endure the suffering and pain inherent in some activities?

   What a strange, amazing species we humans are. I can do nothing but marvel… and wonder.

   We had a few cowboys come by our place today (they even wore spurs), they are searching for a half dozen steers lost in these canyons. While I walked with them and their horses a ways, we talked of injuries. One blew out his knee in the rodeo last summer, he hasn’t run since. One of the others spoke of displacing his shoulder last year with a bull that pushed him up against the fence in such a way that it tore some ligaments or tendons. He was tying down a truck recently and the rope snapped and when he fell, he re-injured the damaged shoulder. But these fellows love the sport of rodeo, and I understand some of the feeling. You can get accustomed to things, and then before long, you’ll let yourself tear yourself up for the crowd, the acclaim, the adrenaline… it doesn’t matter, it just happens, and you’ll go on as long as you can, and then one day you’ll realize that you can’t do it any more.  Hopefully you’ll be riding high at that time, but so often you’re  a busted pile on the arena floor, with thirty thousand eyes watching as you fall.

And the impact on family cannot be underestimated, these performers often forgo other careers so they can chase the thrill, rodeo after rodeo, living in their trucks when necessary, spending nights on couches when possible, and sometimes dwelling in motels when they win. The men and women who live the rodeo dream are romantics and hardboiled pragmatists wrapped into one leather tanned package ready to tie to a saddle and ride for the sport, for the thrill, for the rush of it all.

 

~Chris LeDeux~
‘Hooked on an Eight Second Ride’
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Eight Second Ride

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~George Strait~
‘I can still make Cheyenne’

Her telephone rang ’bout a quarter to nine
She heard his voice on the other end of the line
She wondered what was wrong this time
She never knew what his calls might bring
With a cowboy like him it could be anything
And she always expected the worst in the back of her mind

He said “it’s cold out here and I’m all alone
didn’t make the short go again, and I’m coming home
I know I’ve been away too long
I never got a chance to write or call
And I know this rodeo’s been hard on us all
But I’ll be home soon and honey is there something wrong?”

She said “don’t bother comin’ home
By the time you get here I’ll be long gone
There’s somebody new and he sure ain’t no rodeo man”
He said “I’m sorry it’s come down to this
There’s so much about you that I’m gonna miss
But It’s alright baby, if I hurry I can still make Cheyenne
Gotta go now baby, if I hurry I can still make Cheyenne”

He left that phone danglin’ off the hook
Then slowly turned around and gave it one last look
Then he just walked away
He aimed his truck t’ward that Wyoming line
With a little luck he could get there in time
And in that Cheyenne wind he could still hear her say

She said “don’t bother comin’ home
By the time you get here I’ll be long gone
There’s somebody new and he sure ain’t no rodeo man”
He said “I’m sorry it’s come down to this
There’s so much about you that I’m gonna miss
But It’s alright baby, if I hurry I can still make Cheyenne
Gotta go now baby, if I hurry I can still make Cheyenne”

She never knew what his calls might bring
With a cowboy like him it could be anything
And she always expected the worst in the back of her mind

 

  New products development can take a great deal of time, and this product was no different,
but we are happy, and proud to be able to say that our cactus is now an ingredient in the
new Aveda product line called ‘Green Science Skin Care’.

  Yes, four different products in that line,
and each one has our Opuntia robusta organically grown cactus.

   Wow, cool!

   This line of products started selling a couple of months ago in parts of Asia,
and now is selling at your own Aveda Salon near you.

   It is a fun thing to be knowing that people the world over will be using and enjoying products that have our cactus as an ingredient.

James (Jake) and Eugene Dicus circa 1943… in Missouri

My uncle Jake passed on this month. He was a pretty funny fellow, I think that might be because he was a shorter fellow in a family that tends to run a bit tall. Maybe that’s what made him such a talent at one-liners and a truly inspired poet who could see a story and make a humorous poem about it in minutes.  It also made him a bit of a fighter when he was a younger man…. the stories I’ve heard.

   I suppose with the hard life his family had in the Ozarks made for someone who tried to see the humor in everyday things…. while they also worked and fought hard to get out of any scrapes they were in.

   He wrote his own eulogy….. I enclose most of it here… but some is a bit too ribald for publication on a family site.   The part I cannot include was the last paragraph… the minister would not read that portion aloud at the ceremony either. Trust me, it’s funny, but if the Pastor will not read it aloud, I’d best not print it.

 Jake’s Eulogy
By James Dicus

In-state lies ol’ Jake
dressed fancy for Elain’s sake
as he lived, so should he die
laugh with him, do not cry.

No fancy duds, no jewelry fine,
short in stature, also mind.
Now he lies, he’ll lie no more.
Ends the life of this insensitive bore.

Of his deeds, some good some bad,
made some happy, others mad.
A humble man, short and fat,
If it could be done, he’d try that.

He’d read, paint and write a poem,
Strange, this fellow: content at home.
If he was here, this he’d say…
“Bingo Elaine, go right away!”

Of his friends, and this is true,
wasn’t much he wouldn’t do.
What else to say? it’s all been said.
kick his body, make sure it’s dead.

   Yeah, I always enjoyed seeing uncle Jake.

  So just today, on the radio I heard a song that made me think of him…

~Jamey Johnson~
‘In Color’

I said “grandpa whats this picture here
its all black and white it aint real clear is that you there?”
He said “yeah i was 11, times were tough back in ‘35
thats me and uncle Joe just tryin to survive a cotton farm in the great depression.

“If it looks like we were scared to death like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
you should’ve seen it in color.

“Ohh and this one here was taken over seas in the middle of hell in 1943
in the winter time you can almost see my breath that was my tail gunner ole Johnny Magee
he was a high school teacher from new Orleans and he had my back right through the day we left.

“If it looks like we were scared to death like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
you should’ve seen it in color.

A picture’s worth a thousand words
but you cant see what those shades of gray keep covered
you should’ve seen it in color

“This one is my favorite one.
This is me and grandma in the summer sun
all dressed up the day we said our vows.
You can’t tell it here but it was hot that June
and that rose was red and her eyes were blue
and just look at that smile I was so proud.
Thats the story of my life right there in black and white

And if it looks like we were scared to death like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
you should’ve seen it in color.”

A pictures worth a thousand words
but you cant see what those shades of gray keep covered
you should have seen it in color.

  You can see the video of this song at ‘In Color’.

The Lions scream on the hills

Originally written in April 2006

  The Lion, the witch, and the wardrobe is a marvelous book series for children. Written by C.S. Lewis it shows the majesty of righteousness and has a Christian type character which I think all Christians would recognize.

   It has recently been released as a movie version which I think fully captured the books intent and meaning. I am well pleased with how Disney Pictures did the movie. The stunning computer work which created the full scope and ‘other worldliness’ of the books was so well done as to be mesmerizing.

   While watching the movie, and the beauty of the ‘King of Narnia’, the Messianic Lion Aslan, Vickie and I had to discuss our own Mountain Lion. He comes through our area on occasion, eating deer and goats, scaring people, and giving us all a good reason to walk about armed to the teeth.

   People sometimes report seeing a Mountain Lion here, but more often we just hear it screaming near the house. There have been times when I was in the orchard on the hillside, some ways from the house, and I hear it screaming near the house as I am walking home. It is unnerving to walk toward a scream like that, knowing you are walking toward something your entire being is screaming at you to walk away from. It is at times such as this that I will pick up a few stones to throw at it if I see it, to keep it from charging or stalking me. If I am still in the orchard I might pick up a pitchfork and ax from the shed and walk home with those in my hands. I feel like a peasant from a Frankenstein movie, marching on the castle toward the monster to do battle with archaic weapons.

   There was another time that I had to walk to the well in the dark and cycle the pump on. The lion was screaming outside near the house. So I went out with a shotgun and flashlight. As I was waiting for the pump to fill the tank I walked along the road so I was away from the brush. A neighbor came driving by, parked some ways from me with his lights on me, and hollered cautiously out the window “are you OK John?” It was a touching moment, and I could hear the worry in his voice evaporate when he heard me explain the reason I was standing along the road with a shotgun.

   But this all began with a talk of the Chronicles of Narnia, did it not? Well, Vickie and I had to remark during the showing of the Lion Aslan that our own Mountain Lion has been unheard by us for half a year now. Perhaps it is dead… and then the silence was deafening. You see we have a pond next to the house, it is full of frogs that chirrup all the night long on their orgy of excessive tadpole making. And when the frogs stop making noise it is like an alarm ringing because something is out there and scared them. Then, through the partially open window I heard it, the scream of the mountain lion, and it was close. We walked out onto the dark porch, proceeding cautiously, making sure the skunk was not out there. We stood on the dim porch, under the overhanging roof, deep in the shadows and listened to the close scream, then farther away we hard another scream, that was repeated twice. Then our own closer lion screamed again, and the other one repeated the scream twice. Over the next ten minutes we heard these two lions call to each other across the vastness of the open canyon. And our own lion which was behind our house, perhaps a few hundred yards and to the Northwest crossed the hillside behind us to the North, it then went along the spine of the hill to our East, and then followed that to the Southeast, and eventually the two screams became too faint to hear. In the span of ten minutes we’d heard this local cat cross two miles of densely wooded land without us ever hearing anything other than it’s screams.

   I know that having a local Mountain Lion is a luxury most Americans will never know, and I relish the thought that I live in this wild area, that so befits my own philosophy and nature. I wish this area to remain remote and wild like this, and I understand the feelings of the people who were born in this canyon and regret the opening up of the land that has happened in the last thirty years. The telephone was the first to come in during the seventies. Then people started coming into the canyon settling on their widely spaced houses, mostly out of sight of one another. And we encroach on the Lions territory, causing it havoc in its normal course of business. But the lions and the other animals seem to have come to terms with the new inhabitants of this canyon, we provide food of sorts to these animals with our imported meals-on-the-hoof. Many are the chicken coops that have been broken into by bears here, or tunneled into by foxes. Few goats remain; the rest have been eaten by the lions. Owls take the occasional cat. And mice are attracted to some barns where large amounts of feedstuffs accumulate and give them food, they are seized upon by rattlesnakes as a nice food source.

   Nature is full of bounty when there are not too many of any particular species, but the ‘balance of nature’ is not a balance at all. It is indeed a see-saw with the individual species rising and falling depending upon the vagaries of weather and disease. The fox population reached a saturation point here a few years ago, we had foxes coming up nightly to search for food near our house, and Whitey made sport of chasing them away from the house, while they in their cunning minds made sport of Whitey by running around bushes and coming up behind Whitey until he was the chased. The foxes got to a certain level, and then an epidemic of distemper caused their numbers to fall quickly. Now we do not see too many foxes. And now I have only a memory of standing at night in the canyon watching as the glowing eyes of foxes search left and right, criss crossing like soldiers on a search and destroy mission as they make their way toward me, not knowing I am standing there like a stature on a rock.

   Yes, the foxes are gone, and a few months ago with the lions gone for some time I heard a pack of coyotes yipping near the house. This was a sure sign to me the lion was gone, and while I have no fear of coyotes, I’d rather have that dangerous lion around ‘cause he kept the deer population down, and they eat my cactus. The coyotes will eat our cats. When you have lions around the coyotes stay away (they are pretty smart critters).

   Seasons come and go, the tides rise and fall, and populations and empires wax and wane. There is a time for everything, and we can only guess at and apply our learning to predict the future. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worse. As for me, I put a lot of trust in Mossburg, and Smith and Wesson.

Yep, one of my favorite looking columnists Ann Coulter has a really nice article, that I think in the next thirty years will be held up as right and true….

An excerpt…

“But no one notices when 9/11 doesn’t happen. Indeed, if we had somehow stopped the 9/11 attack, we’d all be watching Mohammed Atta being interviewed on MSNBC, explaining his lawsuit against the Bush administration. Maureen Dowd would be writing columns describing Khalid Sheik Mohammed as a “wannabe” terrorist being treated like Genghis Khan by an excitable Bush administration.”

   Write on Babe!

 From the YouTube info page…

Vladimir Bukovsky spent many years in Russian labour camps and psychiatric prisons for defending human rights. He came to Britain in 1976. He lectures and writes on the old Soviet system and the EU. 

 

Lil Rob… Summer Nights

Lil Rob has a nice old Motown or R and B influence.  But he wraps it with Hip Hop currents.
He’s from San Diego, and this song really pulls you into a summer night in some parts of California.

The Rose
~Joe O.~

Blond, handsome, tall, blue eyes
Strong and proud in his uniformed guise
Proud to defend the “Fatherland” and Rhine
Walking back from the village
In the bright Bavarian sunshine
To his unit not far away
A smile in his heart
A girl on the path not far ahead
Standing near the old castle tower

“Guten morgen! A beautiful day.”
They speak their names, so much to say
An hour seems a minute on this day
“I must go.” he says. “Will I see you again?”
“I will be here tomorrow at ten.”
She gave him a rose from the bush nearby
They said auf wiedersehen, goodbye
They meet again, and again, and again
Giving themselves to each other in time

One day something new is on her dress
A star on her shoulder
To show her pride, they told her,
In being a Jew
A sign of unspoken foreboding, they knew.
“It does not change us.” they said.
“We will always be together.” they said.
We will meet here in secret
You will know I am here
When the rose is at the tower door
And the candle is in the window there.

They came in the night to take her away
To a place where she’d be happy, they’d say
He came the next day and there was the light
The rose was there, but the girl not in sight
He waited, and waited, and waited more
Until there was nothing but to go in the door
And the soldier was never seen again.

It is late evening, summer 1961
I walk from the village to the old castle door
I see a candle in the window above
As I get closer I meet an old man there
Tall and handsome his blue eyes show despair
“I’m waiting for her” is the first thing I hear
As he points to the castle door
I looked and a beautiful rose is there on the floor
I looked up and the candle light no longer shone
I turn to speak and the old man is gone
Was I dreaming? I rub my eyes
I turn back to the castle door
And there at the entrance sits the forlorn rose
Now clearly long dead on the floor

I have often seen a light in the tower
And I thought I heard boots on the stairs
I never saw the old man again
But always the rose is there.

    Santa Maria was originally known as ‘Central City’ due to the Central location it occupies on California’s coast. The name was eventually changed to Santa Maria because there were mail misroutings with another Central City in Colorado.
    Santa Maria has an old part of town with buildings built of brick which is generally not used for building material in this area anymore. Cruising through an alleyway behind a custom truck shop, I saw this old door, with it’s weights to help move the doors. It was such an old style and design, yet obviously functional, and made me think of how in the old days folks used ingenuity to help them accomplish tasks. It is a little snapshot of a time a hundred years ago.    My Dad used to have a cellar on their farm in the Missouri Ozarks, when he was a kid he enjoyed slamming the door of the cellar which was a ‘trap door’ style on the floor. It had a weight stack also to help one lift it since it was huge and heavy, but when slammed down would slam into the frame with much force and a terrifically (for a kid) loud slam. One day he did this not noticing the cat was sitting on the edge, with his tail over the frame. The door chopped the cat’s tail off, the cat screamed and ran off into the woods, but came back a few days later with the stub healing well. For the rest of his life that poor cat was a stub-tail, but it did not seem to affect him adversly after he healed.

  When I was a young kid I was raised with the old American work ethic that actually had much of it’s roots based deep in the old Prussian/Germanic concepts of morality, family and working hard and honestly for family and society. This concept took hold in the USA with a vengeance, yet after WWII in Germany the liberal concepts of social reform and ‘looking after others’ took precedence over working hard. Hard work was rewarded with punitive progressive taxation, and the worker saw his labor going to reward the welfare system and it’s layabouts and the administrators of the system who have much to lose if their ‘clients’ became productive citizens. For several decades now Germany has been mired in liberal idealism, fighting to show itself more ‘progressive’ than the highly vaunted Scandinavian societies (to whom they have always felt a little inferior in a racial sense). Now the German economy is in the doldrums with massive unemployment, high taxes, and a raft of people unable to resign themselves to working for about the same amount they would get on welfare.
   This is a system that the old Prussian dictators would see as intolerable, and in the old days they would line a few thousand people up to walls and have them shot, and the rest of the population would see the value in ‘honorable work’, the economy would rebound, the people would be happy workers, and society and the state would benefit. But now the liberal societies are having to perform a re-molding of character with a massive public relations and information campaign. This campaign is called You are the wings! You are the tree! You are Germany!
   I support the German government in this endeavor, Germany needs reforming, and the German character needs to find itself again. So long after the ruins of WWII have been scattered, and the smoking ashes have gone cold, still the ravages of that great conflict to liberate the people are causing suffering. This is the way of all wars, and Iraq will be no different.
   This is a little bit I took from the article.

    Optimism and confidence are based on the principle of achievement, which the campaign constantly calls upon. People who are confident that their efforts are constructive in some way create self-confidence, they are, as the campaign demands, prepared to take risks, they are mobile and flexible. But this is an experience many Germans have been incapable of having for a very long time. The principle of achievement is being overridden. There are - as everyone knows - too few jobs which allow people to prove their mettle and move upwards. Alternative job structures are at a very rudimentary level still, aside from the black market. And even among the employed there is a widespread suspicion that the future is in no way dependant on how hard you slog. In a situation like this, a call to give yourself a kick up the arse and start ripping up trees means little more than a call to vandalism. Because ripping up trees as a metaphor for performance no longer has much currency in most people’s lives.

   If liberalism gives us the ruined economies of Western Europe and the obliteration of the work ethic and defilement of the environment as happened in Eastern Europe, it is a wonder that there are people in this country who espouse liberalism.
   Thankfully we have not yet totally succumbed to these concepts, I hope we never do.
   If you wish to see the German Version for the internet of the campaign click here. I did, and I must admit, it made me miss Germany some.

   Sideways is a different kind of movie. It won high awards and acclaim from many major movie critics and independent film reviews.
    But locally it is very popular due to the fact that the majority of the filming was done in Santa Barbara County in the Buellton/Lompoc area. It also features wineries quite prominently, and the beauty of the local wineries and the scenery of the miles of vineyards in the area cannot be beat.
    The main character of the movie talks throughout the movie of his love of a particular wine grape and the resulting wine; a locally-grown grave vine called Pinot Noir. I am no wine aficionado, yet I found it interesting to hear the ‘Wine talk’ in this movie. I felt like I learned a lot about wine, but what’s the use since I don’t really go for wine? (I’ll take a good stout brew over a wine any day).
    An interesting thing about this Pinot Noir wine grape that I learned from the movie, is the fact that it is a thin skinned grape, and as such it responds more quickly to environmental changes. The warm days (for months the daytime temps have been in the mid eighties, and the cool nights on the Central Coast (in the mid fifties, even down to the high forties here in the canyon). This quick reversal of temperatures causes the grape to fill to bursting with rich juices, making for a richer full-bodied wine.
    That is what is explained in the movie, and it’s a good lesson. But there is another side to this movie. It is a story about ‘Jack’ (played by Thomas Haden Church) who is getting married in a week, and desires to spend a last week with wine aficionado ‘Miles’ (played by Paul Giamatti) who is an aspiring writer. These two unsavory characters careen along on a wild orgy of wine tasting and partying with the ’soon-to-be-married’ man on the prowl to find women with whom to spend his last days of ‘freedom’. This bothers the hero of the story, but why I don’t know. He already had proven himself to be a low-life by stealing money from his little-old-lady mom while stopping by to say hello on his way to peruse the wineries of the Santa Ynez area.

    If one is easily offended do not watch this movie. It has a fair amount of cursing and some lewd and raunchy behavior with the occasional foray into criminal misadventure. But when one watches the whole movie one sees that this is not a paean to an immoral lifestyle, for both protagonists suffer damage as a direct result of their actions.

    But the highlight of the movie was the scenes of businesses I have been in, roads I have driven. To watch the evening haze coming in from the Pacific as the sun sets is a marvelous sight. But to see the same scene on television and knowing that what you see every day millions across the world can now see, that is an exciting prospect. The people here all know of the special scenery we have that we drive through daily, but when one passes beauty daily it can become commonplace. It is nice to see that beauty out there for all others to admire.

    All-in-all I enjoyed the movie immensely (mostly due to the local scenes). But young children might perhaps be better off when shielded from this language and behavior.