MLK Day

We will be volunteering today.  It's a good thing to do on any given day.  It's a better thing to do today.

Why?  Two reasons: 1) Astronaut Mark Kelly, husband of US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, has asked supporters to honor visitors of the January 8th massacre by volunteering today, and 2) There's a really interesting project unfolding at Montezuma Well Nat'l Monument next door.  We can walk to it.


The project at the Well is for TUG.  That's the new acronym for "Traditional Use Garden."  Until now it had been known as "The Hopi Garden."  Somehow, for reasons unknown, it morphed into TUG.  The mainstays of TUG, of course, are The Three Sisters: corn, beans and squash.  Whoever sited The Hopi Garden didn't have much of a feel for how it would be used and maintained.  So, our project today is to relocate TUG to much better soil, water, solar and public exposure near the popular picnic area.  Most of the heavy lifting has already been done by NPS Staff.  The "word on the street" is that volunteers will simply put in the "T" posts and string the wire and so forth.  That's doable and something I am looking forward to.

The MLK Day organizers here are serving free food at 8:30 am over at the school.  We'll forego gut bomb pancakes and simply show up @ TUG about 10-ish and pitch in for awhile. By the way, today's type and style of activity is known as "episodic volunteeering," in the parlance of the trade.  That's high-falutin' words that simply mean it's a one-day deal.  Every industry's got to have them ten dollar words, ya know?

Yesterday was interesting.  I spent most of the morning tidying up the house and grounds ahead of the visit of our Idaho Falls Friends.  After they waved adios, Susun went back to Sedona for a big birthday party at Peggy and Hank's Place.  I then set about changing the fuel filter on SuziQ.  In the process, I destroyed by digital camera when it was drenched in gasoline.  Susun returned and took a long nap.  Then we had a real nice campfire from 5-ish to about 7-ish.  Gary came over and we had a fine time.  That's all he wrote.

Have a Great MLK Day & Cheers!  jp