The Hazel Project

Davak has kindly requested a little description with the Joshua Tree photos.

1. This is the best one of the windmill farms. They were everywhere but they’re placement made sense in the middle of a great big valley - where the wind gets very concentrated. This was right before Palm Springs.

I have more if anyone is interested since I was quite taken with the windmills and took way too many pictures of them. I look forward to affording alternative energy at some point. They have a system here where you can purchase a certain percentage of your electricity as generated by these things. They’re actually quite graceful. Graceful Energy; two words that rarely get used together.

2. This is me taking a picture and Keith playing a game called, “asleep at the wheel”. This was a new game to me. The game is played when someone wants to take a picture in the car. The driver and all occupants in the car pretend they’re asleep cruising down the freeway. Obviously the first time I played it wrong. I guess I thought we were playing “Smile Forrest Gump”. I’m cool with it. I like my smile these days.

3. This is during Lunch in Palm Springs. IT WAS HOT! but this was a great Mexican restuarnt with very decent vegetarian selection. Tim, Keith, Teresa and Bella eat vegetarian and mostly vegan now that I think about it. I’m considering myself a Conciencious Carnivore- Mostly fish; if and when, I do eat red meat, I’ll buy Kosher steak- no ground beef- Davak took that off my diet in 2002! - Which I’m deeply grateful!

Obviously this is a picutre of a gargantuan margarita- in Palm Springs they just bring the biggest most expensive drink on the menu instead of asking what size you want.

I’m trying to be funny.

ACTUALLY this is a picture of Tim and Keith with a pretty blue glass in the way!

Tim is describing in detail the new vitamins he just purchased. Vitamins that are taken from plants that only grow in the rainforest. This small company practices techniques that preserves the rainforest floor. I guess this means they use something other than a bulldozer to harvest the plant. I tasted one of these vitamins though and I was pretty impressed. It heats up your mouth- that is if you chew the gelcap like I did. And it tasted sweet, then it made my mouth all tingly and the stuff began to expand - It stayed that way a few seconds, intensifying, then it got very bitter. It made me think of what liquidized tree would taste like. Freinds, this stuff is WAY different than glutenized centrum - of which I’m also thankful and take regularly but have been too scared to chew.

5.This one is Simple. Me, Tim, and Sonny Bono- yes it was all musicians on this trip and we are DEFINITELY the kind of people who sang ‘I got you babe’ when we got back in the car. That’s the kind of song where we remembered only the melody instead of the lyrics. So the lyriccs became ‘da da da’ and then everyone would sing the chorus. Tim sang the oboe part, which is ironically ‘da da’

6. This is the plaque explaining the sculpture in the picture that follows. It struck me because lately I’ve been steeped in transferring Fellini’s Raincoat tapes to pro tools. The feelings that are intertwined in delving into that past are intense and reach far into my life. I watched the wind move this huge sculpture for 20 minutes before I noticed this plaque. When I saw the last sentence I immediately thought of Fellini’s Raincoat, at first the dynamic of the band as a whole then specifically between Marty and Beth. And then between Marty and myself, as musicians, as marraige partners, and our eventual divorce.

The sentence reads-

“The arms delicate balance places them variously in and out of harmony with each other- a reminder that all relationships at best are delicate and ever changing.”

It made me thankful that Fellini’s happened, and I had a chance participate during that time in Jackson Mississippi.

7. This is the Geokinetic sculpture. It’s smaller than you might think. It’s located at the entrance to the Joshua Tree Visitors center.

This is half of the pictures. Lets call it PART 1 for tonight.

Thanks for checking in.

Stephen A. Thomas

This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 12:48 am and is filed under on the path, posts & stories . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.