YCGL - October 1, 2022 - Balloons and Bill Russell

Today was the start of the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta.  This is the 50th Anniversary of the event, and they were hoping that they would beat the previous number of balloons.  I donæt know the numbers, but they had 900 balloons in 1988 (hot air and gas) and I think they were hoping for 650 now (hot air).  I think the TV reported 115,000 people there at Balloon Park.  The party goes on for nine days, including a nighttime flight and stage shows during the day.  
 

This is a picture Jaye took off their TV.  Much better than mine as I was heading north out of ABQ to spend the night on the top of Raton Pass.

Those dots aren't dust flakes on the camera lens, they are balloons about a mile north of Balloon Park!

At 269 miles, today was my longest drive.  But it was broken up by a stop to see a dear friend from college, Bill Russell.  Bill was a music major along with Loraine Warren Marlow and Sally Solien Edgar.  He was a piano performance major, but in his senior year, one of the voice teachers, Louis Cunningham, told him he was a classical tenor.  So Bill added an extra year to his program and graduated with a dual piano and voice performance degree.  Cunningham was correct, Bill's first opera gig was at a venue in New York City called the Metropolitan Opera.  Not a bad way to start.  He's sung at opera houses around the country and throughout Europe.  A number of years into his career, another vocal teacher convinced him that he wasn't a lyric tenor, but a Heldentenor.  That is the big, booming tenor voice that you hear in Wagner operas, for example.  He went on to become an opera company manager at a number (somewhere around 10 I believe) of companies around the country.  And he is still singing.  He is on-call at the Santa Fe Opera and fills in as needed.  We talked for four hours about operas and opera singers.  I pulled up the Met Opera Channel on SiriusXM on my phone, and he started singing along.  It's wonderful!  

He has another skill as well.  He is a savant (Not, Not, Not idiot) (that is my analysis, not clinical) with languages and words.  He is a reviewer for the word puzzles in the New York Times.  He works seven different puzzles a day for them, critiques the clues, and makes recommendations.  He has now given me four examples of different puzzles and even with his help, I cannot figure out how some of the puzzles even work.  And it's like breathing for him.  And he can do crosswords in four languages.  

He moved to Santa Fe two years ago and lives in a community on one of the Native American reservations.  He has totally bought into the desert biosphere.  When he moved in, the yard was all rock, very common in the southwest.  He decided he wanted a green and has plants growing throughout the yard.  He has a fruit and vegetable garden with a number of native and unusual plants.  What he is holding in the picture is a "Mexican Sunflower" blossom.  The plant is on his patio and until a wind storm blew it down, it was 17 feet tall.  Now it's seventeen feet wide and seven feet tall.  

He is also a professional chef.  He posts some of his creations on Facebook and they are incredible.  

And he is the nicest guy you would ever meet!  He cooks and drives for the local senior center.

Check out the Meow Wolf tee shirt he's wearing!

Just like earlier this spring, I hated to leave him.  He is special.

The next segment to drive was from Santa Fe to Raton Pass.  Bill said, "I hate that segment of road from Las Vegas (N.M.) to Raton.  I normally will put on a Wagner opera to have something to think about."  Much of it is pretty plain range land.  Frankly, people who complain about driving I-80 through southern Wyoming need to drive this portion of road and they will think twice about complaining about Wyoming.  

So, as I was driving a few miles south of Las Vegas, the Met Opera Channel started playing Wagner's Gotterdammerung.   Act One lasted until a few miles south of Raton.  That evening, I texted Bill about opera and the soprano, Jane Eaglin, who I didn't know.  He wrote back, "Good timing.  Jane Eaglin was simply wonderful and she's a great teacher now...We are having high winds and heavy rain is expected.  You got out just in time."  I wrote back, "I had them also.  Blowing all over and two heavy showers.  But, beautiful rainbows afterward.  Worth it!"  

One later was even brighter and was a full arc.  Worth it!