Hee haw!

horsing around in Wickenburg

The Desert Caballeros Western Museum in Wickenburg, AZ is billed as Arizona’s most western museum.  Apparently Caballeros is Spanish for “dude” because Wickenburg is the dude ranch capital of world.  Dudes from all over the world ride the Wickenburg trails next week. The clink of spurs on the pavement was the tipoff.

The museum’s Cowgirl Up! Art exhibit was impressive. Unfortunately photography was prohibited so you’ll have to take my word for it or hit the trail to Wickenburg yourself sometime before May 6, 2012. 

The soulful eyes of a young Yavapai girl; the masculine strength of a cowboy toting a bale of hay and impressing the heck out of his young grandson; the galloping abandon of women on horseback feeling their oats in a brass sculpture titled Girls Night Out; the in your face smug bunny; these all made me yearn to paint, sculpt or saddle up.  Lack of talent and courage preclude me from doing so but for a second I pulled a brush oiled with petal pink across the bunny’s cheek. I reigned in my horse with admirable expertise.

Weather got you down? Go to a museum. 

Desert Caballeros Western Museum general store exhibit

My Winter Vacation - Part 2: The American Spirit

Sometimes you have to leave the country and spend time at the crossroads where cultures intersect to appreciate what is uniquely American. In Barbados I was reminded that Americans have always traveled the trade routes to remain in touch with the finer sensibilities of cultures with longer histories. In turn, Europeans have always traveled to America to enjoy the sensation of freedom and wide open space.

Like a pound dog, the space shuttle Endeavor waits for a new home

Of rhino pairs & bipolar bears

On a manmade field of ice, a bipolar bear takes three steps forward, three steps backward, bobbles her head to the left and to the right and repeats the process. She resembles a windup toy with a weak battery that is compelled to move in place, never forward.

Across campus, rooms with bulky equipment designed to entice a rhinoceros to charge large objects sit idle. The resident rhinos are napping near a pond out in front. It appears they are no more interested in staying fit than most of us. A sign cautions that rhinos have been overhunted and are now an endangered species.

Nearby, an expanse of grass labeled Bison Environs appears to be an exhibit of where bison would live if any inhabited this zoo.  At this moment, the Detroit zoo appears to be fresh out of buffalo.  Happily though, this regal animal has made a comeback since it flirted with extinction in the 1800s. (The food industry will dispute that buffalo were ever endangered. Perhaps that’s because they were part of the drive to replenish the American herds.)

The Detroit Zoo in Royal Oak provides luxury accommodations for damaged animals. It is evident that patient rights come first here, but visitors aren’t complaining about how few animals are actually in view today. Peacocks roam zoo paths looking like docents and that is what we are here to do this hot summer day just outside the motor city. We are just out for a walk in the most diverting of landscapes.

About the time that we think all the animals have gone to lunch, we spot a trio of giraffe strolling across the grass in front of a reproduction of an Egyptian palace.  Egypt was one of the first cultures to keep wild animals on display in royal compounds, a human docent tells us.

When you don’t demand to be entertained by nature, the simple curve of a giraffe’s neck is grace. The tiger’s repose is refreshment. Like so many regional zoos, the Detroit Zoo provides a safety net for God’s creatures. We exercise a God given right (Genesis 1:28) when we care for animals.

Zoo-awe-lo-gy

When I saw the world through a child’s eyes monkeys in the zoo performed hilarious antics, tigers paced their cages with the thrill of the hunt in muscle memory, and lions lazed on warm rocks, allowing children to admire jungle royalty at a safe distance. We took for granted that wild animals were caged for our benefit, to develop our curiosity about the world and foster our appreciation of nature. The world was a big place.


Today the world is smaller, and the zoo serves a larger purpose. I reflected on this at the privately owned and operated Wildlife World Zoo and Aquarium in Litchfield Park, Arizona.

South America is too small now to accommodate the Andean Condor, who has the largest wingspan of any land bird. Today this solitary bird spreads his wings in a mesh net enclosure.

An appetite for bushmeat in the Congo has sentenced an entire species of monkeys to life behind zoo bars. They will never return to the wild. If they are to be preserved, it will be in captivity.

Nothing inspires awe so much as God’s handiwork in the animal kingdom. What a fashion show – bold designs sported by big game in Africa are recycled in intricate detail on small fish that dart about in the Caribbean waters.

Every form of human behavior can be observed in animals – the ADHD otters constantly in motion, the parrot couple carping at each other – he talks incessantly in her ear, she lifts her wing to distract him, he smoothes her feathers, then gives her a rude bite on the foot. Her squawks are unintelligible, but his are discernable. He articulates a litany of English words. He is an abandoned pet.

The popular animals are the mutants – an albino alligator so white he glows eerily in his dimly lit indoor swamp, an albino boa conscripted into the animal show to demonstrate reptile habits – the freak show in the circus.

A hymn set to an English melody is a proper tribute to the animals who find sanctuary in the world’s zoos, and to their keepers who tend to them with respect.

All things bright and beautiful
all creatures great and small
all things wise and wonderful
the Lord God made them all.

With all due respect for the human need for space, food and fuel, let’s sustain as many of these marvelous creatures as we possibly can.

MIM

When in Phoenix, don’t miss the new Musical Instrument Museum. Worth noting:

Open just 10 months, the museum first twinkled in the eye of Robert Ulrich, founder of Target. “No one has ever done a museum devoted to the instruments and music of every country in the world,” the purveyor of cheap chic said in a New York Times interview in 2008.
You will need two visits to fully appreciate the contents of this museum that sprawls across the Phoenix desert. Visit the café for lunch. It features locally grown Arizona foodstuffs that taste as good as described on the whiteboard. For someone who felt like she’d been crawling in the desert for days looking for interesting food, this was worth the price of admission.

Music is the language of the soul, the expression of what we see and feel. MIM sets itself the task of showing how music is the thread that pulls through every tribe and nation, uniting us globally. Enter each music room and rest your eyes on instruments created from whatever clay is available – cedars of Lebanon or a Castrol oil can. Watch performance videos as you move from Greece to Turkey to Belarus and listen through the earphones MIM supplies – all timed to accommodate a carefully researched (I’m sure) attention span. For fun, take your eyes off the displays, remove your earphones and observe the people in the room. They all smile in wonder, delight or reverence, bop their toes and bob their heads like chickens to whatever beat they hear, sing along when they catch a familiar tune, unaware their voices join with others who are doing the same.

Music is entertainment and communication, ritual and rite – and right. In some cultures, only the anointed may play certain instruments or tunes. In some countries, only men may perform music. This breaks my heart.

Random thoughts:

Young musician from Belarus perform in other countries because of restrictions in their own. They are credited with bringing a new sound to the world stage, but their music sounds oddly Irish. I think there is a Masters’ thesis or doctoral dissertation somewhere in this observation.

You can fashion a bagpipe out of anything, including a cow and a dog. I’m thinking Stephen King could have a lot of fun with this idea.