Happy Holidays! We hope things are going well with you, but whatever your news is, we’d love to hear it.
IN SILVER CITY
Both Kelly and Rosana have been hunkered down here in Silver City all year. It seems that the motivation for travel has diminished over the years, so that now we are content to spend our days within our local environment, absorbing all the wonders of the changing seasons and our evolving interests.
Rosana continues to regularly attend services at the local Episcopal church, which is both a spiritual and a social matrix. The church has a new pastor who seems to be melding with the local parishioners very well. Kelly periodically attends special events there, such as a Mariachi concert and a Thanksgiving dinner.
Both of us continue to practice our Subud latihans several times each week, which deepens our connection with the Almighty and helps us deal with fluctuating worldly and political chaos.
Rosana’s primary activity these days is reading, and we make regular trips to our local library, returning with a huge pile of new book treasures to delve into. Kelly also enjoys reading, but his scope is much more limited.
Rosana regularly talks on the phone to her sister, Marcia, who lives back East, and Kelly continues to play canasta via FaceTime on his phone with his daughter, Ajila, and sometimes her long-time friend, Val.
HEALTH
We both have been quite healthy this year, with no major illness episodes, thank God. Of course aging is inevitable (Kelly is now 81 and Rosana is 82), so we are reminded of this in various ways. Kelly’s hearing is not as good as it used to be and he periodically wears a hearing aid for assistance. Rosana continues to have issues with her balance, and frequently uses a cane when going outside the house. Also her short term memory seems to have been impacted by her bout with Covid last year.
Kelly tends to be more vigorous physically than Rosana and continues to go on daily dog walks and does maintenance around the house, as well as working in his shop.
OUR WORK
The Tree of Life sculpted tiny home that we reported on last year was put up for sale early this year, via local ads, as well as national online sales venues. It was even featured in an issue of Desert Exposure (see page 6), a southern New Mexico magazine. What eventually attracted a buyer was a poster in a local real estate store window, and the artful home is now happily residing across the street from the Gila Hot Springs resort. This seems like a perfect place amongst all of the towering trees.
Rather than immediately delving into another sculpted tiny home, Kelly decided to focus more on creating the wood art panels (called marquetry) that he most enjoyed about making the tiny homes. This year he has created dozens of these pieces of art, most of which can be seen here.
In order to sell the new artwork, Kelly joined the Grant County Art Guild, which maintains a gallery in Downtown Silver City that is always open (except for two holidays each year). Kelly was immediately invited by the Guild board of directors to have a display area in the gallery, along with about 35 other artists. His artwork has been steadily selling from this venue, providing both satisfaction and income. Part of the arrangement with displaying members is that they commit to tending the gallery for 3 or 4 shifts each month, so Kelly has been learning the art of retail sales and greeting customers as they enter the gallery.
One of Kelly’s recent pieces of marquetry features a group of Native Americans doing a traditional dance at a local Gila River Festival. Kelly was unsure of the tribe they represented, until he queried a local fellow sculptor and photographer, Jesse Ochoa, who had a wonderful show of his works the Silver City Museum. Part of his exhibit showed photos of local Apaches and Jesse confirmed that those Kelly pictured were also Apaches; in fact he said that several of them are his friends. Kelly then decided to give that piece of marquetry to Jesse, who has since become a newfound friend.
Besides his time spent creating artwork, Kelly continues to maintain his suite of websites, including the naturalbuildingblog that he posts new articles to every other day.
Rosana is working on her memoirs, bit by bit.
LOCAL FRIENDS
Our Gang of Six group that we established here in Silver City last year is till going strong, with nearly weekly gatherings and celebrations, usually over lunch, where we share what is going on in our lives. This group has become our local family. Of course we have other local friends that we meet with less regularly.
VISITS FROM AFAR
Kelly’s sister, Rebecca, who now lives with her love in Alabama, stopped by for a nice visit on her way home from dealing with matters of her estate in Albuquerque.
We also enjoyed another visit from Kelly’s cousin, Reese, and wife, Kathleen. This happened shortly after Thanksgiving, since they were already in Phoenix for that event and decided to make the hop over to Silver City. This visit was prompted by the desire of Reese to meet with Kelly and a new friend, David Stone, who is now in the process of moving to Silver City.
David is the inventor of Ferrock, a carbon negative material that has great potential in the building industry. Kelly and he have been discussing the possible use of Ferrock to build dome shaped earth-sheltered homes, and Kelly engaged Reese as a 3D printing specialist to assist in making a model of a possible design for this. Reese is now working on the third iteration of the model; the first iteration is pictured above.
RECENT PASSINGS
Earlier this year our dear pet Nicky died peacefully in his sleep after a long life of being with us. Kelly immortalized him with this image.
Our other dog, Lilly, who is younger, is still going strong and is actually enjoying being the only dog!
Most recently we were shocked by the sudden death of Brajesh Friedman, Kelly’s older sister Alexandra’s husband. They were living at the Mount Madonna Center in California, where Brajesh, one of the founders of the Center, had built his home. Brajesh was successfully recovering from surgery and all looked well, until he suddenly had a series of seizures, went into a coma, and died. Alexandra was nestled next to hm in bed when this happened.
Alexandra has been suffering from increasing symptoms of dementia over the last few years, and her future was uncertain, without his care. Kelly’s sister, Molly, who happened to be visiting California from her home in Hawaii, went with two of Alexandra’s children, Lucas and Tali, directly to Mount Madonna to be with Alexandra. They met with personnel from the Center and it became evident that Alexandra would have to move from her home within a few months and would likely require 24 hour supervision.
Brajesh and Alexandra had let it be known to their families that they would prefer to die together, if possible, especially if one of the them became incapacitated. As the family discussed the options with Alexandra, she decided that she wanted to honor their pact and took a potion that was prepared for that occasion. Molly lay down in bed with Alexandra as the medicine took its course, and felt Alexandra’s last breath.
LOOKING AHEAD
Obviously none of us know exactly what lies ahead, and that is one of the things that makes life so exciting. But whatever comes, our motto for life is to go with the flow.