February 17, 2000

I have been busy with meetings, art classes, power walking and various other activities. We had a friend, Dan Sullivan, visit in January on his pilgrimage to Utah for skiing. During his visit, Ken and Dan went downhill skiing at Eldora, a local ski area and the next day the three of us went snowshoeing up in Rocky Mountain National Park. We found fresh snow and beautiful surroundings. The outdoor activity is so invigorating. In March Dan and Maria will be driving back East from Utah and plan to stop by around March 10. It will be great to see them.

Our weather has been very mild and we have had very little snow. The sky is overcast and snow is predicted for today. I sure hope we get some precipitation. The forecast is for a couple of inches in our area. The higher elevations are expecting several inches of accumulation. People keep telling us that we can have blizzards, which will last-2 – 3 days, and I keep waiting for these to occur.

This time of year is one of Ken’s busy travel times. VCA (Vision Council of America) was formed with the merger of Optical Industry Association and VICA), so now Ken is working for VCA. In any case, VCA held their annual meeting at the Phoenician in Scottsdale, Arizona, a 5 star hotel (and Arizona’s only 5 star hotel). It was pretty plush with 8 million dollars of art housed in its facilities, enormously large cactus gardens with 350 species and beautiful golf courses. I would wake up early each morning to walk the golf courses – trying to get there before the golfers and every morning they would be there. I did walk part of the courses even though there were signs indicating no walkers or runners. There were beautiful gardens and little waterfalls on these courses and I felt they should be enjoyed by nature lovers and early morning power walkers like me.

There was a spouse tour to Heard Museum in Phoenix, which is an Indian Artifacts Museum. They had a headdress which was worn by a chief which was so long it was only worn when the chief was seated on his horse - beautiful feathers tinged pink at the tips and very elaborately beaded. There was quite a display of precious stone jewelry done in the Southwestern/Indian motif. One of the things the tour made me realize was the numerous numbers of Indian tribes we have in the U.S.

The second tour was to the Talliesan, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home in the Arizona desert. Talliesan means shining brow. He designed this home so that upon approach you could not see the structure, only the natural desert landscape. He had no windows or conventional roofing originally, only canvass coverings. Since that time, there is fiberglass roofing to provide a more durable roofing material with the same lighting quality that Frank Lloyd Wright intended for the architects who live there. The persons who live at Talliesan are called the fellowship and live, eat, and entertain as a group. This type of setting is not for everyone. Our museum guide was a tall blonde woman with a definite accent in speech. I thought she was Scandinavian born, but she was born in Wisconsin and her father worked with Frank Lloyd Wright. He left Wright’s employ only because JFK requested he become an adviser to him. She was very informative and delivered her insight of Frank Lloyd Wright with distinctive speech, pauses and was tremendously knowledgeable of this subject. Her delivery of this information was truly mesmerizing. Another wonderful treat while on tour was a 7 year old Chinese girl, Kim (cannot remember her middle name) Pong, who was giving a concert that night together with a violinist many years her senior. The kid was fantastic! Her parents are both architects and live at Talliesan along with their daughter. We all agreed that we had probably heard a child prodigy, who we probably would be hearing from again.

On Friday evening at the Phoenician, we had the Theme Party a “Pow Wow” with an Indian flautist, an Indian ring dancer, Indian singing, various games, etc. I SURE COUL D HAVE USED THAT INDIAN HEAD DRESS I SAW EARLIER AT THE HEARD MUSEUM.

As a member of the Boulder Art Association (BAA) members were encouraged to enter arts/crafts into their Christmas montage show the first week of December. I did not enter anything this past year, having just become a member and not having time to create anything to enter. However, after Christmas, I picked up 4 different size trees and lights, beads, flowers, birds, etc and have been busy decorating Christmas trees to sell at the next arts/crafts montage. I must have at least 30 trees complete with at least 30 more to go. I do hope they hold this event, otherwise I must seek another source to enter these decorated trees for sale.

February began a series of art classes. Tuesdays, Gretel and I drive into Denver to the Art Students League for a figure painting class. The instructor is Kim English and he has quite a following and is an established artist, at least, in this area. My first experience with nude figure painting was quite an eye opener. This young woman in her late 20’s came in with purple hair, purple and black tattooed eye brows (she had had all her natural eyebrows waxed and pulled our). Next she had eyeliner tattooed on her eyelids. I asked if that was painful and she said yes, especially the eyelids. For the first pose, she took off her robe and revealed further tattoos on her shoulder and a tattooed G-string. Whoa!! This first session was so crowded you could barely walk in the classroom. The instructor didn’t get around to me for the first 30 minutes, so I had to throw some paints together to come up with flesh tones and begin on sketching sessions of 5 – 10 – and 20 minute pose studies. At the beginning of the session, I probably added 50 pounds onto her body uniformly, and at the end of this first session had her proportions correct. I’ve kept a couple of these sketches from each session to mark my hopeful improvement.

On Fridays in February (and into March )we drive into Loveland for an oil/pastel course. This is a female instructor, Patti Andre, who has exhibited internationally. I do prefer her technique in teaching. She recommends beginning a painting with an underpainting and then a layering technique allowing previous colors to show through. The drive to Loveland is much more pleasurable and easier to drive to. It is also the home of the famous sculpture exhibition in the summer.

People drive to Loveland to mail their Valentine Day cards and wedding invitations. The town really goes out for Valentine Day as it was lavishly decorated with hearts, lace cut outs and romantic bits of verse for St. Valentine’s Day.

We have had a heron at our pond the past few days along with two geese and a couple of ducks. While having breakfast a coyote is apt to walk 20 feet from the house. The prarie dogs are once again establishing themselves in some of the existing holes of previous exterminated prarie dogs. Sarah, from Sarahland had exterminators come in and killed thousands of these creatures.

News on the water to our pond. Sarah, who owns adjacent property with pipe line that feeds water from the Swede ditch into our ¼ acre pond is building a 5 acre pond, which is not completed and construction will be on going for several more months. She and her attorneys are filing for water rights for this pond. We in turn had to file a counter claim to protect the rights of water flowing into our pond. She also has a counter claim filed by the St. Vrain Water Conservancy. In the creating of this pond, they have uncovered a large quantity of subsurface water and this may cause lack of water to people who irrigate with water from this source, (the Swede ditch) some distance away.

Hopefully the counter claim filed by the St. Vrain Water Conservancy will help our cause.

Ken is travelling next week and then in 2 ½ weeks will travel to Shanghai, China. I do not intend to travel with him to China. However, I am anxious to learn the location of the next ISO to be held in 2001.

That’s about what has been happening in my life. Ken, of course, has been actively pursuing his mountain biking, snow shoeing and last Saturday we both went cross-country skiing at Eldora. We went off the groomed trail and did a lot of steep up hill where herring boning did not keep me from slipping. It was a work out for the entire body. Advil was available upon our return home..

Love,

Diane and Ken