Tucson

It was a bit of an adventure getting here. I got up at 7 am to finish packing for an ostensibly noon flight that actually left at 4 in the afternoon. That flight got me as far as Denver but then I had to wait for a plane to Tucson. I finally go to the Doubletree hotel at about 1:00 in the morning. Did I mention it is beautiful here, with actual sunlight that seems to have a warming function?

Planes from Brazil
One of the women at the airline desk gave me her theory as to why United is always so fraught with delays, which in this case required an engine part. She said, “well, these are Embraer planes. They’re built in Brazil. They don’t do well in the cold.” That sounded reasonable to me, but when I suggested it to my colleague Mo, she said “It’s always cold at 40,000 feet.” Fair enough.

Orange Trees
So it’s one o’clock in the morning and I look out my second story window and there is an orange tree there full of ripe oranges. This morning, I see it is one of a row of hundreds of trees that line the compound. I once heard from a colleague who’d moved to California that expat Canadians are always crazy for oranges, until they’ve spent a few years shoveling up the fruit and throwing it out. Nonetheless, I am crazy for oranges. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that the orange juice at breakfast was ghastly—thin with no flavour.

How Many Cactuses?
I guess that should be cacti. In any case, I took a few minutes at lunch today to stroll around the hotel, which is designed on the rambling model, something like a dozen two-storey motels strung together. In the course of circumambulating the building, I saw no fewer than 5 different species of cactus.

I picked a grapefruit
Stop the presses. I reached up and picked a grapefruit off one of the trees on the path between the meeting room and the swimming pool. It isn’t quite ripe, but I set it on the desk in my room when I went out for dinner, and when I got back, the whole room smelled deliciously of grapefruit. Who knew these things were so aromatic?

Ansel Adams
He lived from 1902-1984 and when he was in his seventies, he helped set up The Centre for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. We went to tour it last night and were reminded that a lot of the creative part of creative photography takes place in the dark room. So now I am left wondering how many of his amazing effects of shadow and light were actually burning and dodging. http://www.creativephotography.org/

Arizona – home of turquoise mining
Who knew? Maybe everybody except me, but the Navajo in Arizona and a lot of other people too have mined turquoise here. You strip mine it, apparently. Many of the historic mines are closed now, but a few are still running, producing 20% of the world’s supply of turquoise. Much of the rest comes, who knew? From China.