Citizens State Bank – Ouray, Colorado
The bank move into this former saloon building in 1918. It survived the bank closures of the 1820s/30s and continues service today.
I lived here for a while and such a photogenic region it is. There will be more photos of this – one of my favorite regions – in the San Juan Mountains of SW Colorado.
I’m getting out of the architecture business.
I’ve always believed you must truly enjoy what you do otherwise you will not do it to the best of your ability every.single.time.
Thanks to the ever encroaching gov’t regulations my goal of providing the very best service I can to my clients has become an arduous chore sapping me of my normally decent outlook on life in general.
I can’t live this way and am already cutting ties.
Because of the nature of my work I can’t just “cut the cord” and walk off.
But suffice to say by the end of summer I will be about 90% removed from the world of “architecture for hire”.
I will be pursuing other ventures, some old, some new.
Because I bore easily I have to have many irons in the fire at all times, and I must be in 100% control of them at all times.
One of the new ventures is designing and creating music in it’s many forms.
This has been a lifelong hobby of mine and now I’m going to step it up a notch.
More….
I was lucky that the core of my profession was my primary hobby – I started when I was 7, made my first money when 14, and “retired” not all that long ago. I find I’ve lost most of my interest and now fill my time with many other things – including this web site. I did keep one aspect of my work, but it’s more similar to what I was doing at 15 than 65.
Music: I “played” bass long ago … until I crushed my left ring finger in a stamp mill in the 70s. Had a girlfriend whose mother worked for Gibson but I (mistakenly) passed on the chance to get an EB0/3. I could put my fingers in the right place at the right time but I didn’t have the soul to be a musician. Never played again.
About 30 years ago I bought our son a Rogue bass and a Peavey amp and he dabbled with it for 10 years then gave it back as he was not interested. 10 years later he got interested and I gave it back. About 6 months ago he sent it back to me and I’ve been working it. Though it takes much effort to learn, once finger picking is learned it really is a much easier and more versatile way of doing it.
Though basses and guitars have strings, in most ways they are 2 different animals.
My son has a job teaching school in the Wet Valley. Beautiful place, I could live there but for Colorado politics. Family story is that Great-grandfather’s journey west from Iowa in the 1890’s was first to San Luis, but the altitude and climate didn’t suit Great-grandma so they ended up in Willamette Valley, Oregon. I wonder if the San Juan Mountains reminded him of his home in Switzerland.
The more things seem to change, the more they stay the same. Tempus fugit.
Tempus Fugit
So when I was a youngster, in a far away school, Latin was an obligatory part of my school curriculum. Being a shy and studious child, and blessed with an inspiring teacher, I came to love Latin.
I know in some circles Latin today is considered elite and useless but it served me better than I could ever have imagined in my career and travels.
Virgil was one of the authors we studied at school. The term tempus fugit is from a four part poem by Virgil, The Georgika, written 30 years before the birth of Christ. It is all about agriculture and country life – farming, gardening, trees, wine production, animal husbandry and the struggle of man against the forces of nature. As a student I could hardly believe that someone from so long ago could write so clearly about such things. In one part of the poem he actually listed all the then known trees!
Here is the beautiful part of the poem from where the ancient expression “Tempus Fugit” comes:
Thus every Creature , and of every Kind ,
The secret Joys of sweet Coition find :
Not only Man’s Imperial Race . . .
but they
That wing the liquid Air ; or swim the Sea ,
Or haunt the Desert …
rush into the flame ,
For Love is Lord of all ; and is in all the same .
But time is lost , which never will renew,
Sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus
While we too far the pleasing Path pursue ,
Surveying Nature , with too nice a view .
For me those Latin lessons so many years ago were not time lost, but time has certainly flown.
SK–My wife’s initials. It has been over 65 years since Latin class. It has gone too fast. Americans had better wake up, turn off the blankety blank boob tube or we are just another empire that turned our backs God.
I think gov’t mandated schools have programmed most people to not think very deeply.
I’m currently working on the lyrics and music for a concept song that will be titled “Time For Now”, by a hand made band named “Starliner”.
It deals with the idea of the man made option of the forced recognition of the concept of time.
Time, and how that linear notion creates barriers to the process of dreams.
“Man doesn’t have a soul. He is a soul. He has a body.” C.S.Lewis.
And thus, in the absence of body the soul continues and expands.
Dreams are revelations of the co-mingling of the soul with the bigger picture.
Space travel?
Space = ether, we already do it.
It’s a great quote from a brilliant mind.
We are souls. And we are energy.
We all lose our bodies but continue to live on in other ways and expand as you say.
The Celts have this idea of the “thin place”. Some place where the space between human and spiritual is barely there. You find it described in various ways in fairy tales and ghost stories and tales of transformations and crossings over. And dreams play a big role in folk tales all over the world for a reason.
The concept of time is quite a subject to tackle in a song. I guess it started with us, hunters and navigators, staring at the moon and measuring how long it took to grow from a sliver to a glowing ball in the sky.
All deep and interesting stuff to ponder especially now as science and medicine reveal more about our connections to the rythems of the universe and that the line between life and death is blurrier than it seems.
Recently I asked a noted theologian for his opinion on the following statement. “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” His response was brilliant. “Somebody is being what we call ‘clever-clever’! Both statements are true.”
HA! Good one!
You and me could have a good conversation over a bottle of Fireball.
No doubt!