The Neighborhood

I've been staying at my son Tom's house on Capitol Hill in Washington...six blocks in back of the Capitol Building, the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court.   It is a dense residential neighborhood of row houses, manors, modest frame dwellings...most of which lie within a tightly regulated historic district.  The district ensures that almost no change can be made in the exterior of the houses.  So each trip around its many blocks reveals its many shapes and forms; each residence having its own unique story and lore.

But besides the structures, the neighborhood ("near""dwelling""place") is the people who live there.  The children who ride in wagons for their afternoon "walk" from the local day care center.  The woman trying to decide on flowers in Eastern Market, built in 1873 and still housing all range of food vendors.  And folks in their houses and flats, sorting out their lives and possessions and networks.  The neighborhood is a kind of tapestry of structural and human interactions, played out in a live street museum, set just in back of the major institutions of our federal government.  A place for people behind the people's courts and legislative bodies.

Skijoring

 So you put together horses, cowboys, skis, and snow in the middle of the downtown business district and you get Leadville's version of skijoring.  "Joring" comes from the Norwegian word for "driving"...and in some parts of Scandinavia, it involves skiers being pulled by dogs over long race tracks.

But in Leadville, a horse and rider pull a skier on a rope to launch him over a series of jumps.  The skier has to snag bright rings which are lined up between the jumps by putting his arm through them (which involves switching the hand holding the rope).  The skiers, at least those who complete the jumps, are timed.  The winner is the skier with the fastest time and the greatest number of rings.

 

These horses move fast, around 40 miles an hour down the flat center of the course.  The jumps and rings are arrayed on each side of this center aisle.  The skier must move from side to side, jumping and grabbing rings.  Times for running the course average under 20 seconds.   

Of course, not every skier makes it to the end of the course still on his skis.  Some wipe out entirely after the first jump.   But the competition has been going on since 1949 and is one of the central winter festivals of this small mining town (which boasts at being the highest incorporated city in the United States, located at 10,152 feet more or less).  And the color of the event is not just the competition itself, but also the spectators who line the main street, the sometimes colorful horses (spraypainted?), and the setting in this old mining town.  

As the competition came to a close, it seemed a fitting end to my month of skiing in the mountains.  Tho' at no point did I think it was time to take up myself this "new" sport.

Art from the sidewalk

Salida has a strong presence in the arts.  Evidence is the number of art galleries per capita.  Wallmart and other businesses line the strip along Route 50 but the historic core of the town forms the art gallery-coffee shop-yoga studio-bar-restaurant center of urban life.

What is more striking, though, is the integration of folk art and ornamentation into the many small houses that fill out that urban core.  Small home owners decorate their houses with ornaments, found objects, small statues and architectural fancies, probably extending out a Victorian tradition that was the rage when in 1880 trains arrived to make the town a commercial and industrial success.  

 So a walk down the street asks the visitor to move slowly...note the small works of art and artifice that populate the yards and add color and design and life to function.  Form does not follow function here...form has an individualistic small-scale artistic sensibility of its own.