Colorado is one of the Rocky Mountain states with a touch of the southwest, mixing together  the Hispanic, Country and western, high tech, evangelical, and REI/Patagonia.  It is a beautiful state with a split personality which makes it hard to call in elections.  even the climate is mixed, southwestern warm but cold and snowy in the winter.  Denver is pretty with its sprawling, attractive suburbs like Westminster and Castle Rock, each with close to 200,000 population and with the Rockies as a backdrop and green and gold grasslands to the east, the plains.  The downtown is nice, with its silver and tan steel and marble faced skyscrapers, international style without a lot of post-modern buildings confusing the picture.  With its downtown convention and museum area, Denver no longer has the feeling that there is no there there.  The city is about young people and has a high tech feel, like Seattle but without the sea.  There are lots of Subarus and Priuses and soccer for the kids, a general feeling of an affluent lifestyle.  You can tell a lot by the baseball fans.

We went to a Colorado Rockies game on the 4th of July with our niece’s family and was amazed at what a family park this was, and how many students of all ages were in the stands.  It was a bit Yuppie, like Camden Yards in Baltimore or Mariners games in Seattle.  The Rockies were fun to watch, even though they only win at home.  They are like Minnesota or Oakland, a young team that does everything well, the small things, like hitting the cut off man or turning the double play.  Speedy, good defense, produce when you have to, no mistakes.  After the game, there was a wonderful fireworks display.  They turned off the stadium lights and Lockheed-Martin provided the fireworks.  The final section was a chain reaction with intense flashes and concussions, all in silver, like a bombardment, five blasts in a row, simultaneous, side by side, horizontal and only a few hundred feet up, level with the upper stands it seemed, followed by a solid stream of colored tracers shooting upward in the sky, the final volley.  When it was over, people were sitting silent in the stands for a while, recovering.  It reminded me of the bombardments set off around Moscow in its holiday celebrations.  It was like an artillery barrage from canons circling the city.  You expected to  see German bombers overhead.

The next day we went to the Denver Art Museum which was  very good, much like the Seattle Art Museum, with a wide variety.  My favorite items in the gallery were the early Twientieth Century Taos and Santa Fe painters, from the Taos artists Society.  This school is one of my new interests at the moment, along with Japanese and German stamps, the naval war in the Pacific in WWII, and William Faulkner.  There was an excellent Nicolai Fechin oil of a Mexican cowboy, two excellent Gustave Baumann woodblock color prints, “Summer Clouds” and “Processional,” Bert Phillips’ “Camp at Red Rock,”  And, I admired Robert Henri’s “Tam Po Qus,” of a Native American girl, rather impressionistic.   I also admired E. Martin Hennings’ “Girl With Blanket,” also of a Native American girl and his “Rendezvous,” both with bright colors, the latter in a birch grove, with fields of medium green; Oscar Berningshouse’s “Taos Field Workers,” and Walter Ufer’s “The Kiset Studio,” a tan adobe building with blue window trim, and with dark bluish green mountains, his trademark, in the background, dated 1929.  Joseph Henry Sharp’s  soft colors in “The Red Olla,” of a Taos native girl, was appealing, along with E. Irving Crouse’s “War Dance at Glorieta,” 1903, with native Americans crouching at a campfire.  Crouse is always a bit contrived for me, however.

My second favorite item following the Taos group, was Deborah Butterfield’s, “Orion,”  one of her glossy red, abstract steel horses which capture the essence of what a horse is.  There are other Butterfield horses in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.,  the Billings, Montana Yellowstone Art Museum, at Texas Tech University, etc.  I never miss the opportunity to see one.  My third favorite item in the Denver Museum was an Edward Curtis photograph, “Sioux Girl and Winter Camp.”  My fourth item was Thomas Eakins’ painting “Cowboy, Study at Badlands,” 1887, in green and chartreuse, a chalk drawing appearance, of a cowboy sighting a rifle, using his horse’s back as a stand, quite intriguing.  My fifth favorite was Frederick Remington’s “The War Bride.”  Other favorites included the French Impressionists, especially Pisarro’s “Banks of the Oise,” 1867, and Monet’s “Water  Lily” pond scene.  I also liked Julius Alden Wier’s “Dansbury Hills,” 1908, and a Juan Gris still life, cubist, in tan and chartreuse, showing a piece of the newspaper, Le Journal, dated 1916.

The museum had a wonderful furniture and crafts section, showcasing a Biedermeier bureau, 1820, of walnut and satin wood, and a Japanese Edo cabinet, dated 1750, black lacquer and silver fittings, with two accompanying chairs, also black lacquer with horseshoe shaped backs.  The native crafts section of the museum was terrific.  There was a memorable Ute robe, of red cloth and with white bead work, and a Ute men’s shirt combining leather and black and white cloth.  There was a Nez Perce dress, black with beads, some beautiful, feather patterned San Ildefonso black pottery, some Sioux large possible bags, and a Sioux dress, made of deerskin, with blue and white beads.

The items which lingered with me, mesmerized me, were a blue Ming vase, porcelain, with the blue underglaze for 1426-1475 timeframe; the Biedermeier furniture; the Sioux beaded dresses and. Nez Perce and Ute clothing; Julius Alden Wier’s still life, the Eakins cowboy with rifle, and Walter Ufer’s adobe renditions.

Before heading south on my own, I drop my wife at the Denver International Airport and discover another favorite place in the process, the west balcony of the main terminal, an exposed porch under a blue canvas roof, with blue metal chairs and tables, from which you can watch planes landing.  The airport itself is a beautiful architectural design, like a ships sails, held by cables, all interconnected to form a roof.  From this exposed porch, you can see for miles around.  To the east are golden fields heading towards Nebraska and Western Kansas.  To the west are the grayish purple mountains.  To the south, straight ahead is. Pima Road, connecting to Interstate 70.  Overhead are billowy cumulus clouds, some silver, mostly white, with patches of blur sky in between.  It looks like it might rain, but to the east, the skies are clearing.  The overall impression is of a green and tan landscape, a flat panorama.  You can watch planes landing from the south, as if on a highway in the sky, descending gradually a few minutes apart, their engine pods hanging below the wings.  Several. Alaska Airlines planes land, no banking, but descending fast, gliding down faster than expected from some altitude, wing lights blinking, the nose only slightly down.  As they approach in the distance, you can see orange dots beneath the wings, the engines.

I leave the airport , I drive south on I-25 towards Santa Fe.  Passing through  Colorado Springs, I think of LeRoy, my next door neighbor in Roswell growing up.  LeRoy, retired Army officer, who shared his great wit and wisdom with the neighbor kid.  LeRoy, one of my heroes, who died of a heart attack in Colorado Springs while visiting his daughter.  As I drive south, between Pueblo and. Trinidad, the landscape becomes drier, not desert but a few less mountains and warmer.  I begin to see the distinctive yellow and orange New Mexico license plates on cars. I feel like I am going home although I left New Mexico in the 1970s for a career abroad and in Washington, D.C.  (2009)