Mostly Millicent

I’m keeping it short today. This blog has become a bit way too verbose, and I’m really trying to finish writing this book of mine, so need to cut that baloney. Besides, this is a blog, not a book.

So (for today) I’m limiting myself (at this venue) to a few bullet points and photos and I’m not even going to worry about tying anything together. I’m just going to tell you a few “fun facts” about where I am.

• Millicent Rogers came here in 1947 with a heart broken by Clark Gable. Before she died in 1953 at age 51 she wrote a letter to her son:
  

  “Dear Paulie, Did I ever tell you about the feeling I had a little while ago? Suddenly passing Taos Mountain I felt that I was a part of the earth, so that I felt the sun on my surface and the rain. I felt the stars and the growth of the Moon; under me, rivers ran…”

• The rain today has been something else. I look forward to the return of the blazing sun, but today it actually feels refreshing in this climate that is so dry it makes Missoula seem like Seattle. As a friend said of high-altitude desert living, “Night cream becomes day cream.” Or you could use BijaBody all day everyday, like I do. I honestly don’t know where I’d be without the serum and the treatment, and I’m not ashamed to plug my friend’s company because her products really are all that. 
• But let’s get back to Millicent. She was married three times, with six months or less between marriages, and her second marriage dissolved in 1935 due to “extreme cruelty” from both sides. I’m not sure why 1935 is an important detail to me, but it is. I guess I thought “extreme cruelty” was a modern cause of divorce.
• In addition to Clark Gable, she dated two princes as well as authors Ian Fleming, and Roald Dahl.
• But it was Gable who broke her heart so badly she retreated to the desert.
• Her heart never was in good shape after she had rheumatic fever when she was eight years old, and her life expectancy was ten.
• She was not a simple woman. At the time of her death she had close to 600 couture gowns and an extensive collection of accessories that her family donated to the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
• The Millicent Rogers Museum is here in Taos, and because I’m a “resident” I get admission gratis. Woot! The museum contains thousands of pieces of Hispanic and Native American arts and crafts as well as almost 1,000 pieces of Native American jewelry. I wonder if the gift shop has reproductions? {Note to self: you do not have a paying job right now.}
• Millicent is just one of many interesting characters that have called this area of New Mexico home. One of them, Aldous Huxley, lived and wrote in this same cabin where I’m living and writing though I’m pretty sure he only had the one room without the kitchen and bathroom. Yesterday I opened my email and saw an email from Finest Quotes, which I somehow got signed up for. Yesterday’s quote came in at 12:34, an auspicious time, and said:
  

  Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you. – Aldous Huxley

• Huh.
• Son of a gun, right? Because that, my friends, is precisely why I’m here.

Now I’ll show you a few pictures of where I am.

You get off Highway 522 and turn onto Old State Road 3 toward San Cristobal you get a great view of the Sangre de Christo (Blood of Christ) Mountains.

It’s a quiet street….But what a welcome home! Here’s the inside of the cabin:

There’s the man of the house with our starter woodpile:

Jose keeps an eye on the place and brings wood whenever he notices I’m running low. He so quietly delivered wood this morning and I woke up to this beautiful stack:

When I arrived at the cabin exhausted and broken, Jose pulled in behind me in his camouflaged-paint-jobbed truck wearing his “cold weather gear.” He was so nice and friendly that it scared me a bit, but now we’re buddies.

The man has a heart of gold, but more about Jose another time.

It’s too rainy to see the moon tonight, but last night it was unbelievable.

We hope the snow comes back!