The first of the Arizona travelogues was yesterday’s post on Kelly Houle’s art, which I saw when we visited the home she shares with her husband Ken and her son Benny in Mesa. After looking at the art, we took the short drive to Tempe to pick up Ben Goren.  The thermometer in the car gave the outside temperature (top right): 113° F is the equivalent of 45° C!  That temperature is not unusual for the Phoenix area this time of year, but oy, was it hot!

Here’s Ben, posing (at my request) next to his 1968 Volkswagen Bus, the vehicle that all of us in who hitchhiked in the 1960s prayed to see coming down the road. VW buses were always driven by hippies: a guaranteed ride when you were thumbing. Ben says this vehicle has about 750,000 miles or more on the original body, though the engine has been replaced several times and a bit more work has been done.

Ben’s trumpet, carefully ensconced in a foam-lined plastic case:

We all know that Ben allows Baihu to scratch and bite the hell out of his arms, the sign of true fealty of Cat Staff. Here’s a photo of some of the damage:

The Dewey-Humboldt home of Karen and Mike Houle, Kelly’s parents, where we spent a pleasant three days and nights chewing the fat, both literally and figuratively, and hanging out on the front porch (not shown), watching the sun set and Venus and Jupiter appear.

An “appetizer” before the first night’s Italian meal. (Karen is of Italian descent.) Just the ticket with the nice Rioja I brought. Best not to eat too much, as plenty more is coming (see below):

A family style Italian meal: pasta with sausages, bread, salad, and Italian wine. From left to right: Kelly, Ken, Karen, Mike, and Ben. This being a table full of heathens, there was no grace, just occasional discussion of the follies of believers.

And breakfast with bagels, and italian vegetable-and-egg scramble, English muffins, homemade raspberry jam, fried ountry ham, great coffee, and orange juice.

Ben considers himself a secular Jew, although only his dad is Jewish. When I told him that his mom had to be Jewish for him to be considered Jewish under THE LAW, he said that he underwent a “conversion” when he was young. I’m not sure that such an act is possible.

I told Ben that if he wanted to violate Jewish dietary law in the biggest way possible, he should eat ham and cream cheese on a bagel. That violates the “no ham” law as well as the “no mixing meat and dairy in one meal” law. He proceeded to do just that. He said it was good, but I prefer lox on my bagel with the schmear.

Mike Houle is an accomplished woodworker (he made the box for Kelly’s book that I highlighted yesterday), and has an immaculate and well-appointed shop in a separate building. Here it is: I’m sure Kelly inherited (culturally or genetically) Mike’s artistic abilities, craftsmanship, and penchant for order.

Here’s a pine knot he carved into a grotesque figure:

Ben with his BIG LENS photographing the goldfinches at the birdfeeder. You can see the photos in this morning’s “readers’ wildlife” post.

As Kelly is interested in typesetting her miniature books, we stopped in to see Schuyler (Sky) Shipley at his Skyline Type Foundry in Prescott, one of the very few places in the world that still handcasts metal type for use in printing presses. Sky is a fascinating character: he flew 747s as a commercial pilot, and, after retirement, took up making type and collecting and using antique machines connected with printing. He also flies a restored Lockeed P-38 Lightning training plane, and plays bass in a local jazz band. The man is a polymath.

Here’s one of the machines Sky uses to make type. I believe it’s from the late 19th century. It’s very complicated and requires exquisitely manipulated tuning to make usable type. The hopper in the top is where the metal (a mixture of lead and other metals) is kept molten.

The end product is superb. I believe Sky can make about 2000 different kinds of type. Here’s one set, which of course has multiple copies of most letters, necessary for setting entire lines of type. The price is remarkably low: this hand-made set goes for about $30.

Here’s Sky’s collection of antique printing machines, most of which he uses. They range in size from tiny ones (perfect for Kelly’s miniature books) to big ones good for printing newspapers.

A linotype machine, which replaced time-consuming hand setting of letters with a typewriter-like scheme in which each slug was set by typing a key (you can see the tricolored keyboard at the bottom). This was the way most newspapers were printed until a few decades ago, when offset printing run by computers eliminated the need for metal type. Sky wants to keep the old craftsmanship going.

Sky’s Foundry is filled with weird geegaws that he’s collected, like this miniature electric chair in a bottle. He was told that it was made by a prison inmate, but doesn’t believe it.

Sedona, the Woo Capital of America (and also the home of rich people who go there in winter) is in a superb setting of red rocks, hills, and outcrops. It’s very New-Agey, with stores selling crystals claimed to have various healing powers, and much palaver about “conjunctions”, “vortexes,” and “harmonics.” There are also many ritzy art galleries catering to the tourists who flock here.

Well, if you must have a Catholic church, this one has a lovely setting, embedded right in the rocks.

Lunch at a local restaurant: typical New Mexican food, which is Hispanic but heavy on green chiles. I had a chile relleno (“stuffed chile”: a whole chile stuffed with cheese, or sometimes meat), then battered and deep-fried. This one was coated with a blue-corn batter, which was scrumptious. The chile relleno is one of the glories of Mexican cooking.

A kitschy kat in a local art gallery:

We then went into Prescott, a cute little town not far from Dewey-Humboldt. When we stopped in a brewery for lunch, Kelly revealed to my astonishment that she had never tasted beer in her life. Not a sip! So I inveigled her into taking her first sip (remember W. C. Fields’ “The Fatal Glass of Beer”?), and photographed that epochal moment.

She didn’t like it much. This was a local brew made with chocolate, which I thought was good, though far too rich to be a session pint.

Note the use of two hands to hold the glass, a sign of someone who’s not hoisted many brewskis:

We finally went home to drop off Ben and take me to my car, as I was headed for Las Cruces. When we pulled into Ben’s driveway, Baihu was sitting in the window with a most reproachful look:

Thanks to Kelly and Ken, and to Mike and Karen, for their generous hospitality.