Allophile

Bisbee. Bumper-sticker. Acronym.

So, this past weekend--we went with our friends-from-out-of-town to Tombstone and Bisbee, a nice Sunday-drive fromTucson...

Bisbee is a historic mining town and county-seat--about a mile high in the Mule mountains of Cochise County, a couple of hours SE of Tucson...its mining heydays are gone, but what's left is great architecture that hosts an incongruous mix of hard-drinking Harley-riders, hippie gallery-owners, county bureaucrats, pierced baristas, retirees who've opened up antique shops, tourists from Ohio and Germany, and urbanites away for a b&b weekend...
...the old stone and brick buildings (optimistically grand Italianate) in the narrow valley, with wooden houses and postage-stamp-gardens going up and down red hills covered with oak and pine...Bisbee almost has an old-world feel...
(And the chipotle honey mustard from the Killer-Bee-Honey-hole-in-the-wall is killer-good...)

...speaking of bees...some artsy-graffiti down in the Brewery Gulch area of town:
(fun with stencils...)

...some real-life bugs too, battling for one of the spring blooms:
(Does anyone know what kind of bug this large guy is?)

This street-corner gives you a good feel for the up-and-down-ness of Bisbee. Much of the residential-part of the city is only accessible by pedestrian-stairs...


...back to some of the artsy-graffiti, in an empty lot between a gallery showing avian photos and an off-the-leash dog park:


...one of the doors in town; bottle-capped folk art:
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...on the way down, we stopped in Tombstone for lunch, and for our out-of-state-friends to watch a re-enactment of The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
Right after we parked, we noticed this bumpersticker:

...nothing like a bit of in-your-face xenophobia to make you feel welcome as a tourist, eh?

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Spring continues, with breezy days...

The last of the winter fruit are dropping off the taller branches of lemon tree in our yard. This one had been deformed--it grew in the crook of a branch and took a permanent bend:

...more desert globemallow blooming, including this purple variety:

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...and, in the midst of all the school-budget-uncertainties,

I've learned a new acronym: RIF--Reduction In Force...

...as in--you get a pink slip; you've been RIFed.

(English is a flexible language, eh? Any noun or acronym can magically become a verb.

RIF's been verbed.)

I've not yet been verbally notifiedin that way, but who knows...