Tag Archives: miscellaneous

Trip West Photos from Jeanne

Posted on August 26, 2012 by | 17 Comments

Crater Lake was a new discovery for me this trip. I took hundreds of pictures there. Heck, have one more:
That’s Wizard Island, the secondary cone. Crater Lake is about six miles across and 2,000 feet deep.
Aw, shucks, here’s one more, ’cause you’ve got to see the Phantom Ship:

Now to the Willamette National Forest. Here’s the view coming in towards the resort town of Detroit:

Below is where I like to hike around Devil’s Creek:

Forest floor.


My family has been going to Mt. Rainier since the 1920′s.

Mt. Rainier the first evening at sunset.

Clear weather is not always a given at the mountain, which makes its own weather!

I love bracket fungus and the dew drops caught my attention.

This lake can be seen by the road if you travel towards Sunrise (east) at Mt. Rainier. I’ll put pictures up of the view at Sunrise some other time.

This great view of Myrtle Falls is only a 7 minute walk from the parking lot at Paradise.

Narada Falls is too big to fit into any camera view, so I just put it in the background for this shot.


Evening sun on the mountain.

I hope you enjoy these, it’s hard to choose favorites from 2600 photos! I’ll put more up some other time if you like.

Jeanne

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Posted in Adventure, America, Admin., Outdoors, 2012, Jeanne Kasten

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Taking it all too seriously– from Jeanne

Posted on August 26, 2012 by | 11 Comments

“Artists shouldn’t enter the arena of competitions until they are tough enough to realize it is only opinion and not a reflection on their worth.”  (Mary Moquin)

So… I got a rejection letter.  None of the pieces I submitted were accepted, although I’ve been in that particular exhibit twice in years past ( most recently about three years ago).
The above is one I submitted. Problem is with form letters, you never know what it was that made them reject it. I’ll only be able to speculate when I go to the exhibit.

I’ve noted before that they seem partial to some 3-D element for the prize winners, but I haven’t tried that yet.  There are a lot of ways that could be done with my work, but without my work by nature being 3-D,  I suspect it would look contrived. I also get frustrated when I get too far away from the actual drawing (like those pendants, where the glass cutting and soldering is time-consuming).  Cutting paper, layering paper, rotating layers of paper, mirror-edges around the design–all of them  sound cool but don’t really sound fun to put together.  I’m really not a paper-crafter.
I have a couple of other ideas about how I can give them more depth, so I suppose I’ll concentrate on that first.

I have a couple of little peeves about these exhibits. The first is the application fee (in this case, $25, which isn’t too unreasonable). The second is that photography and other kinds of art work are usually grouped together, and I think photography exhibits/competitions should be held separately from other media.  I think photography is an entirely different beast, especially now that good cameras are affordable and it’s so easy to use the computer in conjunction with that.  I love it, but just because it hangs on the wall doesn’t make it the same thing.

Evaluating my work is a constant process, always there in the background, but it’s good to put it up front sometimes.   Right now the difficulty of getting exposure to promote sales makes it a challenge in ways that don’t have anything to do with the  difficulty of doing the work.  I hope I’ll be able to draw some  honest conclusions later on.  Maybe that will include submitting some photographs next time.

There’s one nice little conclusion to this form-letter rejection, though. I was shelf-reading at work last night (shelf-reading is checking the shelves to make sure that every book is placed in exact order). I always keep an eye out for bookmarks since I have quite a collection. Usually I find check-out receipts and boarding passes. This time, in a book called “The Lord is my Shepherd”, I found $26.00. Just enough to cover the application fee and postage to send the cd. Is that cool, or what?

Jeanne

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Posted in 2012, Admin., Adventure, Art, Human Behavior, Jeanne Kasten, Libraries, Mandala Dreams, Mandalas

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Damned Environmentalists vs It’s All About Money

Posted on July 17, 2012 by | 22 Comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

The neighbor up the hill drove down to sit awhile yesterday evening.  We discovered once again, as we have before, there are areas where we’re rigid enough in our certainties so’s there’s no room for civil discourse.  We found two of those more quickly than it takes to tell it.  One involved multi-national corporations.

Neighbor:  Sure.  They’re shipping jobs and industry overseas because labor, costs of production are cheaper.

Me:  That’s what I’m saying.  They’re indifferent to the well being of US workers, the US economy. 

Neighbor:  It’s still jobs.  Still people working, making a living.  Africa, South America.  They’re all people.

Me:  Yeah, they’re people.  But why should a guy in Minnesota trying to scratch out a living favor losing it so’s someone in Asia can have a job?

Neighbor:  He can buy products cheaper.

Me:  He can’t buy products at any price if he doesn’t have a job.  Part of the job of his government is to make sure his job stays inside the country.

Neighbor, clamping jaw:  We aren’t going to talk about this.  You and I see it differently.

Then, a few minutes later:

Neighbor:  They want to build a pipeline to bring oil from Canada to the Texas coast.  Damned environmentalists are protesting, keeping them from it.

Me:  So why don’t they refine it up there.  Canada, northern US?

Neighbor:  No shipping ports.

Me:  What they need shipping ports for?  Nobody in Canada, Minnesota needs gasoline?  Cities don’t need hydrocarbons to produce electricity?

Neighbor:  They need to sell it overseas.   It’s all about money.  They can get better prices selling it to China or somewhere.

 Me:  Who needs to sell it overseas?  The people living on the land they’d take by government mandate to  put in a pipeline?  The people in the US who’d be heating their houses and running their cars on the gasoline if it’s refined close to where it comes out of the ground?  Who?

Neighbor, getting up:  Sorry I brought it up.

Luckily, neither the neighbor, nor I, depend on any sort of agreement between ourselves.  Neither has anything invested in the opinion of the other.  And whatever we might think about it, that oil’s going to arrive where the people who burn it pay the highest price.  The Canadian sands producing oil belong to people who might be anywhere, but who own stock in a company who bought the mineral rights.  They want the most dividends so they can buy more stock and get more dividends.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Current Issues, Government, Human Behavior, Nature, Relationships, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas, Transportation

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Harmless Lunatics, Constraints and Contracts

Posted on June 14, 2012 by | 4 Comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Back during the last century I used to know a guy in Socorro, New Mexico named Dennis Tolliver, who’d dropped in from some other century and could never quite get the hang of things.   He ran a successful business, worked hard, was considered trustworthy in most ways, even though his business involved selling used automobiles.

In that part of the country everything’s located far enough from everything else to argue compellingly that a person needs a vehicle.  Among the people who went to Dennis to fill their vehicle needs were those who’d proven themselves unworthy of credit.  But Dennis didn’t mind.  He’d sell anyone a car and if need be, he’d carry the note himself.

But even though Dennis was a local legend, even though everyone who bought a car from him knew precisely what to expect, people sometimes wouldn’t make their payments.  They knew Dennis didn’t mind.  He didn’t worry when they fell behind three months.  He’d spot them stopped for a red light, walk up and throw them out onto the pavement, and drive the car back to his lot to sell it again.

A few years before I became acquainted with him Dennis got himself a felony record for armed robbery and resisting arrest.  He was on his way through Grants, New Mexico one Sunday morning and decided he wanted some booze.  Stopped into a grocery store, went through the “NOT SOLD ON SUNDAY” ribbon blocking off the alcoholic beverages section, and took his bottle up to the register.

Clerk:  I’m sorry.  I can’t sell that to you.  I’d lose my job.

Dennis:  Why?

Clerk:  It’s against the law.  They’d fire me.

Dennis:  Hold that thought.

Dennis left the bottle on the counter, went out to his car and brought a Government 1911 Colt .45 out from under the seat.  Went back inside, showed it to the clerk and racked a round into the chamber.

Dennis:  Okay.  The price on that bottle is $7.95.  Here’s $20.  I’m taking it.  You do whatever you need to do.

Dennis settled into his car and took a few swigs while he watched through the store window as the clerk called the cops.  He was on the tarmac opening a can of whupass on the first one that showed up when two more arrived and he was hauled off to the slammer.

As nearly as I could tell the felony record never bothered Dennis, never influenced his behavior in any way.  The police were prone to leave him alone, which was appropriate, because Dennis was a fundamentally honest man.  He lived by his own contracts and promises, and he gave others the benefit of a doubt when it came to living by theirs.

But I’ve digressed.  I was actually going to write a bit about my own lunacies, my contracts with my cats, with my chickens, and the vice grips of necessity and options a person can find himself examining.  Even if he’s a lunatic, a hermit, and lives close to the bone.

At least I never had to be Dennis, or someone else.

But I guess I’ll just have to leave you with Dennis to think about and I’ll mull my own business over in private.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Relationships

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Art Work Update from Jeanne

Posted on June 13, 2012 by | 16 Comments

Last week when I finally cleared the decks and got out all the pens again, I realized how critical it seemed for me to start drawing every day. In the meantime I came across this little book while I was shelving at the library:

It describes Resistance and how to combat it. Those of you who are doing creative work already know what I’m talking about. But knowing the characteristics of Resistance and having a plan to fight it helps. I’m going to have to own this book just in case I ever see myself getting away from drawing again.

So here are a few photos for you showing what I’ve been working on.These aren’t scans, so the photo angles will be a bit off.

Although I find the asymmetrical ones very fun to work on, I also demand that I retain my ability to do the symmetrical ones free-hand. All those curlicues in the middle area compensate somewhat for where it got off track. I hope.

I rarely get out a ruler, but on this one I did for the next stage. I just used it to mark dots where I wanted to start those outside edge designs. Once I had one that I thought was round, and when I got a circular mat cut for it, it turned out it wasn’t round at all. So now I’m more careful about that, either making sure it’s round or not getting round mats!

Here’s one more from the end of last night:
I don’t think it’s finished, but at this point it’s definitely time to walk away and not look at it for a few days.

However, I couldn’t help bringing it over to Paint Shop Pro to see what I could come up with:
Love it!

Here’s a close-up of an old one that I had already matted about 6 years ago. I had pens that weren’t as good as the ones I use now, so I’m brightening it up with better colors:
I guess that center motif has always been a favorite of mine. I need to break away from that.

Just for fun, here’s a photo of the above taken under a black light:

A photo of the work table. My son took a card table and cut off the legs so it’s only about a foot high.  I sit on a cushion on the floor. I have a clamp-on light and a clamp-on magnifier. It works great since I can move it around easily and can use it for anything up to a couple of feet square.
Oh, I also worked on that long strip one lying across the pens. But I’ll show you that one again when it’s finished.
I hope everyone has a good creative day!
Jeanne

 

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Posted in 2012, Admin., Art, Books, Mandala Dreams, Mandalas

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Mandala Dreams update from Jeanne

Posted on June 7, 2012 by | 7 Comments

Hi everyone, I thought I’d sneak a  post in here when Old Jules isn’t looking.

Since I got back from New Mexico last weekend, I’ve been clearing space to draw again so I thought I’d tell you a little more about what I do with these gel pens.

When a drawing is finished, it’s never really finished because I can take original drawings and make hundreds of variations on the computer using Paint Shop Pro 7. The first picture is a really old drawing I did when I was just starting to get serious about it. Soon after it was finished, I was unhappy with it for several reasons. I  hadn’t developed the ability to plan for margins and also lacked the skill for keeping it symmetrical.  (Although it did sell, I never got a good scan of it because of the size. I’ve since learned that Kinko’s has a huge scanner so now I use their services for large drawings. This one is about 12×12 inches.)

But the second version is a favorite that I always enjoy looking at, and I frequently use it for greeting cards. It’s also in the running as a possible variation for fabric.  Same drawing, just tweaked with PS Pro 7.

The originals are always the best for viewing in person because I use a lot of metallic and fluorescent inks which don’t show in a reproduction, but playing with changing colors and shapes  gives me more variety for printed copies and fabric.  I’ve even used the manipulations as starting places for entirely new drawings.

Here’s a mandala that really is special just because of the capability of the particular gel pen I was using. There is a line of Sakura gel pens that actually makes an outline on the edge of the color as it’s drawn across the surface. If you enlarge this piece, you’ll see how much more intricate this becomes.  Although I’m pretty good at fine line drawings, these pens add even more detail. The finished size of this drawing (not the paper)  is about 4 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches.
This is  also an old one, but it shows off this added line feature really well.

Since I’m only working one part-time job right now, I have time to draw again, and I’m working on several half-finished pieces. I also have an order for some greeting cards that just need to be assembled since I already have the photo reproductions.  I also intend to get back to those soldered glass pendants since I have a stack of those that I set aside when the soldering started to drive me nuts. I listed three on Etsy last night and will probably put up several more soon: http://www.etsy.co/shop/Mandaladreamer).

Here’s what I was working on this evening:
This one will be fun when it’s finished because all those fluorescent inks glow under a black light.

I also sorted through my entire collection of pens and threw out at least a couple of dozen that didn’t survive not being used frequently last winter, as gel pens  to dry out easily. Here’s what’s left:

Old Jules suggested that I write a post about my recent trip to New Mexico, but since the main thing I came back with was a determination to keep  drawing and work harder at sharing it, I figured I’d post this instead.

~Jeanne (Mandala56)

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Posted in 2012, Admin., Adventure, Art, Mandalas

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Gamblers, Gambling and Risk-taking

Posted on May 28, 2012 by | 5 Comments

Previously blogged May 17, 2005

Saturday a recently acquired friend and I revisited one of the sites I spent a lot of time puzzling over during the search for the lost gold  mine.  The place was the focus of the ’98 search  and a good many years prior to that.  Sometimes it amazes me how many times I climbed and unclimbed the west face of that mountain, always finding something new and puzzling.  I spent most of a month camped at the top, friends coming in for a week or so, then heading back to their lives elsewhere without finding what we were looking for, but finding enough adventure, fellowship and mountain air for a while and remember as one of the good times.This was Jim’s first time up there.  We went in mainly to look at a rock pillar that’s peeling away from a cliff face.

It’s a formation that fascinated a man I’ve come to know awfully well by his work; a man I never met, but whom I followed around that mountain puzzling over what he did, how he did it and why he did it.  A man who lived and died 150 years ago, roughly.  A man who knew a gamble when he saw one, went into a canyon spang in the middle of Apache country at a time when the best he could hope for if he was a quick death, or if his luck was bad, hanging upside down over a slow fire.

I’ve been wearing the arrowhead that almost certainly killed him hanging from a leather thong around my neck for a decade or more.  The ruin a few charred logs high, a long-tom sluice he carved with an axe out of a three-foot diameter log, a 400 pound rock he chiseled down to use as an arrastra and a hundred or so signs and symbols he made on rocks, along with his various diggings are all that’s left to tell what kind of man he was.

A gambler, he was, gambling on being caught by Apaches, gambling a broken leg in a place where such a thing was sure death.  A man who believed in himself so thoroughly that in that setting that he pecked away at the base of a 50 ton pillar of rock trying to get at what was underneath until it gives a man the fantods even today to walk beneath it.

One of the things I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating as I watched Orion chasing the Pleiades across the night sky to the background music of wind in the treetops is the thought of how a man of that sort would feel about a world where low-level risk-taking is a criminal offense.

A time when edging the nose of  a vehicle onto the pavement without fastening the seat belt probably won’t get you hurt, but it will almost certainly get you a conversation with an armed pair of mirror sunglasses.  A time when risk is defined in how many years it might take you to get cancer from whatever you’re eating or smoking.  When excessive gambling is betting the grocery money at the blackjack table.

I wonder if he’d have played a wheel, or just picked a few numbers that suited him and bought a hundred tickets with the same six numbers on them, going for broke on something he believed in, the way he did in life.

One of the ways we define who and what we are includes what we’re willing to give up to travel around the sun a few more times.  That guy on the mountain wasn’t inclined to give up much.

Old Jules

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Posted in 1990's, Adventure, Gambling, History, Human Behavior, Lottery, Native Americans, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Prospecting

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A Military Man

Posted on May 27, 2012 by | 13 Comments

Previously posted August 21, 2005:

The man in this picture is my old friend Richard Sturm.

[Note:  I'm going to edit this a bit before I post it to the So Far From Heaven blog, add and subtract a few hindsights and afterthoughts.  Jules]

Richard died in December, 2004, in Port Lavaca, Texas.

Richard was a 100% disabled veteran of the United States Army. From 1964, until his death he spent his entire adult life in and out of Veterans hospitals. When he wasn’t in a hospital he was usually in a café somewhere drinking coffee and being friendly with anyone who’d give him the time of day.

Or he was with me, camping, fishing, seeing the sights, singing, passing the time. That happened less than he’d have liked, probably more than I’d have preferred in a lot of instances. Richard wasn’t an easy man to be around.   

A while back [2011] his brother and I were discussing Richard, and Vic remarked, “You never really saw Richard when he was at his worst.”  I didn’t say so at the time, but I think I spent a lot more time with Richard over the years than Vic did, or than Vic was ever aware I did. 

Aside from Richard, all those Sturms were super-achievers, and although I spent a lot of years from 1965 onward considering Vic among my best friends, he was a busy man.  People sought him out.  If I wanted to talk to him, I called him.  Over all those decades I could count on one hand the times he initiated a contact between the two of us.  “People call me.  I don’t call them,” he explained to me once when I mentioned it to him.   I’d guess that applied to Richard, same as it did to me.

But that’s digression, edited in this May, 2012, with a lot of hindsight.

Before Richard volunteered for the Army he was a patriotic youth, intelligent, dynamic, from a family of super-achievers. He graduated from high school with honors, well liked and respected by his teachers and classmates. A young man with a future. Then he joined the US Army.

In 1964, he was stationed in Massachusetts with the Army Security Agency. Without his knowledge or consent, he was selected for an experiment by the career military men who were his superiors. He was given a massive dose of LSD. He sustained permanent brain damage as a result.

Richard spent several months in a mental ward of an Army hospital, presumably under observation by the powers-that-be, to see what they’d wrought. Then they gave him is medical discharge, released him from service and from the hospital, and sent him home without confiding to anyone what the problem was and why it happened.

Several years later after he’d been examined, had his thyroid removed, given electric shock treatments, everything the puzzled medicos could think of to try and improve this mysterious condition, his brother, an attorney, came to suspect something of what had happened. The stories of events of this sort had begun to creep out of hiding and into the press.

A formal demand was made for release of his records, and finally the story came out.

Richard wasn’t injured defending his country. He didn’t get his skull fractured on some battlefield by enemies. He was betrayed by the career military men of his own country, officers and enlisted men, whom he’d given an oath to obey and defend. He served in good faith, and he was betrayed by his country.

Some have noted on the threads that I don’t have an automatic high regard for career military men. They’re correct. Richard’s just an extreme example of thousands of men who’ve been killed, injured, disabled by irresponsible, insane, and idiotic decisions by men who make a career of blindly following orders without thinking, weighing consequences, not feeling any remorse so long as they were ordered to do it.

Like good little NAZIs, Japanese, Soviets, Israelies, Americans, Cambodians, British, Africans, Chinese, Cubans, Argentinans and military men everywhere.  Just following orders. 

Support our troops.

Old Jules

2012 note:  During a conversation with Vic in 2011, I mentioned the LSD experiment and Vic replied, “It’s a shame I could never prove it.  Richards records were all destroyed in a fire at the Army Records Holding Center in the late 1960s.”  Live and learn.  Somewhere back there, I must have heard it from Richard, I came to think the records had been uncovered and it was established, official fact.

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Posted in 1960's, Adventure, Government, Human Behavior, Liars, Military, New Mexico, NM, Politics, Texas, US Army

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Sorting Through Eternities

Posted on May 26, 2012 by | 4 Comments

Previously blogged a few years ago:

After the post a few days ago about the meaning of life I found myself pondering a number of things about how most of humanity relates to the subject.  The great majority of folks in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim world believe they know how to get by with doing some heavy-duty ugly during this lifetime and still end up somewhere good.  Assuming they tip their hats regularly to a diety carefully tailored to forgive them their breadcrumb sins.  It’s the hat-tipping, after all, that’s important.

On the other hand, that same body of humanity’s prone to take a lot of satisfaction knowing the people who didn’t tip their hats right have a tough row to hoe.  Many engage in firefights of advance “I told you so!” insofar as how bad those who didn’t believe them are going to wish they did.

It’s not something I need worry myself about, but sometimes my mind drifts there anyway, imagining what it would be like in an Eternity surrounded by the sort of people who spent their lives absorbed in hat-tipping with one hand, and selling used cars with the other.

Old Jules

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Posted in Human Behavior, Spirituality

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The Legal Money Raffle Consortia

Posted on May 24, 2012 by | 4 Comments

Previously posted in 2005:

I used to know a guy named Mike, down in Socorro.  A man with a lot of ideas.

During the mid-‘90s, about the time the Internet was cranking up big-time, Mike had the idea it would be cool to start an online raffle.

Mike had some money lying around.  Just about enough to buy a full-sized Harley, and a large RV.  But he thought he could increase the amount of money he had by taking a risk.  He’d sell raffle tickets online for a Harley and a large RV without buying them until someone won the raffle.  If he didn’t sell enough tickets, he’d make up the difference with his savings.  But if he did sell enough tickets, he’d give away the Harley and RV, and pocket whatever extra came in.

It turns out raffles are illegal at almost any level, though the cops and prosecutors look the other way if they feel the cause is a good one, or if it’s just small potatoes.  But item one for Mike turned out to be that if he went online he’d be almost certain to be prosecuted.

Item 2, was the fact he was, in effect, proposing to raffle a motorcycle and an RV that didn’t exist.  The fact he didn’t own them yet compounded the felony he would be committing.

Now what Mike was proposing to do was precisely what lotteries do.  Raffling off something that doesn’t exist…. Money that they plan on earning as interest.

But, of course, when a government-sanctioned, or government-owned administrative entity commits an act that rhymes with something that would be a felony if an individual behaved identically, all’s well with the world.

Unless they happen to have a lot of attention focused on their behavior, which sometimes happens.

Similarly, I used to know a guy named Dan, who had a lot of cash lying around doing nothing.  He dreamed up an online something he called a ‘money club’, or ‘money pool’.  Members, Dan dreamed, would pay $5 per month into the pool.  Every month the total proceeds, minus 10 percent (to Dan as operational and administrative fees) would be handed out to some lucky member by a process known as Random Number Generator…. Something nearly identical to what’s being done by lotteries.  Except it would be private enterprise….. private sector.

Dan figured the payout percentages would be so much better, the odds so much better than any lottery that it would cause players to flock to him.  He might have been right.

But there was naturally a catch.  What he was proposing was and is a herd of felonies at almost every level of jurisdiction.  Even though what he proposed was a lot better for the players involved, than the competition (the government and the various legally recognized mob) could (read ‘would’) offer.

So neither of these ideas ever came to fruition, though each represented the cleaned up versions of corrupted first-cousins we all accept as normal in the lottery systems.

It’s surprising sometimes to see people who claim to believe in free enterprise so blindly support any government monopoly.

Old Jules

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Posted in Adventure, Human Behavior, Lottery, 1990's, Current Issues, Internet, America, Gambling, New Mexico, Government

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